the blue collar success group

Kenny Chapman founded The Blue Collar Success Group with the mission to help home services industry operators become real owners. The coaching, training, and development company gives home services business owners the tools to improve employee consistency, retention, communication, and management, as well as maximize leads.

A better sales process increases sales and growth.

Kenny likens the relationship between sales and marketing to marriage. It takes a certain degree of communication and teamwork in order for it to be successful.

“The sales team and the marketing team can have a really good marriage where everything is communicating really well and reporting is going back and forth or sales and marketing can end up... in divorce or a turmoil-based relationship.”

Kenny emphasizes that it’s important to ask what each team can bring to the table to solve issues in sales. With combined efforts, marketing and sales teams can create a productive system that will bring in leads.

What should you be doing before the sales process starts?

Take the time to consider what your service or product is worth and what customers are willing to pay for that service or product.

“You’ve got to figure out cost to goods and labor estimates and all these things. And if you don’t do it effectively, which most don’t, then you go to market underpriced and underpriced selling kills everything.”

The Blue Collar Success Group provides a “12 Step Ultimate Client Experience” that focuses on the relationship between the company and the customer. In the customer/company relationship, you are the hero, you are providing an invaluable service.

Marketing and Sales
Marketing and sales transactions can be broken down into a system of three steps:

1. Primary marketing and attracting the customer. This is where Scorpion comes in.
2. The sale and the follow through.
3. The review, follow-up, and “happy call.”

These steps demonstrate the attentiveness required for success. The process is not over after the sale is through. You still must ensure your product or services are adequate, and also cultivate a continued relationship with your client that may prompt their return and possible promotion of your business.

How do you determine where you’re starting to make sales?

Kenny highlights a few steps to help you determine when and where your business is making sales.

1. Meet with a business coach.
2. Have clarity in what you’re doing and why.
3. Check revenue numbers and key performance indicators.

In the home services industry, many of the services and products offered were at one point considered a commodity and wants. However, over time these wants have become necessities—giving your service an invaluable edge.

If you are confident in the value of the products and services you provide, your customers will be confident in you.

Business Sales Process Investment To-Do List

Business owners need to be thinking more, Kenny says. Step back and brainstorm, plan, assess current problems and successes, and predict future outcomes.

The problem is, in the home services industry, boards of directors don’t really exist. The Blue Collar Success Group’s Mastermind Groups enable business owners to reach a board of directors mentality without ever establishing an actual board.

1. Align margins correctly with pricing.
2. Find clarity in what you want to accomplish.
3. Make sure your sales team has a strong script and is trained effectively. Build the system for the person having the communication step-by-step.

Why are podcasts important for home services business success?

“Our frontline is kicked in the teeth all day... we have challenges day after day, call after call… as owners, as leaders of these organizations, we have got to get some good information, we have got to listen to people who are going through the same thing.”

Listening to peers in the industry via podcasts can relieve stress for home services business owners. You can discover invaluable tips on business priorities, improving management and sales skills, maximizing leads, and advancing overall business growth.

Kenny Chapman founded The Blue Collar Success Group with the mission to help home services industry operators become more successful owners.

The coaching, training, and development company gives home services businesses the tools to improve employee consistency, retention, communication, and management, as well as to maximize leads.

“The home services industry is changing faster than we’ve ever seen it and we want to be a guiding light to that. So, we’re going to touch more lives and help people understand where to go.”

What is the current state of sales?

“Sales does not matter… all that matters is what goes to the bottom line… meaning that we watch three, four, five, ten million dollar companies generate a lot of sales, but there’s nothing at the bottom, which creates stress, which creates anxiety, which creates fear, which doesn’t allow owners to make good decisions.”

Kenny highlights that while the state of sales in the current economy is very good, there is no guarantee that it will stay that way forever. If your company is not making decisions with the bottom line in mind, it can lead to serious issues in the long run.

What are a business owner’s biggest mistakes?

“The challenge is really, entrepreneurs are optimists by nature, we can’t not be. When business owners get up in the morning, you have got to go ‘Today is gonna be better’... the challenge is, we don’t have our own blindspots.”

At The Blue Collar Success Group, they create “mastermind groups” to support business owners and help you predict future issues and find those blindspots.

The key, Kenny says, is preparing for a recession prior to it actually happening. With this in mind, business owners will have a plan set in place so that in the event of a flood, you won’t sink, but swim.

What is relational selling?

Kenny states that you have to build trust in order to earn the authority to ask a customer for their business.

A strong relationship with the customer, begins inside the company. It is the culture within the company that will ultimately affect the client relationship.

“When things get busy, sometimes owners have the tendency to forget the importance of team, and the importance of how we treat them. If you treat an internal client, meaning a team member, like a commodity, then they will treat your end user like a commodity.”

How to tackle the recruiting challenge.

“If recruiting isn’t as equally important as generating leads, then you’re not serious about recruiting.”

Kenny encourages business owners who want all the benefits of a good team, to invest as much in recruiting as you are in securing leads. And, when it comes to recruiting today’s generation of Millennials, there are certain facets of the home services industry that it is important to highlight.

1. Millenials like the idea of a path without debt, which is exactly what the home services industry offers. However, Millennials are looking for a work environment beyond the bare minimum that the Baby Boomers may be used to.
2. Family values are much more common in today’s industries, which offers Millennial techs the opportunity to find accountability, purpose, and passion in their work.
3. Many millennials find “side hustles” they are passionate about and enjoy outside of the more often mundane work they do to earn their main source of income. If you give your employees the opportunity to capitalize on their strengths and passion within your organization, you’ll find that they won’t need to seek out a side hustle, as all of the validation they are searching for can be found within your company environment.

Stay tuned for part 2 of this interview with Kenny Chapman.