What if growing your profit wasn’t about chasing more customers—but getting clearer on exactly who you should serve, who you should say no to, and how you consistently win the right deals?
Many trade and service businesses believe growth means taking every opportunity that comes through the door. But this episode explores how one business built its way to a six-figure net profit month with just one salesperson by becoming more selective, more disciplined, and more consistent in how it approaches sales.
In this episode you’ll discover:
- How getting clear on the customers you’re most likely to win—and who are also most profitable—can help you grow without simply quoting more work.
- Why learning where not to play and confidently saying no to the wrong opportunities can free up resources for the customers you serve best.
- How a simple, repeatable sales process built around speed, value and consistency can help turn the right opportunities into stronger results.
Play this episode to discover the three focused changes that helped one trade business build towards a six-figure net profit month—and how you can apply the same thinking to your business.
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This podcast helps the entrepreneur, founder, CEO, and business owner in the trade, construction and industry segments, regain focus, build confidence, and achieve measurable results through powerful sales training, effective sales strategy, and expert sales coaching—guiding every sales leader, sales manager, and sales team in mastering the sales process, optimizing the sales pipeline, and driving business growth while fostering leadership, balance, and freedom amidst overwhelm, stress, and potential burnout, creating lasting peace of mind and smarter decision making for every California business and Australia business ready to scale up with excellence in sales management , through refined sales processes, proven trade sales techniques, and strategic sales leadership that strengthens sales process execution, accelerates sales team development, builds stronger sales teams, improves time management for sales, drives resilience and results, increases team results across the construction industry and wider industry sales sectors, and supports sustainable trading growth that continues to drive results through an effective management process in modern trade sales.
Episode Transcript:
Ben Wright:
This customer has just made $123,000 net profit in their last month, and they have one salesperson. Today, we’re gonna go through how you can do that too.
Intro:
Welcome to Trade Sales Made Simple, the show helping seven to eight figure trade, construction and industry leaders finally end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so that you can close more deals and grow faster.
I’m your host, Ben Wright and over the last 15 years, I’ve helped hundreds of trade and sales leaders grow their businesses and generate over $200 million in additional revenue by simplifying their sales processes.
Let’s get started.
Ben Wright:
I have to admit, this is one of my favorite customers, right? Terrific business, started small, they’ve grown quite big, and they’ve just banked their first six-figure net profit month. Have a think about what a six-figure net profit month could do for you, right? What we’re talking about is over a million dollars in net profit per year annualized. Terrific results from this business that has one salesperson. So, we’re gonna go through three things today around what they’ve done to implement this profit into their business.
I will say they are in the trade industry, they are, broadly speaking, in the services scope, so painting, electrical, kind of plumbing type of area, right there in that there, so it can absolutely be done. If you’re thinking, hey, this business isn’t for me, this is one that is very much a quintessential trade business. So, let’s jump through what they’ve done.
Well, the very first thing they did about 12 months ago was got really clear on knowing who they serve. And what I mean by that is getting really clear on the types of customers that are most likely to say yes to them. That doesn’t necessarily mean the customers they most want to be doing business with, but hold your thought on that, because I will cover that, but those ones who are most likely to say yes to them.
So, they got really clear, and in this instance, it’s very much in the building space. So, commercial builders and residential builders are their key area to target. They got clear on a geography, they got clear on a business size, they got clear on the type of work that they do, right? And from there, they’re then able to line that up with those types of customers that are profitable for them.
So, whilst they had some customers who would be likely to say yes to them, they weren’t as profitable as they liked, so they took that market of, okay, who would like to work with us, but also then matched it against who we’d like to work with. So, that’s number one. And the reason that’s so important is that straight away they are quoting customers that are more likely to say yes than others.
So, it means that for every lead they generated, their close rate was likely to be higher, which meant that one salesperson is out-quoting less leads or less projects than they were before, because they’re winning more of those, which means less quotes, more wins to hit their sales target. So, that was number one. Number two is they got really disciplined around where they don’t play.
Now, it’s a flow-on effect from number one, but the reason it’s so important is that it’s very easy to say, here’s what we’re gonna focus on, but it can be quite difficult to then say no to others. So, what this customer was able to do was learn that it’s not a yes to every person that comes through, right? Focus on who they do serve really well and build the habits around saying no to the rest. And sometimes that meant a little bit of short-term pain, because there was a deal that could be done, but they knew that by delivering that deal, it would suck up a huge amount of resources, for example, or make them very little profit, which meant less time on the customers they served really well.
So, I will say this is a hard act to nail when it comes to growing your business, because as we’re growing, we want to be able to help as many people as we can. That’s certainly my experience with a large number of business leaders. But by saying no to some, it means that we do a better job for others.
And I’m a big believer around making sure that we help where our help is needed, not where we try to force in that sale, because they’re the moments where we often get the results that aren’t as strong, the customers that aren’t as happy, it can impact our Google ratings, our reviews, for example, right? And then when it comes to customers we want to win, can impact whether or not we get those. So, number one was all about knowing who they serve. Number two was making sure they could say no to others when they needed to.
Last but not least was all around their process. They got their process really clear. They’ve used the core three conversion framework, which is speed, value and process.
So, they know how quickly they need to get the leads. In fact, they are razor sharp when it comes to getting out to site. They’ve brought their quotes down from seven days into 24 hours.
They know exactly where they add value. So, they’re able to articulate to their customers why their trade service is going to give them the value that they want. And they follow a process consistently.
I will say with this business, their process is super simple. Right, speed to lead, speed to get to site, quote as quickly as they can, and four or five pieces where they know they really add value. So, they’ve built a simple process and the benefit of this is that it’s easily repeatable.
So, when they fall off the perch and they don’t quite get it right, they can very quickly get back into that process that they know works for them. Now, the results, well, as you can see, right, $123,000 net profit in one month. And just to give you some comparison, that is at least, at least 10 times more than what they were making when they started with us.
Right, and careful when I’m talking about numbers is not to give away any types of industry or people, right, but this business, broadly speaking, you know, they do services across the country, right, broadly speaking, they’ve been able to really nail it from three things, right, knowing who they serve, so getting really clear on the types of customers that are profitable, but also are most likely to say yes to them, saying no where they don’t, and rolling out a process based around speed, value, and process. Now, as you’re exiting today, as we’re finishing up this podcast, have a think about, in particular, what I really want you to go from start to finish on these. Number one, are you doing that? If you’re not, fix that first.
Number two, are you doing that? So, number one, are you dealing, are you quoting with customers, or are you more likely to win? That’s the first area to focus on. Tick that before you go on to the next one. Number two, are you saying no to those you don’t want to win? Right, we can’t do that until we’re clear on number one, so move on to that when you’ve got number one right.
And then number three, the process piece, once you know who you’re targeting, I then want you to have a look, if you’re open to this, of course, around speed, value, and process. Now, if you don’t know how to do any of this, right, it’s really important that you think about it because to grow your business, you’ve got to make change. It’s something that we have some programs, some amazing programs launching in the coming months around.
Little bit of a spoiler alert, they are going to be running off a wait list, so if you want to make sure you get notified about these, you need to click on the link in the show notes. It’s quick, it’ll take you about 30 seconds, and some of these programs won’t cost you anything. So, that’s it for today.
Keep thinking about how you can be 1% better each and every day, because it does make all the difference. Bye for now.