From Cold Sales To Predictable Profits with Troy Aberle

[00:00:00] Entertainment Insights Don't Take Life Too Seriously Welcome to Brainsky Unleashed Hello and welcome to yet another exciting episode of Brainsky Unleashed. You may recognize this gentleman who is sharing the screen with me.

[00:00:18] This is Troy Aberle, if you have not seen him before, you're going to see him a lot more because he happens to be a damn good friend of mine as well. And I love talking to him, there's always something insightful that comes from conversations with Troy.

[00:00:32] If anything, he brings a level of understanding of things that just he just thinks differently and I love that about him. And he could point things out that maybe I miss because I mean, let's be honest,

[00:00:43] I may be one of the greatest things in Sly's bread, but I'm not perfect. So that's why I talked to guys like Troy to help me really see things better. And so, Troy, welcome to the program. Thanks, buddy, I appreciate it. And I love talking to you.

[00:00:55] So I think it's just a blast that we get to have these conversations and share with some of the other wonderful people. Absolutely. And I mean, listen, Troy, as you should love talking to me, because why wouldn't you?

[00:01:05] And on that note before we even jump into this any further, this is just yet another important reminder. Hit the subscribe button. I can see it. You can see it. It's right there. Hit it. Touch it. Be gentle with it. Slam it. I don't care.

[00:01:18] Just hit the little traffic button. Just all you got to do is hit it. And then bam, I'm there every time I update something. Bam. Now you know exactly what's happening in the world of Brainskian Leashed, highly important stuff, obviously.

[00:01:30] And rated because the algorithm cares just like you should care. I care. Thomas, I care. Troy cares. That's why. And and and you got to rate it. You got to give it five stars because anything less is bullcrap.

[00:01:44] We all know it. So anyway, Troy, let's jump in here. Before we started this amazing podcast, you and I were talking and we were talking about some of the ways in which people will try and present things like, you know, we talk a lot about education based marketing

[00:02:01] and trying to help people understand things and kind of open their eyes to some of the problems that they have. But yet you mentioned it to me, and I think it's a very interesting important point, which is,

[00:02:13] you know, some people just don't like to be told that they're wrong or that they're missing something or that they have a problem. So let's kind of talk about this and figure out a way to overcome it. Well, if you think you know what?

[00:02:24] Nobody likes to be pushed on the face, right? You obviously probably had that with your spouse or somebody that's told you you're wrong and sometimes you listen. But a lot of times it's your first reaction is defensive, but especially if it's something you've only been taught

[00:02:41] a certain way to do things in which created your paradigms for birth. But even as you go through business, you researched or you've been taught or you've been mentored and guided in certain ways. And those certain ways is what shape that they believe

[00:02:54] some habits that you have today. It's difficult when you're under this much stress because for a lot of business leaders, you take like over 80 percent of the executives right now are having a real moment of burnout or close to burnout. There's a lot of pressure, cashflow, employee retention,

[00:03:11] where your position for market share profitability. I mean, there's just so many KPIs that we're throwing at at leadership today. And so when you take all of that stress and you put that all into one, it gets heavy. Then to be told and you're doing everything you can,

[00:03:26] you stay awake late at night. You sleep in four hours at five hours and your family's complaining you're never home and you don't get to go out with your favorite car or go get that burger on Friday because you're always under a lot of pressure

[00:03:39] and you have a lot of tasks. There's got to be nothing worse in the world than someone calling up saying, hey, you suck at your business. There's got to be nothing worse than that. And so what's your first reaction? Talk to my secretary.

[00:03:54] See if they get time for me. They try to put you off. They try to do different things that remove you from that conversation or about being put in a vulnerable state. So that's why I bring that up is I think there's a lot of that

[00:04:06] that goes on behind the scenes. Subconsciously, we're not paying attention to. You know, I mean, I can't argue your point because I think your point is probably quite spot-on, frankly. But it's the, okay, now that you've got a really valid point as a business owner

[00:04:23] and I'm sure I've been that guy who would call somebody up and thinking I'm going to be Mr. Hot Shot Salesman. And in the end, I'm probably getting shut down because I'm that guy going, hey, by the way, you suck at your business

[00:04:35] or you're failing and I'm calling attention to it and it's rubbing you the wrong way. So what should I be saying? So let's kind of bring this down to a more personal level. Like what should I be saying? What should this person

[00:04:49] who's listening to this podcast be saying? I need to get back to the basics where people have forgot how to build recourse really truly understanding who their ideal client is. You know, it's something that I am so determined about is really understanding that ideal client

[00:05:03] so that I can understand what truly does keep them up at night. What's preventing them from enjoying the other pieces of their life that they're not always getting to their fullest. Now forgive me because some people would say, Troy, I don't believe you on that.

[00:05:17] I'm actually having a really good life. That's true. But if I take time to actually get to know you and what are the things that are causing problems, maybe that leads into another conversation based on our framework. And what I'm saying is,

[00:05:29] if I can show statistically that there's challenges in certain areas of your business and I can at least have the opportunity to say, could I give you a perception or an opportunity to see it through a different lens? Just in case there's something little missing.

[00:05:46] Now if I went back 20 years ago and talked to the guys from Blockbuster, Kodak, JC Penney, Sears, you know, I've often wondered if I took framework to them and said, hey, I know that these things are going on. There might be an opportunity that the marketplace is shifting.

[00:06:02] There might be a thing where you need to create that shift or follow that shift. All of these things start to come up and maybe there's an easier way to do things to still get to the same financial and emotional profit.

[00:06:16] But again, it's going back to your question. I think we need to build more record and really truly understand what is going on for people today and then go to them and present something with a solution that combats those statistical stressors.

[00:06:32] All right, so reading the playful mofo that I am, dig into this, all right? If you are so willing, my good man. You have amazing hair to that point. Thank you so much, you know. Appreciate you calling me out on that. Thank you. Right.

[00:06:47] But let's just imagine that you're in a situation where you're not working out of your existing book of business. Maybe you're a sales guy who's got to do cold sale. Maybe you're a small business guy who does roofing, right?

[00:07:04] And I mean, roofing is not one of those repeat businesses. And let's just say, for example, that this is not a roofer. And I'm only using roofing because I had a previous podcast, Fantastic Podcast yesterday recorded. That's upcoming for anyone who's listening.

[00:07:18] Or maybe it's already played, depending on this place. But let's imagine that you're a roofing company and you're not a small roofing company per se. You actually maybe do two or three million dollars in sales. When we talk about roofing

[00:07:33] or we talk about some of these companies that... It's cold lead. None of these are built up rapport coming from the book of business that does exist. How do you begin to build that rapport? And what does that feel like? What does that sound like?

[00:07:48] What does that taste like, Troy? When you're the guy who's got to get the business but you never had the business in the first place. You never had the rapport to even start working on it. And so you're talking about the person would actually be a roofing company

[00:07:59] and you're trying to help them with their business? Yeah, so let's say for example, I'm going to totally play this out for you, right? And I want to see how you would recommend if you were coaching a roofing guy. All right, so I'm going to give you...

[00:08:10] I'm the roofing guy. We're going to play. I'm the roofing guy. I am going about my day, all right? And I know that I have to get people to buy gutter cleaning, gutter installation, gutter guard and roof repairs and roofs, okay?

[00:08:31] And in my opinion, I'm running a great business. The homeowner thinks that they don't have any problems. And so if you were to try and advise the roofing guy to improve the way his business is working, even though, yeah, okay, I'm not getting maybe as many roofs

[00:08:51] or as many repairs as I was from 2022 to where we are today. How does that work? Okay. And then also if you're the roofing guy. So we'll kind of do this twice. If I'm the roofing guy and I've got a bunch of homeowners

[00:09:06] and I don't know them from a hole in wall, how do I get their business? So what would you try and tell the roofing guy to help his business from a coaching, counseling, business growth, commercialization, I'll take it from our man Craig T. Standpoint, how can he improve?

[00:09:21] But then again, how can the guy down the line who's got to actually sell to the homeowner, right? And how do you get the homeowner's attention? Great point. So if you're the roofing company, I think there's two things that often come up

[00:09:34] in those types of trade type businesses. One is getting clients on this one thing. Now some people are really good at it, some people struggle. So if we took a part and look at that, what is the effect emotionally having on the business owner and his team

[00:09:51] when or her team, when they're not getting enough clients? It's adding a ton of stress. There's it's harder to make cash flow work, hard to grow your business, hard to know exactly what to do. And so you know, in taking a look at,

[00:10:06] do they actually truly have a really substantial goal that's really clearly defined not only for the business owner, but for the salespeople and everyone in between so that they really understand what it is that they're missing out on and be able to collaborate and put ideas together.

[00:10:22] It's easier to do that on part two of our framework is when reaching talk about who truly is your ideal client so that we can niche that down, whether that's in a geographical area or sort of types of credentials or demographics

[00:10:37] so that we can talk to people in certain industries or what have you about their roofs at home or what have you can target things but getting really crystal clear so that we know some of the things that are keeping them up at night as well.

[00:10:48] Maybe it's people that are executive or other blue collar workers or dentists, whomever. And then what is the way that you're grabbing their attention and having education so that they trust you? Because when you do that, if the way that you can actually build more rapport

[00:11:01] so for instance, as an example here, if we're looking at somebody, a roofing company, they have 40 person crew and they've got multiple jobs in commercial and residential, being able to tell them the exact things to do door knocking with or campaigns and sending that out to people

[00:11:21] to not only get their attention and talking about the hazards to having a bad roof whether that be for mold, breathing problems, emotional behavior problems, those types of things. And then talking to them about not cleaning your gutters, what does that do to the addicts

[00:11:38] and the health of the home and the roof? What does a healthy roof actually mean? And before then even getting someone to look to check on an audit of your healthy roof, then what is the criteria that you should be looking for in a company?

[00:11:50] Because there's a lot of pieces to that. So what you're really doing is that part. Now the second part though that you've asked about is now that person could also be in a place where they already have a ton of work. A hail storm went through tornadoes, whatever.

[00:12:02] They've got just two, three years worth of business. Now with the challenge of are you simply just doing roofs and trading time for money or do you have a system in place where you are the visionary again with those goals and those clients?

[00:12:15] But now are you making sure that you've found each and every way of putting people into it either a program or giving them an offer that gives them a value stack to not only do the roof but maybe have an inspection service

[00:12:27] where you actually go into the addict check out health, mold, inflation values, all of that. Do gutters maybe put up extra a decorative lighting underneath the soffits because creating a happy home actually makes people want to come home and not hang out their bunnies.

[00:12:42] Like it's just so many more things of an emotional experience that we can do which add more money to each and every cart. But people forget about other things and adding more value that can have more emotional impact on those customers. That's interesting.

[00:12:56] So I mean I kind of like where you went there and I want to kind of dig into that one a little bit as far as now the position of the roofing company selling to the consumer. So roofing guy goes okay, we need to get more consumers

[00:13:15] very hard to build rapport because you're coming in cold but you just basically went somewhere with adjusting the service type. Instead of just simply focusing on gutters need to be cleaned, roofs need to not have holes. But you also went with something along lines of

[00:13:37] hanging lights and soffits to create a more impressive home effect. And then you took it to a level of an emotional connection to the home. How does a roofing company teach their team to connect that way? Because you just went somewhere that I've never heard anyone go

[00:14:01] and that's connecting an emotional tie to a soffit. Because people again, that's the thing that you don't know what you don't know. And so for any business owner that's listening or in any industry is finding someone like with what what we do is taking a look at it

[00:14:18] from another lens of perspective. When you identify the problem when you're ideal client identify the problems that they're going through, there's things that you can do to help reduce the pain that they're going through. And people are going to buy from you

[00:14:32] to either gain pleasure or avoid pain. But 99% is to avoid pain. So truth is, if you feel like your house is getting kind of ugly, boring doll and it's not that fun, it's not that great of an emotional experience, it's just a place to cohabitate.

[00:14:45] What do you typically do? You go find other friends, other groups of people, bars, clubs, restaurants, because you don't find without emotionally charting at all. So I'm talking about saying now to the roofers or the people up on the roof is realizing you're not just adding some protection

[00:14:59] up there and doing a job. You're creating a space that makes it more inviting for a husband and wife or your children or whomever to come home to cohabitate and to experience life together. So if you really look at it when that person pulls up

[00:15:14] to the driveway of their car or their pickup truck and they see the front driveway in their house, you make it look like the castle that encompasses their family and their life and you make sure that you add any type of value rather than just Wham-Bam

[00:15:31] and slap on a roof and leave, it's about actually creating an whole entire emotional experience so that those people want to come home and when they walk in the door and they get that hug from their family and they want to spend more time there,

[00:15:45] those are the experiences that that roofing company has the ability to deal with. It's not just the roof. What happens is then those people then call you back for more and more services because they love the feeling they got from seeing what you've already done

[00:15:58] versus if you were paying them the butt contractor and they're also going to refer you to other people that don't like their house as much or they think about selling or whatever because they're like, yeah, we need time for upgrade. Okay.

[00:16:10] Well, what if you call Thomas' roofing company? That's, we gotta stop right there, okay? Because I gotta, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta take a nibble, okay? What you are saying is that you are tying a roof, be it a roof repair,

[00:16:28] a brand new roof, gutters, whatever the service is, to this emotional bond of my family, my hearth, my home, my happiness, my joy, my pleasure and all of this. And all of that, Troy, sounds amazing. But let's imagine for a moment

[00:16:45] that you are the sales guy who's literally, it is his job to sell that homeowner the roof because what's going to happen is unless you describe it, pitch it, sell it, paint the picture for the homeowner, then none of that will happen. That is all incredible theory,

[00:17:07] but none of that will happen unless the homeowner understands what you're getting at. So, so Troy, if you will indulge me for a moment, because I am both excited and skeptical at the same time, sell me a roof. Exactly how you are saying.

[00:17:20] Imagine for a moment that I am that homeowner and obviously neither one of us are in roofing, so if you say something that sounds corny, you know, trolls be damned, it's not that Troy is a roofer, but help me feel from,

[00:17:33] from a sales person standpoint to the consumer, the hell are you talking about? Yeah, so I know, so if I love cold calls more than warm calls for some sick twisted reason, but the good news is the most of the world hates cold calls,

[00:17:47] so I don't have a lot of competition if I was going door to door, would I? Of course not. So that's the fun part. But if I walked up to a homeowner today and I said, can you help me out for a moment here?

[00:17:55] I've been talking to a lot of people in your community that have told me that, that there is a lot of stress going on in their life. They hardly spend any time at home, nothing seems that fun, they're tired of doing the artwork, maintenance and all that.

[00:18:07] And they also know that there's things working in their home that are actually causing not only emotional but physical health problems. And I would say, did you know that X amount of percent of people don't even understand that there's moles and things happening inside the roof

[00:18:21] that's actually causing behavior problems like ADHD, hormonal problems, gut problems and things like that, that's having a lot of behavior problems. Why is that? Should that matter? Well, let's be honest, there's a lot of people getting divorced nowadays because they can't handle the stress of money,

[00:18:37] relationships overload and all types of things. So what we're doing is is we've realized that people don't have time to make their home, their castle anymore, it's just simply a house. And so what we're doing is is we're looking at the health of the air that you breathe,

[00:18:51] but we're also taking a look at the perception, the view of your home and how it feels when you do come there and how it feels when you have your friends over to get people coming back together to have fun.

[00:19:01] Can you imagine knowing that your air was crappy and that a lot of things have been going to the doctor for it to actually be? Can you imagine being able to have your friends over again and having a whole new aesthetics to your place

[00:19:14] and feeling that you're in this place of growing? And I would have them actually answer a bunch of those questions for me, Thomas, to see what they know and not to educate them on that. And if they said, well, wow,

[00:19:24] I didn't realize how many things could be happening for my home, what do you guys do? And I'd say, well, we know what we actually we provide transformations on the outside and the inside of homes for people with an audit. And that's all it's going to show you

[00:19:38] where we see an opportunity to be healthier for the air, but also for the view. And if that person said, how do I look if I'm really interested? If that's fine, but then I'd leave them information about statistics about things that they never knew.

[00:19:53] And even if they already just got a new roof, is how many times a roof gets installed by someone who didn't know what they were doing the leak was happening. Right. I have a personal story of that. And finally, their daughters were having behavioral problems because of mold.

[00:20:07] And they just got the roof done a year before and they had no idea that it had that to do with it. They couldn't sleep. And there was a lot of a lot of deep faith. So that's, you know, you tie that together

[00:20:18] and you put that fear into what could be happening or what is happening. And you tie that together and put that into place. You know, the thing I liked about that is it came off so natural, you know, even though you're not like a roofing guy, but

[00:20:33] I'm not a roof. Yeah. But I mean, you know, one of the things I liked about that was you did tie the emotional to it. And I mean, obviously, you know, any conversation that takes place between someone who's selling and someone who is being sold to

[00:20:50] is not so much one way. There's obviously questions in a back and forth versus just simply, you know, straight up pitch like you just did. But I like the quality of what you did. The thing that I'm listening for, which, you know,

[00:21:03] both from a pitch standpoint as well as a profitability standpoint is that not only are you identifying, not only are you identifying a way for to improve their feeling about their house and become more comfortable in building rapport and, you know, like and trust you,

[00:21:23] but you're also increasing your profitability of the company because in order for you to even make these statements, you therefore must be able to provide these services. Now, I'm not saying that every roofer can do these services, but to think if you're a roofer out there

[00:21:37] and you're listening, to think, you know, what other services can I provide and how can I take this advice and run with it to make sure that, yeah, you know, well, not, you know, we will do an audit and we will show you what's wrong.

[00:21:50] And, you know, a lot of roofers get up and I mean, I'm on my third roof at this point. Listen, nobody goes, oh, jeez, I'm so excited about getting a new room. But, you know, mostly that audit involves some guy getting up on your roof,

[00:22:03] snapping some pictures of some really crappy shingles or some shingles that were laid out wrong or maybe, you know, missing shingle here or, you know, bent shingle there or missing, you know, soffit or flashing or whatever. You know, and then going, well, you know,

[00:22:19] hey, while we're up there, you know, you got some gutter problem. You went for like quality of health inside the home. And, you know, I don't know necessarily what it takes to become someone who's qualified to find that. And maybe you've got to be someone

[00:22:35] who also goes, you know, it goes into the house and goes into the sea. That's what you're gonna edit? Hit them up. But that's good. You got to edit an old piece of it. And but I mean, the roofers have to get educated

[00:22:45] in that to be able to educate. Yeah, doing that too, Thomas is, you know, I read out the opportunity to write a song with Keith Irbins, one of his songwriters. You know, and what he told us just landed with me and went into my soul.

[00:22:59] Show me, don't tell me. And so what do most door knockers do? They hang something on the door. Right. And that's nothing. There's no rapport built. So I'm telling you, you could have friends over again. You can feel good about pulling up to your driveway again. Right.

[00:23:14] You can feel good about breathing again. And the thing is, is you should also, there is a piece missing here. You should be willing to say to the person before you even look at this audit, I need you to know I'm a homeowner too.

[00:23:28] And if there is one thing that I think is fully true that you resonate with me on, I know how you feel about contractors. Everyone else in this block has felt the same. You know what we found is we need to be really crystal clear

[00:23:40] and honest, how to hire the right contractor. Because for the most part, most of you guys should expect me to be really late with my quote, my communication should be terrible and all of my deadlines should be a bit terrible. And I'm going to give you excuses

[00:23:55] that won't even make sense or add up. And wait and then shut up and listen for your client to tell you all the horror stories that they already have in their head. Because now they're going to tell you what they already believe is true.

[00:24:08] And you say, which is why? We've done this, this, this, and this to call about that. And here's the statistics behind it. And if we don't do it just to double protect you, here is a guarantee. That's refreshing. I love that. You know, to the listeners,

[00:24:26] I want to give you a preview and let you know that Troy and my good friend Craig, we're all teaming up and we are actually going to be holding sessions just like this. But instead of me being the one who's going to say,

[00:24:39] hey, hypothetically, here's a roofing company, we're actually going to invite people on these calls. And we want to actually just, Monday mornings, help them. Just take someone's problem and work on solutions. If you felt that this was informative

[00:24:53] or helpful, then you're going to want to join into this. And there's going to be more to come. This is not, we're not ready for primetime quite yet, although we're getting pretty close. But this is a really great opportunity

[00:25:07] for people who can see exactly what just took place and go, you know what, I would love to have that for my business. I know that I'm struggling with X. And wow, that was really awesome what Troy just did. And I mean, I could do that too.

[00:25:20] But the great news is it doesn't look very properly. Well, I mean, I'm pretty good at that. I don't want to lie. But to have Troy- We do the server each and every day. So that, I mean, this is so exciting.

[00:25:34] But that's it is taking someone or taking a group of people like Troy and Craig and myself providing just coaching services not at an exorbitant, eye-popping cost. Yes, would we be available for eye-popping costs for amazing boutique levels of service, getting the Ferrari level of service? Absolutely.

[00:25:58] But at the same time, man, there are so many, there's so many people who have issues, they have problems and these things can be worked on and people can learn from others. And this is something I'm really excited about this project coming up.

[00:26:09] So more to come on that. In the meantime, Troy, we're beginning to wind down the clock here. Is there anything that you would like to kind of talk to the audience about, give them any bit of wisdom, share with the audience?

[00:26:23] This is going to seem so off topic, but I want you to take a look at three things. I want you to look at, Ari, do you have a clear goal or outcome for your physical and mental health and what you're doing there?

[00:26:38] Do you have a goal for what you want to achieve in your relationships? And do you have a goal for your finances? Take a look at what's been going on over the past five years. And if you're not getting any closer to it, she doing those goals,

[00:26:51] ask for help because there's something that should be able to shift your life condition so that it equals your blueprint. And I'm a Tony Robbins coach as well. So, you know, Tony always taught us if your life condition doesn't equal your blueprint, you're in a problem.

[00:27:06] So you can either change the blueprint or change the life condition. In all honesty, the blueprint is more authority in your DNA and I don't want to change that. I want you to get your dreams and your goals. But you might have to think about them again

[00:27:18] because you probably haven't, you've been in whatever reactive mode. But then let's take a look at what we can do to change the conditions to make you work smarter, not harder. And then you can achieve those life conditions. And that's the formula for happy. Yeah.

[00:27:33] And that's what'll make your, it's happy, your spouse happy, and most importantly, your staff and customers. And to that point, you know, I think far too many people wait. Just wait. Well, you know, if I wait for X, then why will happen? If I just, you know,

[00:27:51] hold off a little longer before Ask for Help, then I'm sure it'll all work itself out. I mean, miracles happen. But let's be honest, you know, repeating this thing over and over again. That's the worst thing you could do. What's the miracle of hope? Right.

[00:28:03] I mean, repeating the same thing over every single day, expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. And most of the time, this is what we do because we are afraid of something. We're either afraid of, we're afraid of the problem

[00:28:18] because it may open us up to criticism or, you know, hurt our feelings because that we're now recognizing the problems exist where they didn't before or it may cost something. And well, I feel like I can't afford to fix X because I'm, I don't have the money

[00:28:35] with the same time. You may feel that way, but if you don't spend X, then you may never get Y. It all depends on your situation. And so, yeah, I think that that's a really important point, Troy, that you're making,

[00:28:51] which is you're going to have to change that. That you'd part of. Be hungry for a solution if you haven't identified a problem. Yeah. And sometimes you'll think, I'm just fear not. That's okay. I'm just telling you that it's, otherwise we'll be telling you what we say

[00:29:06] versus what you bring to us, what you know. So let's close that knowing and doing gap. That's really what we're doing. You know all of these things. We're just bringing them up, sorting them out, what's causing it, and then we're closing that

[00:29:21] so that we can put action into place and recover from that. And some level of accountability because even some of the best and brightest minds, if they don't have a level of accountability to go, yeah, you know what? I'm going to get this done this week

[00:29:36] because no one's just kind of pushing them, prodding them, may never get done, even though you may know what the problem is. So again, thank you so much, Troy, for joining us. It's been another excellent time shared with you. Once again,

[00:29:49] you can always reach out and find Troy Aberly where? Go to coachatroyaberly.com is exactly where you can go, T-R-O-Y-A-B-E-R-L-E. Absolutely. You can find it there. You can use your email address. I know. And he's all over social media. You can't scroll through the internet

[00:30:09] without running into a picture of Troy, I swear. It's either that or it's just my role. But I have to say I'm really impressed. Hard to argue such a fact. But you know, it is a thing. You know, when you have a feed like mine,

[00:30:22] all you ever look at all day is Troy. And it's so anyway with that note, once again, please hit subscribe. Don't forget to leave us five stars, write an amazing review. Sharing is critically important if you'd like it was just produced. Make sure that you share it.

[00:30:34] Thank you once again for being loyal listeners and we're going to catch you on the next episode.