Getting the Sales Team on the Same Page, and Selling More Effectively, with Chorus

Housecall Pro helps small businesses embrace digital tools so that they can work more efficiently and grow revenue. The mobile software company provides a field service management app designed specifically for home service businesses — from plumbing companies to window cleaning services. With Housecall Pro, these businesses can move onto a digital platform and away from manual, paper-based processes for scheduling appointments, providing estimates, billing customers and more.

With more home service businesses looking to modernize their operations, demand for Housecall Pro’s software has been growing fast. But selling effectively to this busy community of blue-collar workers takes a high-touch approach. The sales team at Housecall Pro was taking that strategy to the extreme by creating a narrative to suit every individual sales opportunity. This model was not scalable or repeatable, and it was preventing Housecall Pro’s sales organization from being as successful as it could be. It also made onboarding and training of reps extremely challenging.

Using Chorus.ai to Help Move All Reps Toward a More “Scientific” Way of Selling #

When Brooks Pettus joined Housecall Pro as its chief operating officer in early 2017, he was tasked with helping the San Diego, California-based company’s sales team move to a “deck-based” sales approach. He focused first on people, assessing staffing and training needs. Then, he worked on changing the sales process, introducing new playbooks and a uniform method for conducting product demos.

“The goal was to get everyone selling the same way, because that’s the science of great selling,” Pettus explains. “But if you want everyone to sell the same way, and use a scientific approach, then you need a way to measure how they are performing. Chorus.ai is the perfect fit for that.”

Housecall Pro adopted the Chorus.ai conversation intelligence platform along with other platforms like Salesforce to help support and drive sales team success. “Every word matters in sales, and with Chorus.ai, we can review and measure every word our sales reps use with prospects and customers,” says Pettus. “We can verify that they’re on script, and on point, which is critical. We can also say to reps, ‘You only have about 30 percent adherence to this narrative that we built for you, which we believe will help you succeed. We really need you to be at 80 percent.’”

Pettus says that setting goals for reps using data from Chorus helps them to refine their craft as sales professionals. “The ‘art’ of sales — how reps interact with customers, what intonation they use on calls, and what other soft skills they apply in the sales process — needs to complement the science if selling,” he says. “That’s what helps the whole sales team to win sales at scale.”

Moving Faster and Closing More Deals Using Chorus.ai #

The insights on sales team performance that Housecall Pro gains from using the Chorus conversation intelligence platform is also helping the company save time on coaching and training. Janelle Nappi, Senior Manager, People Development, at Housecall Pro, says that’s partly because she no longer has to spend hours digging through sales calls for relevant data. She can also have more targeted discussions with reps.

“I can move so fast with Chorus.ai,” she says. “I can typically save about 10-15 minutes in my one-on-one coaching sessions with reps — and, in my world, that time-saving is huge.” Chorus.ai also allows Housecall Pro’s sales leaders to better measure the impact of their coaching and training programs. “We used to dump a script on the team, give them a little coaching, and then look at the numbers later to see what changed,” says Marshall Robinson, Senior Director of Sales at Housecall Pro. “But we never really knew if the coaching made a difference, or if reps were even adhering to the new methods we were introducing.”

He continues, “Now, with Chorus.ai, we can keep up with those numbers by rep, team and manager. So, there’s more accountability. Plus, we can hear what our best people are doing on calls and apply those best practices across the team quickly.”

One significant result of adopting a more consistent sales approach at Housecall Pro, according to Robinson, is the 10 percentage-point increase in the win rate the sales organization has seen since implementing Chorus.ai. “Because we were able to move our entire ‘sales ship’ in the right direction at once with Chorus.ai, we were able to see value from the platform quickly,” says Robinson.

Another benefit of using Chorus.ai is faster onboarding of new reps at Housecall Pro, according to Robinson: “We know what the baseline for performance is, so we can now set goals for reps and track their progress in Chorus.ai,” he explains.

The sales team at Housecall Pro has successfully transformed their approach to sales, and Pettus says Chorus.ai has played no small part in supporting their change and improvement. “Chorus.ai has helped our sales organization go from good to great to excellent in a very short amount of time,” he says.