EP: 226 Joe Jordan w/ Siro - A Salesperson's Shortcut to Financial Freedom: AI and Sales Coaching

In this power-packed episode, Joe Jordan, a former Cutco alum and now an AI innovator in the HVAC industry, shares his insights on how AI tools like Siro are transforming sales and team dynamics. Whether you're a comfort advisor, technician, or sales manager, this episode is brimming with actionable strategies to boost your performance.

Key Takeaways

• Early and Frequent Pricing: Top reps are getting pricing 50% earlier and 50% more often, leading to significant improvements in sales results and overall company performance.
• AI-Driven Sales Coaching: Tools like Siro can transform sales by identifying key moments in conversations, fostering best practices, and providing AI-driven feedback without sharing sensitive data.
• Team Buy-In and Ownership: Creating a culture of improvement by involving team members in the process, recognizing successful behaviors, and treating members like owners can lead to remarkable results.

Don't miss out on this insightful discussion into the intersection of AI and sales, and how it can revolutionize your business! Check out the full episode and join the conversation.

Connect with Joe Jordan on Instagram for more tips and stay tuned for updates from *HVAC Success Secrets: Revealed*.

Find Joe:

On The Web: https://www.siro.ai/
Instagram: @siro_app
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-jordan-249860145/

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Sponsored By:

Chiirp: https://chiirp.com/hssr
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Service World Expo: https://www.serviceworldexpo.com/
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Transcript

Joe Jordan: 0:01

I would pay. To have that experience because it really taught me two things. A, how to sell and B, how to bet on myself, how to take risks and have agency.

Evan Hoffman: 0:15

Hey, welcome back to another HVAC success secrets revealed with Thaddeus and Evan. Unfortunately, Thaddeus is occupied as we made a last minute audible for the timing for today's conversation. We got Joseph Jordan on with Siro super excited for this conversation. As he is a former Cutco alum for those of you that are fans of the show, Thaddeus and I both, he used to sell Cutco. It's where we first met way back in 2007, which feels like it's just yesterday, but it was really eons ago back when we were just college kids, but Cutco is a phenomenal organization. I will say that they've got tremendous sales training and what Joe was able to do while he was there, he thrived as a sales rep while he was there. He then got into sales management while he was there and ended up developing some software and while he was in school, he taught himself software skills, coding skills, and realized there was a really great opportunity to impact not just one organization, but dozens, hundreds, thousands of organizations, tens of thousands. There's over 100, 000. Contractors in North America alone, just for HVAC, let alone plumbing and electrical and all the other trades that exist. So he developed a killer AI software that allows you to be able to properly train your selling techs, your comfort advisors, and be able to pull in some best practices and ratios and KPIs that you need to effectively manage your team and so I'm really excited to dive into the conversation today. What it is that AI is going to help you do as an owner, as a manager, a general manager, to be able to effectively run your organization in an efficient manner and really shortcut. The ability to not have to go on a ride along to make sure that everyone's following the script, to not have to question whether or not your guys are running things the right way and really streamline the whole process. So I'm stoked for the conversation today and this whole conversation really started with actually one of his selling I don't know what you would call them selling representatives at at Siro. We were walking back from Rocket X one of the events there, and we just started up the conversation and it started with what is it that separates you? There's all these AIs that are coming in, so I'm excited to get into that part of the conversation as well and what it is that really makes Siro special. Before we get into the show, of course, we've got to recognize our sponsors because without them, the show is impossible First up we have Chiirp. So transform your home service business with Chiirp, the ultimate automation toolbox. Capture more leads, connect instantly and skyrocket your sales. Chiirp integrates seamlessly with Tools like ServiceTitan and Housecall Pro offering automated texts, emails, even ringless voicemails. Make sure that you never miss a call again with their automated sequence around abandoned calls. It's a phenomenal opportunity to make sure that you get as many jobs on the board as possible this summer and into the fall. So go ahead and book your demo today with Chiirp visit chiirp.com/hssr to book your demo today and get 25 percent off your first three months. Next up, we have Service World Expo. Service World Expo. For the most magical contractor experience at Service World Expo in Orlando, Florida, this October 15th to 17th, 2024. Enjoy keynotes, breakout sessions, four hour workshops, and social mixers. The exhibit hall will be packed with industry leading products and podcasts like this one. So you're going to be able to network with other residential contractors and hear from some amazing keynotes to help contractors like you elevate your business register now and use the promo code Secrets100 to receive an additional 100 off. There it is. serviceworldexpo.com/ and add in the promo code Secrets100 to register today and we will see you there in Orlando, Florida. And last, we have Elite Call. Ever thought about outbounding your database to fill up your dispatch boards? Enter Elite Call, they boost your memberships. They have a US-based call center that does exactly just that for over 20 years. Their dedicated teams don't just make calls. They directly integrate appointments into your CRM and fill your dispatch boards. Don't let your competition get ahead. Let Elite Call Connect with your customers first and visit elitecall.net to learn more. And now an uninterrupted podcast with Joseph Jordan.

Joe Jordan: 4:45

Joe, how you doing? I'm doing fantastic. Especially after that intro is graphics are sweet. It's great to be here. Thanks for having me.

Evan Hoffman: 4:51

No worries. It was a bit of a struggle having to do it at all by myself, but it certainly makes me appreciate Thaddeus a little bit more every time. You made it. We struggled our way through, but we made it. Awesome. I appreciate you coming on. I appreciate you taking some time. I know you had to juggle around your calendar a little bit here for us to make the show happen. You're speaking in Baltimore. In two hours. So we'll try and rip through this and make sure that you add value to our audience and then be able to crush it on stage there. So walk us through your background. How did Siro come to be and why the trades? Why was this an industry that you were passionate about helping?

Joe Jordan: 5:26

Absolutely. So the story starts in 2017 June. I got a letter in the mail after my freshman year of college to sell knives to moms. And it sounded a bit weird, but it also sounded like it would look better on my resume than camp counselor, which was the alternative. Totally miss the internship boat.

Evan Hoffman: 5:47

I will say it still sounds a little bit weird.

Joe Jordan: 5:50

It does still sound a little bit weird. Especially with Convo, the letters are pretty vague like 18, not an hour, like base appointments. I was like, okay it still sounds like more than I'm making as a camp counselor. Let me give it a shot. Didn't expect to like sales or be good at it, but my first summer at Cutco, I ended up being number two in the office out of about 80 reps and selling more in my first 10 days than anyone had in that office that entire year so far. So I ended up liking it and being pretty darn good at it and I learned so much that summer at this point, looking back, I would pay to have that experience because it really taught me two things. A, how to sell and B, how to bet on myself, how to take risks and have agency. And I wouldn't be able to do what I do now. Without that experience selling Cutco, I'd trade my business degree, which comes from the number one ranked business school in the world for that experience selling knives to moms. So it ended up being way more than I ever expected. Fast forward to summer I was invited back to become a manager. This is my sophomore summer going into my junior year. And again, the numbers said we did really well. We finished in the top 10 out of about 500 offices in the country. Top 2 percent of offices. My division manager still has not been able to beat the amount of Cutco that we sold that summer in the territory now all the way in 2024, six years later, right? But I didn't feel as good about that experience. Yes, learned a ton about leadership management, recruiting, forget about it. But the problem was my reps didn't learn, right? Not a single one of the 186 salespeople I hired sold more than I had the previous summer, not one. And It wasn't because selling Cutco is complicated. You've sold it, you just got to get in there, smile, cut up some food, and then ask them to buy. But it doesn't mean it's easy. There are some things that are a little bit unnatural to try and do if you're not a salesperson. How to ask for referrals. How to ask for the sale, share your goals. similar to how like techs in HVAC sometimes aren't super comfortable putting on the sales hat. When you're hiring people off the street to sell, they're not super comfortable wearing the sales hat either and what it came down to is there are only three or four mistakes you can make to not sell Cutco. The problem was, I just had no idea which ones my reps were making that are preventing them specifically from not selling any Cutco. I would have to drive out an hour ride along. I just did not have that kind of time and at the end of the day, like bringing in a rep, it's too expensive to not have any idea what the hell they're saying and so the original idea for Siro was like, you know what, Hey, let's record these conversations. Let's transcribe them. Let's bookmark the handful of places where you can't make mistakes or else you definitely lose the sale and let's just queue up those places and turn a hour long conversation into a five minute review, right? Just the highlight reel and that's where the original idea for Siro started and, why the trades? There's a lot of technology out there for people in tech, people selling software over zoom. But besides some of the big players in the trades like Service Titan house call pro like outside of CRM dispatch, all that stuff, mostly the trades have been left behind by the technology industry and so I just saw, I saw an opportunity to marry my tech background With my sales background in the field to bring the latest and greatest in AI to help real people start selling more and maybe get a little bit more of the freedom and the sales skills that I got selling personally at Cutco.

Evan Hoffman: 9:27

Incredible. Yeah it's, it really is a phenomenal organization. I will a hundred percent say that it's one of the best sales trainings, especially for kids to be able to go into I'm absolutely going to be encouraging, strongly encouraging my kids to spend at least one summer there and learn those hard skills of being able to have communication or soft skills, I should say being able to communicate with another human being, being able to influence another human being to understand human psychology and buyer's behavior and buying signals and all of that is important, regardless of whatever it is that you try to do moving forward not to mention the hard skills of determination, perseverance setting goals and what that looks like and actually going after something. There was always a corny saying at Cutco. It's not about the knives, it's about the lives and the impact that you get to make. And yeah, absolutely phenomenal organization and I worked three hours a week at most. School and I played football in university as well in the fall and I was able to save 10 grand. As a college student, right? Like that kind of thing just doesn't happen. It's, yeah, incredible opportunity, amazing place to work, amazing people. Some, I will say a little, it was difficult for me as a manager to be able to recruit people because it was all about numbers, which I imagine that was a lot of where your success came from as a sales manager. It was sheer volume of people that you were recruiting versus the impact on one person. I'm curious. Something that I know I struggled with as well, being a top sales guy myself, and then coming into the management side, outside of being able to listen to what it is that they were doing on each individual presentation, what other disconnects were there in terms of trying to get the best out of them and trying to get them to execute at a really high level?

Joe Jordan: 11:13

Yeah, great question. Obviously the first problem is just that the conversations are a black box. You have no idea what's actually going on in the home and I would say that's the primary thing. But setting that aside for a second what else is a challenge? If you think about monitoring the conversation, the whole point of that is to like catch mistakes and most of the time what you're doing is you're just showing them how to do what you already taught them, right? If people just listen to you in the first place, you wouldn't need but people don't listen to you. Why? There's a couple of different reasons. Number one is they don't believe you. I can tell someone that, for example, you're going to close way more deals if before you get into the cutco pitch, you say, Hey, before we get into that stuff, do you mind if I share my goals with you? And you tell them how you're doing this to be learn the skills you need to start a business later. You're going to tell them you're in a contest period and you're X percent of the goal and by the way, you don't have to buy the other Y percent today just to help me out, Mrs. Jones but listen, if you do decide to get Cutco, when we write up the order, I'm going to make sure you get the greatest deal possible because of this contest period that I'm in that ends tomorrow. It's a chance to build urgency, right? And now I have them on my side. Now all of a sudden it's a completely different conversation. But sometimes people just may not believe you when you tell them that's going to actually help them close more deals, why don't they believe you? Sometimes it's hard to build trust, like really quickly with someone. And and sometimes like you're the guy standing in the suit at the front of the room. You're not the one sitting in their shoes, right? So one of the things that we tried to do as much as possible was to get their peers to share the best practices. It's going to sound 10 times better coming from someone else, whether it's a technician, comfort advisor, whoever it is telling them this is the way to do it. And you should listen to me because I just tripled your numbers last week. And that's one of the ways that you can create belief. The second reason that people don't do what you tell them to in my experience is because they just don't know how. I get up there and I role play my style. But you may have a completely different style. So my sales style is a lot more question based. My whole goal is to make you feel understood. Like I get your situation and then I'm going to present a solution. That's just really tailored to what you need other people are more charisma based sellers. They just make you their friend and you want to buy from them no matter what the hell it is that they're selling you. Other people are just super process oriented. I'm going to hit all the fricking little buttons to make sure we have the whole right. There's different styles. And so sometimes if I tell you, this is how I handle an objection, that may not be your style and so one of the things we tried to do as well at Cutco was figure out the top reps we had and like each of those styles. And then have each of them sort of role play in a training or a team meeting, how they would handle the objection because there are, there's more than one way to skin a cat, so to speak. And and I experienced this myself as a rep. I didn't really start doing some of the advanced techniques. I was like, there's no way I could do that. Until my manager went and found me recordings, pre zero, that he recorded of one of the top reps that he had four years ago that matched my sales style. And all of a sudden it clicked. That I could do. I started implementing those things and my average order doubled overnight. If I had just seen that recording from that guy who matched my style, I would have taken those on way earlier. I would make twice as much money in the last month. So those are the two big challenges that I see trying to get people up to speed is just do they believe you? And do they have an example that they believe in themselves, their own ability to actually model?

Evan Hoffman: 14:52

No, that's a fantastic point. And by the way, for anyone listening to this only applies to Cutco. It doesn't apply to sales in any other organization whatsoever. Of course, being slightly facetious with that. But no it's funny you even mentioned that and sharing goals. And I can already hear because I was a comfort advisor after I left Cutco, I went and sold HVAC equipment and being in that environment, a lot of them are very hesitant to talk about themselves, their goals. They're like, yeah, it's easy for a college kid to do it, but for a grown man that's just not something that I would ever do. And yet. Three months ago, we were at Epic at EGIA, Tommy Mello up on stage. What does he talk about? How he gets all of his technicians when they're doing a sales presentation to pull out what their goals are, to pull out pictures of their family and wouldn't you know it, they get more referrals, higher average ticket, higher everything, right? Why? Because people are now engaging with you. They care about you. They care about something that's bigger than them. When we talk about reviews, we often talk about the fact that people are more willing to leave a review for you as an individual technician than they are for the company. So being able to engage with them and say this is one of the ways that I'm judged as a technician and I get reviewed as a technician by the amount of reviews that have my name in it It's going to engage the customer in a different way. It creates a different feeling. So I love that point, being able to get people to buy in and share the goals and all of that. But yeah, it is a struggle to get that buy in from people. And that's the thing that I love about what Siro does for contractors is it enables you to get in on that conversation. With the second point that you mentioned in the different selling profiles, the different characteristics of a technician, of a comfort advisor, is Siro able to pick up on that and match it to someone else who has that similar profile and show them examples of that.

Joe Jordan: 16:42

Great question. Creating these sales archetypes as we call them internally we don't do it yet. It's on the roadmap. It's going to be really exciting when we have it. Here's what we do in the meantime. So let's say you ran into, we're getting other quotes. As the moment you finish that recording, we're going to find recent examples from the top performers, whether it's like texts or comfort advisors, whatever it is. And we're going to put as many different examples from those different top reps as possible right underneath. We call that our answer key. And so what happens is over time, I'll click into one or two of them. It'll take me right to where they recently overcame that objection and how they handled it. I'll get a sense of who my favorite top reps are that I feel comfortable modeling. And then what happens is I can follow that person. And now they're going to be recommended to me. At the top of my feed, I can jump into any of the moments from their conversations that they've opted to share that are deemed like these model conversations and learn from how they bring up memberships, right? How they present the good, better, best. Share the options. Whatever it might be. I get a chance to explore early and then zero in on the one or two guys that I really feel match my style. And then what tends to happen is someone on a drive home, it's you know what? I just finished that audio book or that new podcast episode isn't out. Let me just pull up one of these full things from one of these guys. And you start to learn by osmosis by listening to how these people do their, conversations.

Evan Hoffman: 18:07

Interesting. And I think an important factor there too is in the recruiting side of things. When you're bringing people into your business to not pigeonhole them into you don't have the charisma to be able to sell. You don't have the gift of the gab to be able to sell. Like anyone can sell. It's just how they go about doing it. And do they have a mentor or a leader, an example of how to succeed within the style and the characteristics that they have? Is that accurate to say? Love it. So when it comes to Siro, what is it that separates it? What is it that makes it unique? Because right now there are a handful of other AI tools that fit within this realm of being able to listen to the calls, being able to analyze what it is that techs and comfort advisors are saying on the calls. What is it that makes Siro unique?

Joe Jordan: 18:59

Yeah, absolutely. To start off this answer, do you mind if I share my goals with you? Yeah, let's hear it. Awesome. So the difference is start with the why. So I'll share that first. Why are we working so hard? Like, why does everyone at Siro work crazy hours to deliver sales coaching technology to the field and to the trades? We do it because it pisses us off that the trades that field sales has been left behind and is not as respected as it should be. Because it's an incredible wealth building and skill building and freedom, agency building opportunity for people. Again, I am now multi millionaire by the time I was 25. I'm 26 now because I learned sales skills and because I learned to bet on myself. But when I was in college, my roommates staged an intervention to try and convince me not to do Cutco again. They said, you're going to miss the internship boat. This is not going to help you with your career. The Cutco cult has you. You're brainwashed. I didn't listen to them. I'm very fortunate that I was so bought in. But that kind of stuff stops so many people from getting into the industry and then with the lack of coaching, the total black box that these conversations are, a lot of times people who even make it into the business, don't realize the full opportunity for wealth building and skill building that exists here and so we want to change that by breaking the 80 20 rule in terms of sales production, in terms of upsell production, and turn the trades, field professionals, turn those careers into the most accessible path into financial freedom. So that's the why. How does that show up for people who are actually using Siro so a lot of the other companies in this space started with, you know what, we want to do AI. Where aren't there like a lot of people doing AI? Oh, it's in the trades. Whereas we started with the trades and we said, you know what, AI can actually help them and so what we're able to do is we've identified that the analytics where the AI, tells you what's wrong. Those are a critical piece, but with just the analytics that tell you whether people are following the process. Where they're talking too much. What objections are hurting you the most. All those do, and it's a critical piece, but all they do is help you find problems. Where we really come in and start to differentiate is on fixing the problem. What do you do about it if you realize that you're getting blasted by getting other quotes? Or that your reps just aren't bringing up memberships? If I just asked you what the biggest problems are in your company, in your sales teams, you could probably list three things and be right about two out of three. So fixed problem is really the most important thing, because again, if people just listen to you, you wouldn't need CIRA, you wouldn't need AI in the first place. So how do we actually get you to be able to fix the problem? If the answer isn't just reminding people, now that you can see it's definitely the problem, to bring up memberships, to handle the objection like you taught them. What we've found is that yes, the AI plays a role in fixing the problem, but the number one thing here. Is getting rep buy in and getting them in front of examples from top people that match their style. That's what changes rep behavior. So I'll give you an example. We had two companies on Siro, compared their results over the same time period. One company had managers going in and leaving comments with critical feedback like crazy. They were leaving like four comments for every single rep, over and over. But their reps weren't engaged. 2 percent of them were actively listening to the audio clips too. We had another company where the rep managers were asleep at the wheel. They weren't really commenting at all, but 40 percent of their reps were listening to audio consistently every other day for 15 minutes for sustained periods, guess which company improved more?

Evan Hoffman: 22:49

The one reps were listening. 100%,

Joe Jordan: 22:51

12 times more. They improved their net sales per lead by about 24%. Whereas the other company only improved like two or 3%. And so where does the difference come in? It's in the functionality that we have to get reps, listening to each other, to get reps, sharing recordings with each other. So we have almost like a little Facebook, Feed within the app where people share their best practices. A leaderboard where you can see within Siro who has the hottest recordings around the company. The answer key that automatically recommends these short clips if you're missing pieces throughout the conversation notifications when your clips are getting a ton of views and so what we do with this follow system is we create It's an environment where everyone is competing to create training content for each other. That's what gets a buy in. That's what gets people listening and now you have the tools to say, Hey guys, let's focus on sharing best practices for this thing that we know the problem is and that's when you start to see behavior change and when you start to see improvement. It's taking have the top reps role play three different ways to do the thing in the team meeting bring them into training to tell your reps to share their goals instead of you saying it. It's automating that day after day and week after week and that's what ends up creating massive results and that's why Siro is different because at the end of the day, We're not all about AI. It's not the whole solution. A lot of it is just getting reps, listening to the right pieces of audio. No idea. And AI plays a role, but it doesn't get you all the way there.

Evan Hoffman: 24:21

No, of course. And I think that's something that, I know a lot of people are resistant to whenever they're looking at introducing something new into their business is getting the buy in from the team. I've seen companies try and switch their field software and go from one to another and they get halfway through the onboarding and they pull out and we'll ask why. And CSRs didn't want to switch dispatch didn't want to switch. Office manager didn't want to switch. The team just pushed back. They didn't wanna do it. They felt like it would ruin everything and make their lives harder. If you don't get the buy-in from your team, you're never gonna be able to move forward with any type of new tech. So let's walk through that. How do the best companies get the most buy-in from their team initially, and then how do they increase that over time?

Joe Jordan: 25:04

Yeah, absolutely. So the first number one thing that you're gonna run into is the Big Brother. Objection. And you'll see this more with other tools than Siro because of the way that they're, the way that they're structured but basically what you have to let your team know is that you are not going to get in here and micromanage them. This is for them to share best practices, you to share best practices, and hold each other accountable to getting better. That's what this is about. It says all making more money and then share examples and we'll give you some of the examples at Siro, the case studies of how much more money the People have made as a result of as a result of Siro. So first thing is you have to make that promise up front. Second is you have to actually deliver on it. Like when you're going in and leaving comments, you can't just be Micromanaging the crap out of them because A, it's gonna, you're going to lose their buy in, B, they're not going to change their behavior anyway, right? You want to go and bring in the examples from the top reps and we'll provide those for you as you're commenting on the different key moments, right? Share those examples and say, here's how so and so did it, as opposed to do it this way. Here's the script. I told you this three times already. So that's thing number one. Number two is start with your top reps, sales, technician, service, all this stuff. It's monkey do. People will always listen to the top people more than they will listen to their manager. And so get those top people on so that they can get in front and say, guys, this is really cool. You're going to be able to hear what I do, how I just closed that such and such deal last week. And I actually listened to a recording the other day and it helped me accomplish this week. This is this is going to be really great. So start with the top reps. Let them do some of the selling, some of the selling for you. Second is you want to set the expectation that this isn't an option. This is something we're all doing together and and make it a part of the culture. You don't have to be like texting a bunch of reps who didn't record all the time or a bunch of texts who didn't record a bunch of the time. What you want to do though, is every time you get in front of a team meeting, just prep one clip. You'll have clips in the posted section ready to go for you. Takes three seconds to pull one up. Just throw it up on the screen and recognize the person for A, recording. B, doing a good job and let the team talk about what they liked and instantly, it's not about micromanagement. It's about us learning together and it creates a culture where I want to get recognized. I want my recording up there to show off how good I'm doing at selling memberships or whatever it might be. And we'll walk you guys through that whole process. Our customer success team is there really hands on in the beginning, even doing some of the coaching like with you on those first couple of calls to make sure you have everything down pat. But those are the key, really tactical things. What I would say, like if you take nothing away, if you take one thing away rather from this, it's that reps text will follow the leader, get your top people to do as much of the selling for you as you can.

Evan Hoffman: 27:46

I love it. No it's a huge thing. I remember recruiting new people and bringing them on board and trying to show them new things and asking questions about their sales presentations. And every time you're like you just want me to sell more so that I could, so you can make more money. And I would literally show them on paper and be like, do you see how much more money you make than me? When you make a sale, I get peanuts, you get the bulk of it. Why? Because we want you to go out and make more money. Do I make some? Absolutely. Do I want you to sell more? Of course, but I want you to succeed so that you can hit your goals and dreams and all of those aspirations. But when you get someone on your team who has zero financial interest whatsoever, In their success and you get them promoting something, it's huge and I also wrote down what you appreciate appreciates are you recognizing the things and the behaviors that you want other people to be implementing into their sales calls, into their conversations, into their. Customer engagements, on those those conversations, you want to make sure that you're paying attention to those things and recognizing the people that are doing well at it and I love that now you've got a tool that allows you to be able to extract who is the best at X and then get them to talk about it and then play the recording on top of it and then send out recordings to people and say, Hey, this might be something that's helpful. This person's doing a great job at this. Yeah, being able to leverage a tool that will actually save you time especially when it comes to sales coaching, because sometimes it just feels like you're banging your head against the wall because you don't know what you don't know. And ignorance is not bliss, it is pain. So when you don't know what people are saying in the presentation itself, it's incredibly frustrating and I remember at Cutco vividly, I was one of those people who I could recite the entire presentation perfectly. So when I was in front of my manager, that's how I did it but when I would actually be in front of a customer, I do something completely different because that's what I found that worked for me. So I could do both, which I think allowed me to succeed because I knew both and could understand both. But next up, we got a random question generator, and then we'll get into a couple other topics here. So this is one of our favorite parts of the show. It has absolutely nothing to do with anything that we've been talking about. It's completely random and allows us to go off the cuff a little bit to see what it is that. Is really on your mind and it's a fun part of the show. It is brought to you by On Purpose Media, your HVAC marketing experts, your home service marketing experts, we're the plumbing electricians and HVAC contractors websites, PPC. We got it dialed in. Make sure you give us a call onpurposemedia.ca and if you're looking for a second opinion to see if your stuff is actually working and how well it's working and you want an unbiased approach to it onpurposemedia.ca/second-opinion, go check it out. All right. So we've got three questions pulled up. You don't get to know what they are beforehand. Would you prefer a question one, two, or three? What do you wish that they would teach in school? That they don't. And I really, I'm going to give you a second to think on that. I really love this question for you specifically, because you did go to such a high level of schooling. So what do you wish that people would, what do you wish would be part of the curriculum that isn't?

Joe Jordan: 30:50

That is a great question. Okay, so I'm torn between two things. Maybe I'll share both. The number one thing I would say is information literacy. Especially as more and more people just basically get their information from social media, which learns the kind of content that like you like and then feeds you more of it. It's pretty easy to end up in a place where you're just seeing stuff that like you would already agree with, whether it's news, whether it's like developments in AI, whatever it might be. And I think it's very easy for you to Like basically your thoughts to become a program of the algorithm that you're seeing. And I think like people need to be taught how to shape their information diet and how to spot. Like things that maybe are missing information so on and so forth. And this happens on like both sides of the political spectrum all across it like so that's one thing. I think the news for example, like the average age of cable people on cable news is like over 60. No one's really watching the news anymore. Everyone who's coming up now is getting all that information from social media. So that's one thing. The, the second thing is maybe something like some way to teach how to sell and how to take risks, because I think if you don't know both of those things. It becomes very difficult for you to do anything in the economy besides work for someone else. And working for someone else is like not necessarily a bad thing. That's a perfectly honorable thing to do. But I think the problem is way more people get stuck either working in a job they don't like or they want to start their own business someday but don't know how and are unwilling to take the risk and I'll use a line I got from someone who I was interviewing earlier. Who used this line for one of their companies. It's like life is too short to be in the wrong career and unfortunately, I think a lot of people, a lot of people get stuck there.

Evan Hoffman: 32:44

No, I agree. And that's Gary Vee is a big perpetrator of of tasting and trying a whole lot of shit when you're young. I see what it is that fits for you. Try stuff on and go after it. Take risks, right? But it's difficult for people, especially in today's society, the way that people are brought up, it's very much like you got to have it figured out. You got to know what you're doing. There's this pressure that's put on kids to figure it out early and I love that to being able to take risks and try stuff on and see what it is that works for you. Also really love the info literacy part because. As a marketer, we leverage social media to get our message out in as many different ways as possible and leverage the algorithm and what people are paying attention to and we know how it works and how it operates and that it's a reflection of what's going on inside and letting people know that is actually what is happening. and it comes back to what we just talked about, too. What you appreciate appreciates, right? What you focus on expands and so if you're focused on one side of the political spectrum or the other, it doesn't matter. algorithm is agnostic to that, it actually doesn't care. It's going to continue to feed you information, which is going to get you to stay on the platform. That is its sole purpose and sole goal because that drives revenue. It's twisted and wild, but that's why it exists. It's going to feed you the things that are going to keep you engaged. Speaking of that, and here's a wild way to twist this back in, keeping reps engaged versus I've heard this before. I know at Cutco this happened, as a comfort advisor this happened. Managers stand up there, they continue to preach the same things over and over and over again and it's very easy that as soon as they start that speech, the eyes get glossed over, the ears shut, you're no longer paying attention. How does having an AI tool allow you to get through that to continue to feed similar information that's going to actually solve problems and get you to improve versus. The tired old tricks of continuing to harp on, do it this way, do it this way, do it this way.

Joe Jordan: 34:51

Yeah. Great question. So why do we end up in a place where we're saying the same things over and over again? Part of it's probably because we're bringing in new people. So they need to hear the basics part of it because the existing people, it still hasn't hammered and for them part of it's because if you're standing up in front of a room, what are you going to use that time for? You're going to use it for the things that the most people like need to hear. You're not going to coach in front of the room on the one thing your second best rep needs to do to start getting better because it's too advanced. You have to do the basics that will appeal to the masses. So how does that fix with a tool like Xero? It speeds up your coaching so much that you can actually do tailored coaching with each individual. So what does it actually take to keep a salesperson or a technician engaged? It's okay, what is the next level of development for you? And you can marry that next level of development to whatever motivates that person. It might be money, it might be career growth, it might, they just might want to learn the basics of of sales so that they can start their own bit, whatever it is, right? What is the next level of development for you? How is that going to further whatever other goals you have and what is it going to take to get there? That's when people light up and re engage, when they have that next level to work towards. Thanks. Every games use this all the time, right? There's always levels and there's the next thing and there's the new Skin or camo for your weapon that you can unlock if you like, right? You want to recreate a version of that's actually a lot healthier because it's married to real goals in the real world And you can only do that if you can 10x the rate of coaching And that's what Chiirp actually does. It makes it 10 times faster. We've done the studies and so if you can go 10x faster, you can actually go to each person and say, Hey, here's where you're going next. Here's why that matters and here are the things you specifically need to work on to get there. So it kills the need to just do mass coaching to everyone all at once, lets you tailor and that's when people's eyes light up.

Evan Hoffman: 36:58

I love it. Then it keeps the team meetings where you do have everyone together more about the culture building and allows you to cut through that clutter and not make it so focused on a specific technique or a specific way of handling objections and you can also showcase more of your team.

Joe Jordan: 37:15

Go around the room. Okay, what's everyone working on? Tell me one thing you learned today. Let's play a clip or if you are doing mass coaching in one of these team meetings, like the analytics may tell you that it's actually something you need to focus on that you weren't focused on before that you haven't said before. So for example, one of our account executives now who came to us from the pest control world where he was using Siro, what Siro told him was that, The number one thing he needs to do for his team to sell more was bring up pricing earlier in the conversation. And so all he did was coach on when to bring up pricing and like how to transition to it. And all of a sudden his bottom 80 percent of reps Are selling 36 percent more in one week because he just played a couple of clips in his team meeting and told people when to bring a pricing and how to transition to it. And now he has the data to back it up before he introduces it. So it's guys, here's the new thing, what we found. is that our top reps are getting the pricing like 50 percent earlier or 50 percent more often whenever it might be. Let's talk about how to do that and what's that's going to impact to our bottom lines. It's brand new. It's fresh. And then play the examples, right? Of, of top people in those conversations, which also lights people up. Everyone wants to know what the top people are doing. So even the mass training can become more interesting because you start focusing on things you didn't realize you had to.

Evan Hoffman: 38:39

How do you discern between causation and correlation? When it comes to data and numbers. Great question.

Joe Jordan: 38:45

When you're looking at something like that that's where you need to have a a little bit of wherewithal to understand why that might be happening. Because bringing pricing up earlier. Maybe isn't exactly the thing that's going to create those results. It might just be that you're talking past the close somewhere else. In this case, they're in door to door. So they were getting kicked off the door before they even had a chance to bring up pricing. Whereas if you just get pricing out and give yourself a shot to close before you get kicked off the door, you're gonna close a lot more pest control. And This is also where the AI is not going to tell you everything. We're working on some stuff right now that we'll actually be able to explain and hypothesize some reasons why for you, but for now take a look at it. Share with your team. Where we get these insights is we compare to the top reps. Ask your top reps, like, why is this number so different for you than for everyone else? And then you can get to the heart of to the heart of the issue. And sometimes even if you don't know why, you just focus on it. You'll end up taking care of The thing behind it that's actually creating the result anyway.

Evan Hoffman: 39:49

I love that because now you get down to the beliefs and the values behind the top people and why this is what I've noticed. Why do you think that this is the case? And now it takes the guessing game out of it for the manager, right? Like I've been standing on my soapbox as as Josh Griffin talks about when it comes to data, because there's so much data that we can look at now from a marketing side, from a sales side, operations, et cetera. There's so many different numbers that we can look at. And when you need, what you need to do is decipher what the story is behind the data. Because it's all telling a story, and I love that idea, that slight switch of, I don't need to figure it out, I need to work with who it is that is performing at this level, and these are their numbers, to understand why they think this might be the case. And then I'll compare my story with theirs to see what aligns there, and what makes sense. That's brilliant. I love that small shift there. So we talked a lot about how CIRA works, why it's impactful, how it's going to help managers. Who's it a fit for? What size a company? Is it companies that have selling techs? Is it companies that have techs that flip to comfort advisors? Who is it really a great fit for? And how can companies get to that level? Yeah,

Joe Jordan: 41:08

absolutely. It's going to work for both the comfort advisors. And your texts it's especially going to work for your texts. If you somehow compensate them based on like the upsells that they do, even if it's just like you pay them more for those jobs, cause then they're like, there's a what's in it for thEm. the AI is really going to be able to decipher. What's going on. If you have at least five people out there doing those recordings once you're below five people, whether it's texts or comfort advisors combined then it starts to not make as much sense. I would recommend working with some of the great like consultants and sales trainers that work out there to help you get to that level. Once you're there, then it starts to make more sense. Thanks.

Evan Hoffman: 41:53

So for contractors that are concerned with the data being shared, because you have access to all of these companies best practices, and some of them want to keep that in house. They want to keep it tight knit. They don't want to share it. Others of course are very open and they believe in the abundance mindset and they can share with anyone because they know 95 percent of people aren't going to implement stuff anyways. So I may as well just share it. The other 5 percent they would have figured it out regardless. So for those ones that are afraid of that, how does the data get shared? How do the KPIs get shared? The ratios get shared? And what is it that's unique and gets closed off and is just for your company?

Joe Jordan: 42:31

Yeah, totally. Are never going to share any of your recordings and transcripts with other people. Point blank. Period. You own the recordings. You can ask us to delete them, to export them. You can export them yourself. Whatever it is, that's yours. Point blank, period. Now, what actually is shared? A lot of the key moments that we've taught our system to recognize. The objection, for example, I'm getting other quotes, or I want to think about it. Or if you have a one legger, like I want to talk to my spouse, right? We train the algorithm on everyone's conversations. So it's able to recognize them on day one when you start recording. Second thing we do is we have free packaged bookmarks for other key moments. Especially if you work with a next star or a blueprint, right? With Victor. We'll be able to recognize a lot of those key moments out of the box. So right off the bat, you start recording, we'll be able to track whether and when they asked to see if their park job was okay. Whether and when they put on the booties when they get into the home. These sorts of like basic things that are going to happen across all HVAC conversations, we've just trained it to recognize whether and when that's happening in the sales conversation. We train that across the industry so it's able to recognize that in all the conversations. second thing that we'll do is like best practices for how long you should be spending on a certain thing. How fast you should be talking. We'll start with a template that we've seen that's best practice for the industry. And then it'll, we, you can go ahead and change that over time for your particular company.

Evan Hoffman: 44:10

Got it. Do you guys ever run into compliance issues or get a lot of pushback from either technicians or homeowners saying, I don't want to be recorded?

Joe Jordan: 44:18

Yeah. Great question. We almost didn't start the company because we were worried that we would get a bunch of like pushback from homeowners. But it just has turned out to be basically a non issue. Of course, there are going to be some people who are like, I don't want to be recorded. But they turn out to be pretty few and far between at this point. I think people are pretty used to being recorded. And in some cases, because there are a lot of poorly run companies out there, let's face it. Like people feel more comfortable that there's someone who's quality controlling these conversations. And if I'm promised something like I have some way to to prove it. And one of the things we found is that in many cases, having the recording has actually helped defend companies like, Hey, actually, We didn't promise this or, we're God forbid, you have some sort of lawsuit, it's actually we're, we we did it basically the right way and if you do have someone who is like doing things that are not okay you can nip that in the bud. By correcting the behavior, doing a strike system, and then God forbid, of course, having to terminate the person. But as far as the legality goes, there's obviously nowhere where you can hide behind a bush and record other people's conversations. But in most states, you're allowed to record basically any conversation that you're a part of. For in person conversations without getting permission from the other people in the conversation. Because it's a safety thing at that point once you're in person. There are 11 states where you do just have to let the customer know you're recording. They're like continuing the conversation is the implied consent to be recorded. You're good. You can disclose it. Hey, we're recording for quality and training. It doesn't have to be the very first thing out of your mouth. You can introduce yourself, so on and so forth. And some people make jokes, like we even have one rep say We're recording for quality and training and because I get lonely at night, so I like to have something to listen to, crack a joke and move on. So it's really been an issue.

Evan Hoffman: 46:08

Yeah. That comes back to just simple framing. How is it that you're setting it up? Is it and from a manager to technicians, an owner to technicians being able to frame it in the right way to say, Hey this is here to help you. This is here to protect you in your conversations with the customer to make sure that everything is on the up and up. And we want to make sure that we're helping you succeed at the highest level. And then for homeowners, it's here to protect you to make sure that everything that's promised is delivered to make sure that The technician is actually going to quote unquote behave within the home and they're going to be we monitor them. We take care of them. We want to make sure that we're delivering that five star customer experience. Love it. As we wrap up here, we want to make sure that anyone who is interested in reaching out can do that. Shout out to, there we go, Michael, one of our biggest fans. Joe is the realist, Siro is the way to go, improve sales prospects, or protects all parties. It absolutely does. Thanks Michael, for chiming in. Appreciate you brother. Profit rocket. Go check out the blueprint. I know Joe mentioned it there. You guys do integrate directly with it. And so all the scripts and the checklists that are in there, you implement that into the CR or the software as well.

Joe Jordan: 47:11

Yep. So it can come all the key steps that you're going to want to identify in the blueprint. You'll be able to get basically out of the box on. Again, like if you're not following them super closely, it'll just take a little bit of tuning, but if you're really just like following that thing, your reps are like on it, we'll be able to identify that out of the box.

Evan Hoffman: 47:27

Love it. If you want to reach out for a demo, siro. ai, we are going to put these links in the show notes as well. So you'll have these. So go check them out for a quick demo and see how it would be a fit for you. And if you're just interested in feeling them out a little bit more, go check out Jordan on Instagram, the underscore Joe underscore Jordan. He is not just Joe Jordan. He is the Joe Jordan. So go check him out on Instagram as he's putting out some great content on there. We do have one final question for you. And sometimes this leads into some lengthier, deeper thought topics, but Joe, what is one question that you wished people would ask you more, but they don't?

Joe Jordan: 48:04

Where is AI going? Is one interesting one. Why, like how do you have a team that's so bought in? Is another interesting one. I guess you asked me for one and I just gave you two. I also failed that test on the previous question. Ha.

Evan Hoffman: 48:19

That's all right. Standard overachiever coming from Cutco. It is what it is. All right let's unpack that. Number one where is AI going? Where do you foresee this going?

Joe Jordan: 48:28

Yeah. So the way that these models work, is based on a bunch of texts that came before it. All it does is try and predict what the next token should be. And a token is like a unit of text. Typically a word or half a word. Predict what the next token is. And what these models are really good at doing is generating stuff that seems reasonable. And The bigger and bigger they get, the more reasonable and the more reasonable that the outputs they produce sound. And most of the time, When you're doing something like that, for basic tasks, for taking the LSAT, for example, or doing math problems, for example it tends to do pretty well. So what are the weaknesses? It can't plan. It doesn't really reason. And so people now are doing all these sorts of tricks to try and force them to reason or do something that looks like reasoning that produces a similar result to reasoning. But what's probably going to happen over the next two or three years is we're going to figure out how to get these things to plan ahead and how to reason. And that's where things start to get weird. And that's where things start to get really fun. I have a blast. I frickin love my job right now. But that's where stuff really starts to get fun for us. Because the applications really start to bloom. In the meantime, the fundamental technology that underlies like ChatGPT is improving all the time. Even without this kind of addition of planning, these things are still getting bigger. They're being trained on more data. They're being trained on more computers. Like the biggest bottleneck right now to improving these things is just energy. Do we have enough fricking electricity to run these computers for these GPUs, these specialized computers for doing AI all day long for days and days. And the cool part is we have so many companies that have entered the ring. People are really familiar with OpenAI who produced Chet GPT. But now there's another company, Anthropic, which was formed by people who left OpenAI. And guess what? Anthropic's latest model is now the number one model in the world. Cloud 3. 5 Sonnet, according to most benchmarks. It's better than GPT 4. 0. Whereas previously, OpenAI used to be the absolute top dog. Now, Anthropic, they're itching past each other over and over again. And so now we have this really competitive environment that's good for everybody. And so the tooling built into CRL, every time a new model comes out, that's better, basically immediately benefits. And so for example, now we're launching a feature called Ask CRL, where you can literally just go in and ask CRL what the sales rep struggled with. Where we lost the customer. Did they bring up memberships? How did they do price conditioning? What else could they have done to better price condition? And you just get answers that are great and it links exactly to the points in the recording and those kinds of things are only going to get better and better and so A if you're not on the AI train yet for your sales and your techs, get on it. But B it is a really wonderful time to be alive while we're creating. Machine intelligence. The line I really like is the same materials from like sand are used in these like chips and GPUs and so forth. So like we are teaching sand to think, right? I forget who first said that but I love it. It's really what's happening right now. and yeah, there are some parts of it that are scary, but what a privilege to be alive at this point in history and be able to watch this unfold.

Evan Hoffman: 52:04

No, it's, AI is a tool at the end of the day, and it's only going to be as powerful as the user inputs that are going into it. So having companies like yourself that are able to build on top of it. And leverage the tool that exists and make it very specific and unique to, to solve problems for people is an incredible application. And to watch what you're doing, to be able to like, the thing that I love about CIRA, I'm just going to speak off the cuff on this part is it eliminates the rational part, even on the human side of bias. When it comes to analyzing data, analyzing performance, analyzing top achievers versus everyone else, and being able to provide actual coaching moments for people that are specific to them based on what it is that they struggled with other softwares that I've looked at, there is still the human bias that exists, and it requires them sending training. information over. It still works. It's still good, but when you're able to cut through that, that the bullshit filter that exists from human beings and just deliver the raw data, it's incredibly impactful and it can actually help move the needle. So I love what it is that you guys are doing.

Joe Jordan: 53:15

Yeah, really

Evan Hoffman: 53:16

appreciate

Joe Jordan: 53:16

that. Absolutely.

Evan Hoffman: 53:18

Second part, buy in. We did touch on this a little bit at the beginning. Curious if you had any additional thoughts around buy in. And what it is that contractors can do that homeowners can do not homeowners, but home service businesses to get more buy in.

Joe Jordan: 53:31

Yeah. So this is a little bit less about sales and tech teams specifically. But I think one of the things people talk about a lot is ownership as a value. It's like a really popular value for people to have now, and you put it on your wall, and you talk about it in your interviews, and then people just don't really reinforce it much again after that. And I think really the most organic way to create ownership. Is to treat your team like owners. does it mean to actually treat someone like an owner? The very the most basic thing is ask your team what they think and actually want to know the answer. And then the same way that you handle an objection the framework I learned at KUKA that I still use is KASA clarify, agree, solution, ask. Oh, you know what that's just like out of our budget. So first step is clarify. So it sounds like you like the knives, like you would get a lot of value out of all these pieces, but with the kid you told me you're sending to college right now, it's just a little bit too expensive. Yes, now they feel heard and I'm ready to drop down to the set that has almost all the same pieces, but is like almost half as much money. Same thing when you want to ask someone what they think. Just clarify that you have it right. And don't stop until you get them to agree that your summary and your understanding of what they think matches theirs. And once you do that, it makes a huge difference. Because even if you decide not to incorporate what they've done, or what their suggestion was, they at least know that you truly understood it, you truly considered it. And a lot of times when you ask, you're going to change your mind, even if not all the way, like you're going to get some nugget that makes your decision or your plan or whatever it is a little bit better. And I've had. People on my team actually tell me this, right? Stuff like, you're the best boss I've ever had because I can tell that you actually want to know what we think. And you're the guy, we can tell you're the guy, but, like you still treat us like owners like equals or when we make a decision that I don't agree with, I'm more bought in because I know that in other decisions, like you've actually updated your mind and I can see you incorporating the feedback into your mental model in real time. And it encourages people to continue to think critically and escalate things to you. That are problems that you wouldn't otherwise hear about. If they know you're going to listen, they'll tell you when things are going wrong, if they know you're not going to listen. Then things can burn in the background.

Evan Hoffman: 56:09

I love it. I remember another saying that I heard at Cutco was God gave you two eyes, two ears and one mouth for a reason. You're supposed to listen twice as much as you talk, right? Yes. And that objection cycle. It doesn't just work in sales. It works in all forms of communication, right? When you're able to relay back the issue that someone's having. I do with my kids then I ask, am I isolating the issue after that? So I just want to make sure I hear you correctly. Boom. Here's the objection. Is this correct? Is there anything else? That is influencing this as well. And now you isolate that it is just that one thing. So if we were to solve that, you'd be wanting to make for, you want to move forward with a decision here today, right? And then you can drop down from, maybe we don't do the full variable speed system. Now we're going to drop down to a two stage system instead. Yep. Maybe we don't go for the 22 C here. Maybe we drop down from there, right? Whatever it is that the drop down comes down to. We provide another solution. If it is a cost thing. Now we can offer other solutions. Maybe it's not dropping down the system. Maybe it's offering financing instead and making it more affordable for them today. And now you've got the monthly option versus the whole upfront cost. There's tons of different ways that you can go about it. That's what the coaching's for. That's what Siro's for, is to be able to bring in the best practices from your team, to be able to show it to everyone. Anything else as we wrap up? closing thoughts that you want to leave everyone with?

Joe Jordan: 57:33

I'll say the simplest way to summarize that I think it clicked for me as you were talking is like in sales. What I learned was people don't buy because they understand, they buy because they feel understood. And it's the same thing with your team. They don't buy in because they understand of course it helps to understand the vision and so forth, but they buy in because they feel understood, they feel a part of it. Just learned something.

Evan Hoffman: 57:51

There it is. That's it. Mic drop. Joe, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Again, go ahead and check out Siro at Siro.ai. Simple easy to type in. I don't even need to spell it for people. It's perfect. Joe, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate you and good luck on your message here in 35 minutes. Yeah, it was a blast, Evan. Appreciate you too. Thanks for having me. No worries. And until next time, cheers everyone.

Thaddeus Tondu: 58:23

Well, That's a wrap on another episode of HVAC success secrets revealed. Before you go, two quick things. First off, join our Facebook group, facebook.com/groups/hvacrevealed. The other thing. If you took one tiny bit of information out of this show, no matter how big, no matter how small, all we ask is for you to introduce this to one person in your contacts list. That's it. That's all. One person. So they too can unleash the ultimate HVAC business. Until next time. Cheers.