Episode 80: High-Integrity Sales with Timothy Rethlake of Hearth & Home Technologies
Today Brad speaks with Timothy Rethlake, Vice President of Trade Marketing & Sales Training at Hearth & Home Technologies, the world's leading producer and installer of hearth products. Its product line includes a full array of gas, electric, and wood burning fireplaces, inserts, stoves, mantels, and more.
Listen in as Timothy discusses why high-integrity sales are essential to the lifeblood of any business and why many sales onboarding programs are actually setting salespeople up to fail. He also explains why ambiverts make the best salespeople and why he teaches his salespeople to be “lazy”.
Timothy then touches on his view on organizational leadership, speaking on how to discover what motivates each individual member on your team and the crucial difference between a big ego and a strong ego and why the latter is a key trait of great leaders.
Finally, Timothy shares how Hearth & Home Technologies creates lifestyle solutions by designing fireplaces that “give a robust, visually-appealing flame” while letting clients have full control over the placement of the heat.
Bio:
Tim Rethlake is Vice President, Trade Marketing & Sales Training for Hearth & Home Technologies, the world’s largest manufacturer of hearth systems and related accessories.
Tim has been in what he calls the “romance and entertainment industry” his entire professional career. He has held various Sales and Marketing leadership roles with Hearth & Home Technologies and is a popular presenter at hearth industry and building industry events.
Headquartered in Lakeville, MN. with manufacturing facilities in Minnesota, Iowa, Pennsylvania and Vermont, Hearth & Home Technologies markets hearth systems under the Heat & Glo, Heatilator, Majestic, Vermont Castings, Harman, Quadrafire, Stellar and SimpliFire brand names.
If you would like to contact Tim about any of the content on this podcast episode, you can reach him at rethlaket@hearthnhome.com
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Topics Discussed:
[02:35] What is “high-integrity sales”?
[11:40] How anybody can become a better salesperson
[15:05] Educating sales team to become better listeners
[23:03] What happens if the salesperson does not really believe in the product
[26:15] Turn your clients into your assistant salespeople
[33:03] Motivating salespeople beyond financial incentives
[44:32] The Franklin Covey and Miller Heiman process
[48:05] How to provide continuing education to your salespeople
[52:17] Technologies that Timothy is currently excited about
[1:08:59] How Hearth & Home Technologies designs their fireplaces
Key Quotes by Timothy:
Someone that has high-integrity is a whole person—the inside matches the outside.
Building trust with customers is really simple: You do what you say you’re going to do every time over time. I didn’t say it was easy. It’s just simple.
Often, if the expectation is not met, it’s because the expectation was not set or clearly defined.
There’s a one-second difference between make the call and take the call. [...] Get ahead of it. Be proactive when things do go south.
We’re all in sales to some degree. It’s just that not all of us do it professionally or have it on our business card.
A lot of sales onboarding programs set salespeople up to fail. We set them up to go out talking, not to go out listening.
Take the blame, give the credit, always, everyday.
Often, the profession picks the person rather than the person picking the profession.
