That is precisely the premise behind this inaugural episode of RIA Beyond, a new multimedia program from the Restoration Industry Association produced in collaboration with Cleanfax.

New voices, deep roots

Saima Hedrick, the RIA’s new CEO, is three months into her role, arriving with more than 20 years of experience in association management and a background in public health.

Justin Woodard, the organization’s president-elect, brings a different kind of history to the table. He is the owner and CEO of Woodard Cleaning and Restoration in St. Louis—a third-generation company—and he noted that both his grandfather and grandmother previously served as president of the RIA in the 1970s and 1980s, respectively.

“I kind of feel a sense of pride to be able to sit in the same seat, or follow in the footsteps, if you will, of my grandparents,” Woodard said.

That generational perspective matters in the context of their conversation. The RIA’s original code of ethics was developed in 2006—a document that reflected a membership that looked quite different from what it does today, before the rug cleaning segment broke off to form its own association in 2009. The industry has changed. The code needed to change with it.

More than words on a page

Hedrick described a deliberate, stakeholder-driven process behind the updated ethics framework. Rather than revising a list of principles in isolation, the RIA convened different groups—including a carrier relations task force and a carrier representative task force—to surface what each party actually needs from the others to build trust.

“We took a really holistic process in all of this,” Hedrick said. “This time we really took a point to have conversations with different stakeholders and really come to the table about, what do you need from restorers to build up trust?”

The result is not simply an updated document to post on a website. Hedrick said follow-up education, accountability structures, and ongoing dialogue are all part of the plan—something she called unlike anything she has seen in 20-plus years working in associations.

Woodard framed the ethics code in practical terms: not as a compliance statement, but as a list of behaviors that are critical to success. And he was direct about what it takes to make that kind of document work inside an organization.

“It takes incredible repetition of the expectations and those standards,” he said. “You have to repeat, repeat, repeat and talk about it all the time.” He also emphasized building those behaviors into the rhythms of meetings, gatherings, and day-to-day operations—and recognizing people when they demonstrate them. “We have to highlight and catch people and restorers doing the right things,” he said. “And we have to elevate those people.”

When it comes to accountability and consequences for ethical misses, Woodard’s view was measured. Consequences matter and provide protection, he said, but they are not the engine that drives a healthy ethical culture. “You don’t implement core values with a stick.” The real work is consistently encouraging people toward the right behaviors—starting with leaders who model them.

Watch the video here and listen to the podcast, and keep reading below:

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Balancing advocacy and trust

One of the more pointed questions in the conversation concerned how the RIA can advocate for restorers while simultaneously building trust with carriers and other stakeholders who may see things differently. Woodard acknowledged the tension honestly.

“I’ve been on the side of the table where I feel like I am the little guy,” he said, where he felt taken advantage of, and where his instinct was to fight back and win by making the other side lose. He said that approach doesn’t work, and over time he has come to believe it doesn’t even feel as satisfying as expected.

His alternative is rooted in a principle his father instilled at Woodard for years: the win-win-win. “That’s a win for the customer. That’s a win for our employees. And that’s a win for Woodard or the shareholders.” Woodard argued that the same framework applies across the industry—that restorers, carriers, adjusters, and consultants are not adversaries, but parties who all need to arrive at outcomes that serve the homeowner or business owner who is trying to get their life back.

“We have to stop pretending like they’re the other side,” Woodard said. “We are all in this to help the customer get back to their life.”

Hedrick brought it back to a practical reality: ethics is good for business. A trusting relationship with carriers and other stakeholders is not a soft goal—it is a competitive and operational advantage.

The one standard the industry needs most

Asked to name a single ethical standard the industry should embrace more seriously right now, Woodard chose transparency—and he was specific about what that means in practice.

The restoration industry involves novel worksites on a regular basis. Restorers run into scenarios nobody has seen before. Consultants get assigned. Relationships with adjusters may or may not exist. Billing disputes loom in the background of jobs that are still in progress. Woodard’s contention is that the industry would be better served by more direct, upfront communication about those concerns—asking the questions that

feel uncomfortable, disclosing worries early, and negotiating clearly on the issues that tend to cause conflict later.

“If we could just have a little bit more transparency—if we could say, hey, I’m a little concerned about this one—that we’re going to do all this stuff upfront and we’re not going to be treated fairly on the back end,” Woodard said. “We might go just that much further in building trust between all the different people that have to come together to help customers.”

It is, he acknowledged, a nerve-wracking shift for an industry accustomed to holding cards close to the vest. But in his experience, a different result requires a different approach. “I really believe if we are able to do things in a more transparent way, communicate more clearly, we will increase trust in the ecosystem. We will be seen as the professionals that we are.”

The next step

The RIA plans to continue this conversation at its upcoming convention in Savannah, Georgia, where the new ethics framework and related projects will be presented to the broader membership. Hedrick and Woodard both encouraged industry professionals to get involved by participating on committees and task forces, joining the RIA, or simply referring a colleague who has not yet joined.

RIA Beyond will continue as a multimedia program with articles, videos, and podcasts. For an industry navigating significant strain in its relationships with carriers, TPAs, and other stakeholders, the hope is that a renewed foundation in ethics offers more than a good-looking document. It offers a way forward.

Don’t miss the RIA International Restoration Convention & Industry Expo. Click .

Learn more about RIA membership. Click .

The post The Trust Factor: An Inside Look at RIA’s New Ethics Framework appeared first on Cleanfax.

Doug Hoffman, executive director of NORMI (National Organization of Remediators and Microbial Inspectors), and John Greenwell, general manager of EcoLife Asia, have spent considerable time at that intersection. Greenwell consults and conducts audits primarily for luxury hotels across Asia and the Middle East. Together, the two have developed a joint training program targeting hotels and resorts, built on NORMI’s standards framework and Greenwell’s on-the-ground regional experience.

A guest experience issue, not a facilities issue

The reframe Greenwell brings to hospitality clients is simple but consequential: hotels are not managing buildings; they are managing guest experience and brand trust.

“A hotel can do everything right operationally, but it’s really what the guest feels,” Greenwell said. “If they walk into a room and it feels stuffy or it smells off, that’s what they remember.”

Leading brands have responded by building IAQ and mold prevention into brand standards, design decisions, and daily operations rather than treating them as reactive maintenance. IAQ now affects comfort scores, online reviews, repeat stays, and staff retention—a dimension Greenwell said many properties still fail to recognize. In Asia especially, brand standards for humidity and particulate levels typically exceed local jurisdictional thresholds, because the strongest organizations understand that a one-size-fits-all approach across multiple climates simply does not work.

Two levels of training, one shared goal

For Hoffman, the hospitality challenge mirrors a broader one that NORMI addresses across every vertical: ensuring the right work gets done the right way, every time. The IICRC S520 provides the standard of care, and NORMI’s professional practices provide the pathway to it.

The joint training framework targets two audiences. The first is housekeeping staff—the people Hoffman described as the real first responders, the ones most likely to encounter mold in a guest bathroom before anyone else does. The second is facilities and maintenance management, who may not perform remediation themselves but need to understand correct work well enough to hold contractors accountable.

“Too often, properties think that when they contract something out, it’s no longer their problem,” Greenwell said. “That’s really flawed. They must have an understanding of what the contractor should be doing to ensure the problem is actually addressed properly.”

The training is also being delivered in multiple languages—Mandarin, Japanese, and Vietnamese among them—to reach hotel staff across the region for whom English is not a primary language.

Common mistakes and how to avoid them

Greenwell identified three recurring failures across the properties he audits. The first is acting only after visible mold, odors, or guest complaints appear—by which point, he said, the problem is already established. The second is prioritizing temperature control while neglecting moisture; even a well-designed HVAC system will struggle if humidity is not actively managed.

The third—and the one the training program directly targets—is siloing IAQ as a purely engineering concern. Greenwell said he regularly walks into areas of properties where he can smell mold or see condensation on supply vents, and staff working nearby have not noticed either.

“In my training, I’ve coined a phrase: see something, smell something, feel something—then say something,” Greenwell said. “That applies to everybody in the property.”

Hoffman echoed the team accountability point. “Don’t ignore what you see, don’t ignore what you smell, don’t ignore what someone’s told you,” he said. “In larger organizations, that toolbox-training mentality—where everybody understands the goal—is sometimes neglected. But for hospitality, guest comfort has to be at the top of the list.”

Where to start

Both Greenwell and Hoffman said the first step is attitudinal, not technical.

“They need to see indoor air quality and mold as a guest experience and asset protection issue—not a facilities or compliance issue,” Greenwell said. “Making that connection leads to everything else: improved retention, improved revenue, improved reputation.”

From there, the practical steps follow: focus on prevention over reaction, break down departmental silos, commit to training across all levels of the property, and conduct regular external audits. At the enterprise level, Greenwell said the strongest brands pair clear global IAQ frameworks with enough local flexibility for regional teams to adapt to their specific climates and conditions.

“The brands that get this right don’t start with technology,” he said. “They start with intent and commitment. They decide that air quality is part of the experience they’re selling, and then they build the systems and structure to support that decision.”

More information on NORMI’s training programs is available .

The post Why Air Quality is the New Five-Star Standard appeared first on Cleanfax.

In this conversation, we explore the IICRC Legislative Fly-In, where industry professionals meet directly with Congressional offices to advocate for the work of inspectors, cleaners, and restorers—and for the standards and certifications that protect consumers and communities.

Learn why this event matters, what attendees can expect, and how advocacy is helping shape the future of the industry. Click to register.

The post Policy in Motion: Why the IICRC Legislative Fly-In Matters to You appeared first on Cleanfax.

In this episode of Unscripted, an video production, we take a closer look at the people behind the scenes who help keep the cleaning and restoration industry moving forward—the ones who don’t make the headlines but whose work makes everything else possible.

This time, that person is Alicia Hooks, the IICRC Renewals Reinstatement Supervisor.

On the surface, the role is about process. Answering calls and emails, guiding professionals through certification renewals, helping them navigate continuing education requirements, and making sure the administrative side of staying certified doesn’t become a barrier to the work itself. It’s detail-oriented, deadline-driven, and demands consistency day in and day out.

But spend any time with Hooks, and it becomes clear the job is about something bigger than paperwork.

Behind every renewal request is a professional trying to stay compliant, stay competitive, and stay employed. These are technicians, project managers, and business owners who have invested real time and money into earning their credentials—and who are counting on someone like Hooks to help them protect that investment when life gets in the way. A missed deadline, a lapsed certification, a confusing reinstatement process—any of those things can have real consequences for a person’s livelihood.

That’s the weight Hooks carries into every interaction, and it shapes how she leads her team and approaches her work. Serving the customer, in this role, means understanding what’s actually at stake for the person on the other end of the phone. It means finding solutions, not just processing requests. And it means recognizing that helping someone keep their certification current isn’t just an administrative task—it’s helping them keep working, support their families, and continue building the career they’ve worked hard to create.

In this episode, you’ll hear firsthand what it looks like to lead with service, work as a team, and find genuine purpose in helping others succeed—both on the job and at home.

The post Alisha Hooks: Inside the IICRC’s Renewals and Reinstatement Team appeared first on Cleanfax.

Verisk, the parent company of Xactimate, has introduced updated labor efficiency settings—including a new designation called large loss efficiency—that alter how labor time is calculated and, by extension, what an estimate pays out. According to industry consultants Ben Justesen and Nate Cisney of Restoration Made Simple (RMS), the average restoration contractor is not yet aware that this is happening.

“It’s going to get even hotter because many people don’t even know about it yet,” Justesen said.

What’s actually changing

To understand the impact, it helps to know what Xactimate’s labor efficiency settings actually do beneath the surface. Each line item in Xactimate is supported by a set of time assumptions Verisk calls supporting events—built-in allowances for things like drive time, breaks, setup, cleanup, and what the software describes as overall loss of productivity from working in a restoration environment.

Those time allowances get factored into the labor pricing. The new large loss efficiency setting reduces several of those allowances significantly. According to Justesen, the setting removes the 60-minute daily drive time assumption entirely, trims the setup and cleanup allowance from roughly 42 minutes to 35 minutes, and eliminates the 37.5-minute restoration environment productivity loss factor altogether.

Justesen pointed out that the information presented here is an example of one of the trades they analyzed. “Each trade is a little different in how they are reduced,” he explained. “What’s really happening on the inside is it’s reducing the waste time on the labor,” Justesen said. “They’re not giving us drive time. We’re not getting the overall loss of productivity working in a restoration environment.”

The net result, based on calculations Justesen and Cisney have run, is an average reduction of 4% to 5% off the total estimate compared to standard restoration pricing. That may not sound dramatic in isolation, but when applied across every job where a carrier or adjuster chooses to use the large-loss setting, the cumulative effect is significant.

“Most of us as contractors don’t realize when something maybe happens that hurts us adversely because we’re just running businesses,” Cisney said.

The definition problem

At the core of the concern is a question nobody seems to have a clear answer to: What, exactly, is a large loss?

Justesen said Verisk’s definition, as communicated so far, is vague—and that vagueness creates opportunity for misapplication. The parallel he drew is instructive. For years, insurance carriers disputed overhead and profit by arguing that a job lacked sufficient complexity or involved too few trades. The definitions were never clean, and the ambiguity consistently worked against contractors.

“I don’t know what large loss is,” Cisney said. “That’s another one of those where I go, there’s going to be a million opinions from somebody. And I’m going, I don’t think that’s the right way to quantify.” He offered his own example: some of the most labor-intensive, time-consuming jobs he ever handled were small-dollar losses complicated by difficult property owners. What makes a loss large isn’t always the dollar figure.

Justesen put a finer point on it: if an insurance company knows that applying a large loss setting saves 5% on an estimate, the incentive to push that threshold lower is real.

The global change problem

Beyond the definitional ambiguity, Justesen raised an objection that goes to the architecture of the setting itself. It applies globally across an entire estimate—meaning it adjusts labor pricing on every trade, every line item, all at once.

To illustrate why that’s a problem, he described a $2.5 million church restoration job. On trades like framing, drywall, and painting—where large quantities were involved and efficiency gains were legitimate—a modest downward adjustment might be defensible. But the same job required a specialty contractor to cut six feet of concrete for drainage work. That subcontractor had a minimum mobilization charge of roughly $2,000. Xactimate, even at standard pricing, was generating something closer to $200 for that line item.

“If I use this setting for large loss, sure, maybe it does for the framing, for the drywall, for the paint—it is okay, my efficiencies are better,” Justesen said. “But this one trade or these two trades are completely the opposite… and now you’re going to reduce my price by another 5% when I need to go up about 200%. It doesn’t make sense that we have a global setting. It should be by trade if they’re going to do this.”

The inverse problem applies on small jobs as well. A minor drywall patch—32 square feet—still requires multiple coats applied at precise humidity and temperature thresholds, with required curing time of up to 14 hours between coats. The labor inefficiency on a small job is arguably higher than on a large one, not lower. The same logic applies to carpet cleaning: the setup time to run hoses, mix chemicals, and place bumper guards is essentially fixed regardless of whether the job is 50 square feet or 500.

What contractors should do now

Justesen recommended that restoration professionals visit the Verisk website and ensure they are signed up to receive notifications about product and pricing updates. The large loss setting, he said, was released or is being released now, and most estimators and business owners have not seen the notification—either because it went to a spam folder or because the email is routed to ownership and never reaches the person running estimates day to day.

More broadly, both Justesen and Cisney emphasized that staying passive is not a viable response.

“The RIA is doing their best,” Justesen said, noting that the Restoration Industry Association is holding meetings, preparing position statements, and developing educational materials in response to the change. There have already been internal conversations with Verisk about making labor efficiency adjustments trade-specific rather than global, and about building in separate considerations for smaller jobs. Justesen said he is cautiously hopeful.

“I think they see [the concern],” he said. “And Verisk isn’t the only one—we have to look at all the estimating software programs and what they’re doing in their pricing and what they’re doing in their labor efficiencies.”

Cisney’s closing message was simpler: get educated, get involved, and get organized. “We need to come together and try to keep ourselves educated and let’s push for what we think are fair rights,” he said.

The post A Quiet Change in Xactimate Could Cost You on Every Job appeared first on Cleanfax.

The one advantage small companies have every single time is speed. Not size. Not equipment. Not even price. Speed.

And I don’t mean how fast you show up to a job. I mean how fast you respond.

Big companies are slow by design

Think about it. When you need something yourself as a consumer, getting a fast response is a game changer. When you’re running a business, how fast you respond, communicate, and adapt is everything. Big companies—and there are a lot of great ones out there—are slow by design. They’ve got layers. Approvals. Committees. Have you ever worked with a large corporation and discovered they had a marketing team of 20 and a legal team of 50?

Somewhere in there is a person whose entire job is to schedule the meeting about the meeting about the meeting. You’ve got something better to do.

Speed is the competitive edge

Here’s a real-world example. A customer fills out an online form—cleaning, restoration, hard floor care, odor control, whatever it is. One company responds in two hours. Another responds in five minutes. Who gets the job?

It’s not even a fair fight. It’s a foot race where one guy is already at the finish line eating a sandwich. Because in that moment, the fastest company doesn’t just look responsive—they look more professional, more organized, and more trustworthy. Before anyone’s even met them. Before the customer has welcomed them into their home. Fast can mean ready. And ready means competent.

Every delay opens the door for a competitor

Here’s where most companies miss it. They think, “We need better marketing. We need better leads.” Those are nice, but you don’t need them. You need to move faster with the leads you already have. Because every delay creates doubt. Every missed call, every slow estimate, every late follow-up—it cracks the door open for your competitor to walk through. And what they’re going to do is walk through it with a smile on their face.

Speed doesn’t just apply to sales. How fast do you get to estimates? How fast do you solve a problem on a job? How fast do you make a call as an owner when something goes sideways? If everything has to wait, if every decision has to run through three people and a group text and a Teams meeting, you’re acting like a big company without any of the benefits of being one. You’ve got all the slow and none of the brand recognition. That’s a bad deal.

Speed is a culture, not just a tactic

Stop trying to compete with big companies on size. You won’t win that game—they’ve been playing it longer, and frankly, they know what they’re doing there. Start beating them with speed. Be the company that answers the phone first. Shows up first. Sends the estimate first. Follows up first. Because in this industry, first often wins. Not best equipped. Not lowest price. First.

We’ve talked about company culture many times. Add speed to that. It’s the expectation shared by everyone on your team that when something comes in, we move. We don’t wait to see how we feel about it on Thursday. We move now. That culture has to come from the top. If the owner is slow, the team is slow. If the owner moves, the team moves. It’s that direct.

You don’t need to be bigger to win. You just need to be faster. Because while big companies are still scheduling the meeting to discuss the plan to form the committee to evaluate the opportunity, you’ve already done the job, sent the invoice, and asked for the review. That’s the advantage. Use it.

The post You Don’t Need to Be Bigger—You Need to Be Faster appeared first on Cleanfax.

Most people in the cleaning and restoration industry know the IICRC by its certifications, its standards, and the credentials that appear on business cards and company websites. But behind all of that is a team of real people whose job is to make sure the organization is accessible, responsive, and genuinely useful to everyone who reaches out—whether that’s a seasoned restoration professional or a homeowner who just discovered water damage in their basement.

In this episode of Unscripted, an IICRC video production, Gabe Rowley, Helpdesk Representative at the IICRC, shares what it’s like to be on the front lines of that interaction every single day.

The range of what Rowley handles is wider than most people might expect. Certifications, supply orders, exam questions, general inquiries from technicians in the field, calls from consumers who aren’t sure where to turn—it all comes through the helpdesk, and it all requires someone who can think on their feet, communicate clearly, and represent the organization well under pressure. No two calls are exactly alike, and that variety is part of what makes the role both challenging and rewarding.

What ties it all together is a commitment to keeping communication flowing across the organization. The helpdesk isn’t just a call center—it’s a connection point. When a technician has a question about their certification status, when a training provider needs clarification on a standard, or when a consumer is trying to figure out who they can trust to do the job right, Rowley and his colleagues are the first voice they hear. That first impression matters.

One of the tools Rowley highlights in this conversation is the IICRC Global Locator—a resource that helps consumers find certified professionals in their area quickly and with confidence. For contractors who have invested in their credentials, the Global Locator is one of the most direct ways the IICRC connects that investment to real business opportunity. And for consumers, it removes the guesswork from one of the most stressful decisions they’ll make in the middle of an emergency.

This episode is a behind-the-scenes look at the role that keeps everything—and everyone—connected, and a reminder that great organizations are built as much on the people who answer the phone as the ones who write the standards.

The post Gabe Rowley: Much More Than Option 5 on the IICRC Helpdesk appeared first on Cleanfax.

In this episode of Unscripted, an IICRC video production, Angelina Dixson, Marketing Supervisor at the IICRC, pulls back the curtain on what it takes to market an entire industry’s gold standard. From graphic design and social media to email campaigns and cross-department collaboration, Dixson and her team serve as the voice of the organization—translating the work of standards developers, certification bodies, and industry leaders into messaging that resonates with professionals and consumers alike.

The scope of that work is broader than most people realize. Every certification launch, every new or revised standard, every event and industry initiative needs to be communicated clearly and consistently to a global audience. That means Dixson’s team isn’t just creating content—they’re building awareness, shaping perception, and reinforcing the value of what the IICRC represents across every channel they touch.

A key focus right now: consumer awareness. Most homeowners and business owners have no idea what IICRC certification means—or why it should matter when they’re choosing who to call after a flood, a fire, or a mold problem. Closing that gap is one of marketing’s most important jobs. That means helping everyday consumers understand the importance of working with certified professionals and giving them the tools to find those professionals quickly and confidently through the IICRC Global Locator.

For cleaning and restoration contractors, that investment in consumer education isn’t just good for the industry in the abstract—it directly supports the businesses of certified professionals by driving more informed hiring decisions at the consumer level.

This episode is a quick but revealing behind-the-scenes look at how marketing supports the industry from the inside out, and how the right messaging, delivered consistently, helps elevate trust, credibility, and connection across the entire cleaning and restoration profession.

The post Angelina Dixson: How the IICRC Markets the Value of Certification appeared first on Cleanfax.

In the cleaning and restoration industry, experience is genuinely valuable. Years on the job teach you things no training manual can. But experience has a shadow side, and that shadow looks a lot like habit mistaken for wisdom. When the way you’ve always done something becomes the reason you keep doing it, you’ve stopped making decisions—you’re just repeating them.

Your customers, meanwhile, have moved on. They book appointments online, track service arrivals in real time, and expect instant confirmation. Their entire consumer experience has been shaped by businesses that obsess over convenience and communication. When they contact your company and the process feels like it hasn’t changed since the early 2000s, they notice, even if they can’t articulate exactly why. And they rarely tell you. They just don’t call back.

That’s the real cost of outdated habits. It’s not loud or dramatic. It’s the slow drift of customers toward competitors who made the experience easier, faster, and more transparent. Your technical quality may be excellent. Your equipment may be top of the line. None of that fully compensates for a customer experience that feels out of step with today.

The solution isn’t to throw out everything that’s working. Some of the old ways are the right ways, and that distinction matters. The goal is to stop protecting habits and start questioning them. There’s a simple way to do that: take one process in your business—just one—and ask yourself whether you’d design it the same way if you were starting your company from scratch today. If the honest answer is no, you’ve just identified exactly where to focus next.

That single question, applied consistently, is how good businesses become better ones. Growth rarely comes from doing more of the same. It comes from being willing to trade a comfortable habit for a better result.

The post The Most Dangerous Phrase in Business appeared first on Cleanfax.

But according to Troy Harrison, founder of The Sales Navigator and a sales strategist with more than 30 years of experience in B2B organizations, that instinct is often misplaced.

“Most of the time when a small to medium-sized business isn’t achieving what it needs, the problem is in the first three layers,” Harrison said. “You’ve got to have those layers right before the methodology makes any sense at all.”

That framework—which Harrison calls the Navigator’s Chart, and which forms the backbone of a book he recently completed—organizes the sales organization into four distinct layers, each one building on the last.

Four layers, one framework

The Navigator’s Chart draws on a simple nautical analogy: to complete a successful ocean voyage, you need water, a vessel, a crew, and a route. In a sales organization, those translate to your customer base, your sales infrastructure, your people, and your methodology, in that order.

The first layer—the water—is where Harrison always starts. “If you’re not sailing the right waters, your journey is going to fail,” he said. Understanding who your customers are, how they buy, and how that’s changed is the foundation everything else rests on.

The vessel covers the infrastructure: activity metrics, quotas, compensation, CRM, and tech tools. The crew is your sales manager and salespeople, their skills, their fit, their readiness. And the route is your sales methodology, the training and process frameworks that so many companies jump straight to.

“Here’s a question I ask business owners all the time,” Harrison said. “How much of your sales organization was actually built and designed with intent, and how much of it just sort of happened and was assembled from the parts you have?”

The waters have changed

Harrison argues that the customer base—the water—has undergone more change in the past five years than in the previous hundred. Two shifts stand out.

The first is generational. Older buyers responded to relationship-building through personal connection—sports talk, shared hobbies, common ground on anything outside the office. Millennials and younger Gen Xers have flipped that model. “They don’t have time for that, and they’re kind of suspicious of it,” Harrison said. For younger buyers, the relationship develops after the business value is established, not before. “If you do become somebody that solves their business needs, then you get the right to start having a beer with them.”

The second shift is informational. Classic sales methodology was built on what Harrison calls information asymmetry—the salesperson held the knowledge, and the customer needed it. That dynamic is gone. Today’s buyers arrive at the sales conversation with 70 to 80% of their buying process already complete, sometimes knowing more about a vendor’s products and reviews than the salesperson does.

Harrison pointed out that the most widely used sales methodologies were written for a world that no longer exists. The Sandler Selling System dates to 1967. SPIN Selling was published in 1988. Even The Challenger Sale, released in 2011, drew on research from the 1990s. “All of those are written for worlds where the buyers weren’t informed,” he said. “Our waters are different, and salespeople are walking in completely unprepared for it.”

Do your homework before you walk in

Harrison is direct about what he’s seeing in the field. Salespeople still walk in looking for a fishing photo on the wall. They’re unaware of their own company’s Google reviews while the customer has already read them. They’re performing, Harrison said, while the customer is trying to do business.

His solution is simple and immediate: use AI to research every prospect before you walk in. Harrison relies on Claude for broad research and Perplexity for granular, link-supported results. “I don’t even say go to their website,” he said. “I say, here’s the person, here’s the company—go out on the web and find what you can find on them.” The tool will surface social media, LinkedIn, article mentions, and more in a minute or two.

For salespeople who still do in-person cold calls, Harrison’s advice is blunt: “Before you pull a door, you need to pull your smartphone, pull up the app, and do that one- or two-minute research.”

The Navigator’s Chart, Harrison said, isn’t just a diagnostic tool—it’s an argument for building a sales organization with intention, starting from the customer and working outward. Training, he’s quick to note, still matters. It just has to come last.

Watch the interview and listen to the podcast:

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The post Why Better Sales Training Won’t Fix Your Sales Problem appeared first on Cleanfax.