The Power of Suggestive Sales

Shawna: Good morning, welcome to today's webinar. We are here live at Evosus headquarters. My name is Shawna Mesher, Director of Sales and Marketing at Evosus, and to my right is Francesca Hester, Director of Client Success.

Francesca: Hello, hello, thanks for having me.

Shawna: I think this is maybe the first time in history where we've had a repeat guest two webinars in a row. We just want to keep having you back.

Francesca: Well, I appreciate that, thank you.

Shawna: Thank you guys for joining us. One quick housekeeping thing before we get rolling today. At the bottom of your screen is a button that says Q&A. If you have any questions during this webinar and conversation, just type your questions there. We have Kim as a panelist online, so we'll pause a few times through the webinar and ask if there are any questions and answer those for you. So again, thank you for taking the time out of your day to join us. Today we are talking all about suggestive selling and the power of suggestive selling. What does it mean to sell versus clerk? If you have a retail presence or a retail store, listen up, this conversation is very much for you, especially in 2024. If you have a specialty retail store, there are a lot of challenges that come with that. Francesca, I'm excited to have this conversation with you. We go way back, for the audience that doesn't know, we have a long relationship. For those tuning in, we aren't historically software people.

Francesca: Not at all.

Shawna: In the last decade or so, Francesca has done some other things in the hot tub industry, so we feel like we have a unique perspective on suggestive selling and how LOU and Evosus can help you use the tools to suggestively sell and really engage with your customers. We're going to talk about that today. With all that said, Francesca, I'm going to throw it over to you and ask, what is one of the most important tools that you used in the Evosus software to suggestively sell and also empower your team to suggestively sell?

Francesca: That's a great question and a really important one because I would say, you know, picture a hot tub store. You've got your two people on for the day, waiting for their rotation. Someone walks in with a disgusting jar of water and they walk up to the counter. It's like, “I don't want to mess my hot tub up.” And the really fascinating thing is those people are just as important as who's coming in to buy a hot tub. One thing that really helped our team was sales history. When someone came up to the counter, it wasn't just like, “let me test your water and off you go,” right? “You're low on chlorine.” It's really having a conversation. It's really digging into, how is their hot tub, how has it been treating them, and how long have you had it? With the tool of having purchase history right at your fingertips, you can say, wow, you haven't bought a certified filter cleaner in a year. When was the last time you cleaned your filters? Just start having that conversation. Same thing with any of the chemicals. You can really dive in and have a real honest conversation because you have the history. That was a really cool tool that we used a lot. It also helped us take care of our client but also upsell. It's like you came in for one thing, but if you're coming into my store in 2024 to a destination location, people are here to get everything they want. They don't want to just come in and get one thing and then get home and realize they forgot spot shock oxidizer or another test strip.

Shawna: Yeah, it's so funny because we used to tell our team all the time, it's really important to paint the picture. If somebody is walking into your specialty retail store, getting in their car, it's probably either raining or too hot. Wherever you live, it's one of the two. They're getting into their car, putting their seatbelt on, making the effort. You need to reciprocate, and you need to take care of them in a way that Amazon won't, that Home Depot won't, because they deserve that. The reality is if they do get home and a week later they're like, oh man, I do need pH increaser. I thought I wouldn't need it, but I do. They're probably going to go to Amazon or somewhere that's convenient because they put in all that effort to come see you and maybe didn't hit the nail there. I think customer history and sales history is so important. I remember there was somebody who worked at the company we worked at prior, and I remember sitting there and she would come running in so excited, “oh my gosh, I just had a $400 supply sale and these people only came in for chlorine”. We would always ask, how did you do it, what did you say? Her answer was pretty much the same every time. I looked at their history and we just drilled into every single thing. You haven't bought chlorine in six months, you're probably running low on that. It looks like you haven't bought new filters in three years. By the way, you've had your hot tub for seven years. Have you ever replaced the cover? Because it doesn't look like you have through us, right? It's those things that...

Francesca: Kind of set you apart.

Shawna: Yeah, and customers aren't necessarily coming in saying, “my cover looks okay but I'm just wondering when I should buy a new one,” right? But we know that the energy efficiency is really important, the weight, the water quality, rain getting in, algae, all that kind of stuff. We know, you guys know, you know better probably than we do. So customer history, that's a really great tool to use to suggestively sell.

Francesca: Absolutely, and I think that's the nail on the head. It's a tool, right? The magic of that is getting your people to really utilize the tool without it being clunky. That was another thing I really loved about it. One click of a button, you could see it all. You're not going to three different things on your computer, through papers, it's all right there. That way you're actively engaging with your client and you don't have to walk away. We all know what happens when you have to walk away. They're like, I gotta go. You're like, no wait! But you missed the opportunity.

Shawna: That's such a good point because in most companies, your techs are selling things out in the field. Your folks taking phone calls and scheduling could potentially be selling things and shipping them to the customers. How difficult would it be if we had to jump between three different softwares to figure out what they bought? That wouldn't be a good client experience. So the fact that anything anyone in the company is doing is within the one product, because it's an all-in-one software that you can access from any internet browser, I mean, there's nothing more powerful. Such a good point. I'm going to take just a quick second. I know we haven't talked for too long, but Kim, I'm wondering if there are any questions out there?

Kim: Not at this point, thanks ladies.

Shawna: Cool, awesome. Thanks, Kim. Francesca, that's all great. I see it. You've painted the picture really well. Let's get tangible really quick and come up with a scenario. What tools do we have within LOU that make suggestive selling easy and doable for a salesperson and quick, right? That's important to make things quick and not have long conversations.

Francesca: That's a great question too. One thing we did was we used what we call static kits. That's software lingo, but basically what that does is we could make a chemical kit startup kit, and we would have all the different items in there. What's cool about the software and how that helps you, again as a tool, it's like your assistant, is it puts it all under one SKU. What that does, right, client comes in, you start engaging like we just talked about, then you have this kit with literally everything they need. If you need to add something else, that's easy. If you need to take something away and customize it, that's easy too. You can do all of that in the system. Then again, to your point, it's just this very fluid transaction. We've made it really easy for the salesperson, so they're not running around or looking to be like, oh, we didn't stock chlorine this morning, whoops. I have to run into the back. It's just all right there at your fingertips.

Shawna: I love that. The picture I want to paint for everybody in the audience that maybe can't identify what that would look like in a real scenario is imagine this, and you guys have all probably had the scenario. Customer walks in, their head's hanging low. They're like, ah, I bought a hot tub not from you guys, so sorry. We're like, it's fine, it's fine, right? We just want to take care of you. They're like, I bought an inflatable hot tub from Costco. What do I do? What do I need? There are two scenarios here. Your salesperson can either grab a bottle of chlorine and test strips and say, this is what you need, here you go, and get back to Facebook or eating lunch or whatever they were doing that was so important before. We've all been guilty of it. Or they can say, fantastic, you bought that inflatable hot tub. We want to make sure you have a great soaking experience. How awesome that you made an investment in your health. What a great entry point to get into soaking to see if you like soaking, and then you can invest in a bigger, better hot tub down the road. Let me take care of you. We have this kit here; it has everything that you need to balance your water and make sure it’s safe and clean for you and your family. In the kit, you’ve got chlorine, shock oxidizer, balancers, test strips, and a really cool card that gives you step-by-step instructions. It's laminated, so if it gets wet, it’s good, and you can keep it in that tote. Your salesperson can ring up that tote in one second; they just scan it, and it pops up all of those SKUs, all ten SKUs. What a different client experience.

Francesca: Yeah, hands down. And I think too, but getting your people excited, you know, your sales pros, excited about engaging with people who didn’t buy from you. That’s really big because I remember being like, oh ho-hum, they’re not coming in to buy a hot tub; they’re probably coming in to get chems, or they didn’t buy from us. But I think where we really helped our sales pros is that if you build that relationship at the counter, if you talk to them and get them excited about your company and how you help them, they’re going to buy their second hot tub from you. I remember clerking at a counter and just starting to talk because how many people do you see a day? Not that many. And it's really fun to engage, and I ended up selling them a new hot tub right over the counter.

Shawna: That’s insane.

Francesca: Literally because of the software, you have it side by side. You can quickly see their purchase history, go right into a sales order; it’s such a seamless experience.

Shawna: Yeah, or create an estimate. That’s so good. That’s such a good point. Awesome. Kim, I’m going to pause again and just see if we have any questions.

Kim: Well, I think Francesca just answered it, which was how you motivate your sales clerks and staff to engage with your customers. You kind of really just answered it, so thank you.

Shawna: Yeah, that’s awesome. I think, just circling back to the kits for a second, there’s so much power in them. The chemical startup kit is important, but there are other things you can do with kits. Suggestive selling in the showroom, in a retail environment, that’s their job; they know that they’re salespeople. They’re a little bit more privy to the training that’s provided for sales. However, we also have salespeople in our company that don’t know they’re salespeople yet, and they are technicians.

Francesca: We will tell them

Shawna: We will tell them that their job is to sell, educate, and fix things. They have a huge job, and a lot of our technicians don’t want to identify as salespeople, and that’s okay. But they are truly trusted advisers out in the field, kind of like a doctor, right?

Francesca: They’re in our clients' backyards, like prime time.

Shawna: What more intimate space than in their own home? So, there are tools that we can use, what we call static kits, to make technicians' jobs easier and suggestively sell, right?

Francesca: Absolutely, or even in your back office, your people who are fielding the calls, and they need a new ozone or this and that, and you need the ozone and the harness and all that stuff. You can throw that all into that dynamic kit, so it’s just a fast click. Something that just popped into my head while we were talking is we’re always trying to minimize error. Right? Humans make errors. I mean, so do robots and computers; we all make mistakes, but robots tend to make them a little bit less because we can tell them what to do. That’s the super cool thing about the dynamic kit; it leaves very little room for error. We all know whether you’re selling hot tubs or pools, the SKUs change all the time. Your vendor updates it, and you don’t update it in time because it’s your busy season, right? So having that kit, having the right SKUs in there for your people so they’re not calling their sales manager, asking which one, just makes it so easy. Again, reducing room for error—who has time for that?

Shawna: Yeah, right. It’s between making sure the part numbers are correct, not having to have a parts book in every store so a technician or salesperson can sell effectively and sell the right things. In addition to that, I think, again, less room for error, but also, I don’t know about you guys, but we’re not paying our people $8 an hour. Payroll is really expensive; these people are extremely valuable. We want to make sure their time is utilized taking care of the customer and moving the business forward. Gone are the times of paying people to just do admin, paperwork, checks, and balances when we have systems that can do that. You’re paying for a system; let it work for you. Let it do all of that for you. If you use kits, again, little room for error, a lot less admin time, and you can just sell really suggestively and add-on sales just come naturally.

Francesca: For business owners, you’ll start seeing if you use some of these tips and tricks that departments that were never revenue-generating can be. That’s something we learned along the way. You can make your non-revenue-generating departments have a lot of high revenue, especially if you can get your technicians to really suggestive sell. We always say just get one more, right? One more test strip or one more chlorine. There’s just so much you can do.

Shawna: Yeah, I love that. I love that. Okay, well, we’re going to have some fun here. Let’s see if we are awake enough to do this. We’re going to do rapid fire and give you guys a few quick questions that you can ask your customers to enable your salespeople to engage. You want to go first or me?

Francesca: Tell me how long you’ve had your hot tub.

Shawna: When is the last time you used a certified filter cleaner?

Francesca: How long have you had your hot tub?

Shawna: How’s your hot tub experience been so far?

Francesca: That’s a good one. Have you ever been in our store before? Oh, that’s a yes or no question. I failed. I lose.

Shawna: Those are just a few questions that your sales pros can ask to engage with people. A great one is, when is the last time you used a certified filter cleaner?

Francesca: Everyone looks at you like, what? I just rinsed them off with water.

Shawna: You cleaned them? How? With the hose. When is the last time you wiped your counters down with just a paper towel and didn’t spray anything on them? Or washed your hair with water and no shampoo? Would that be weird?

Francesca: Pretty sure the last time I checked, water doesn’t break down oils.

Shawna: So important, right? It’s those little questions, and adding those finite words makes a huge difference. Then you have the filter cleaner discussion, and they’re like, yeah, I have never done that, and I’ve had these filters for a couple of years. Maybe we need to have a bigger conversation. Maybe you need new filters.

Francesca: Maybe we need your backup there, right? Because you don’t want to put really wet filters back in your hot tub. You can just make room for that. We made space to have these engaging conversations.

Shawna: Versus just giving them the bottle of chlorine or the bottle of filter cleaner, and they’re on their way.

Francesca: The next time people come in with nasty water or dripping gray filters, don’t shy away from it. Be excited about it because it can turn into a large chem sale, and it could be your next hot tub sale. You just don’t even know.

Shawna: It’s so true. If you have a business that offers other products like billiards tables, pool tables, massage chairs, barbecues, or saunas, just having a conversation with people, you will be shocked at what they will give you.

Francesca: We had a very wise person tell us both once, people are interesting, so be interested. That literally changed my life; it changed how I engaged with people. Everyone is interesting and has a story to tell. It’s our job as sales pros to find out what that is and to help them.

Shawna: Yeah, and stop trying to just make the sale. Just have a conversation with people. People buy from people they like.

Francesca: So true. It’s not just about the destination, right? It’s the journey that really makes it.

Shawna: The long game, not a short game, for sure. Kim, any final questions before we wrap up?

Kim: No questions, but thanks for the interesting conversation. This has been fantastic.

Shawna: You’re welcome. Thank you all for joining us today. I hope this conversation was helpful. If it was and you’d like to join future webinars, our next webinar is April 10th. It is all about recurring revenue. We are going to have a very special guest, Susan from Silk Balance, joining us to talk about recurring revenue. We’re going to talk about auto-ship programs and how to keep your company moving along in a tough economic environment. We’re really excited to have that conversation on April 10th. Go to our webinars page and register. We’ll get you the link for that. Super excited, and thank you all for joining us. Thank you, Francesca.

Francesca: Pleasure.

Shawna: We will chat with you all soon. Bye, guys.

Francesca: Bye.