EP30: Thomas Williams Talks About The Importance Of Role-Playing

No, man, I appreciate it. Glad to be here tonight. This is super, super pumped. Glad to be on the podcast. So my brother and I started our business in 2001. I was 18. I graduated high school in May and got my real estate license. He came to me in October, asked me, did I want to start a gutter business? And I put as much thought into it as can we make money at it? And his answer was, yeah, yeah, we make money at it. And so we started a gutter business. And that's been 20 years ago. This next month will be 20 years that we've been in business. And we evolved from just gutters to roofing and siding, windows, additions, that kind of thing that eventually put us into a position where about 2013,2014, we started a sister company where we're building houses as well. So that's kind of a 10,000-foot view of us.

Oh, yeah, I guess that's important, isn't it? So All-American Exteriors is our remodeling company, and American Craftsman Homes is the building business.

Yeah, the only experience I had was being... Yeah, when I started, I was in real estate, had worked for a real estate broker from the time I was 15 until I got my license, was selling real estate at 18. So I had a little bit of just sitting in a subdivision watching builders build experience, but actually no hands-on, swinging a hammer, shooting a siding gun, anything like that, and still really, truly don't have a whole lot of experience. With all of that, my specialties are more towards sales and marketing and running a business.

That's right.

We're going to talk

What year was that? It was March, April,2020, something along those lines.

No, that's a, that's a fantastic question, Eric. So we did make it past 10 years. We were at a 19 year mark, but we were continuing to run this crazy contractor cycle, right? Where I was running from one customer lead to the next, you know, Windshield time all the time. I was exhausted. I didn't know how much longer I could do this on my own. I mean, and not to say that I'm on my own, but I handle our remodeling side and my brother handles our new construction building side. So the sales for our remodeling business falls on me. And I'm spending hours upon hours upon hours. driving to customers, getting to their home, doing a little song and dance, hoping and praying that they're going to choose us to go with their job and getting the sales sometime and not getting the sales sometimes and not knowing why. And I think that's one of the most important things that I've learned is that there's a reason why you don't sell a job and there's a reason why you do sell a job. And if you don't know why. you might want to spend some time digging into a sales process that's going to help you have a better understanding of why you didn't get that job, why you did actually sell that job. Right, Eric?

I mean, I think it was just a point of exhaustion and I started searching. I come across, um, you know, different sales books and different, um, you know, Grant Cardone's and. different people that I would dig and listen to audibles and was just because I was spending so much windshield time that I was just trying to learn and grow and get better and grow our bottom line. I mean, our top line was okay, but our bottom line was like, where is all of our money? Where did all of that money that we brought in, where did it go? You know, those were conversations that were being had quite often, and I was just digging and trying to get better and stumbled across, you know, a system that teaches a repeatable system that can be trained to a team. And ultimately, that's been my goal is I don't want to be. a one-man show, a five-man show. I want a team that works under me that makes the cogs, you know, turn. And something that I, you know, I've read different books, the, the, the e-myth books to where you've got to have. a standard operating procedure. You've got to have some SOPs that this is the way that we do it. This is the All-American Exteriors way, or this is the Team Handy way, or the Pondigar way. We all have those business mission statements, and we have the way that we do things, and we've got to get it in a way that it can be carried on down the line to where somebody can do it besides just me and just Eric and just Brad and just Drew and just different, you know, all the different guys that are running businesses in our group. And when I stumbled across this sales process, it's a repeatable process that can be taught. And if you dig in. And here's the key, Brad and Eric, is if you put the time and the effort into the role plays to learn this and truly begin to get a grasp of what step one, two, three, and four actually mean, then those role plays become to get easier and easier. And then the real life calls. they start to get easier and easier and more productive. And you're, you know, you're able to, you know, start weeding out customers or potential leads that are not really your customer to where you're not windshield time to every single lead that comes through the door. Right.

Yeah, it's pretty spot on.

Absolutely. Yeah, no, I mean, that's. That's critical because if it doesn't deliver

So one is don't want to take the time, right? And I can understand that, especially in the early beginning stages of learning this process. I don't have time. I'm too busy. I'm in the middle of trying to quote 16 different estimates and these customers are waiting on me. And I'm trying to decide which one to put on top priority because they may be the one that actually buys for me today. And I think we have to circle back around to one once we've talked about two and three. And so two is embarrassed. They're afraid that they're going to make themselves look like an idiot. And so this is something that I speak to a lot of people about is that, Brad, wouldn't it be a lot better to stumble and make a mistake in a pretend? scenario than it is to do it in real life to where we've made a mistake in front of our customers. In that scenario with our customers, it cost us money. In the role play, it cost us a couple of laughs or we pause and we stop and we say, hey, I really didn't mean to say that. Can we run through that again? Can we figure out a better way of saying this? you know, to the point that you get used to it. And I'm sorry, Brad, I'm going to have to ask you again what number three was.

Doesn't work. So, I mean, that's a, until you try it, how can you say something doesn't work without giving it any type of effort at all? And I don't know how to have that argument with somebody. So I would challenge, anyone who thinks that role playing doesn't work to put 10,15 role plays in and then come have a conversation with me afterwards about it not working. And so then we come back to number one about not having the time. And so you get past two and three and then you really start seeing the effects of it changing your game with your customers. And then you really start going, man, this man, why didn't these guys tell me? Brad, Eric, why didn't y 'all have this conversation with me about this role play thing? And man, I've really got to dig into this and I've got to start putting some time. I'm going to start time blocking and I'm going to make sure that nobody's making appointments during these times because this is so important that I've got to be on a role play with the pond digger. And I've got to be on a role play with Team Handy. And I've got to be on a role play with Kristen Bender and Drew Collins and Landon. And I've got to consume all of this information. And you get past that not having any time because you got to have these role plays. Am I right?

Oh my goodness. I mean, that's, it's night and day difference between where I was 18,20,22 months ago as to my calendar was full. We literally just took every single phone call that came in and scheduled an appointment and I was booked three, four. On-site consultations is what we would call them now, but it was an estimate to go out to a customer's home. It was three. Oh, yeah. I didn't know. I didn't know people charged for estimates.

Yeah. I mean, I'll talk to about the paid consultation, but I mean, now I don't go to a customer's house unless we're. We're hashing out the details. We're signing a contract, collecting a deposit. And honestly, I don't want to go to a customer's house for an on-site contract. I don't want the $250, $500. I want the contract. I want to sign the deal, leave there with a 50% deposit. And so my time is so far different than what it was. I have availability to work in my businesses. to actually review profit and loss, to look at something and go, why in the world did we lose this amount of money? Or why did we not make as much money as we should have? And we can review those and we can make better SOPs for other things. So I have more and more time to actually be a business owner instead of only focusing on producing jobs to be sold or sold jobs to be able to be produced. that kind of thing. And so, Eric, you were touching on the paid consultation. And I mean, this could get a little dicey here. I hope y 'all are okay with me maybe stepping on a little ice. Go for it. But I don't really feel like that somebody should just head strong, jump into a real-life customer call, and break out the... Eric, I'm going to need you to give me some money if you're going to want me to come out and actually give you an estimate. Because you could take a customer who is on the hook, they're ready to buy from you, and you say the paid consultation in the wrong way because you haven't role-played, you haven't practiced, you haven't done it in a way that it makes sense and you're comfortable with it. You could totally blow a sold deal by bringing up something that you haven't practiced. So I think, again, we're hitting on the importance of role plays here.

The wheels started really kicking after 30,40,50 role plays. It didn't, it was just a, I'm doing this because they have told me this is what I'm supposed to do. I'm saying these words because. This is the word tracks that I have been given to respond to these potential customers. And I don't know what I'm doing, like 30,40,50 points. You know, I didn't know why I was doing what I was doing. And, you know, part of that was, is I wasn't, I wasn't investing enough time in the role plays to make notes. I was not, I was scared. I mean, like I was worried that I was going to ask the wrong question. I was going to ask the same question twice. Somebody was going to give me an answer and I was going to ask the question again. And so I came up with a method that worked for me. And I think it's important that whatever the method is that works for you, you use it. If it's my method, if it's something that Brad has, Eric has, Drew, anybody, I think that it's important that. You follow a process, follow a way of doing a call, a role play. You keep them consistent. You do them the same. I mean, even as far as, you know, we're here in our offices. And if you're doing your role plays in your office, you should do your live calls with your customers in your office. And I'm sorry, Eric, I'm digressing away from your question. Your question was when. did I get excited and excitement started to, when it started clicking for me and I started spending that 40,50 role play mark. And then, you know, then it got to be where I was role playing with Eric because he was pushing me to get 200 role plays in. And I was role playing with Brad and I was, I was role playing 15,16 times in a week. And that's when it got interesting.

Goodness, I would say 20 hours a week, if not more.

Yep, absolutely.

So, I mean, one of the, the aha moments that I remember that sticks out a lot to me is you and I had a role play. Eric and I had a role play and we had an awkward conversation. And I said, Eric, I'd much rather have this awkward conversation with you here than to get out to your home and start having that awkward conversation and us really not be comfortable. And you latched on to it. I mean, it was something that literally just came out of my mouth. Like I didn't even know. where it came from, if I had ever even heard it before, if it was just something that I made up and you loved it. And it, it really kind of boosted me to, to dig deep into that awkward conversation. And that's one of my favorite word tracks to this date now.

Work for Eric in flipping California. I mean, it's got to work for all the other areas in between, right?

Yeah. Um, so most of my role plays were being done during the day. You know, I would block off time during my, my calendar and. You know, I might have three phone calls with a real customer and three phone calls with a contractor in the group and have a role play. And so I avoided doing them after hours because I was afraid of what what she was going to say. Like, why are you taking away from our family? Why are you you know, you already don't have enough time with the kids and it's dinner time and all of those things. Eventually, I started, the more I put into it, the more effort I invested in this, the more time I spent on role plays, the more fruits I started seeing in my real life sales process with my real life customers to the point that I finally started having a conversation with her. And I started telling her, hey, you know, I really think this stuff is working. And I really think that I need to start spending some more time. And it may take some time after hours that I need to actually role play with some of these guys like Eric Triplett, who's on the Pacific Coast. And I need to be able to do this at not just nine to five. And when I started changing our sales process and we, so back up to 2019. We did around $900,000 in sales in 2019. And in 2020, we did $1.25, $1.25 million from 2019 to 2020. And then by the end of May this year, we had surpassed what we did in 2020. So the fruits are starting to... to bear and the effort that I've put into this and the time that I've taken away from family, it gives me more time to invest in my family at different, different times. There's some effort that has to be put into this. I mean, we're, we're doing this at, you know, dark 30 to, to have this conversation, but we're doing this because we want to help other contractors because I'm a little bit selfish guys. I say this pretty often. I've found, Since I was a young child, my dad taught me that when I'm helping other people, I'm actually helping myself. So I think that's the reason why we take the time that we do to invest in the contractors that are in the group because we see where we were years ago and we see the potential that everybody else has and we want to help them see that fruition of potential, right?

All of the above. But I have to say that honestly, if I hadn't learned a process to where I could have a conversation over the phone with a customer when COVID hit, I'd have been lost. I mean, we probably would have unfortunately just shut our doors because I wouldn't have known what to do. Zoom calls. I mean, that was brand new to us. And but but, you know, fortunately, we had some some time invested into actual phone calls to where we were having these conversations with with customers pre-qualifying before. You know, do we want to go out to a customer's home? Does a customer want us to even come into their home? You know, we now need to wear masks and gloves and booties and all of that kind of stuff that takes even more time and resources and effort. So I have to speak to that, that honestly, I feel like that if I hadn't learned this system when I did, that it would probably have killed us. Can I communicate more and better with my customers? Absolutely. Can I ask the right questions at the right times? And that is solely because of the profit sales system, the ability to. take a statement where I want to toot my horn. And instead of doing that, I take it and turn it into a question. And then it becomes the customer's idea at that point, right? I mean, all of these things, I could sit here until I was blue in the face and try to get you and Brad to believe me and understand it. But ultimately, you've got to dig into this your own and figure this out on your own. to be able to believe this, right?

No doubt. Difficult, easy, awkward. uncomfortable conversations that you have to have with your existing customers, things that come up in the middle of the job that nobody knew about, that normally, or not normally, but years ago, you would just eat and say, well, how can I have this difficult conversation with this customer and tell them that they're going to have to pay me $5,000 more than what we expected before?

It's still there or not, but. I don't want the onsite consultation charge. I want to go out and sign a contract with a customer. And the consultation charge is there just to, I mean, there's multiple reasons for it, right? But it's to protect our time and make sure that if I've went out there and I've detailed the work and I've put the effort in to give you a detailed proposal and ultimately a detailed contract and the wheels fall off this. And for whatever reason, you're not comfortable and you just, you know, I get it. You decide to change your mind. There's going to be a charge for that. Are you going to be comfortable with that, Eric?