Why Better Sales Systems Beat Lower Prices With Jerry Levinson

Speaker A: Welcome to the System Simplified podcast, where we feature top leaders who share stories on how to successfully systemize a business. Now, let's get started with the show. Hello. Adik Levitt here, the host of the System Simplified podcast, where I feature top founders, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders about systematizing a business. And today's episode is being brought to you by Business Success Consulting Group, where we create, document, optimize and implement processes and procedures so businesses can grow and thrive. And today's guest is Jerry Levinson. Hi, Jerry.

Speaker B: Hi. Good to meet you. Good to see you again. Not me too.

Speaker A: Good to see you again. That's right. So we met, um, at one of the events that Dan Kushel put together, and I interviewed Dan for my podcast twice. I was a guest on his podcast. And you also know Debbie Allen, and she's also a guest on the podcast. So we, we know, we know different people that basically recommended that we meet, and here we are. So, yeah. Yeah. So I am, uh, very happy to that you are on the podcast and we're going to have a conversation about your entrepreneurial life and life and how you're actually helping other entrepreneurs now succeed and do better.

Speaker B: Great. Yeah, that sounds good. I'm looking forward to it.

Speaker A: Good. So, Jerry, here's your bio. So you are a powerhouse in the flooring industry, turning small businesses into profit machines with simple proving systems. After building and selling your own multimillion dollar company, you now help flooring dealers raise prices, close more deals, and take back control of their time. So you're basically working with people that want to stop struggling and start winning. And you are the guy to show how to do it, to make it happen, because you've done it. You walk the walk. You don't just talk the talk. So tell us a little bit about your entrepreneurial journey and starting your business. All the way to the exit.

Speaker B: Yeah, Let me, um, go back a little ways to. I ran the blind business. I had a window covering company called Blind devotion. And in 2008 and 2009, I had to go through bankruptcy because our economy was crashing around us. But I still felt like if I really knew what I was doing, I probably could have avoided that. You know, business, um, would have hurt, but I probably could have avoided it. If I really understood the marketing and selling principles, how to operate the business properly, I could have avoided that. And, uh, so I started my journey and sought out, uh, Joe Polish and then Dan Kennedy. I, uh, was a big Dan Kennedy fan. And that really sent me on my journey to having a Better understanding of how the business works. And you know, being.

Speaker A: What are some of those, I'm interested on that, that part. So what are some of the principles that you learned? Because you know, you, you were successful, experienced in the economy, external boom, crash, and then you decided, hey, you know, now I learned that, I don't know, now I'm going to learn how to know. So what are some of the things that you feel if you had to summarize three to five points that are like the main key points here, that if you knew them in 2008, 2009, you, you wouldn't have gone bankrupt.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean marketing is a huge thing. So really understanding how marketing works and how people work, because when you're in product focused industries and both window coverings and flooring were both product focused industries, they're not people focused. So you get within an industry and you start advertising like other people do and you start believing what other people are believing and you're focused within the industry instead of on the customers. Uh, you know, there was always a school of thought. Study your closest competitors and see what they're doing. Uh, 10 of the competitors, I think that's nonsense. You want to do really well in business. Study your customer. Find out how you can be extraordinary for your customer like nobody else. Um, and I think this is a challenge that we're having with the whole AI thing is I think people will start to crave more and more the human, um, connection versus this computer, uh, connection that can supposedly answer all your questions. Um, so that was a big thing. Um, and the three principles that I teach, and this goes back to it, it's marketing, pricing and sales systems. Pricing is important that you make it easy to give a price. So some people make it so complicated to give a price that they destroy the joy in buying something new. You know, somebody is buying new window coverings or buying flooring, somebody that's making a purchase. You can kill the joy out of just focusing on the price and line item quoting and uh, making about the details in the work, not the outcome. And that's a big thing. Focus on the outcome, not on the work that needs to be done. And then selling, uh, selling process. Do you ever see that video with, uh, Payless? It was the experiment they did where they opened up a store and they called it Pelesi. And they were selling payless shoes for 5, $600 to influencers. And they put these on display and dressed the salespeople up nice, put a beautiful store together and people were coming in Saying, oh, my God, this is a gorgeous shoe. I would wear this to a party. Uh, you know, and they. And they bought the shoes. Uh, and they said, well, those are actually a shoe. You can get a Payless for $30. And what I tell a lot of my clients is, you have a fantastic product, but a Payless demonstration, uh, a Payless sales presentation to go with your product, and that's why you're struggling to sell, because they're not doing the work that's necessary to be done in order to represent themselves the way they should be represented.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Those are great principles. Okay, so you learned it, and then you open your own flooring company.

Speaker B: Yeah, and that was a fascinating thing because, um, I sold my window covering business in 2013. We grew that to over a million dollars.

Speaker A: Oh, so you did do window covering. So you basically. You bet. But I thought you filed for bankruptcy.

Speaker B: I did, but I kept that business going. Um, uh, I was able to continue that business on. And, uh, I grew up from, you know, from that bankruptcy to over a million dollars a year in sales. And I was able to sell that business and then use all those strategies I learned. I started a flooring business with no experience in flooring. I knew nothing about flooring. Um, excuse me. I had an opportunity to buy somebody else's business, and, um, thought I was getting a business that at least had customers coming in, and they really had nothing. So we were basically starting from scratch. And, uh, we grew that. My goal was to grow that to 5 million in five years. Took us six years. Uh, and I knew about marketing and sales and how to operate and work with employees, how to hire and pay them. Right. And how to get success out of my employees. So I learned the business side of it. And what's fascinating, in the flooring industry, most of the people come from the installation background. They know everything there is to know about the product and the installation, but they don't know about marketing and sales.

Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely, I agree. Now, Jerry, you know, we are all about the processes, so we are all about the operations part of it. Right? So it's about systems and not just operations, because you need to have a sales system like you are talking about. Like, if they don't know about marketing and sales, you got to have a marketing system. You have to have an. A sales system in order for you to be successful. You also need to make sure that even though you know as the business owner about the installation, you have to make sure that you also. Because you cannot do everything, you need to know that um, you need to know how to pass it along to your employees and to your installers and making sure that, you know, it's all systematized. Right. What is the importance from your viewpoint, as someone who has done it, I mean, grew two businesses and exited successfully, which is the dream of every entrepreneur, and now you are helping other entrepreneurs do the same. What is the importance of having well documented and followed systems?

Speaker B: Yeah, I think it's the owner's job is to make their salespeople successful. Uh, there's a quote from a guy named Adam Witte that I loved. It's your job, uh, to build people to create a successful business. It's not your job to build a successful business. It's your job to build people to build a successful business. And really, with those systems and processes, they're key. And, um, one of the keys about it is you, uh, want your systems and processes to be so good that somebody can't hurt you if they leave you, and that you can plug and play a new person in there because you have a good system. In fact, they're so good that one things that we do we focus on is when we hire salespeople, they have no experience in the flooring industry. And we're better off hiring somebody with no experience in teaching them the process and system because you don't have to have knowledge within the industry because we set you up to be successful by having, uh, a clear, easy to understand sales process, you know, and there's a great process for practicing that too. And that's one thing we found, is there's a very good way to practice and learn how to sell without, you know, going out there and burning good leads. So once you get all these systems down, I mean, uh, it's much easier to hire. Like hiring people is one of the most difficult things you'll do. Now if you require them to have experience, the pool of people that you have to hire from is reduced greatly.

Speaker A: Make it ten times harder hiring. You can have a process for hiring so you can know how to hire. I think the harder part is to find the people that match what you need. But to that point, you are so spot on. We had a client one time, they were a property management company, and when we were done documenting all of their processes, he basically told me that he goes, like, I used to hire for experience and compromise on my culture. Now I hire for my culture by culture fit and the experience will get by training. And that is a key component. And from your experience you can see that. And what you told us here is how can you operate a business without a playbook? I mean, that's what basically you said, like in 2008, 2009 or 2007, when you had that problem in the business because of the economy, if you had the right playbooks on how to actually the manuals on how to operate a business or how to do your marketing and the sales, etc. You would probably wouldn't be in that situation because you and your staff would have been trained on it.

Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. And keep score of the game. Which is something, um, fascinating too, which a lot of people don't do. They don't simply keep score of where they're at. Uh, I like to use the analogy, if you enjoy watching football, can you imagine watching it without keeping score? And it's so important for the employees too, because otherwise they're just working for a paycheck. But what if they're working to build that business with you? They're more interested in the game. They're more interested in helping reach these certain marks that are higher and higher, you know, and it's such a great,

Speaker A: yeah, that, that is such a, a great, um, analogy. Absolutely. And, and everybody that is playing in the, in the, on the, on the team playing football, they know what they're supposed to be doing, they know what their position is and they're know the rules of the game and they know, they know what they need to be doing. But if you actually run a business without systems, then it's kind of like running, uh, as you said, a football game without people knowing what they're doing. And they don't keep scores, so they just like basically bump into each other and fall and, and that's the way it looks.

Speaker B: Yeah. We had a client that, um, he bought his business and he was doing about 1.5 million and hired me to work with him. And we implemented all these systems into his business. And then he had two salespeople that had been there for years that he got with the company and they would not get on board with the process and the system. He let those guys go. He hired two kids. One was his stepson and the other one was only like 23 years old. And they did $900,000 more in business and they get nothing but five star reviews. You know, there's no tricks to it. It's a simple process. It's, here's the documentation you go over with the customer, here's the price you give the customer. You get excited for the customer. That's the fascinating Thing about it, when you have a good system and a good, especially a good, easy pricing system, I can't emphasize that enough. When you bundle it and you make giving a price easy, uh, especially in this industry, your focus is on decorating and having fun with your customer. But what everybody else focuses on is making sure they're getting the price right. They're trying to be accurate and they're going over all the details and they're measuring everything, and they're so worried about forgetting something, so they kill the fun. You know, that somebody calls you out for new flooring, which is something that they don't need. You know, nobody needs new flooring. So right off the bat. And a lot of people are competing on price for a product and a service that they don't need.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: So go in there, have fun with the customer, decorate, get excited for, pivot the price and. And then you have the sales presentation that goes along with it. Now our goal is we want to beat the competition with higher prices.

Speaker A: Yeah. So it's really building the dream. That's what you're doing. You're building the dream and then you pay for that dream. But it's not because you absolutely need it, it's because you want it. So I can totally see that approach.

Speaker B: It's so much fun, too, because you see people, and I have all the time, the clients that come to me, they're usually stuck. They got through to about a million and a half. Two million, Two and a half million. They can't seem to grow the company. They've been there for years. And, uh, the processes that we do are easier, not more difficult. So they don't require computer programs and systems. In a lot of ways, we take them back to the way that they used to do things, before there was emails, before there were computers. Go back and handwrite an estimate, sit down at the table and handwrite the estimate. Um, and give that customer an opportunity to buy now. And it's not about a hard close or anything. Simply give her an opportunity to buy now. I'm like, um, we're in an Amazon world where I can order a product and have it in four hours, and yet you can't give somebody an estimate. When you come out to the home, it takes you two days and you're going to email a quote.

Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. It's the speed. It's the speed of the service that will determine here who is going to buy and who is not going to buy. You know, it's like you're there and it Also shows that you are reliable. Because if you are going to be fast and actually, um, submit right there the bid. It also gives the impression that you are going to also be. Show up for the work and do it well.

Speaker B: And I love these people. Oh, gosh, I hate these tire kickers. You know, um, they thought it was going to be so much less expensive. I mean, you think people are doing that for fun, having you come out to the house to give them an estimate and measure their house and go through this whole process. You think they're tire kickers and they're doing this for entertainment. You know, what's apparent is they don't give any information out. So, no, I can't give you any information. I can't tell you what it's going to cost. I can't. I don't have any information on my website. And then when I come out and it's twice of, uh, what you expected. Oh, that was a tire kicker. No, it wasn't. You didn't give them any information. Be respectful enough of their time and your time to give me information. They need to make a decision.

Speaker A: Absolutely. Absolutely. Jerry, if our listeners would like to reach out to you and find out more about what you do and talk to you about your services or ask you questions, how can they do that?

Speaker B: Best way to reach out is go to JerryLevinson.com I'm, um, like, one of the easiest guys in the world to get a hold of. I'm, um, all over Facebook and easy to get a hold of. Just go to JerryLevinson.com you'll be able to get a hold of me. I love talking to people and talking to them about their business. You know, it's. It's so much fun because there's so many opportunities there to simplify this thing and make your business. Our goal is have fun, make money, have fun, take care of the customer. That's my motto. You know, you gotta have fun doing this too. And that's the thing. If you're not having fun at your business, we gotta do it differently. Because not only should you make money, you should have fun doing your business.

Speaker A: Absolutely, I agree.

Speaker B: I'm having a ball. Are you?

Speaker A: Absolutely. I am. I love what I do. And we have fun. Yes, absolutely. I mean, that's what I. One of my clients laugh at me all the time because. Not at me, but laughs when I say that. I said, yeah, yeah, we're going to do this and this, but you're also going to have fun doing that. She goes, yes, that's right.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Very correct. All right, Jerry, well, thank you so much for being a guest on this podcast.

Speaker B: All right. It was wonderful talking to you. I'm glad you invited me. Thanks so much.

Speaker A: Thanks for listening to the System Simplified podcast. We'll see you again next time. And be sure to click subscribe to get future episodes.