Full transcript10 chapters · 10,968 words
00:00From emptying ashtrays at eight to selling the family company
Drew Cameron: Want a sales team that performs like pros? In this episode, I break down how to recruit, hire, train, coach, and pay your way to sales success.
Tyler Martin: 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.
Tyler Martin: Sales is one of the most talked about topics in the home services industry, but most contractors are still approaching it in the wrong way. Today, I’m joined by Drew Cameron. He’s a longtime trainer and consultant who spent more than 25 years helping contractors build
Tyler Martin: high-performing sales teams. Drew grew up in the trades, helped run and sell a family HVAC company, and now coaches contractors across the country on how to sell through education and real customer connection. In this episode, we talk about why sales calls often break down, how to run a better
Tyler Martin: consultation in the home, and the KPIs and compensation structures that drive real performance. Let’s get into it with Drew. Hey, Drew, welcome to the Profit and Grit Show. How are you doing?
Drew Cameron: Appreciate you having me, Tyler. I’m doing well, thank you.
Tyler Martin: I’m doing great too, so thanks for being here. I wanted to, well, first, you were at Epic, just I missed you, probably passed you in the hall, but one of your presentations was around sales. And so that’s kind of gonna be the context
Tyler Martin: of today’s conversation. But before I get into that, I wanna just learn a little bit about you. Could you tell me a little bit about yourself professionally, maybe a little personal tidbit?
Drew Cameron: Yeah, grew up in a trade. Long story, 61 years old. Started at age eight, emptying ashtrays and trash cans in the offices at the business. And then at age 12, after swim team practices, would jump on a truck and be a pair of hands on a residential install job.
Drew Cameron: And did that all the way through high school, basically. Worked in the warehouse, worked in the sheet metal shop that we had, worked in residential new construction. and then in high school, got into the inside portion of the business, working with the new construction department on blueprint takeoffs
Drew Cameron: and manual load calculations back in the day and did that in the 80s until I graduated. Then I went to college, got my degree at the University of Maryland and came back to the business and got into, picked up where I left off the residential new construction estimating
Drew Cameron: and then got into office management, general management, marketing, sales, sales, then sales management, and kind of did all that all the way up until we sold the business in 1996. And, you know, that was the first wave of consolidation. But uniquely enough, the
Drew Cameron: consolidator for us was not another HVAC group. It was a utility company out of Delaware. And so I worked for the utility company for 18 months and I left that. And then I went to work for Service Experts, a publicly traded company, did that for 18 months. And 99, I jumped out
Drew Cameron: on my own and started my own training, coaching, and consulting business. And I’ve been doing that pretty much ever since. And in there, like we talked about, with load calculations, load calculations is something you definitely need to do to be professional in your job and do
Drew Cameron: your job accurately. But it’s also something that helps you educate a customer and separate yourself from the rest of the pack. And so in 2014, unfortunately, I lost a longtime friend who had had a software company, took it over, ran it for his widow for three and a half years.
Drew Cameron: And then my business partners and I, guys that I was working with on the software, We bought it off her and we’ve been running a software business that creates sales tools for contractors.
Tyler Martin: Very cool. Okay. A lot of stuff to unpack there. Before I do, I want to know just something about you personally. Anything that you can share, hobbies, family, anything you’re open to sharing?
Drew Cameron: Yeah, sure. I have a great partner that I went, I actually went to high school with. We had different marriages, but then we got back together at our 30th year reunion, Kim. And so I’ve been with her for 11 years. And I had two kids on my own, Paige and Tyler, 27 and 25.
Drew Cameron: And she has three kids on her own from her family. And yeah, we moved into the city of Philadelphia during COVID when everybody was moving out. And so we’ve been loving the city living for the last five or so years.
Tyler Martin: That’s really cool. What a good story. Hey, OK, so I want to go back to the business and just your direction with it. You pretty much have worn every hat when it comes to like a trades business. It seems like you’ve gravitated a little bit more towards sales, and correct me if I’m wrong,
Tyler Martin: but that’s your area. What lights your fire in that? And let’s kind of go in that direction.
Drew Cameron: I’d love to know what led you in that path. Yeah. I was a salesperson for a bit in our company, but I really got bit by the sales management bug. My dad asked me to kind of take over very quickly after just a short time out on the road. And it was actually that marriage
Drew Cameron: between marketing and sales. And I really just think it’s all marketing. I think it’s all messaging, right? And so you put the messages out there, the baton gets picked up by the call takers and then gets handed off to the salespeople who then hand it off to the installers
Drew Cameron: or the technicians. And all that psychology and philosophy behind the connection of one human to another, and how do you move that needle? And how do you, you know, we talk about winning sales, but you don’t win the sales. You either connect with the customer or a story or you don’t.
Drew Cameron: And I’ve always just found it fascinating. So I’ve made my life study, geez, since the early 90s, is to how do we create more and better connections with other human beings and let the business kind of take care of itself. So we actually got away from selling back in the 90s
Drew Cameron: and really just started connecting with customers and teaching them how to buy and how to get value for what they pay. And it’s led to great success in my company. But the thing that really fascinated me was like, can I do this again somewhere else that’s not my company, not Pennsylvania, and things like that?
Drew Cameron: And so that’s what I’ve been doing since I really started with services experts. And then
06:08Why quote and hope makes every contractor look the same
Drew Cameron: they had me fixing centers that were troubled and struggling and been building businesses ever since.
Tyler Martin: What are common themes you see when it comes to sales, particularly in the trades? What do you see mistakes that, whether it be the salesperson or the owner of the company that’s not leading the salesperson down the right path? What are you seeing? Are there common things?
Drew Cameron: The most common things are people think their job is to sell, to run the lead, to give a price, and to try and close it. And they try and do that usually on one visit. And the reality is, is an educated consumer will buy and they will make a smart decision. And so if you teach people
Drew Cameron: how to buy and give them good information to make a good decision, they’ll make a good decision. But if you run the call, like every other salesperson and every other contractor runs the call and you quote and hope and spray and pray and you give a price on the first, you know,
Drew Cameron: on the first visit, usually within less than an hour’s time, you’re using the same software as everybody else is using nowadays to create a proposal that looks like everybody else’s. You’re promoting brand model efficiency and capacity. The customer is going to commodity in comparison shop it, right? And they’re going to buy it like they buy electronics and cars and
Drew Cameron: appliances and things like that. And the reality is, is where else in the world do you get a proposal to buy anything? You just don’t, right? And so those are the, some of the mistakes that I see. And if salespeople in the trades, all trades, right, all contracting trades, landscaping
Drew Cameron: pools, you know, hardscaping, you know, windows, roofing, siding gutters, all of that. If contractors just took the time to connect with customers and their story and then teach them what they need to know about picking a contractor to design the scope of work first, what the scope of work needs to be
Drew Cameron: and why the price needs to be what it is and how they can pay for it and how you protect them in their investment. What I have found and my business partner has found for the last 30 odd years is more of them buy and more of them spend more money, right? And as we always tell customers,
Drew Cameron: I don’t care what you do as long as you do it knowingly. And that’s my job, right? So let’s get to work and let’s see what’s going on. And then we’ll see where we’re going. Most salespeople are trying to close the business and they look and sound and feel exactly like every other clown
Drew Cameron: in town and they get treated like every other clown in town. And I hate to say that about contractors, but that’s just the way they play the game. And why? Because it’s the way every contractor plays the game. And so if they work somewhere else, that’s what they know. That’s
Drew Cameron: what they’ve inherited. Manufacturers and distributors promote the brand model efficiency and capacity of their equipment, but the equipment is just a part. It’s a big part and it’s the most expensive part, but it’s no more important than any other part in the recipe. Because if it’s
Drew Cameron: designed wrong and installed wrong, you get the wrong outcome, the wrong results. It doesn’t function and perform the way that it should. It doesn’t make them comfortable. It doesn’t make them energy efficient and healthier. And it’s the performance, it’s the outcome, the results
Drew Cameron: that the customer actually buys. They get the product. They don’t want the product. They want the outcome and the results. But everybody’s selling the product. So the customer shops that because it’s different than a car. It’s different than appliances and electronics where all the
Drew Cameron: values in the thing, all the value in our things is from the design and the installation. and then verifying that, you know, testing out that what you did is actually performing to the level that you said it would. But sadly, only about 2% of the contractors actually test in
Drew Cameron: and test out and prove that their work, you know, the work that they did is actually performing to the level that they promised that it would. And now, unfortunately, with this high efficiency, advanced technology equipment, the lawsuits are coming. I mean, there’s trade publications
Drew Cameron: is actually writing about this. And I just saw a presentation a couple of weeks ago where the speaker basically said, you’re gonna see over the next five years,
09:49The 10-step in-home framework, from meet and greet to findings
Drew Cameron: a wave of lawsuits against contractors.
Tyler Martin: Wow, wow. Can you, as a real world example, can you kind of take me through, let’s say we’re talking an HVAC company and you’ve got the comfort advisor going out there for a new system, for an install. In your mind, as much detail as you’re open to sharing,
Tyler Martin: what should that sales call look like? And how do we differentiate ourselves? so we don’t just look like the same Joe down the block?
Drew Cameron: Yeah. I mean, sales processes, as people like to say, they all sound the same. Everybody will tell you, oh, I’m doing that, I’m doing that, right? But when I dig into the details behind it, they’re not doing what I say because it’s not actually the frame.
Drew Cameron: And I don’t call it a process. We call it a framework. Okay. And it’s a free-flowing, flexible framework that allows for your creativity and connection with that customer. But you go in, you have the meet and greet, exchange pleasantries, and then you get started, you ask why you’re there and what has happened
Drew Cameron: and why did they pick you to come out of everybody else that they had come out. And even if they’re having multiple people, why did they call you? And then you get to work and you explain what your process is. That’s the one thing I find that most salespeople never do. They just inflict
Drew Cameron: their process. So I tell a customer, hey, most people I go out to visit with like yourself like to know a little bit about the process that we as a contractor have to go through and you as a homeowners should go through when making an investment of this magnitude? Does that sound
Drew Cameron: fair? And they always say yes to that because it’s like, wow, yeah, I didn’t know there was an actual thing that you have to do and I should be doing, right? Everybody else just came in and did what they did, right? And that gives me an opportunity as well to kind of explain it. And
Drew Cameron: then if they’re going to push back at all, they’re usually going to push back right up front about, well, the last guy didn’t do that. And he’d say, yeah, I find myself apologizing on behalf of the industry more than I care to admit. There’s a lot of companies out there that will take the
Drew Cameron: shortcuts, but we won’t. And it’s the people who do business with us tell us they appreciate that we didn’t do that. But you need to take my word for that. Go out and read the reviews. We have the most reviews with most permits pulled, the highest score on those reviews, blah, blah, blah.
Drew Cameron: Right. And so then I do my process. And that process is obviously doing a complete conversation survey with the customer throughout my time with the customer. So that’s not really a step. That just happens the whole time we’re going around. But then I do a complete walk of the living space
Drew Cameron: and I look at the location of every supply and every return or radiator for wet heat. And, you know, I measure the rooms for purposes of doing a heat loss, heat gain load calculation. I explain, you know, the importance of what that is.
Drew Cameron: I’m looking also for tabletop humidifiers, air cleaners, portable humidifiers, window units, pellet stoves, little portable heaters, blankets. You know, anything that they’ve used, ceiling fans, anything they’ve used to mask or adapt the environment, you know, to make themselves more comfortable. because a lot of times if you ask a customer
Drew Cameron: if they have hot spots or cold spots, which is a bad question, by the way, they’re going to say no, right? I say, take me to the hottest room at four o’clock on a hot summer day. You know, take me to the coldest room at midnight
Drew Cameron: on a cold winter’s night, right? Because you know they got one, right? So why ask if they’ve got one? You know they do. We all do, right? So have them take you there and see what’s going on, right? So now that I’ve done the living space,
Drew Cameron: then I can go behind the living space and look at the building envelope because the building envelope affects comfort and load and air quality. And then I look at the equipment and the duct system and the electrical, and I gather all that information.
Drew Cameron: And then I’m in a good position to have a conversation about, if I haven’t already, we call it money conditioning, have a conversation about money and how they plan on paying for it and what their timeline is for having the work done and when they think about making the selection.
Drew Cameron: And then I can put together findings options and share all that with the customer and figure out where we stand at the end of that. So in a nutshell, that’s kind of it. There’s some obviously a lot of detailed nuance to it, but it’s typically a 10 step process I teach.
13:34Probability pricing and letting go of the one-visit close
Drew Cameron: And, you know, I taught for EGIA and country university as well.
Tyler Martin: So, yeah, you were just doing your presentation at Epic. Speaking of. Yeah, yeah, it’s awesome. So in that presentation, is it the goal to walk out with a signed order or I mean, how do you look at that? Because I know you talk about a lot of times we think about, you know, we’re just trying to close and get out of there.
Tyler Martin: Like what’s an effective meeting like that? Is it to walk out with a signed deal or is it setting it up for a next meeting? What’s your thoughts on that?
Drew Cameron: Yeah, Russ and I, we’ve talked for years. We go after what is the best possible outcome for that particular visit. So sometimes it’s an initial visit. It’s just it’s information gathering. If I sense through the conversation that the decision isn’t going to be made today,
Drew Cameron: why would I give information to somebody who’s not going to make a decision today? Right. And a lot of people seem to think that they’re going to convince that customer to buy and push and all that, you know, take that shot. We call it probability pricing.
Drew Cameron: Give the pricing information to the customer when you have the highest probability of them making a decision on that information, whatever that decision may be. It’s not about getting a sale. I let go of my attachment to getting that result. It’s about execution, right?
Drew Cameron: And execution is, you know, when should you give that information to have the highest probability of the customer connecting with that information and saying yes or no, right? So, I mean, I’m not saying that you can’t do the so-called one-leggers. right but you know on an initial visit some people do buy you know on the spot but some don’t your
Drew Cameron: your job is to read the room and then make a judgment call as to when you think it’s going to be you know you know most applicable to that situation and those people you have to share the information and then sometimes obviously it’s a big job and you got to take the extra time to do
Drew Cameron: a two-step process anyway but no the goal is the best possible outcome right and the best possible outcome is sometimes they buy from me sometimes they buy from somebody else sometimes sometimes they don’t buy at all and they put the project on hold. I don’t care what they do as long as they
Drew Cameron: do it knowingly, right? So they see that I don’t have my foot on the scale trying to get a result that serves me. Homeowners sniff you out and they know that you’re pushing for a sale. They know the things that you do to try and get a sale. They’re smart and savvy nowadays. I can literally,
Drew Cameron: everything I’ve said to you on this call so far, I can literally say all that to a homeowner and say, I’m not here to sell you anything you don’t want, you don’t need, you can’t afford, it doesn’t make sense. This is your home, it’s your family, it’s your bank account, you have to be happy with the choices that you make.
Drew Cameron: I don’t because I don’t live here. I’ll be happy if you’re happy with the choices that you make, as long as you don’t know anything. And that’s my job. So let’s get to work and see what’s going on. And see, just even that statement of intent, right, lowers the barriers that are out there with customers.
Drew Cameron: They see that I’m real and authentic and genuine. And then obviously some of the tools that I use, they basically say, well, geez, nobody, nobody explained this to me. Nobody did the level of detail that you did. Nobody showed this to me and is doing this, you know, this type of stuff is not unusual.
Drew Cameron: Yeah. Most contractors are trying to sell the job today, to get the revenue, to get the job on the board, right? To fill a crew day, to get personal revenue and a commission and things like that. And you can be successful doing that.
Drew Cameron: You definitely can, you know? And there’s lots of ways to get to a 50% closing ratio doing those types of things. But there’s only one way to get to 70, 80, 90% connection ratio. And it’s not that way. So you either pursue success and get achievement or you pursue greatness and it’s a state of identity and a place you come from.
Drew Cameron: Right? And that identity is I am a servant leader in the home to help other human beings live their best life. Yeah.
Tyler Martin: I definitely, in what you’re saying, I hear, I’m putting myself in the position of the consumer, and I feel you diffusing the whole process. You’re bringing down the barrier of I’m trying to close you as opposed to I’m trying to educate you. And I think as soon as, as a consumer, you hear that, you kind of drop your guard and
Tyler Martin: you really are there. You’re now comfortable asking questions. You’re not feeling like it’ll get rushed through. and it just opens up hopefully a natural conversation to what’s best for me in my situation.
Drew Cameron: It typically does. I mean, I’ve had customers spend, you know, $20,000 to $40,000 more with myself or one of the people that I work with in coaching ride-longs and such than anybody else even quoted. And it’s not that they spent more, it was different, right?
Drew Cameron: The scope of work and the outcome promise guaranteed in writing, by the way, or your money back if you’re not happy, was different. And they literally thanked us for saying, you know, thank you for taking the time to walk me through this. I was ready to make a decision for $8,000 or $1,000.
Drew Cameron: You came in at 23, right? And this just feels like it’s going to give me what it is that I want. And then the guy actually added a $7,000 change order after the fact, you know.
18:26Coloring books, flow hoods and the missing thank you gift
Drew Cameron: And so he ends up spending $30,000 when the other two companies, one quoted $1,000, another quoted $8,000. One was duck worker only. Another one was some duck mods and equipment. and we were a complete redo of the entire duct system, all new equipment,
Drew Cameron: and just a different approach to the job, right? Because I found out, you know, this gentleman I was riding with, we found out who the customer was and what they really wanted and where we were and why things weren’t working the way that they needed to do.
Drew Cameron: And then we just said, okay, well, what do we need to do to basically make this the right thing? I don’t care about any other clown in town and what they’re quoting, right? Because they’re not us and we’re not them. And customers will try and compare. I’m not telling you customers won’t try and compare what we’re doing. But if I haven’t done my job to teach them about how to get value and how to select a contractor in that right scope of work, then that’s going to be on me. That’s not on them.
Tyler Martin: Right, right. No, that makes a lot of sense. You know, you had mentioned Jason Walker before we started. You were on his podcast recently. And I had sat in on one of his presentations. And in that presentation, he talked about how he designed this coloring book.
Tyler Martin: And it’s a pretty elaborate coloring book. It’s not like just thrown together. And he actually gives it to the child when he comes into the presentation. And, you know, of course, the child keeps them busy, which is a good byproduct. But then one step further, he has them give it to him at the end so they can put it as part of a contest.
Tyler Martin: And I guess the kids really get into it. One, I thought that was really creative because it wasn’t like a little cheesy. It’s pretty, it shows the whole history of his company. What do you think about that idea? And then what are other differentiators maybe that you, how we can separate ourselves from just looking like the next guy down the street?
Drew Cameron: Yeah, that’s a great question. And Jason and I talked about that. Yeah, I did that at Cameron and Sons. and we used them there. We used them at trade shows and home shows and things like that too. And we did the contests. It’s neat because it engages the customer.
Drew Cameron: It also, if you really think about it, it starts the recruiting process into the industry, right? It does. A little bit. And there’s just all kinds of nuanced little things. Certainly you can carry treats for pets. Always ask for permission before you give the coloring book to the kids
Drew Cameron: or treat to the pet, stuff like that. And just your tools and your process and how you explain things to customers. Doing load calculations is important. And airflow analysis, pulling out flow hoods. And you could certainly go as far as duct blasters and blow-over doors too, right?
Drew Cameron: But at least flow hoods and infrared thermometers and just ways to make air visible, right? This is like this invisible thing that we’re trying to communicate and educate customers on. and it’s not like bottled water, right? I mean, we used to, I grew up drinking out of a hose
Drew Cameron: outside as a kid, right?
Tyler Martin: Me too, by the way.
Drew Cameron: Yeah, or out of a spigot, right? But, and nowadays we’ll pay four or $5, depending on if you’re at a concert or something like that, it might even more if you’re in Vegas, heck it was $10 or $15 for a bottle of water, right?
Drew Cameron: But, you know, we’ve bottled water and they have bottled oxygen. That’s not the same, right? Our job is to make air visible however we can, make it tangible. And the more visible and tangible we can make it, you know, to all the participants in the conversation, the more we can kind of bring it to life and make them see, you know, this is responsible.
Drew Cameron: We are responsible for the health, well-being, safety, and comfort of your family. I mean, whether or not you get a good night’s sleep in this house is really predicated upon me. Whether or not your kids and you are safe from the invisible things floating in the air, you know, that comes down to us.
Drew Cameron: That’s why we were essential services and are essential services, right? Yeah. So I do, you know, I work with clients to say, listen, you can’t do everything all at once, right? But just tweak and add. Jason does something neat with adding LED lights, you know, to some of his installs.
Drew Cameron: Okay. It’s kind of cool, you know, not everybody gets it. But there’s all kinds of things that you can talk about during your sales process, but also as part of your installation process, part of your service call and maintenance call process, as well as part of your call taking.
Drew Cameron: The one thing I do find in this industry, which is shocking, is the post-transaction process. It doesn’t exist in 95-plus percent of the business, meaning there’s no back-end loop except the review nowadays. Nobody’s thanking the customer. Happy calls went away with the review, right?
Drew Cameron: So nobody’s reaching out to the customer to check in on them, human to human. Nobody’s sending a little thank-you gift on service calls or a big one on installs, right? Nobody sends the salespeople back to do a post-customer verification, making sure that they’re happy with the job, have any questions or things like that, and then delivering a thank you gift.
Drew Cameron: Some of them will mail something through a third party. Some, but very few. I mean, these people are spending probably, on installs, $20,000 plus. You’re not even thanking them? Yeah. So there’s all kinds of little nuanced ways that you can just separate yourself from the common contractor out there.
Drew Cameron: I always said in my training, don’t be a contractor in business, be a business in contracting. Right. And the business is not the vocation. The business is taking care of people.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s huge.
23:46Explaining load calculations without losing the homeowner
Tyler Martin: That mindset shift is huge when you say it that way. You know, load calculations, you talk about a lot. Now, I know of those because I’m in this industry and I hear the terminology and I’m inquisitive. But as a consumer, I might not really know what that means.
Tyler Martin: Like if I’m Joe consumer, you start talking load calculations, I’m going to gloss over probably. How do you bridge that gap? And how do you do it in a way that it comes off that you’re trying to educate versus kind of? Because sometimes contractors and just people in their professions in general, my profession is guilty of this.
Tyler Martin: We use these big buzzwords and it makes us look smart. And it’s really kind of intimidating the consumer more than helping them to understand. How do we make that not happen with load calculations and other types of things like that?
Drew Cameron: Well, something you said right in there is actually the point, right? It’s like, we got to make it simple, right? We use terminology and phraseology and acronyms and abbreviations, and we just talk about them freely like everybody understands it. I mean, I ride along with salespeople all the time and talk about Manual J. What’s Manual J, right?
Drew Cameron: You know, Manual J is a protocol by a standards organization known as Air Condition Contractors of America. They happen to write one methodology for load calculations. They’re not the only one, but it is one. It’s probably one of the more popular ones because they’ve pushed it out there.
Drew Cameron: That’s what they’re all about is standardizing things. But I learned about load calculations a long, long time ago. I got certified in ACCA, Manual J, D, S, T, L, and N. And those are standards for designing and installing systems. And so those are standards that they wrote, but they’re just a way, not the only way.
Drew Cameron: National Comfort Institute has protocols. ASHRAE has protocols. Building Performance Institute has protocols. So long and short of it is, I tell customers, your house loses heat during the winter and it gains heat during the summer. We need to size the equipment properly to make sure that the system can remove the heat
Drew Cameron: on the hottest day and heat the house on the coldest day. The problem with that is that the technology has changed over time. We now have high efficiency advanced technology, right? Your house was built in the 50s or 60s or 70s or 80s at a time when this technology wasn’t
Drew Cameron: even imagined. And so we no longer size to the tonnage like you may have heard. We size to the actual BTUs that you lose and gain. And we can fine tune that with the duct system and the airflow and the type of equipment
Drew Cameron: that we put in. And so I do a process to measure all the windows, the doors, the insulation values of the exterior walls, floors and ceiling, appliances and people. We put that all into a piece of software, the direction the house faces, and we pull in weather data from third parties.
Drew Cameron: And then it tells us how much heat your house is losing and gaining. And then we size to that. I can’t assume that when the builder built your house in 1970 that he knew what he was doing, hired a contractor to do what they were doing, or that they did it right.
Drew Cameron: We make no assumptions to that, right? So I can’t size based on square footage, and I can’t size based on the machine size that you have. Those would be two red flags for you, Bill and Susan, since you said you’re talking to some other companies.
Drew Cameron: if they don’t do a load calculation, even consumer reports. Are you familiar with consumer reports? Yeah. Yeah. They go. Yes. Even consumer reports, the leading consumer advocacy magazine says you as a homeowner shouldn’t do business with me as a contractor or any contractor if they don’t do
Drew Cameron: this process. So beware, make sure that they do the load and they show it to you. You’re entitled to see that you’re not entitled to get it right. Cause that’s their design process as it is my design process, but we will do it. We will show it to you. And that will help you see why the
Drew Cameron: equipment is what it is and what your choices are. Right. Because once I now know that, then I know how much air I need to move. Then I can tell whether or not your duck is adequate. Then I’ll measure the, you know, the duck performance because there’s a low possibility
Drew Cameron: that your system is going to deliver you comfort and happiness and energy efficiency. If I don’t verify airflow, there’s a high probability that you’ll be happy if I do it. And so we’re going to also take the blood pressure of the system. So then we do static pressure tests and pull out the flow hood.
Drew Cameron: At the very least, pull a tape measure and a ductulator for God’s sakes, right? But I’m telling you, contractors are lazy. I love them, but they’re lazy. They won’t do it. They honestly believe that their gut is smarter than the tools. And they’re wrong.
Tyler Martin: Right, right. What do you think when it comes to, that’s great stuff, by the way. What do you think when it comes to hiring the right salesperson? Do you believe that profile is someone that has past experience in this area?
28:07Hiring for desire, responsibility and their own buying habits
Tyler Martin: Is it someone that maybe doesn’t even have a sales profile and we grow them into that? Is it someone that has different types of sales? I mean, what do you generally see are going to be the most effective to be an educating type salesman like we’re talking about?
Drew Cameron: I’ve hired people from all walks of life that have had all types of backgrounds. It all depends on the client, the company, and what they need at that point in time. So I can get anybody, I shouldn’t say anybody, but I can get the right person if they have the right mentalities.
Drew Cameron: So they got to have desire, number one. I can’t teach desire. I can talk about the importance of that desire. Desire to be successful. Desire to make money. Responsibility. They are responsible and will take responsibility for everything good or bad in their life as well as their business.
Drew Cameron: 100% responsible for the success of their life and their career. They don’t blame the leads. They don’t blame the market. They don’t blame the competition, the pricing, the marketing, things like that. And then commitment. They’re committed to doing whatever it takes legally and ethically to be successful.
Drew Cameron: And then outlook. They are positive people, optimistic, and they would bet on themselves nine ways a Sunday and twice on Sunday, right? And those are what we call the four crucial elements. If they don’t have those, and I can find out through interviewing,
Drew Cameron: They don’t get hired whatsoever. It doesn’t matter what their background is. From there, ideally, I like somebody who does have a sales background, but also somebody who’s outside the industry. I rarely promote from within, from a technician or an instar, because there’s just a lot of baggage and typically bad habits.
Drew Cameron: And just because you were a selling technician, if you were a selling technician or you were a technician or an instar, that wouldn’t make you a good salesperson. And just because you were a good salesperson selling cars or something like that doesn’t mean you could be a good HVAC salesperson.
Drew Cameron: Right. So through interview, the interviewing and screening process, I can typically weed somebody out. The other thing I found, and these are two other things that are real big indicators. Number one, you have to have a track record of having earned my first year income, meaning my first year income for somebody is above one hundred fifty thousand dollars.
Drew Cameron: Right. Depends on what the background is, but typically it’s about one hundred eighty thousand dollars first year potential income. and we’ll talk about income I know a little bit. But if you’ve been making 40 to 60 or $80,000, I’m not giving you $180,000 opportunity.
Drew Cameron: People might think that that’s wrong and foolish. You may have gotten other people from there. Yeah, you can. But I’m not necessarily looking for a project that’s going to take that amount of time to kind of probably get up to speed unless I really feel in the gut
Drew Cameron: that that’s the right move to do. But rarely is it. Because I need somebody who has an overhead nut to crack at home, right? To pay for a lifestyle that they got to pay for. The way they’re going to do it, through their job, right?
Drew Cameron: So I’m looking for somebody who’s got that track record. And then lastly, your buying habits. So I always ask people about how they buy things. How do they go to market to buy vehicles, how do they have appliances, electronics, things like that. And if they tend to be shoppers,
Drew Cameron: they go and exhaustively shop the process and comparison shop products and customer companies, rather, that’s somebody who I can teach and train things on, right? But that’s going to be in the back of their head And if a customer says they want to shop, they’re going to be like, yeah, I probably would too.
Drew Cameron: Yeah. Right? So your buying cycle and your buying style has to be consistent with what I teach. If it’s not, that’s usually a heavy lift. I can get you there, but it’s your project, right? So how fast can I get somebody up to speed is usually in there as well.
Drew Cameron: Because sometimes a client needs somebody like within 60 days. Some people I could basically take a project on over the next six months. Yeah.
Tyler Martin: A couple of questions. You mentioned those four traits. One of them was desire or drive, I’ll call it. I used to hire salespeople many years ago, and I always felt like the desire drive one was my hardest one because everybody comes into an interview and says, yeah, I’ll work
Tyler Martin: a thousand hours a week. I live and breathe the company’s colors. And it all sounds good. But then when you get on the field, a lot of people fall quickly into that, like, well, I’m only going to do so much and I’m at a certain level. How do you feel you ferret out like that desire or drive in
Drew Cameron: that those initial meetings of getting to know someone? Yeah, that’s a great question. It’s the interview process, right? The interview process will tell you everything. So I have what we call knockout questions that we can do it either digitally nowadays, or we can do it through a
Drew Cameron: call taker who can ask some questions. That then determines whether or not you’re, after the knockout questions. If you’re qualified, you then get a phone interview with me as the recruiter, if I’m, if I’m doing the job and that’s a 30 minute phone interview. I don’t do a zoom interviews
Drew Cameron: because that slows the process down. I’m trying to do them in 30 minutes. Boom, boom, boom. So I have 18 questions. I ask up to 18 questions that I can ask in 30 minutes and kind of get an assessment of that. And then I basically was determined from that who are the most qualified
Drew Cameron: to bring in for face-to-face interviews. You don’t get a face-to-face interview if you didn’t go through the first two steps. I can also have you fill out a screening at that point if I want, but I don’t like to put those barriers up in front of somebody until I have that face-to-face
Drew Cameron: interview, whether that be video, sometimes it’s video, depending on where we’re doing things from, but that’ll be the third part of that process. And in there, I’ll ask questions that weed out your desire, right? There’s usually a couple, three or four questions in there that tell me
Drew Cameron: whether or not you are committed, but you also have an ecosystem at home that’s supportive of that. Because I know when I hire you, I don’t hire you, I hire your family. And I know you’re going to be away from your family, husband or wife and kids, nights and weekends on occasion.
Drew Cameron: And I’m not looking for somebody who’s working five nights a week and every Saturday and things like that. I know that everybody wants to have a life and I want everybody to have a life. I’m 40, 50 hours a week. You know, they can take, you know, cut out early on Fridays, half a day on
Drew Cameron: some Saturdays, not every Saturday. And then we’ll be flexible to work with them and their schedule and their kids’ commitments and things like that. Because, you know, the time today is different than when we came up in the trades. And people, full-time, I think, and full-time employment
Drew Cameron: is really trending towards 30 hours. I mean, that’s what people want to work. They want to work 30 hours and they want a life and they want to spend time with their families. And in fact, A lot of them would rather volunteer than put in overtime, right?
Drew Cameron: Because it feeds their soul. And that’s fine. I’ll support that.
Tyler Martin: Yeah, that’s good stuff. Even when you use that example of shopping, what’s their shopping behavior? That’s pretty deep. Like I never really, that’s a great, great way to approach that and just to see what their thought process is. Because you’re right. We put our own limiting beliefs in, or I shouldn’t say limiting beliefs maybe, but however we believe something is probably how we’re going to approach it in the sale.
Tyler Martin: And that could, it could limit us. I guess that is the right word. It could limit in the way we think rather than maybe think a different way and get more progress in the conversation.
Drew Cameron: Yeah. So I’ve studied a lot about the brain and psychology and philosophy. And the brain is an interesting machine, right? And so I can teach you about certain things, right? But at some point you make three moves, right? The brain makes three moves
Drew Cameron: and then it’s exhausted by what it was taught and it defaults to what it just has been its operating system for, you know, in this case, 60 odd years, right? So I can teach people to say certain things and give them scripts and
Drew Cameron: things like that, but I don’t. I don’t teach people that. I teach people principles and concepts so that they become themselves. They find their own words, but they have to understand the psychology behind what they’re doing and why they’re doing. Russ and I talk about this all the
Drew Cameron: time. It’s not your ability. If I gave you titleless balls and tailor-made golf clubs and foot joy apparel, it doesn’t make you a professional golfer. You’ve got to be able to make the shot.
Tyler Martin: Makes me look like one.
Drew Cameron: Yeah, exactly. And so it’s not about the equipment even, right? It’s not about even the tools. It’s about the ability to make the golf shot. And so people ask about software and sales tools and things like that, sales processes and sales training. It’s, are you as an individual capable
Drew Cameron: of really connecting with a human being at a meaningful level and teaching them how to buy and how to get value. If you’re transaction and coin operated, you’re not familiar. You can be successful, you just can’t be great. It’s actually that law, the lid as they call it,
Drew Cameron: the chasing the outcomes that becomes the great limber. You have to let go of your attachment to getting results and you’ll see that you get more results.
Tyler Martin: Yeah. Do you, when your client hires you and they ask you to train their sales team, do you get into evaluating the salespeople where you go, wow, this probably isn’t going to be the right fit? And then do you go back to the owner?
Tyler Martin: What’s that look like in terms of when you’re going through that process?
Drew Cameron: Depends on what the client’s looking for. If they just hire me to recruit, hire, training, coach people, or just do training, which I’ve done, then I just do the job, right?
37:13De-hiring nine salespeople and rebuilding the team from four
Drew Cameron: But if you’re basically saying, hey, we’re not where we are and we know we have a lot of potential and we’ve struggled and we need to figure out what’s going on, and it’s more of a consulting initiative, then yes, I’ll go in and we’ll
Drew Cameron: evaluate the entire sales team. We’ll evaluate the marketing. We’ll evaluate the tools, the process, everything, the culture in the company. And yes, if there was a client that we went into a few years back and my business partner, Russ and I, they had nine salespeople doing like $4 million at a
Drew Cameron: sub 30% connection ratio, $4,500 average ticket, right? And I mean, abundance of leads. and we went in and just like Russ and I looked at each other and said, we think it would be easier just to start over. Right. And so we literally said that to the owner and the owner said, yeah,
Drew Cameron: I’m not going to fire everybody. He goes, how about, how about, you know, what else do you got? I said, how about this? How about we give them six months to assimilate? Right. Here’s the thing. They don’t believe that we’re going to be here for the longterm. They believe that this, we’re
Drew Cameron: just the next thing. Right. Cause they, the guys told us that. Right. And so we said, how about we give them six months to assimilate. They can quit now. We’ll pay them two weeks of severance. If they leave, no harm, no foul. We’ll shake hands and say goodbye. The door will still be open if
Drew Cameron: they choose to come back, but they would have to qualify to come back. But there’s six months to assimilate. And so if they don’t assimilate somewhere in there, they’ll probably be let go. They can maybe also quit somewhere along the way. We de-hired one almost immediately. And then over
Drew Cameron: the next six months, we lost another couple or three. And then, so we took them down to four salespeople. We added one and in less than two years time, we doubled the revenue, took the connection ratio up to 50%, took the average ticket up to $8,000, right? And this is a company
Drew Cameron: now doing hundreds of millions of dollars in home services. We worked with them for about 10 years, about 12 years actually. And we built the sales team up to 14 people. We got them into generators, we got them into their indoor air quality, crawl space, encapsulation, insulation, plumbing services,
Drew Cameron: and expanded the entire brand. But yeah, sometimes the people you got are the wrong people. So sometimes to change your people, you got to change the people, right? But sometimes people won’t change.
Tyler Martin: I want to add though, when you said that part where they just felt like you were kind of the flavor of the month and you would probably be gone in six months. That is such a true thing in small businesses. Like employees get win pretty quickly
Tyler Martin: if the owner’s got a shiny object type mentality. And after a while, they’re just going to endure it for three months or a month and they know it’s going to go away. And then the next thing comes in. And so it’s interesting that they were just really that open to you. Like, Hey dude, you’re
Tyler Martin: going to be gone in three months and life will go back to normal. It sounds like is what their
Drew Cameron: mindset was. That’s what the salespeople thought. The owner said differently. He goes, uh, he goes, after we told him what our second thought was about deep. So we actually de-hired the entire
Tyler Martin: team right away. Oh, wow. Ceremonally. We say, listen, the job you have no longer exists.
Drew Cameron: you’re all fired right now i say good news we got another job here it is right that’s straight out of glengarry glen ross right isn’t that that’s what i’m saying yeah yeah and so then it’s sheer looking panic and i said i said because we knew what you’re thinking and we said that the
Drew Cameron: owner you know signed a two-year contract to us made a two-year commitment to us so we’re going nowhere right you’re not going to wait us out we’re going to be here and the we have and the commitment you have is that we’ll do whatever we can in our power to help you be successful.
Drew Cameron: I just won’t do your job. The day I feel I have to do your job is that I no longer need you and you will be let go. And it was a great run. I mean, we did all that we could. And it was by
Drew Cameron: the time we left 12 years later, we kept adding value. So they kept us. But 12 years later, it was just time to go. It was just time like, hey, let’s turn it over to you and your people. Bring us in as you need us. And then we ran into them last week at Epic and they talked about
Tyler Martin: bringing us back in. So that’s awesome. Yeah, that’s huge. That’s a huge run. Okay. two things I want to talk about before we wrap up. I want to talk about being a numbers guy. I’d love to know, I love hearing you say like average ticket and things like that. What are
Tyler Martin: some KPIs or numbers that are really critical that we should be thinking about in this realm of sales, you know, salesman in terms of number, salesperson in terms of numbers? And then the last thing I want to close out on is just compensation plans. So just maybe talk about
41:27Average ticket, revenue per lead and 60 percent financing
Tyler Martin: what are some things we should be looking there for a well-designed compensation plan. So first one, if you could maybe get into KPIs a little bit, what ones resonate with you? Average ticket sounds like one that keeps popping up.
Drew Cameron: Well, average ticket is different. It’s going to vary by market. It’s going to vary by scope of work that the markets require. Price points that the contractors pay. I mean, contractors buy equipment for different prices. It’s just the way that it is. And so therefore, that drives what your price needs to be.
Drew Cameron: So average price is more of a metric. It’s not a KPI because there’s no specific KPI to achieve, right? Right. KPI is a vetted number that we know to go after. Right. OK. So average ticket, though, I like to see it be above 18000 pretty much in most markets nowadays.
Drew Cameron: And that will move, obviously, if you go with modulating your staged equipment and full duct systems and full air quality and things like that. But north of 18000 seems pretty good for a complete system solution nowadays. Average revenue per lead. We like to see that number be above 4000.
Drew Cameron: So that is a KPI. That shows that you’re basically revenue per lead. It’s meaning all opportunities run, not just the ones that you sold. It’s looking at, are you paying for the marketing, right? Are you paying for the opportunities that were created and given to you, right?
Drew Cameron: The higher that number, the better. Connection ratio, a lot of people call it closing ratio. I don’t want you closing. I want you opening the conversation and connecting with people, right? You connected with their story, you didn’t. So when I look at your number, if your number is less than 50, that’s telling me you’re not
Drew Cameron: connecting with the majority of the people. and their stories and their needs, right? And so, yeah, I want to see that be, you know, 40, 45 or so the first year, over 50 the second year, and above 60 consistently the third year and beyond.
Drew Cameron: If you get there sooner, great, you know? But if you start performing below that, and I know every so often somebody lays an egg, that happens, you know, we’re looking at a run rate. So it’s that ongoing performance analytics that we look at. and number of jobs first call quoted versus two-step processes.
Drew Cameron: When I see that number jumping above 40, the number of jobs quoted on the initial visit, unless you run all service-driven customer opportunities, if that number goes above 40, I start to see closing ratios and average tickets start to drop. And the reason is that guys are quoting everything on the initial visit
Drew Cameron: and they’re falling irrelevant to the customer’s buying process. See, you might have a sales process, but they have a buying process. And their buying process is designed to stop your sales process. They’re going to buy what they want, when they want, how they want, and for their reasons.
Drew Cameron: So stay relevant to them. And then you’ve got to be financing. And financing is leasing, traditional loans, credit cards. You’ve got to be financing, I think, 60% or more of your business. I don’t care about the market. If you’re not helping people see the value and taking advantage of 0% or long-term low-rate payments,
Drew Cameron: then, because we live in a subscription society nowadays, if you’re not helping them see that, then again, there are people who would do business with you if they could see that it made sense financially to do business with you, but you didn’t make it relevant to them, right? Because
Drew Cameron: we don’t earn all our money at once. We probably don’t want to spend it all at once, but you’re
Tyler Martin: asking for it all at once. Wow. So you think a typical, using HVAC as an example, probably should have 60% of its installs, is probably how you mean it, are probably going to be finance-based.
Drew Cameron: Finance, lease, credit card, yes.
Tyler Martin: Got it. Wow. Okay, very cool. That’s a lot of good numbers there that are a good blueprint for me. And then last thing I want to talk about a little bit is just comp plans. How do you go in in terms of what’s your thought process in terms of a good comp plan?
Tyler Martin: How much are you spending time in terms of driving behavior, things like that?
45:07Draws, 8 to 10 percent commission and why detractors backfire
Tyler Martin: I’d love to know your thoughts.
Drew Cameron: Yeah. Compensation is very interesting. People always ask me about compensation. I say, well, it depends if it’s based on your objectives for the position, right? And so let’s focus on a residential salesperson. Yeah. It’s about driving results and performance and incentivizing success and such and rewarding that connection.
Drew Cameron: And so I’ve tried every way under the sun to compensate over the years. The best I have found is during the training period, you pay them a salary, the training salary, and then you put them on a draw for up to six months.
Drew Cameron: They can get off the draw at any point in time during that six months. Once they get off the draw, they can’t go back on the draw. Right. And so the draw is basically an advance of earnings. Right. Okay. And I pay commission based on, you know, your connection ratio.
Drew Cameron: So the higher your connection ratio, the higher your commission. And so the goal is in the industry, I think, is about 10%. You can go more. Right. But I think 10% of what you sell, it should be about roughly about what you earn.
Drew Cameron: Now, if you start through hitting certain KPIs or certain goals and things like that, stretch goals that I give you in the way of revenue or average ticket or assuming revenue per lead, things like that, then I’ll pay you incentives above what you’ve earned in the way of commission
Drew Cameron: on a month-to-month basis. But my target commission for most people is 8%. If you go into that 50 plus percent connection ratio, then I’ll pay you 10, right? And then there’s bonuses to be earned on top of that, right? If you fall below the threshold of 40%, then your commission is going to drop.
Drew Cameron: So I’m not punishing you. I’m incentivizing you to get to a certain commission level. Because I’ve tried, I call them detractors. I’ve tried detractors. All they do is demoralize salespeople, especially if they’re close to a line. If they’re close to that line of demarcation of going to the next level and they just missed
Drew Cameron: or something like that. I mean, it actually had the exact opposite effect. We thought we were having some deterrence, if you will, to low closing ratio, low performance. No, it’s going to happen. And then you just basically hit the guy while he was down with a detractor, right?
Drew Cameron: So I basically gave a nice window as to where they can achieve a good, healthy earnings, but they got to perform. They got to stay there. They got to be right in that sweet spot. Yeah.
Tyler Martin: That’s one I used to struggle with is like the carrot or the stick approach. and I kind of came up with the same thing too. The carrot seems to always have a lot more impact than trying to do the takeaway method just for, you know, like you said,
Tyler Martin: when the person’s down, you’re just kind of kicking them.
Drew Cameron: Yeah, last thought on that is what I really found over time, as did Russ, is it requires real strong leadership, right? You need sales leadership in an organization. You don’t manage salespeople, you don’t manage people. You lead and coach people, you manage systems and processes.
Drew Cameron: And so you’ve got to hold your people accountable to the systems. And if they won’t stay accountable to the systems, you know, then I’ll coach them on it. But if they keep being violators of the system, they can’t work here. I don’t care. I have de-hired $2.5 million salespeople, $3 million salespeople, because they wouldn’t
Drew Cameron: follow my protocols. No matter how many times I coach them, they wouldn’t do their debriefs. They wouldn’t fill out their report right. You know, and this is back when things were not as digital as they are today. But you know what? In order to have the job, you got to be able to do the job, the entire job, not just be successful at closing.
Drew Cameron: I de-hired my older brother twice, who was my best salesperson I’ve ever worked with.
Tyler Martin: Really? Wow.
Drew Cameron: Yeah. And I said, do the job right or don’t have the job. Right. And so, yeah. But you only get hired back twice because you’re related to the family.
Tyler Martin: That’s my new word, though, de-hired. I like that word. I’m going to work on that one. But so just in terms of wrapping up here, websites that you’d like to share, I believe flowodyssey.us is one of your websites. Anything else you want to share?
Tyler Martin: I’ll put your LinkedIn in the show notes. Anything else that people want to reach out to you? And do you want to talk about Flow Odyssey?
Drew Cameron: Yeah. Energy Design Systems is our software company, eds.tech. We have software tools over there that support the sales process, eds.tech. And then flowodyssey.us, that’s the training, coaching, consulting company. within a month, we’re going to be releasing a video archive of training between Russ and I.
Drew Cameron: It’s next level. There’s nothing else out there like it because it’s not just standard process and things like that. It’s all the nuanced stuff that everybody always asks us about in the classes. And that’ll build itself out over the next couple of years too.
Drew Cameron: And then obviously Contractor University, mycontractoruniversity.com, my affiliation with EGIA, but I’m on the board of directors there. I’m one of the national trainers and founders there. And you can get access to a lot of my content and tools and resources there too.
Tyler Martin: Okay, cool. I’ll put all four links in the show notes if people want to reach out to you. I can’t thank you enough for being on here. I feel like we could talk another hour, but I appreciate you sharing your info and I’ll keep my eyes open.
Tyler Martin: I know you’re out on the speaking circuit, so I’ll keep my eyes out open. Hopefully I can connect with you in person next time.
Drew Cameron: Sounds good. I appreciate it, Tyler. Take care.
Tyler Martin: You as well. My biggest takeaway from Drew is this. Many contractors think they need more leads, but the real opportunity is often improving what happens once someone gets in the home. Instead of rushing to quote and close, Drew focuses on connecting with the customer, educating them, and designing the right solution.
Tyler Martin: That approach leads to higher connection ratios, stronger average tickets, and better long-term relationships with customers. If you’re a home service owner looking to turn growth into real profit with better cashflow, cleaner financials, and KPIs you can trust, you can book a no-pressure intro call at cfointrocall.com. That’s cfointrocall.com. Or check out my website,
Tyler Martin: cfomadeeasy.com. As always, thank you so much for listening. I will catch you on the next episode.
Related Episodes
- Why You’re Losing Jobs After the Call Is Booked – Brigham Dickinson
- Building an Ethical Sales System for the Trades – Lenny Gray
- Marketing Mistakes Costing Trades Businesses Thousands – Adam Rich
- The Hidden Revenue in Your Pipeline You’re Not Capturing – Ryan Fenn
Tyler Martin works with owners on the numbers behind these stories: HVAC business coach. For where your business sits right now, read the $3M to $15M scaling breakdown.
