Home Improvement Sales: 4 Ways in 5 Minutes to Have a Great Year

Now here are four things to do to make sure you have a great year. The first thing you want to do is make sure you have goals and more importantly, a specific plan and how you're going to get there. You need to have a goal using the numbers for where you work.

1. Set Clear Goals and Track Your Progress

In other words, track how many leads you're going to run, how many appointments you get. What your average sit rate is.. what your closing rate is, what your fallout rate is, your credit rejects, and your cancellations, and your average contract price.

So you get what your net sales are going to be for the year and from that you can get your net income as far as commissions are going to be. Then what you want to do is break it down into a month-by-month plan. Divide it by 12. And then the most important of all is that you track your goals. Compare your numbers to your plan.

So in other words, after the first month goes by, if you're not at your goals, then compare with the specific numbers that you plan to hit and then make the necessary adjustments so that you can get better and adjust as you go along. It's really important that you have goals because there's really only two things that motivate people, fear and desire.

And without desire or your goals, you naturally default to fear. Fear is not consistent. Most people without goals are fear-motivated, which means they're cruising along and all of a sudden their paychecks start to get slim. They can't pay their rent or mortgage and they start to panic. All of a sudden they kick it into high gear, and start to do the things they need to do.

Then they start making money. And the problem is that once they start making money, then the fear is gone. Therefore, the motivation and then they start to drop again and it's almost like being a yo-yo, they go up and down. They're not consistent. I call it the Duncan method of selling, but if you have goals then you're working towards something consistently instead of running from something whenever it starts to chase you.

When you set your goals, it's really important that you make your why.  Your goal may be 100 thousand dollars a year, but what's the why? Why do you want to make 100 thousand dollars a year? Is it to take care of your family? To retire other specific things you want to accomplish, you need to find something that you want bad enough that you are willing to be persistent and fight through to get what you want, even when the going starts to get hard.

2. Take Responsibility and Invest in Self-Improvement

Now the second thing that's going to help you have a great year is you need to take responsibility for results and work on self-improvement so you can get better. It's not that the job is too hard. You aren't good enough yet. That’s the whole secret. That's what took me forever to figure out. That it wasn't the leads. It wasn’t the company.  It wasn't anything but myself, and it's such a simple thing to do to realize that ok... if I’m not making enough sales...It means I don't know how to yet. If I don't know how to, it means that I don't have enough knowledge. So all I have to do is get the knowledge I'll get better and I'll make more money.

You can get knowledge through a variety of sources. You can get them from the top salespeople at your company. You can listen to podcasts. Can listen to audiobooks. You can watch YouTube videos. The point is you want to get better. The most valuable thing that I own is my ability to make money. And I'm constantly working on that. So I can get my skills better and better so I can make money. As you get better, the byproduct of that is that it allows you to compress time. I'm sure there are people in your office that make twice the amount.

One person making $50,000 another making $100,000 the others making $150,000. Have you ever thought that the person making 50k has to work two years to make what the person making $100k makes in one year? In other words, they work two years and the other person could work one year take a year off and still make the same amount of money. You need to find a way to get better and do whatever it takes to master your craft.  

3. Decide to Be the Best

The third thing you have to do is you have to decide. You have to make a commitment. Probably the easiest thing to decide is that you're going to be the best. What's the benefit of that? Well, number one, if you're the best, you'll never have to worry about money again.

People who are the top salespeople in every company or office make the top paychecks, and they're the ones that you want to be like and they never have to worry about money. But the point is that until you decide to be the best, you're conceding by nature to be second best. You've got to decide. You've got to commit and you've got to be willing to do whatever it takes so you can become the top salesperson in your office.

4. Take Care of Yourself Physically

And the fourth thing that people don't talk about a lot is that you got to take care of yourself physically. Yes, this is a mental job where you're talking to people and you're thinking. But physically you’re riding in a car and sitting in homes all day... and you don't get a lot of exercise. If you don't watch, it's going to affect your sales. You need to be sharp and you can't be sharp, and you can't be on top of your game if you're not physically fit.

When you’re not getting enough sleep, you are more irritable. And you know what that does to the customer? So you need to find a way to get exercise. Get enough sleep. You need to find a way to eat better. Now when you're making money, you can eat healthy food in nice restaurants. I mean spending $40.00 to $50.00 for lunch is nothing when you're making $2000 a week. But until then you’ve got to stop eating junk food. Stop eating at McDonald's and fast food. It's just going to kill you. Pack something healthy for lunch. Make your own sandwiches pack fruits and vegetables, but make sure that you're on top of your physical game because your physical game is going to balance your mental game.

 Be sure you get some rest in terms of taking some time off and having a balance in life. If you're home improvement sales, these are grueling 5 days, sometimes six days a week. Leave the house at 8:00. You don't get back to 10 or 11 at night. You need to find time to have a balance for yourself and your family. So I like that every three months I take a week off and at the end of the year I take the last two weeks off.  And that kept me fresh. And it kept me motivated to do my job because I enjoyed it because I had so much time off. What if my company won't let me? Well, your company will comply if you are good. The thing you have to keep in mind is that…I call it the number. A number of performances, your closing rate, Whatever they track, but at a certain number your company owns you. And at a certain number, you own them. That's why you want to do all the other things we talked about above so that you can own them. Own them, make money, and have fun. This is a wonderful job.