[Cover Story] Rainmakers: The Secrets to Successful Pest Control Sales

You know the type...he’s on the podium year after year after year, accepting the top sales award. Her office wall is a sea of plaques, with a few more piled on the floor that have not yet been hung. Their business cards are written in gold and include "Mega-$$$ seller."

What is their secret? How do these salespeople achieve such success year after year? How do you work your way to the top...or even just bring an increase to the sales in your territory?

According to pest management industry top performers and sales managers, there are basic traits that successful salespeople have in common. The top traits are:

1. Listening

2. Relationship building

3. Planning/follow through

4. Willingness to learn/train

5. Drive and ambition

LISTENING. The skill most often identified with a top performer is the ability to listen. "The No. 1 trait is outstanding communication skills," said Brian Alexson, Terminix vice president of sales and service for commercial and national accounts. "Some people think of this as great speaking ability, but that isn’t it. The best communication skill that any salesperson can have is the ability to listen.

"Too many salespeople want to regurgitate all their information," Alexson explained, "but if you listen, the customer will tell you what they need."

"Ask questions!" said Jon Altpeter, director of sales, Bio-Serve Corporation (Rose Exterminator), Troy, Mich. Before you start telling your story, listen to your prospects and customers to identify their needs, then target your message to fit, he said. "A prospect may not want to hear your story. The key to this industry is a lot of questioning."

You also need to be willing to walk away from an account if you find that the fit is not there, Altpeter added. Don’t spend your time trying to "sell a round hole to a square box," rather, you should be willing to say "this isn’t a good fit at this time."

But don’t write off the account all together, cautioned Mike Masterson, president of Isotech Pest Management and 633 Envisions Inc. Just put it back on your long-term prospect list, where there may be a fit at a later time. And before making that final decision to walk away, be sure that you’ve asked all the questions — and listened to the answers. "If I’m walking out the door, and they are not buying I ask them why," he said. A question — such as "Is there any reason why you didn’t purchase this from me that could help me do better in the future?" — can provide valuable insights on your products, services or selling techniques...or may even bring new life to this sale.

Masterson, a former salesman at Orkin Pest Control, recently used this technique to close a service contract with a key prospect who initially said no. Just before walking out the door, Masterson asked if there was a particular reason the prospect did not accept the proposal. The answer: the monthly cost was $5 too high.

The proposed amount was just over the manager’s authorization budget, and he would have had to go through a full approval process with his manager. Masterson immediately reduced the price by $10, and the manager signed the contract. Whether you are opening an initial discussion or closing the sale, active listening is No. 1. "If you let them talk, they’ll tell you what you need to know," Masterson said. "The key thing in sales is to be the best listener."

RELATIONSHIP BUILDING. Listening also tells your prospect and customer that you care. And caring is the first step in building a relationship — a relationship that begins the moment the salesperson walks in the door or picks up the phone and lasts throughout the term of service. In a service industry such as pest management, where the seller and servicer go to the customer’s place of business or residence, and the customer generally sees only these two people on a regular basis, the sales and service people are the company to their customer.

As that salesperson, Masterson said, "I have to have their trust and have a good relationship with them. It’s going back to the basics of what America was built on — relationships and trust. Nobody wants to do business with a stranger. They want to do business with a friend." And when you are sincerely interested in helping them, he added, "the customer will see it."

Although relationship building may seem to be a natural ability, there are certain personalities that better fit such roles than others, particularly in the initial stages, said Brad Bartlett, managing director, Interview Technologies Inc. ITI works with companies in the pest management industry to hire and retain high-performing employees through its personality profiling and performance management technology. Top performers in a position are identified and profiled, and a composite job profile is created describing the primary personality traits and behavioral tendencies shared by these people. The job profile is then used as a benchmark against which applicants’ profiles are compared. Candidates whose profiles vary significantly from the composite may still be good hires, if they show flexibility and a willingness to develop the key performance areas.

"A person needs to be outgoing to be good at forming relationships for business purposes," Bartlett said. One who does not score highly on the dominance scale (which indicates such traits as assertiveness and drive) may be able to work on this and raise their level, but it will require more energy than it would for a person for whom it is innate, he explained.

If you are wondering if you have this trait, ask yourself a few questions, Bartlett said. Ask: "Do I take the initiative to meet other people?" and "When I was a single guy, did I approach the girls or did they approach me?"

Being good at relationship building can also come back to a salesperson with leads. "If you invest the time in your customer, the customer becomes your best salesman," Masterson said, explaining that when customers are happy with your service, they love to refer you to their friends.

"There’s nothing like a referral," said Norman Nelms, vice president, ABC Pest, Pool and Lawn Services, Houston. And such referrals can come from a number of directions — sister divisions or departments of the same company, peers at other stores, residential leads from business owners and business from residential or even other services in the same account. But it can be presumptuous to ask for referrals immediately upon closing a sale, Nelms believes. Rather you should perform the first few services to prove yourself, then lead into referrals or additional services that may be applicable.

PLANNING AND FOLLOW THROUGH. Whether you are prospecting through such referrals, other leads, or cold calling, the top performer is the one who, Nelms said, "physically makes a plan and works it."

"You need to have a plan and work the plan," he said. Set realistic goals, target your calls, then be persistent, friendly and methodical. It is important to follow up on every sale, and on every potential sale — send a thank you card, make a follow-up phone call, say congratulations for a choice well made. Staying in touch with your customer past the sale shows that you care, builds the relationship and "will lead directly into referrals," he said.

As you start, set your prospecting plan, Masterson said, "Get creative." Resurrect old records and call on businesses that cancelled a year ago — ask them how things are going now. Go to the papers and jot down the names of those seeking new business licenses — get to them before they open their doors. Choose a main street and go door to door — make cold calls on new accounts and talk to current accounts to check on service and ask for referrals. Pull out your list of "square pegs" to see if there is a new fit. "If you keep your records on every call you’ve made, that’s your gold for next year," Masterson said.

As you are doing your planning, he cautioned, be sure to set realistic goals and "don’t mistake activity for achievement." Define your target market, create your prospect list, gather background information, then start making the calls. It can be too easy for salespeople to fall into the planning trap — spending all their time making lists and preparing for calls, then realizing that the day, week or month is over, and they’ve not made any actual calls.

The amount of planning and strategy that needs to be done is often dependent on the type of call being made. Altpeter said he sees three levels of sales in the pest management industry:

1. Residential — These are generally call responses, for which the customer needs immediate service and wants to do business. "That’s like blackjack — it’s instant gratification."

2. Small- to medium-sized accounts — These managers can usually make the final decision and will work with the company with which they feel most comfortable in service and price. "These are more like checkers — requiring some strategy."

3. National Accounts — Larger accounts often require much more relationship building and a longer sales cycle. Decisions are made at higher levels and require more in-depth presentations and strategizing. "This is more like playing chess. You have to be at the top of your game. You have to be thinking three or four steps ahead."

WILLINGNESS TO LEARN/TRAIN. This brings us to the age-old question: Can such sales skills and strategies be learned; that is, is a salesperson born or made? We posed this question to each of our experts. In the end, though, with the response coming in at 50/50 — half believing salespeople are born, half believing they are made — we seem to be no further than those who tried before. (See Born or Made? story on page 30.) However, if we take a closer look at the answers, we start to realize that those who sided with "born" also believe that the skill needs to be developed and trained to acquire the level of a top performer; and those who agreed with "made" believe that an innate desire and willingness to learn is critical to success.

Take Altpeter who decided he would have to say that salespeople are born, but qualified this with "good salespeople are made. It needs to be developed."

"Training is huge," Altpeter said. "I would rather have a good sales manager and all new sales people than have a mediocre manager and a seasoned sales force." As such, Altpeter has learned to never judge a candidate simply on his or her personality alignment. He interviewed a salesperson whose profile was completely opposite that of a top sales performer. "But I knew he had the potential because he had the flexibility," Altpeter said. The salesman trained, practiced and dedicated himself to learning his craft. Six months later, his profile had flexed and he was gradually coming more into line with that of a successful sales performer.

Bartlett, who agrees with the concept of natural sales ability, also believes in the need for training. A person may have been born with all the right personality traits, but they still need to learn to present the product/service, manage their time, make presentations, manage the prospect funnel and work through the close. Whether born or made, there’s always something new the salesperson can learn or practice to improve his craft.

DRIVE AND AMBITION. And, whether they came in on the side of "born" or "made," the experts all agreed that real sales success is ultimately dependent on an inner drive and an ambition to succeed.

Like any other talent, sales is a skill that may be more innate to one person than another, but it is the drive to succeed that truly differentiates the top performers. Compare the salesperson, for example, to an Olympic gymnast. Just about all of us did somersaults as children, and most of us were able to pull off a semi-round cartwheel. If we’d decided to go into gymnastics, we’d have then begun to learn the techniques and train our bodies. But without some innate talent, it would have been incredibly difficult to reach the level of an Olympian. Whether we ever made it to the Olympics would, thus, be dependent on both our innate ability and our training...but even more so, on our drive and commitment.

To be their best, gold medalists spend uncountable hours at the gym, they commit their bodies and minds to achieving their goal. Salespeople must commit themselves as well — to studying the skills, understanding their products, knowing their customers, learning from rejection and practicing their craft to achieve the gold in their field.

A successful salesperson has to literally enjoy the challenge of making the sales call, Alexson said. He or she has to have the drive and ambition to persevere. "You have to be knocking on doors. You really have to get yourself psyched up. You have to think ‘100 people are going to tell me no, and I’m going to enjoy every minute of it.’"

The secret to success? It’s all about attitude.

The author is a freelance writer from Champlin, Minn. She can be reached via e-mail at llupo@giemedia.com