Selling At The Highest Level
In this episode we welcome Bill Ryan to the show! Bill and his team sell software to Fortune 500 companies. He has closed multiple $50-$60 MILLION Dollar sales! He opens up his book of noted and shares some of his best stuff with us here.
There are many parallels in sales whether we are talking about a $150 sale or a $60 million dollar sale. Bill helps us realize them and gives several tips for navigating larger businesses like franchise dealer groups.
Resources from this show
Shane’s Blending Hammer, the Jackhammer
PODCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Keith: I’m Keith Cosentino. He’s Shane Jacks. And this is the PDR College Podcast, your no. 1 source for expert level information for the dent removal business. We are gonna talk tools, we are gonna talk techniques, but most of the time we are gonna be talking business, business, business.
Shane, tell these boys why we’re gonna be talking so much about the business.
Shane: Well, Keith, my baby seal collection is getting low, so I’m gonna have to purchase a few more of those. When I get angry, have a bad day, I go out back, grab a baby seal and club it to death.
Keith: It just – it releases so much tension.
Shane: It does. It is a – it’s like going out and going to the batting cage, except you don’t have to hit leather, you get to hit baby seals.
Keith: They don’t move around as fast.
Shane: Nowhere near. They’re just sitting there going “Arf, arf, arf,” looking for a little fish, and home run every time. Ever tried to hit a knuckle ball? A seal’s head pretty much stays still. No problems. It’s beautiful.
Keith: So, man, today is a really exciting episode. I’m excited to record it. We are playing in the big leagues this time. We are bringing on a guest to the show who plays in a world that is foreign to most of us guys holding steel tools every day. What do you know about that Shane?
Shane: I don’t know nothing man. I’m here. We need to bring on the guest and then I’ll say – make a couple of comments. That is exactly how I had it planned. What do I know about what? Not pushing steel – not pushing metal rods?
Keith: Yeah, you know nothing about that.
Shane: I don’t know anything about it. That’s why we’ve got a guest on here.
Keith: Every single day we are pushing steel and trying to pretend like we’re salespeople at the same time, so what I decided to do is find someone who is selling at a level much higher than we would imagine and see if we can take some of those skills that they have at that level and transport them down into the land of mortals where we live and see if we can use them to make more money, which is what this show’s all about. We want to teach you better dent techniques and all that kind of stuff, but the end game’s to make more money.
And I found, deep in my contacts, my man, Bill Ryan, who I have known for a long time. We’ve actually been buddies since we were kids. But Bill is a salesman for a giant, worldwide software company, and Bill closes deals – Bill closes deals that you don’t even think exist. We’re talking $50, $60 million sales and Bill’s closing them. This is the world he lives in. So I thought “Man, what are you doing at work? Tell us what you’re doing.” I said “Would you share some of this stuff with a bunch of guys that probably won’t even understand what you’re saying, but will you come on and see if we can pick something up?” And he said he would do it.
So, I would like to welcome to the podcast Mr. Bill Ryan. Welcome.
Bill: Hey everybody. Thanks for having me. And Keith and Shane, I’d like to congratulate you for coming up with, probably, the top 10 – well, at least the top 20 paintless dent removal podcasts on the internet. So, congratulations guys. That’s quite an accomplishment.
Shane: Well, I think we’re in the top 30 something now.
Bill: Well, yeah, I mean, you know – you’re trending, you’re trending well.
Keith: We’ve been features in such search engines such as Google and Bing.
Bill: All right, well, I think Keith’s given me an introduction that makes it sound, sound like what I do is very different from what you guys are out there doing.
Keith: It absolutely it.
Bill: No, I don’t think it is.
Keith: I don’t think it is either.
Bill: When you break on a really large sale, or a really complex process, it’s a series of little processes. It’s just there’s more little processes to get to your goal. There’s more people involved. But it all comes down to the base interaction with you and a client. And in my world you’re really searching for the truth.
In other words, if you’re talking to someone, you have to figure out what their motivation is, you have to figure out where they play in the decision making structure of this deal, and, really, if they’re worth your time or not, and I think it’s very similar to the same way you guys are, are dealing with a customer. You’re having to make those assessments every time you deal with anybody.
Keith: That’s absolutely true.
Bill: The benefit for you, though, is you actually get to close somebody right there.
Keith: Yes.
Bill: My close, will, in many cases, take years. So, if I make a mistake in, say, the sales technique, or my sales process, if I skip a step, I don’t get any immediate feedback. I realize it a year later as my competitor’s closing a deal that I made a misstep in one of the 100 conversations a year before.
Keith: Oh, heartbreaking.
Bill: Yeah. And, believe me, when you go back and when you’re looking at a sale you lost, you can find – you can find the things you did wrong. They stick out like a sore thumb.
Keith: In retrospect.
Bill: Yeah, I mean, it’s funny how that works.
Shane: The thing about – the thing about Bill, is, these things that he’s – these sales that he’s making, these deals that he’s trying to close are so much bigger than what we’re doing though, so we really don’t care – I’m not gonna say we don’t care about one sale, Keith, but the – the kickback to it – the ramifications, if we don’t close that small $200 or $300 job, they’re nowhere near what Bill is doing. He has to pick every single word. That’s got to be stressful.
Bill: Well, it’s not so much of that, Shane, it’s that you have to turn a multimillion dollar sale into several $300 sales. And what I mean by that is every interaction with somebody, when you go into it, you have to have a goal in mind, and you have to judge yourself “Have I achieved that goal or have I not achieved that goal?” If you’re not judging every interaction as a pure sale you can’t adjust your technique mid-game.
Keith: That’s a great way of looking at it.
Bill: Keith – yeah, because if Keith gets five at bats a day, let’s say, if we were only judging by a closed deal, I get two or three at bats a year. So, Keith would get better than me in two days.
Keith: If you’re just talking about the close.
Bill: Well, you’re talking about the close, you’re talking about the process –
Keith: Right.
Bill: You’re talking about reading the people. Everything that’s important. And I think from, from a paintless dent removal angle, you guys, I envy you, and you have the ability to try out new things that maybe are way out of left field.
Keith: Yeah, that is –
Bill: And see what works about them.
Keith: That is true. It’s something I’ve talked about before. When we’re – when guys are listening to this podcast or if you’re listening to Zig Ziegler or something and then you’re in the truck driving up to a place and you can hop right out and you can engage this new technique you just heard about 30 seconds ago, right now, and see if it works or it doesn’t, and if it doesn’t, an hour and a half from now you get another chance. “I’ll try it a little different this time.” So it – you do, really, you get pretty good pretty fast if you’re trying to.
But I am interesting in hearing all of your stats, or at least a lot of them, when you’re going through a larger organization with a chain of command, because that’s very similar to our – the wholesale side of our business where we’re more working with these large dealer groups. There might be three or four, five guys, you need to touch, and it’s not a deal that you close the first time.
You’ve got to keep that relationship going sometimes six, seven, eight months, a year, before you do any work for these guys, popping back in, checking on them. So I think that type of account selling is probably a little bit closer to what you’re doing on a regular basis, still different, but I think it’s a little closer.
Bill: Sure, and believe me, there’s a million books about that that I’ll reference too. One thing that I do want to say about just trying new techniques and how important I think it is, I learned to sell on the phone in probably the worst telemarketing boiler room you guys have ever seen. But one of the things a boss had told me, and said I’ve done really well today, I got two orders, he said “Well how many people hung up on you?” I said “Well, even better. Nobody’s hung up on me today.” And he said “Well, if nobody’s hung up on you you’re not pushing hard enough.”
He’s like “You could have gotten four orders, because if you’re not pushing people hard enough to hang up on you you’re leaving money, you’re leaving effort on the table.”
And I think it’s really important that when you guys go out and are making these sales that you have a sale that you’ve completely burned, a pitch that went horribly bad, something that you invested – you’re essentially investing that time making a bad pitch and becoming a better salesperson.
Keith: When that guy gave you that advice, at the moment, did you think that was good advice?
Bill: Like all good advice, I thought he was crazy. Two years, two years later I found myself giving that same advice to a sales team I was managing.
Keith: No kidding.
Bill: You know, if you – it’s equivalent to a baseball player that hits all singles. He’s like “Hey, that’s great,” but if he wants to be a homerun hitter you’re gonna have to strike out a little bit.
Keith: Yeah? So you’ve got to push a little harder and put a little more skin in the game, try to close a little sooner, a little harder.
Bill: Yeah, and then once you find it’s not working, you’ve found your breaking point. You’ve found how hard you can push it. And once you know how hard you can push it, you can then turn that on when you need to and turn it off when you don’t. But until you know what that line is, how much people are willing to take from you, you don’t really know how to push it.
Keith: I think you did a couple years of that if I remember right. As a general rule, when you’re doing telemarketing, are you trying to first establish rapport or are you trying to first establish a need, or something else? Is there a step that’s always right?
Bill: No, but there’s a step that usually works a little better than most, which is establishing consideration, I guess. Meaning, when you call somebody and you’re trying to sell them something, say “Hey, this is Bill Ryan. Have I got you at a good time? Is now a good time?” It’s something that nobody asks them, and if they say “No,” your follow up is “Oh, when would be a good time?” And nine times out of 10 you get on their calendar, or when you call them back at the prescribed time they’re waiting on your call. Or –
Keith: People hit me with that all of the time.
Bill: Or, if they’re on the computer, and you hear them typing, and you say “Is now a good time?” and they say “Yes,” you’ll hear that the typing will stop. So you’ll either end up with an appointment or you end up with somebody that’s giving you their undivided attention.
Keith: So it’s showing a little consideration instead of going straight into a pitch or a script.
Bill: Yeah. And then you go – but then you go straight into your pitch. At that point you just have their attention and you have, I don’t know, 30 seconds. And that’s why it’s real important to get that pitch down, down pat, and it’s real important to do that, no one or two times a day, it’s important to sit down and cold call for a couple hours. Because you won’t get into your rhythm until your tenth call, and if it’s something that you can do for five minutes here and there you will find a way to do anything else but that.
Keith: Oh my gosh, yeah.
Bill: You have to put it, block it off on your calendar, “Wednesday mornings are for cold calls.” And then that’s what I do from 8 o’clock until 10 o’clock on Wednesday mornings.
Keith: Are you still doing that in your current capacity?
Bill: I do, but not as much as I should.
Keith: Yeah, but you’ve got a team now.
Bill: Well, I have a team, but you’re not touching the account – you’re never really touching the account unless you’re turning over rocks in it yourself. And there’s a really great motivator to your team when you find somebody that the cold callers haven’t found. They ask you “Well, how the hell do you do that?” “Well, here’s how I did it. I cold called. Here’s what I found. You guys could have found it just as easily, but, you know, I’m watching. I’m watching. I’d like you to find these kinds of guys too.”
Keith: It’s – if you ever spent any time in a large organization, the organizations I’ve spent time in are nowhere near as large as the guys you’re dealing with, Bill, and Shane, you’ve had a little touch of it in your work for BMW –
Shane: Right.
Keith: The chain of command is so vast, I can’t even imagine selling anything to anyone within there, because there’s no one, it’s like a board collective. You’ve got to deal with 50 people just to talk to one. It’s amazing that you can even –
Shane: And you got a bit of a taste of that last November out here.
Keith: Yeah. Sure did.
Shane: And that was figuring out the chain of command, and you can’t just blow through them and go to the top, you know? You can’t go straight to the top, in some situations, and that one that we were in, Keith, it was – it really wasn’t the top that we needed to be in. It was the right person. So, it’s not necessarily going to the Vice President or the President of the area of the company, whatever, that you’re dealing with all of the time. It can be somebody – this was – the person we needed to talk to, Keith, was not – was barely even in management.
Keith: Yeah.
Shane: An obscure person. I know I’m being a little vague on this, but I don’t want to throw names or positions out there. So I guess what I’m saying is – it’s hard for me to – when we were in that situation, and Bill, maybe you can expound on this, you can’t just run up the chain of command to the top and talk to the top guy. You need to build rapport all the way up.
Bill: Well, yeah, that’s true in a lot of cases. I mean, the CEO of a Fortune 500 company is probably not the guy that’s gonna sign off on, even, $60 million worth of software. But you’re never gonna go wrong having the CEO’s support.
Keith: Right.
Bill: So one of the things that I think it’s really important for everybody to know in a sales process is where you play. If you’re a 350 pound guy that lives on his mom’s couch you’re probably not gonna be going for the 10s at bars.
Keith: Shane, you’re probably not gonna be going for the 10s at bars.
Shane: Whatever homie.
Bill: You’re gonna be – unless you have sales skills. That – for the most part, you’re not gonna play in that area. So there’s gonna be an area that you’re gonna do well in, there’s gonna be an area that you play in, and you’re probably gonna want to focus there.
So if you know that in your sales process you’re going for this type of person, it’s really gonna be the trick to find that person and to get their attention. I typically like to use what I call Sherpas to help me get up the corporate mountain. Find somebody in that organization that you can mine for data, that you can – that will walk you through the process, that will tell you everything. Believe it or not, those people are usually on the sales side of the organization.
Salespeople love to talk, salespeople love to tell you everything they know, and for the most part they love to help other salespeople. So you’d be surprised at a car dealership how much a sales guy will tell you about who’s making what decision.
Shane: That is kind of exactly where I was going with this. When we were selling to these big dealer groups, I mean, there’s a fairly big chain of command there also, and sometimes these guys that are – Keith, you and I have talked about this, sometimes the cleanup guys in the back that are washing – they know everything that’s going on.
Keith: Yeah, I love that term, a Sherpa.
Bill: Yes.
Keith: I know as soon as you said that, Bill, I was thinking exactly what Shane was saying. The detail guys and the salesmen, like Bill was saying, those are the Sherpas at a dealership.
Shane: You go straight up to the general manager and nine times out of the 10 – well, not – you go straight to the general manager and if you say the right things you could possibly get an audience, and it’s happened before, with you and I, Keith –
Keith: Sure.
Shane: And countless other guys out there, but if you’ve got some aces in the hole, if you have those Sherpas, to help you climb that mountain, yeah, it makes it a whole lot easier.
Bill: I mean, there’s been cases in my career where I’ve had opportunities to meet, and I usually handle the CIO of an organization, the Chief Information Officer, there’s been opportunities where I’ve had meetings or opportunities to meet those folks, and haven’t been ready. I haven’t had my time with my Sherpas, I haven’t mapped the account, and I’ve opted not to take those meetings.
Keith: No kidding.
Bill: You know, in your case, I don’t know how many car dealers there are in Sacramento, but there’s a finite resource.
Keith: Right.
Bill: And if you’re not going into that meeting prepared and you’re not ready to close the business, don’t waste your time, because if you’ve wasted their time they’re not gonna take your meeting again.
Keith: No, they are definitely not.
Bill: So one of the things that I think is hugely important is, yeah, find those Sherpas. There’s always somebody in an organization that just wants to talk, and they want to feel important. They’re usually somebody that’s overlooked in the organization and oftentimes not that respected in the organization, which is the reason they have time to talk to you, which is the reason – I mean, they’re looking for validation. They want somebody to say “You are valuable. You have valuable information.”
Now the challenge with those kind of people is it’s very difficult to get out from behind them. The reason they’re talking to you is typically because they’re not that high up in the organization. They have time. They want to walk you into the general manager to get some face time with the general manager for themselves. So you have to be very delicate in that you have to use them for their information and reward them from it, but you, at some point, have to get out from behind them.
Keith: Disconnect. Yeah.
Bill: And have the meeting yourself. And that’s a very, very tricky situation. And the only way you can do it properly is by explaining that’s what’s gonna happen. Say “Oh, okay. They’re telling you about the process at the dealership. Well, it’s time for you to educate them on your sales process.” “Oh, really? Here’s what I’m gonna do. Here’s what I think. I think I’m gonna walk up to them and do this, and if I get the sale I’m gonna take you and your wife out to dinner.” You know? But –
Keith: So you’re really kind of – you’re not just having a casual conversation and learning the structure. You’re actually building a little mini relationship with your Sherpa.
Bill: Absolutely. Because if you don’t, if it’s unclear to the Sherpa what they’re gonna get out of it, they’re gonna make their own assumptions and they’re gonna say “Well, I’m gonna walk into the general manager – you know what? I’ll talk to them for you.”
Keith: Right.
Bill: “I’ll talk to them for you, man. I’ll get this set up for you. You don’t even have to sell anything. I’ll make the sale for you.” And that’s not what you want.
Keith: No way.
Bill: You want, you want “Jim, if you talk to me and you get me into this general manager, you know what I’ll do? I’ll take your family out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory or wherever else.” And that way you’ve set the expectation and Jim knows what’s gonna happen if something happens for you.
Keith: All right. Eating at the Cheesecake Factory sounds a lot better than eating a piece of nalgahyde in -32 degrees. So I think any Sherpa would go for that deal.
Bill: Yeah, a Sherpa – a little known fact, Sherpas love the Cheesecake Factory.
Keith: Oh, man. That’s an awesome, awesome parallel in our business, and it’s not even a parallel. It’s business is business when you’re dealing with an organization, I guess, no matter how big or how small, but I – I’ve organically been doing that, and now knowing the steps I need to take that’s gonna make it more powerful. I want to hear other, I want to hear other guys, I want to hear, you guys listening to this show, I want to hear you talking about Sherpas next week, or in the comments. Tell me about the Sherpas, where you found them, and what they did for you. I’m gonna find a couple.
Bill: And then – and then you want me to touch on some of the challenging stuff, Keith?
Keith: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.
Bill: All right. There’s a book, and kind of a theory, called Challenge Your Selling. I’m not gonna do it justice because I’m a sales guy and I read it quickly in between plane flights. But the concept is pretty simple. The concept of a salesperson is, is typically portrayed as kind of a yes man. Somebody that’s gonna come in and say “Oh, your ideas are great. We really – we love this idea. Customer, you’re so smart. Here’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna put this in place just like you like it.”
Well, they’ve done a lot of studies and they’ve found out those relationship builder kind of salespeople, in fact, don’t sell nearly as much as other types of salespeople. And the reason is because they’re not offering anything unique and they’re not offering any changes that are gonna make the customers money.
The people that make money in sales are the people that come in by challenging the existing way they’re doing it. A general manager of a car lot does not want to hear that you can come in and incrementally change the way he does paintless dent removal. He’s a big picture guy. They want to hear things like “Let’s step back. Let’s take a look at the big picture. Here’s what you’re doing wrong. Here’s what can make you money.” And you have to challenge the way he’s doing something or you’re not gonna get his attention. And at times that can go over not so well, but at least you’re offering something different.
And it kind of creates a lot of tension in that relationship and it’s called constructive tension though. You have to take somebody down pretty low and pull them back up. You need to say “Hey, this is what I’ve seen that can be improved in your business and make you more money. I’ve noticed these three things. Here’s what I like to do to fix them and here’s what I think the results are gonna be, and here’s where we can be in a month.”
Keith: So, immediately I’m going into my mind and picturing myself in that situation and here’s what I feel like what I would encounter, and you tell me what I’m doing wrong or what I need to do to rectify it. So, in these dealer groups, the GM, I’m sure it’s not that different from any other big organization, but this is the one we have most experience in, the GM is treated like a little mini celebrity, and nobody really likes him, generally, but they all pretend like they do and they all are boot lickers when he walks by and everybody – so, after a while of that those guys get pretty big heads in their little sphere. They think they’re somebody really important and they think they’ve got all the answers, especially if it’s a successful dealer group.
So when you’re gonna come up and challenge the way he’s arranged his business and tell him that he’s not doing it right, he’s doing it wrong, have you, in that scenario, have you spent time establishing yourself as an authority already before you present something like this, or this could be on the first or second meeting with him?
Bill: Well, here’s the thing. There’s 30 people in line trying to sell him, I don’t know telecom service, whatever else –
Keith: Everything.
Bill: That are ready to lick his boots. Okay? And at the end of the day he’s not gonna remember any of those people. Your chances, I would assume, of walking in and getting a sale on the first meeting with a GM, aren’t gonna be very good, I would – yeah, I would expect.
Keith: Right. Absolutely.
Bill: No matter how much you prepare or whatever, it’s a low percentage game. So in your first meeting you need to establish yourself as an expert. And the only way you’re gonna establish yourself as an expert is to come up with some kind of contrarian opinion to what he’s doing. And there’s ways to couch it where you’re not – you’re not just telling him you’re smarter than him, but you’re saying “Hey, you know what? I work a lot with Neylo BMW. Do you know anybody over there?”
He may, he may not. Or whatever your respected client is. Or it doesn’t even have to be our client. It just has to be “I was over at X dealer. I bought a car from this dealer. I noticed they did something wrong, and it really bothered me. And I don’t know if you guys do this or not but I thought it might be a way to improve something.”
So you’re saying “Hey, the other dealer does something wrong and I found a way to fix it. I don’t know if you guys do this or not, but hear me out.” Or “I work with these other car companies and I think they make more money in their service departments because of this. I wanted to share it with you, and you can tell me what you think.” And it – oh, go ahead.
Keith: That’s what I love about your skill set, Bill, it’s like this – these little intricacies that you wouldn’t think are a big deal, but a little angle like that, all of a sudden, when I hear it I go “Yeah, that makes perfect sense, but I didn’t think of it.” You know? It’s not my world. But you’re so good at just analyzing a business and coming up with a couple simple ways to get into the door and make somebody’s wheels start turning.
Because even when you present that scenario to me I’m thinking “Oh, yeah, maybe somebody’s doing something different over there. I’ll listen. Now I’m listening.” You know? Instead of just “Hey, would you like a – you want to try a new dent company? We’re real good.”
Bill: Well, I mean, what do you want to learn?
Shane: You’ve been watching me.
Bill: These guys are like us. They want to make money.
Keith: Right.
Bill: And if somebody came in from one of your competitors and said “Hey, you want to have lunch with me?” “Well, hell yeah. Absolutely, I want to have lunch with you. I want to find out what they’re doing over there.”
Keith: Right.
Bill: And it doesn’t matter if they’re a bad competitor or a good competitor, they just – they want to learn. So you’re offering some value about the industry.
Another thing that I think is huge, and I don’t see people doing this in general, but that information’s really valuable to a GM. But everywhere along the line there’s information that’s valuable to a service tech. Those service techs may be looking for new jobs. The sales guy may be looking for new leads, may be looking for, again, new jobs.
One of the ways I’ve been successful, particularly in the lower levels of the organization, is being able to keep track of all my people that are in my periphery and know where they are in their careers and know where they want to go. And then when I’m talking to a competing business that’s hiring, I’ll recommend that guy.
Keith: All right.
Bill: You know? And just stuff like that. So don’t just become an expert on paintless dent removal, become the expert in the auto industry. Become the guy that people think of when they think of somebody that’s got relationships. When you start getting calls and people are like “Hey, I’m about to go out on the street. Do you know anybody that’s hiring?” or when you start getting calls that say “Hey, I’m looking for somebody good that knows,” I don’t know, “how to change oil. Who do you know?” When you start getting those calls you’ll start realizing that people are viewing you as not just the paintless dent guy, they’re viewing you as the guy.
Keith: Yeah, the connector. You’re the connector. And I’ve organically had that happen with a few places that I’ve done a good job of building my reputation, and it doesn’t – of course, doesn’t translate everywhere because not everybody knows me, but that has happened a little bit, and, I think, in retrospect, I could have done a better job at going to bat for those guys when you do get that call and trying to make something happen for them.
Bill: I spend at least an hour, at least an hour a week, trying to get people jobs, or looking for jobs for people that are either out on the street or thinking about going out on the street. Because when I get somebody a job in an organization that I’m also working with I have a lifetime supporter there.
You know, these people, in my business, they move from one company to the next, probably like they do in the auto business.
Keith: Oh yeah. It’s a revolving door. Everybody knows each other.
Bill: So why not get in front of that? Why not be the guy that hooked up that person with that job at every dealer? And then you have a support network that, regardless of GM changes, regardless of anything like that, you have a built in support network at that dealership.
Keith: Have you ever went down a deep thought from the organization that you, on the outside looking in, it looks like you poached one of their people, then plop them at one of their competitors?
Bill: Yes. I have. Look, you’re – if you’re positioning it right you’re not the guy – in the person’s mind you made that introduction, but it’s not unrealistic from a GM’s perspective, or anybody else, that somebody from Neylo BMW – I don’t even know if Neylo’s still around, but Neylo BMW goes over to Bregger Chevrolet. That stuff happens all the time. So it’s not likely that somebody in that organization is gonna view you as the power broker –
Keith: Right.
Bill: That got the oil change guy from one place to the next.
Keith: Yeah. Probably not. So when – those are all awesome, awesome tips. We could probably stop the show right here and you guys could make a lot of money with just those skills, but one of the things, when you and I were having a casual conversation that intrigued me was the concept you were trying to share with me and I was trying to get into my feeble mind about creating conflict intentionally in a long-term sale. Tell me a little bit more about that.
Bill: Right.
Keith: Because when we think about selling something, we – I think “Oh man, the last thing I want is any kind of conflict.” I want – like you were saying before, I want to be the yes man bootlicker.
Shane: Bootlickers. Yeah. That automatically goes into my mind.
Keith: This is great. “Here, I brought you a cheesesteak sandwich,” and “I really love our suit,” and all this kind of junk. So when you told me that you want to create this conflict – and I want you to share that story with me, you’re talking about too, not giving the guy what he was asking for as far as a timeframe, but it sounded so crazy to me, but I know you’re speaking the truth because I know how well you do for yourself. So tell us a little bit about this concept.
Bill: Okay. Well, it boils down to kind of a negotiation concept. Henry Kissinger, obviously a pretty good negotiator, he used to say “The art of the negotiation is overstating one’s demands.” All right? So whether that be quoting too high, whether that be making your timeline longer, whatever it is, you have to leave some on the table.
And I had a guy the other day quote me for some work on the house and he quoted me and then I tried to get him down and then he told me he had already given me a 20 percent discount when he prepared the quote. Well, I didn’t know how much gutter cleaning would cost, so he set the price, and he set the price low and didn’t tell me he was giving me a discount. So he was giving me something without letting me know he was even giving me something. So I didn’t know, and then I started negotiating, and he didn’t have any room.
So very often we give stuff away without even telling the clients and without making it valuable. And one of the things I try to do is set my prices in a way, and set how long it’s gonna take to deliver the project in a way where there’s room to come off. And I might come off very quickly. I might save them a week, I might save them some money very early in the cycle, but they’re damn sure gonna know that I’m giving them something. Okay? They have to know you’re giving them something or you haven’t really given them anything. You’ve just undercut yourself.
Keith: Right. That makes perfect sense.
Bill: And the way this works is you let – you develop a point of tension. For instance, if somebody tells you that “I need this in three hours,” say “Oh, God, I don’t know. Normally this would take four,” and give yourself some time to work through it in your head in front of the client. This is painful. This is something you’re doing for them. And let that tension kind of marinate. And you have to be comfortable with silence and you have to be comfortable with that tension. And then ask for something in return.
Say “Tell you what? You need it by 3? How about 3:15?” or “Maybe I could get another guy. It might cost you a little more.” Whatever. And I’m trying to relate this to your business –
Keith: Right.
Bill: As best I can. But the point is you’re not establishing your value if you’re just plainly meeting the customer’s needs. It has to be an effort to meet those customer’s needs. And the client has to know and has to think that you’re doing something for them that’s special, that’s more valuable than the next guy. The next guy, believe it or not, could come in and say “Yeah, I could do it for that price. Yeah, I can do it for that timeline,” but his service is gonna be viewed as less valuable because he’s not doing anything extra.
Keith: And he leaves out that personal connection of being the guy who’s gonna come through for him, the guy who’s gonna go to bat for him, and really manipulate the system just so he can make it happen for this guy. You know? “‘I’m gonna – it doesn’t work, it never works, but I tell you what, I’m gonna run it up there for you and see if I can make it happen.” That happens in the car sales process every single time.
“You know what? He’ll never say yes to this deal, but I’m gonna go see if I can talk to him.” This is a sales guy talking about the closer, or the desk guy. “You know what? This is a crazy deal, but why don’t I just go up there and see what I can do for you?” And they come back and they do this back and forth and then finally – if it comes off right, the sales guy’s the savior. “You know what? I cashed in my vacation. They’re just gonna keep it and they’re gonna let me do this deal because it’ll put me over the top, so I’m – it’s gonna cost me a little bit, but I want to see you in the car.” And all that kind of stuff.
Bill: I mean, it happens in every business, and what that sales guy’s doing is he’s creating an awkward moment for you, and relationships really don’t – don’t go anywhere if there’s not tension and there’s not awkward moments and there’s not stuff that you have to do. It’s like working out. If you’re not ripping your muscles a little bit your muscles aren’t getting bigger. And in a relationship you have to kind of strain those muscles.
If you look at great relationships that you have in your life, whether it be friends or wives or whatever, all those relationships have bene stronger because they’ve gone through some tests. So – and these long-term relationships, if they’re not going through any tests or any challenges, you’d better find a way to create some, because otherwise they’re looking at what you’re doing as a commodity that anybody could do. They’re looking at you as just somebody that’s not being challenged by them and it’s not gonna work.
They need to feel like they’re challenging you. They need to feel like you’re meeting with them to work – or you’re working with them to meet their demands and that their demands are tough. Nobody wants to hear that they’re the easiest customer you have. What somebody wants to hear is “Hey, these guys, they work me very hard, but they’re one of my favorite customers. That’s what your client wants to hear about you.”
Keith: Well, and also – go ahead Shane.
Shane: I guess I’ve been doing this, actually unwittingly, for years, which you’re saying you can even do it on a short-term relationship customer also. When I go out, relating this to the PDR industry, I just had one yesterday, go out – the gentlemen – and I have a little bit of different scenario here than Keith does, I have a shop, where Keith goes out to the customer.
Normally Keith shows up before the customer comes out of the office, out of the home, wherever they’re at, people walk into my office, get me, and I walk out. Typically I’ll follow the people out. I’ll open the door, they’ll go first, and a lot of the times the dent is staring me straight in the face, and I will, on a lot of – even if the dent is not terrible, Keith and Bill, I will go “Ooh, and just throw that out there.”
Bill: Yep.
Shane: And I will kind of buildup how difficult this dent is gonna be, and they can – you kind of see this look on their face of “Okay, this is a little more than I thought it was. It’s not a tiny, little dent like I thought it was.” But then I come back and I go “You know, it’s gonna be tough, but I believe we can repair this. I believe we can make you happy.” And immediately I will add some things in there also, that – to give them the feeling that I’m the only guy that can repair it in the area. Is this kind of the same thing, Bill?
Bill: It’s exactly the same thing. You’re taking them – you’re controlling that tension. Somebody that comes in and says “Oh, no problem. We can do it,” there’s no tension there. So you haven’t –
Shane: No perceived value either, really.
Bill: Yeah. You haven’t taken them low, and you have to take them low before you can take them high. The – one of the great things that I learned going through a mortgage process, and I didn’t realize it until after the fact, but I have pretty good credit, and I – my mortgage guy ran my numbers, and he looked at my credit report and he said “Ooh, man.” He’s like “You’ve applied for a lot of lines of credit this year. You’ve applied for three lines of credit this year. Did you know you were gonna be getting a mortgage?”
I said “Well, yeah, I figured I was gonna refinance.” He’s like “And you still applied for this Delta credit card?” “Well, yeah, I fly a lot.” He’s like “Oh, man, that’s not smart. Didn’t anybody ever tell you not to do that?” I said “Geez, yeah. I guess I knew not to do that. I thought my credit was good enough.”
He’s like “Yeah, yeah. I guess.” Paused. I’m like “Oh my God, what an idiot. I can’t believe I did this.” He’s like “But tell you what, I think I can fix it. Let me do some stuff.” And then you hear the furious typing, “Hmmm, I don’t know.” More typing, more typing, more typing. He’s like “All right. Here’s what I can do. You’re still A paper, but I had to change it around.”
And he’s doing two things. No. 1, he’s building that relationship, but what he’s really doing is he’s making sure that I don’t want to go to somebody else because I’m a little embarrassed by this process. So, the same thing. What I might add to that is “God, how’d you do this?” Nobody likes the fact that they put a dent in their car.
Shane: No.
Bill: I might say “How’d you do this? Tell me this story.” Make them relive it. And if somebody hit them they’re reliving something that’s negative. If they hit something they’re reliving something that they did that’s not great. And they probably don’t want to tell that story again. And you’re like “You know what? We can get this out and we can get it out in a way that you’ll never, ever have to tell this story again.” It’s just –
Keith: You know what’s crazy, Bill, is that that’s – I say that word for word. Word for word. I say “How did this happen”?” Because I want to hear a couple of stories. First I want to see who’s responsible for it, because sometimes you find there’s a third party paying for it and you can charge whatever you need to, but other times I just want to hear the story and let them talk about it and relive it like you’re talking about.
And then I even say “Listen, this’ll be the last time you ever have to talk about this happening.” I say that to them, and they giggle a little bit, but I know that’s exactly what they want. They don’t want to keep talking about the time they frickin’ smashed into the side of the garage door opening. It’s just stupid. So I say “Listen, I’m gonna make this go away.”
Bill: It’s like a bad tattoo.
Keith: I am gonna take this Tweety Bird off of your chest. Man, Bill –
Bill: Yeah, so I – go ahead.
Keith: No, you go.
Bill: No, but I mean I think that’s in the transactional sale, somewhere where somebody, whether it be mortgage business or something where somebody can shop you, it has to be even more extreme because you don’t have a lot of time. You have to take them even lower and lift them even higher in a two minute period of time.
Keith: That’s a great, great tip and I now know – just like a lot of things you’re doing, if you’re doing them well but you’re not conscious of the fact that you’re doing them, you’re not – you’re basically not doing them.
So even if you’re already doing this kind of stuff like I have, hearing it, hearing someone else say it makes you conscious of it and makes you hit it even harder and do it better than you were before. So, I’m glad you brought that up. I’m gonna hit that a little bit harder and have my guys do the same thing.
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I’m sure we could sit and pick your brain for hours more about selling. What are some of those books that you were talking about, if we – if we really want to go bookworm on you in the next couple weeks what do you recommend we listen to or read, Bill, if we want to get a peek into your world of high level selling?
Bill: The book that I tell everybody to read isn’t a high level sales book at all. It’s very simple. And I give it to everybody that sits there and tells me “I could never do sales,” and then I ask them two questions about what they do, and they realize they’re in sales because they own a business or something like that.
Keith: Right.
Bill: And it’s called The Little Red Book of Sales by Jeff Gitomer, and basically it takes a lot about being, being a value ad. Finding leads for your customers, knowing what they want. On a higher level, there’s Challenge Your Selling, which talks a lot about some of that constructive tension and it talks about challenging with new ideas. And those are probably the two – those are the two that are on my brain lately.
Keith: Okay.
Bill: But there’s no shortage of sales books. There’s no shortage of channels on YouTube where you can just learn to sell. A lot of your process in selling, you can do almost all these things wrongs if you have the energy and confidence to kind of give the mental follow through. I mean, I’ve seen so many good salespeople get through a perfectly great sales cycle and they say something like “Do you want to sign now or –” and they kind of hang there with an or.
And you’ll hear people do this all the time, when you’re trying anything, people will close you and then they will “or,” and they’ll say it under their breath, a long or, and they’re giving you an opportunity to say no, and they screw the whole thing up.
Keith: Yeah.
Bill: So the techniques, but also the mental follow through is really important. It’s like that kind of sale is just swinging at the ball. You want to swing through the ball. In your head you’ve already made the sale and you’re already popping that dent out. So no matter how much you read these books you have to also get yourself in that mental sales state where you’re gonna make this sale and you’re gonna make it happen, and that’s really where I recommend watching stuff on YouTube.
I watched the Alec Baldwin speech from Glen Gary Glen Ross every day. And I know it frontwards and backwards. And the Zig Ziegler’s stuff’s the same way. You want to get yourself in that mind frame where you can put the tools that you’ve read about to use.
Keith: I don’t know anything about that speech.
Shane: Neither do me.
Bill: Are you joking?
Keith: I’m not joking.
Bill: Glen Gary – okay, it’s – there’s some profanities in there. I’ll throw it out there. But Alec Baldwin, Glen Gary Glen Ross speech, YouTube it and listen to it. It is, I believe, the best monologue that’s ever been recorded, especially if you’ve ever sold anything.
Keith: All right. There’s that beautiful ambiance that we were talking about earlier.
Shane: I’m hearing it this time.
Keith: I’m hearing it. Any town, USA.
Bill: And Keith, if you put some of these – if you put some of these practices to use you can move your wife and family off that train track into a respectable neighborhood.
Keith: Bill, I’m just here on my wooden porch that I’ve built myself. I got my screen door open. I got my hummingbird feeder out, and I’m just enjoying the nice, calming poop – soothing sounds.
Bill: How many dogs do you got under that porch?
Keith: Just one old dog sleeping.
Shane: Do you – you were just speaking about leaving the “or” out there, Bill.
Bill: Yeah.
Shane: I do that constantly.
Keith: I know.
Bill: You will hear people do it all the time. In almost every sale that somebody’s trying to sell me something, they say “Can we get started now or –” and it’s not even conscious. It’s just this dragging “or.”
Shane: Sometimes – well, most of the time with me, it’s conscious, because there’s a pause there and I’m afraid of that pause.
Bill: Yeah. Well –
Shane: “Okay. Would you like to schedule the repair –” pause “or you can – or would you like to call me back later?” That’s – you know what I’m saying? So – that pause there is what affects me.
Bill: Here’s a trick. Here’s a trick. That pause – you’re never gonna create that tension that you want to create without a pause.
Shane: Right.
Bill: Because someone has to think, ad believe me, the client is uncomfortable with silence just as much as you’re uncomfortable with silence, so what do we do when we’re uncomfortable? We tend to run our mouth with anything. Well, clients tend to run their mouth with stuff that you’re not gonna hear otherwise after the silence. That’s when they really start spilling their guts. They’re uncomfortable, so they just start regurgitating stuff, and it’s – a lot of times that’s very useful stuff.
So, I would practice, as you’re talking to people, just in your daily life, say something and just pause for 10 seconds and wait for them to fill the space. Whether it’s your wife, whether it’s anybody, just pause and wait for them to fill space. I’m horrible at this, by the way.
Keith: I – you know what though? Probably not as horrible as I. I’m horribler.
Bill: The better you are at sales, the worse you are at this. This is what all good salespeople struggle with.
Keith: The pause, to me, is really valuable, because I love to listen for those little, tiny vocal cues, just a little “Er, um,” and I can learn a lot about what they’re feeling and what they’re thinking by what they say or how quickly they answer. “Would you like to do the repair today or tomorrow?” is something I’ll say. “Well, what do you have?” “Well, we can be there this afternoon or Tuesday,” and I just wait, and they’ll tell you a lot of what you need to know just in that – just if you’re listening to the silence.
But if you just keep talking because you’re afraid of it, you’ll blow right over it, and you’ll make a bad appointment. Somebody will give you that appointment and it’s gonna fall to pieces before you get there.
Bill: Yeah, you know, that – the pause is – yeah, the pause tells you everything, and I like what you said there where you just gave them two choices. If you’re gonna be somebody that’s gonna leave an or out there, start by getting comfortable with silence and practice everything else, but also start by changing what you say. I mean, typically, Shane, I assume you’re saying the same kind of thing every time right before a signature or right before a commitment. Is that right?
Shane: Typically yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Bill: Well, then just change up the way you present it to not give yourself that opportunity. Just say “How about if we get started right now?” or “How about if we do this at 5 o’clock?”
Shane: Right.
Bill: Just shut up. And they’ll throw something back. They’ll say “No, maybe 2 o’clock.” “Okay.” Or maybe they’ll say “If we can do it for $50 instead of $55,” and then say “$52.” Never give them the exact price they’re asking because that would show yourself not valuable. You know? Show yourself it hurts so bad that you’re coming as close as you can.
Keith: Something else I’ve already instructed everyone to do, that’s what I do too, when people want to negotiate, never give them exactly what they want. Come in in between the two. And we could always do it, just like you’re saying, Bill, for the w– whatever they’re asking for, almost always, but all they want is a little ground. So you just give them that little ground and they’re happy and you don’t have to give up as much money as people think you do.
Bill: I walked into a car dealership once and after several hours I said “All right, fine. If you can’t do $15,000 cash right now then I’m walking out this door. We’ve just wasted our time.” And the sales guy looked at me and said “Okay, we can do it.” Worst feeling in the world.
Keith: He left money on the table.
Bill: Yeah. If he said “Oh geez, we can’t do it. I can do $5,000 – or $15,750. It’s all I can do. I don’t have anything else,” I would have walked out triumphantly.
Keith: You’re the man. You know what? There’s a guy – one of my probably top five wealthiest clients, has this huge Porsche collection, and he calls me at least once a year when he gets a couple new cars and I go and work on them all, and whenever I’m dealing with guys like this, of course, I want to ask him what he does for a living, how he got there. This guy’s retired, of course. But this guy used to negotiate contracts in other countries for cell phone tower placement, or network establishment.
This is back, way back in the day, when cellphones were not, obviously, every place all the time. And a lot of these large US based companies that were trying to go through the proper channels in some of these backwards companies to get permission to put towers there, they couldn’t make it happen.
But he understood dealing with these guys almost like gangsters, which is where a lot of these third world countries were where he was doing business in the Middle East and places like that, and he would go in and find the right connections, a lot like you were saying, Bill, just being resourceful, and finding the back door into the organization, and just cutting these gangster deals with them, so he made a career out of negotiating with Middle Eastern guys for huge figures.
And sometimes they were literally bringing suitcases with $2 million to this guy personally to get the introduction or the sign off from him on his brother-in-law who is the sheik, or whoever it was, and he could do this, and he got paid handsomely to do it, but a corporation couldn’t. They couldn’t figure out that – how to get through that structure.
But I asked him “Okay, you made a career by dealing with guys from the Middle East.” I said “In my part of the world these are some of the most shrewd negotiators ever and I’m finding negotiating – we’ll negotiate a deal, and then after we negotiate the deal and I do the work, then they want to negotiate again at the end.” And I said “What’s going on with these guys?” And he said “Keith, it’s very simple.” He said “If you have taken the deal they assume that they’ve automatically left money on the table. If you took the deal there’s a profit in it for you.
So they want to try to get rid of all that profit. They want you to do it at a cost, or at a loss.” So he says “You’ve got to just start really high and you’ve got to make it seem so painful that you don’t even know why you’re doing the deal and you’re gonna do it but you can’t even figure out why. And when you go with that, then they’re happy. But if you smile and say ‘That sounds great. I’ll do it,’ they think you are taking too much money.” And it’s the same thing you’re talking about.
Bill: Yeah, and they’re big punchers. I haven’t done a lot in the Middle East, but I’ve done a lot in India, and in India there’s some real, real negotiators. But it’s the equivalent to boxers. You have a guy that’s really, really good at working the jab and is a scientist when it comes to boxing, and then you have the guy that’s just throwing huge punches.
And in some of the foreign countries you have negotiators that are just – that are swinging big. They’re getting mad, they’re walking away from the table, they’re doing all this stuff, but it’s really the same – it’s really the same thing. And we’re all trying to get to the same place. They wouldn’t be wasting their time with you if they didn’t want to do a deal. It’s just everything’s exaggerated. But it’s, it’s fun. It’s fun to deal with people like that.
Keith: It is fun. If you can get your mind in the right place that it’s a game and it’s a strategy and it’s not life or death, then it can be fun. It doesn’t sound fun to a lot of guys who think they don’t want to sell, but I think it’s fun, even though it’s nerve-wracking.
Shane: We take it too personally sometimes is the problem.
Keith: Yeah. Yeah.
Bill: Well, you know, I mean, you’re – it’s the difference between playing softball and being a major league baseball player. You know? If you’re playing softball for fun you take it personally, I guess. You don’t have to be consistent, you don’t have to practice, you don’t have to do anything, but this is your job, to sell. So you have to be able to sell when you have the flue. You have to be able to sell to people that you normally wouldn’t like to deal with. You have to be able to get past a slump. You have to do all these things, because this is – if you own a business sales is your first job, your last job, and everything in between.
There’s a study, in one of these sales books, I forget what it is, but it talks about malpractice lawsuits. And they found that doctors that get sued for malpractice lawsuits, there’s not a correlation between how good of doctors they are and how many accidents they have. The one corollary between getting sued and not getting sued is bedside manner. People never sue the doctors they like, whether they screw up or not.
And there’s a lot to be said there because it’s basically saying that the sales side, the customer service side of being a doctor, is much more important to your overall success as a doctor than your ability to practice medicine. And it’s probably the same with popping dents. You know? You could take a couple, a couple notches off your skill set on popping out dents and put those notches in your sales and you would do better overall.
Keith: Oh yeah. We talk about that a lot.
Shane: Yep.
Keith: We don’t make the money with the tools, we make the money with the selling.
Shane: With the selling. Yep.
Bill: My uncle’s a very successful lawyer and told my sister “There’s a lot of mediocre lawyers that are millionaires and there’s a lot of really, really good lawyers that are starving.” And the difference is sales. So he said “Focus on sales first.”
Keith: My sister is a lawyer, that’s why that – that’s why she was looking for advice from the uncle.
Bill: Oh yeah. Probably should have filled that in. My sister is actually being incarcerated – oh, long story.
Keith: Well, man, that is so much awesome information Bill. Thank you for coming on the podcast and sharing all that stuff with us. It’s fun to have a peak into your world, and it’s interesting to see how different it is, yet how similar. I mean, I’m sure I could plop you down in Sacramento and have you selling dent repair for me and in three or four days you would jump off a bridge, but I think you could pull it off for a few days to an expert level without any knowledge of the process or how we do it or any of that stuff. It’s all about selling.
So, thanks for sharing all that stuff.
Shane: Yes sir. Thank you Bill.
Bill: Well, hey guys, I appreciate it and I’ll be listening to the podcast going forward.
Shane: Thanks.
Keith: All right.
Shane: Thank you Bill.
Bill: All right. Take care. Bye.
Keith: Take it easy. You taking some notes there Shane? Did you figure out what to do now? You gonna be a sales star tomorrow?
Shane: Yes.
Keith: I am gonna read those two books though. I can promise you that.
Shane: I’m sorry.
Keith: I’m gonna read those two books.
Shane: I’ve got them both written down. You know –
Keith: I’ll put next to them on the podcast, on our website, PDRCollege.com, and then a particular area for that, for this episode, which will be no. 36, we’ll have a little spot with resources with some links to those books.
Shane: Yeah. And Bill comes on, people like Bill can come on the show and people can look at myself and yourself as great salesmen, leaders of the industry in that area, and then Bill comes on and shows us some things that we haven’t thought of or we’re not doing, and you know what? There’s somebody out there that can do that to Bill also. It doesn’t matter how good you get, there’s always room for improvement. So –
Keith: So, last week we talked about people leaving comments on this episode, or the last episode, and we would give them a set of Black Plague Smooth Series tabs before you could buy them. I was completely underwhelmed by the response. Thank you guys for doing nothing. If as many people commented as had been calling and messaging me about the tabs we would have three pages, but instead I’m gonna read our first, what I might call, a bad review. And this might be my favorite review.
This guy, his name is John, and you can go and read the comment for yourself if you want, but John’s got a bone to pick with us, Shane.
Shane: Yes, he does.
Keith: John says “Just finished listening to the podcast this evening. I was busy glue pulling the rails of a Kia – on a Kia Sportage.” I’m gonna correct some of the misspellings here for you John. “A Kia Sportage. I’ve been in PDR for 10 years but only serious about it in the past five. Been in the body and paint for 28 years. Have been – have been listening to all the BS from body men and painters, how all PDR techs are hacks, and how they destroy the panel and-or the paint.
That being said, there’s a lot of SH work on both sides. I’ve seen it on both sides of it. So trying to throw other professions under the bus to sell yourself or your work is pathetic. There is only one way to fix a dent. That’s the right way. Whether it’s convention or PDR. Try to attach a pick of an envelope – I got my jackhammer in to show I’m not a hater.” So he’s saying he did buy a jackhammer, so he’s not a total hater. He also ordered my tabs two days ago, he says.
But he says “Y’all just piss me off to no end. You two are no better than the jackasses that said PDR is an SH repair.”
So, John is upset, I guess, because we are saying that to paint a car for a door ding is a crime and that it’s terrible. Unfortunately, John, I have to stand by my opinion there, that if you got your 2014 Camaro and you brought it down to the local body shop with some dude named Earl and had him repaint the side you probably wouldn’t like it.
I don’t know why that would piss you off. I mean, nobody wants to repaint a car. If the darn thing is keyed down the side it has to be painted, but it still doesn’t look just as good. It’s not fantastic. It’s the best way to fix a car, but it’s not idea, and if you have a door ding, the best way to fix that is to take the ding out with PDR. That’s why you’re on the PDR College Podcast, because it’s a cool trade, and that’s what we do.
But painting a car does suck, and it’s not as good. I don’t – I’ve seen some fantastic paint jobs. I know a lot of painters that I consider my friends. When you’re painting with the different material here in town than they’re using at a factory and you’re using a completely different process, i.e., not baking the paint like a factory, you’re just getting it a couple hundred degrees so it cures faster so you can get another car in, it’s not ideal. The car’s not as nice. And I will stand by that.
So –
Shane: 100 percent.
Keith: I’m sorry that is upsetting. I am glad that you’ve got out of that hackery and got into PDR, John. I –
Shane: Well, to be fair, maybe he wasn’t a hack body man. I mean, they’re – what they’re doing, in instances, just as you said, with the car being keyed or collision damage, it is the best repair possible.
Keith: Yep. No, I never said that. That is absolutely true.
Shane: Yeah. Right.
Keith: It’s the best thing you can do. You can’t send it back to the factory and have it redone. Even if you could, that would be –
Shane: So PDR is the best thing that can be done for a door ding or hail damage. Especially for hail. You can’t even argue that.
Keith: No, you can’t. Smearing a whole car all over the place with Bond-O. Come on.
Shane: Yeah. Or cutting the roof off? Yeah. Whatever.
Keith: John, we’re good guys.
Shane: Yeah.
Keith: You’re a good guy too. You’re buying our tools, I appreciate it, so you are gonna receive the Black Plague Smooth Series Tabs, and you might set them up on your mantle and light them on fire and watch them burn just to teach me a lesson, or you could use –
Shane: I don’t think so. I think he’s gonna use them one time and go “You know what? These are the best tabs out there. I’ll never admit it, but –”
Keith: Could have got through that Kia real faster.
Shane: A lot faster. And wouldn’t be so angry right now.
Keith: All right. In all – in all fairness, your mood doesn’t necessarily come across perfectly in a text, so he might be just busting our chops a little bit, and I’m cool with that. But I know my man Shane here, he likes an argument as well as anybody, if not better. He will argue with you if you want to argue.
Our other comment came from –
Shane: I’m a fighter, not a lover.
Keith: You know what? We had two comments, three, counting mine thanking Lane for coming on the show, but from Bryan Lewis – I think I’ll send him some tabs too. He says “From now on, every repair of mine will come standard with a free hole.” Wait a second.
That was something you said on the show, Shane. He says “Guys, I truly appreciate your show and subject matter. Today was only my second time listening. I’m going to the Black Plague website to get the new Smooth Tabs that promise higher performance on slightly sharper dents. Also, the Crease Tabs. Thanks again, Bryan Lewis.”
So, Bryan, since the tabs are not available, you will win them with your comment.
See how easy that was? You guys could have commented and won something, but you were too lazy. So the next time we offer something up, get in on the mix and make a comment.
Shane, do you have a tool that you want to review?
Shane: Actually, yes Keith. The Ultra – we use a lot of different – I’ve used a lot of different hail rods over the years, Dent Hog, a lot of them, and they’re all good. The one that I used a couple of months ago that I really like is the Ultra Hail Rod.
Keith: Tell me about it.
Shane: It’s – it’s SET#22 is the part number for their hail rod, Keith, and this thing is 82 inches. What is that? What is 82 inches?
Keith: That’s a little more than 81.
Shane: Okay. So it’s over 81 inches long, and it is a – the reason I like it better, it does have a few small drawbacks. When you tighten the extensions together you do have to put a – tighten the set. You don’t have to tighten the set screw, but it helps to keep it from twisting apart, which happens a lot with hail rods. The joints will twist apart because they’re threaded rod.
This, these set screws, it’s a little Allen screw, keeps that from twisting apart. But the thing that I really like about it – that’s a positive and a negative, positive because it keeps it from twisting apart, but negative because you have to take the time to tighten it down, but it’s bigger in diameter than the rest of hail rods out there. So when you’re grabbing that – you don’t always grab it by the handle, the t-handle on the back, which this one has. Some of them have a ball handle. This one has a t-handle. You can grab that rod, and it’s a bigger base for your hand when you’re just pushing with the rod.
Keith: How much is that thing?
Shane: $1 million.
Keith: Worth every penny.
Shane: It is $500.
Keith: Does it come with tips?
Shane: Yes, it comes with five tips. I think it comes with five tips.
Keith: Do you like those or do you put something else on there?
Shane: No. I honestly don’t like their – I’m not gonna say I don’t like their tips. They’re not my favorite tips.
Keith: They’re not the ones you use.
Shane: No.
Keith: What tip do you use?
Shane: R4 with the rubber cap, and then the R2, I believe it is, is the small ball, or a sharp tip on the flip side.
Keith: Okay.
Shane: But R4 with the rubber tip on one side, always, with the plastic tip.
Keith: You’re really a big fan of that setup. That R4 with the rubber tip. You do a lot with that.
Shane: Yep. I do. A ton.
Keith: So what was the model number for that tool again?
Shane: SET#22.
Keith: So that’s a weird model number. S-E-T # –
Shane: #22. Well, I call it number 22.
Keith: Number sign is what it is, not pound.
Shane: Hashtag 22.
Keith: Stupid.
Shane: How many different names can that thing have?
Keith: The SET tic-tac-toe, playing field, 22.
Shane: 22. SET square that somebody has drawn the lines a little too long, 22.
Keith: You know, we’re gonna start doing something new, Shane, on the show? We’re gonna start reading the reviews we’re getting on iTunes because they’re really awesome and I appreciate everybody who’s taking the time, so if you haven’t hopped into iTunes and written us a review, please do it. We’d love it. And we’re gonna read a couple of them right now. And we’ll start with the most recent ones going backwards.
“Awesome listening. Five stars. This podcast is great. Shane and Keith have awesome chemistry and it just works. It’s great to hear stories and examples that I personally experience every week. Also, great advice. So, thanks guys. Keep it up.” Chris from New Jersey, Precision Dent.
Thanks buddy.
Shane: Thanks Chris.
Keith: That is awesome. Then we have “Five stars. Got better.” By Brandon.
Shane: Heck yeah.
Keith: “This podcast changed my entire LIFE,” capitalized. That’s going over the top, Brandon.
Shane: Heck yeah. His wife is a happy lady now.
Keith: “It completely turned my business from a failure into a success. Thank you.” Man, Brandon, that’s awesome. Thank you for taking the time to put that in there. Super cool.
From July 15th. I don’t know if this is his real name, but Ray Ray the Wonder Monkey – we’re teaching monkeys to do PDR? Man, I knew we were having an effect, but I didn’t think we’d teach a whole other species to get into it. “These guys have a wealth of information that they are really to share with the rest of us. Their tips have helped me to close more sales for more money.” That is what we’re about here. “Their honest reviews of PDR tools have helped me add to my collection and my wish list. This podcast is an all-around great show. Thank you for helping us to get better. Five stars.”
Shane: And the dude is making sales with the name of Ray Ray the Wonder Monkey. I mean, when you all get to – when a customer walks up and you go “Yes, I’m Ray Ray the Wonder Monkey,” and you can close that, dude, you’re killing it.
Keith: I can’t read them all because there’s 14, but two more. I like these. “Five stars. Priceless,” by Ian Dacosta. “Cannot get enough of these podcasts. Tips and tricks of the trade for any technician of any level of experience. Although this is catered toward the PDR community much of the information can extend into other reconditioning areas. Listening and applying what I’ve learned in these podcasts has made me a better technician and a more proficient salesman. Thanks guys.”
That is awesome. And the last one I’m gonna read here is by Rick Rookie Miller. “Five stars. Love the show. Keep up with the priceless information. I am a rookie and with the information that’s provided it’s made me help additional thousands of dollars. Shane and Keith do an amazing job with the show. You guys make a great team.”
Thanks Rick.
Shane: Thanks Rick.
Keith: The additional thousands makes me happy. I’m smiling right now. You can hear it. It makes me so freakin’ happy. I love it. It’s like when I sell a guy a set of tabs and he makes money with them, that makes me feel awesome, but when I just talk in his earholes and he makes a couple thousand more dollars, that is super freakin’ cool man.
Shane: Knowledge is power.
Keith: It is. Just like Bill was saying, you can make a lot of money with selling. So, thanks guys. I’m excited to see the next reviews that pile in this week and we’ll read them live on the show next episode.
Ultra Hail Rod. Would you recommend buying that if you don’t chase hail at all, if you just get the hail that comes your way?
Shane: Honestly, it would pay for itself on – in my opinion, Keith, it will pay for itself over the period of doing four SUVs, honestly.
Keith: Okay.
Shane: The length alone. Now if you have another hail rod that is as long as this, or comparable in length, then no, it’s not. But if you do not have – if you do not currently have a hail rod and you’re working on four SUVs a year that have hail damage on them, I’d say “Sure. Go ahead. You’re gonna make your money back on it.”
Keith: You know what? When you said SUVs it kind of came into focus for me. I’ve – I don’t do a ton of hail, and most of the time it ends up being on smaller rigs for whatever reason, but I remember doing a Sienna van a few years ago and I had nothing that was long enough to get back there and I had to make something because I needed to fix the car, like, tomorrow. So I had to go and get some giant poles and drill holes in the end and put a tip set in the back and use that as a tool, and it worked well, but it was just kind of janky.
But if you don’t have a long tool like that, you can’t do a freakin’ Sienna or Expedition or something. It’d be running all over the sides of it.
Shane: As I’ve talked before, whenever you’re doing an SUV, I don’t know what it is, but you – for optimum, optimum repairs and time of repairs, take the hatch off, work it back to front first, then work it side to side on your cross check and you’re gonna do so much better.
Keith: So just – and don’t you worry about – so if you’re doing it back to front first, if you think you got every dent perfect from the back, then you’ve left little cornrows in each dent when you go to the side. So do you just put a handful of pushes in each dent and then go finish it from the side or you –
Shane: I don’t think I agree with you there, Keith.
Keith: No?
Shane: No.
Keith: Well, tell me. So when you would check each dent are you going in a circular pattern like you were talking about with your [inaudible]?
Shane: Yeah. Um-hum. I don’t go front to back, left to right. Honestly. I kind of go in a – I don’t know if you can call it a circular pattern as much. That [inaudible] will stretch, blah, blah, blah. I – it was kind of metered and really honed down there because I was trying to make it absolutely perfect. But on hail dents, unless you’ve got some pretty big stuff, if it’s quarter sized, most of those, when I go to cross check they’re fine.
Now if I start it side to side and then check it front to back, every one of them is normally low. I think it has to do with the way that the ribs run –
Keith: Yeah.
Shane: In most of the SUVs. Something to do with the tension on the mount. I don’t know. It may be black magic, it may be I’m out of my freakin’ mind –
Keith: I just assume it’s because you can’t see it. They’re down in those little valleys, they’re up on the peaks.
Shane: Maybe so. I don’t know. But when you work it back to front first, when I come to cross check, maybe a quarter to a third of them need more work. Unless they’re all oversized.
Keith: so you’re saying back to front and work anything but a strict front to back pattern – which you kind of have to tell yourself to do, because if you just do what the light shows you you’re gonna work it front to back.
Shane: Right.
Keith: Yeah.
Shane: And another thing, I’ll – I’ve got several lights – at least two lights set up, okay? On the front of the vehicle. And I will move my head – working on one dent, even if it’s dime sized, I’m gonna move my head, I’m gonna start possibly in the middle, push the dent, and just only make a couple of pushes, and I’m gonna move my head left a foot to two feet, over my head right a foot to two feet, make the pushes, and that’s kind of cross checking. I know it doesn’t seem like you’re doing much, but you are. Does that make sense at all?
Keith: It makes perfect sense.
Shane: Yeah.
Keith: If you guys are listening to the show and you’re at a hail site, look around right now at the other guys pushing, see if they’re doing this left-right chicken dance, if they’re also listening to the PDR College Podcast right now.
Shane: If they’re doing the left-right chicken dance they’re definitely listening. And most guys don’t do this. Most guys keep their head laser straight, focused ahead, push the dent and go to the next one. Then they’ve got to cross check every – they’ve got to cross work every freakin’ dent on the – that they’re working, for the most part.
Keith: How are those Smooth Series Tabs getting on for you? Are you getting to use all the Crease Tabs and everything now too?
Shane: Yes, I use the Crease Tabs – the round ones. My favorites are the two – the nine and 12. Is that correct?
Keith: Yep.
Shane: Nine and 12 are my two favorite. The other ones work great also. I’m just being straight up, honest. The two smallest ones are y favorite. And I use the – I guess it’s about a one inch or one and a half inch crease tab on a quarter panel where it rolls fro quarter panel up to rail, that little valley right there.
Keith: Yeah.
Shane: And I thought “Yeah, that’s not gonna –” it’s right above the valley, actually, closer to the windshield, about an inch above where the two actually meet, and I go “Eh, this is not gonna pull.” Bam.
Keith: Slide hammer?
Shane: I use a slide hammer on it, yeah, I did, because it was in the valley, and my mini lifter, the foot would have dented. Does that make sense?
Keith: Oh yeah.
Shane: It was in an awkward angle, so –
Keith: Now one of the guys testing says they pull too hard. You can’t use them.
Shane: That’s like water being too wet.
Keith: Sugar being too sweet.
Shane: Sugar being too sweet.
Keith: That girl’s just too pretty. I can’t do that.
Shane: She’s way too pretty. Actually, there’s that matrix out there, the video. That can happen.
Keith: So I don’t know if they can pull too hard, but I, I sure would like you to give it a shot, fellas. If you want, I can make them worse. I can start drilling some holes in them or something. But they stick like mad. So you do have to – like one of my favorite lines for Shane, “You’ve got to know what you’re doing.”
Shane: That’s kind of the tag line here, “Got to know what you’re doing.” As long as you know what you’re doing you can fix a dent.
Keith: Yep. Don’t pull it too hard or too fast. That particular guy that said they pull too hard though, he has a style of fixing a dent where he likes to really finesse up the dent until it’s to the point where he thinks it’s ready and then takes the tab off, versus most guys, myself included, that are just putting the tab on and going wha-bam and trying to pop it up as high as you can, and thinking “Ooh, cool. It’s high. I can put it exactly where I need.”
Shane: This guy’s an unbelievable dent guy too. He’s absolutely awesome.
Keith: Yeah. Shane’s worked with him firsthand and said – actually, Shane’s told me on a personal level, out of all the guys he’s worked with, there’s only been a couple that have been as clean and as fast as he is, and this is one of them.
Shane: Yep.
Keith: So maybe there’s something to his style, and maybe we can talk about that at a later time. But he says the tabs stick too well. So I guess they’re doing their job. They’re sticking down. So we’re getting closer and closer. We’re probably a week, week and a half out if you guys are interested in buying them, make sure you’re on the Black Plague PDR email list, which is at BlackPlaguePDR.com, or if you can’t spell it, DeadRatTabs.com, or if you’re on the PDR College email alert listed for new episodes, we’re gonna give the same opportunity to you there.
So, you need to be in one of the two places and you’ll get a chance to buy them before they’re on the website, before they’re in the tool companies catalogues and all that stuff.
So if you want to be first, get on that list, and we’re probably super close, about a week, week and a half, two weeks max. All the testing’s coming back awesome. Nobody’s telling me I’ve got to change anything. They just tell me they stick too good. So that’s a great compliment.
Shane: Yes, it is.
Keith: All right. So, nice long show today but I think that is some awesome information, and I want to thank Bill Ryan for coming on and sharing that stuff with us. Maybe we’ll have him on again in the future talking about some more stuff. I have a feeling that we’ve just barely scratched the surface of what Bill can offer you in the world of selling.
This episode is in the books. Don’t forget to write some comments on the PDRCollege.com site, and if you write a review we’re gonna read it on the show. Thanks for listening fellas. Until next time.
Shane: Get better.
[End of Audio]Duration: 85 minutes
