Earvin Magic Johnson’s basketball career achievements include; three NBA MVP Awards, nine NBA finals appearances, twelve NBA All-Star games, and ten All-NBA First and Second Team nominations. He led the league in regular season assists four times and remains the NBA’s all-time leader in assists per game with an average of 11.2. Johnson was a member of the Dream Team, the U.S. basketball team that won the Olympic gold medal in 1992.
Additionally, he was honored as one of the 50 Greatest Players in NBA History in 1996, followed by enshrinement in the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2002. Finally, he was ranked the greatest NBA point guard of all time by ESPN in 2007. You may be curious why I would lead off this post talking about Magic Johnson when the topic is tech leads. Well it relates to what Magic did best, which was assist, or get the ball to others on his team so they could shoot.
For grins and giggles let’s say you sell HVAC products and services like a couple of my clients do. Let’s also say that the typical lifespan of an air conditioner is about 12.5 years. Basic math says your technicians should produce a replacement lead on 8% of the systems they service. If you go back through your service records I’ll bet your techs aren’t “assisting” your sales department at a Magic Johnson clip.
I’ve mentioned before that techs are wired to fix things and pride themselves on doing so. To get replacement leads requires that you keep it on their radar screen and continually provide training and incentives. After some coaching, for every 25 calls they run during a week, each tech should produce 2 leads.
If they eventually don’t, you’ve got to remember that you can either change the people you’re around, or you have to change the people you’re around. Make sure that sales lead generation is included in your recruiting process and stand firm on not hiring any that aren’t willing to participate and produce.
I don’t want to get into your business but you need to establish a transferable process to get these leads to your sales consultants without any of them getting “lost,” and this process will probably require the involvement of your admin folks and should include some role play, because practice always makes better.
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Here are some talking points I helped one of my clients develop in order to help their techs build confidence and competence in this area.
“Homeowner, I’ve completed inspecting and assessing your unit and the problem is with the ___________. I realize that’s not good news as the cost for that repair is $XXX.
But before you get too anxious, let me put this in perspective; the average lifespan of an air conditioner/heating system is around 12 years, so when one gets to be more than 10 years old, like yours, you should at least seriously consider replacement, as it just isn’t a good investment to put a lot of money in a unit that’s close to the end of its lifespan. So as a rule of thumb, when repairs cost $800 or more, and the system reaches this age, the experts suggest you bite the bullet and replace it.
I realize that it costs money to do that, but today’s systems are more energy efficient due to changes in industry standards over the past few years, and that alone will save you 20-40% on your electric bill, which is a big consolation.
Now I’ll do whatever you want me to, but if this were my home I would first talk with our Comfort Specialist. His job is to help you determine all your options along with an exact quote for a new system, so you can make a wise decision; fair enough?”
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The final piece of the tech lead puzzle is establishing incentives, because what gets rewarded gets done.
Once you establish a budget for these, you may need to experiment to determine whether cash, gift cards or trinkets turns on the troops. Why not ask them?
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A couple of months ago 4,000 owners, executives, managers were surveyed by LinkedIn for the 2018 Workplace Learning Report and overwhelmingly agreed that soft skill training ranked as the most important ability their employees needed to learn. Manager involvement was selected as a critical ingredient to increase employee engagement during their learning. Additionally 94% of employees themselves said they would stay at a company longer if it invested in their career.
Well lookie-here: 94% of your salespeople and 100% of company leaders should be excited because the sales coaching I provide is 100% soft skill communication strategies, and it’s my policy for managers to attend my sales coaching side-by-side with their sellers or I don’t agree to take them on as clients. Lookie-here for a FREE flyover.
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©2018 Robinson Training Solutions, LLC
