Episode•June 23, 2025•42 min

EP224: The Paid Estimate Blueprint | Part 2 - Providing Value

Offering value involves more than just stating the correct price, it also involves how you show up. For contractors, real value begins long before the tools are delivered. It’s in the trust you build, the questions you ask, and the way you make homeowners feel heard and understood. The sale truly happens when clients feel confident in you and not simply in your job. In this episode, Brad talks about: Understanding value stacking and its impact on customer perception The significance of emotional connection in sales Techniques for providing value during client interactions The importance of setting expectations and asking for permission How to identify and address client concerns effectively The role of empathy in enhancing customer relationships Link to Resources: Grab Brad's tell-all book: The Contractor Profit Blueprint https://thecontractorprofitblueprint.com Help us get the word out to other contractors by leaving us a review or sharing our podcast! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Transcript

0:02

The experience, how you make them feel matters a hundred times greater than the product. Welcome back to the show. On this episode, we're talking about the paid estimate blueprint part two, providing value. Now, hopefully this goes well because I'm still having technical problems. My computer is still at the service place. And so we're trying to run off my laptop. We'll see how it goes. Anyways, what is... Providing value. What does that mean? Specifically what I call value stacking. Now, some of this is actually marketing. Some of it is sales. The whole premise behind value stacking is at every turn of the journey, the customer from the very first time they wake up and decide they want to do some work or have some work done. And they reach out and they find your reviews. They see your website. They see a truck driving down the street. They talk to one of your employees. the restaurant, you know, at lunch or whatever, any of those exposures to the client should provide some type of value. Now there's different types of value, right? There are values that are professional values like optics. You know, do you look professional? If you look professional, then there's a high probability that you are professional. Now that there, you know, obviously you can look professional and not do professional work. But there's a higher chance of if you look professional that you're going to do professional work, which means I'm going to have a professional experience. If you look like, you know, a homeless man living out of a van, then I'm going to tend to believe that you're not going to do good work. Right. So there's different types of value in terms of how it applies to the sales process and to your clients. There's emotional value there. There's the optics, the professional value. There's the experience value. There's a certainty of achievement value, right? Confidence. And so value stacking is making sure that every step of the way, you have these things locked in. So if you have Google reviews, you know, whether it's one or 500, having Google reviews provides value because it. It adds legitimacy to your business. If 300 people are saying you're the best company on earth to work for, that adds value in legitimacy. It adds value in confidence, okay? So, you know, Google reviews, a website, your wraps in your vehicle, your uniforms, like all those things are more image and optics focused value, but those things do matter. And each one of those things is a level in the stack, right? So if you don't have any of that, and somebody gave me your number, my neighbor gave me your number to do some work and I call you, I don't get the value add of all the things prior to that. So as a contractor, you're starting out at a little bit lower level, although the reference, the referral has a ton of value. If you're getting a referral, that adds a lot. And I don't have like a scale. There's no scale to measure this. But if I were to make a scale, maybe... Google reviews is one point. A website is three points, you know, something like that. And a referral would be like 20 points, right? So if you're stacking these, you're trying to add as much value in the process. So understanding that part of it. Now let's talk about the sales aspect of it. Once they get on the phone call with you, value is added, not by knowledge. Let me say that again. Value is added. not my knowledge. What do I mean? It does not matter how much information you know. It does not matter how long you've been in business in terms of the experience you have. Okay. What matters is how you make the client feel. It has absolutely nothing to do with product. This is what most contractors get wrong. They believe as long as I have good quality work and I have pictures to prove it, That's all that matters, Brad. People want quality work, right? As long as they do quality work, that's all that matters. I can be a complete dickhead to my clients because that doesn't matter. That's not important. All that matters is that I do good work. Wrong. The experience, how you make them feel matters a hundred times greater than the product. I've said this so I'm blue in the face. You can do an average quality product. I mean, literally average. and have a phenomenal experience, and you will blow any contractor out of the water that has a top-of-the-line product and a terrible experience. Because customer experience, on the scale that I was just talking about, customer experience is like worth 50. You know, if we're going to 100. Google reviews is one, a referral is 20. The experience is like 50. The product is like 30, right? Like the experience matters way more. So how do we provide an amazing experience, quote, value in the sales process? Well, it's not about talking about yourself. I can tell you that right now. It's not talking about yourself. It's not talking about your knowledge. It's not talking about your awards. It's not talking about all the things that you're great at. It's not even talking about you at all. because it has nothing to do with you. I saw a post this morning. It was a well-done post in terms of how it was laid out and the information, but it was for like a fencing contractor. And he was saying, this was like on his business page, right? And he's saying, when you hire our company, you get the best. You get all of these, why we're so awesome. The post is a post, like a sales ad rather. Even though it wasn't an ad, this was like an organic post on their page. It's written like an ad that reeks of ego. Now, from the outside eye, it looks like, oh, this is a legitimate company and, you know, they do good work. But from me reading it, my emotion, my emotional reaction to that ad is this contractor is completely full of themselves and they don't actually understand how to provide value to their customer. Now, do you have to talk about yourself? Yes, you do. Do you need to post pictures of what you do? Yes, you do. You know, do you need to have confidence and be, and have pride in your stuff? Yes, you do. But what I'm telling you is in the sales process, it has nothing to do with that. When I tell people that we have, I have clients and I've done it myself. We have clients that we have, you know, we sell jobs for $50,000, $200,000 over the phone. And we never even talk about the project. like the actual details of the project. We get into overall scope, like, oh, you want a kitchen remodel? Cool, that's it. Like that's the level of scope. And they sell these $100,000 kitchens like that without talking about scope. People don't believe me. You probably don't believe me. And that's because you're closed-minded to this. You're not open-minded to the idea of understanding what real value looks like. You have to get it out of your head, beat it out of your head. I don't care what you gotta do. do a lobotomy, whatever, get out of your head that the product and how amazing you are matters because it does not. You have to learn how to connect with your clients on an emotional level. You have to actually get them to open up emotionally about things in their life that they probably would never share with a stranger. We always say if you can have a client crying on the phone in a good way, then the job is sold. Like there's no way you're not going to get that job. And that may sound completely, you know, ass backwards, stupid to you, but that's the type of connection you want. Because here's the alternative. And I tell my guys all the time is we do role plays in the group. I've mentioned this before, but we'll do a role play. And when we're doing role plays, you know, you're role playing on our sales training with your peers who know the same information, you know, and they know how to do the right way. And so it's very nerve wracking. You, you know, a lot of pressure, which is good. And you, when we get done and we give feedback on that, we're like nitpicking, right? This is like telling an Olympic gold medalist, Hey, you know, you need to do tweak this one little thing, an eighth of an inch in order to gain a thousandth of a second, right? Like we're doing that kind of high level detail tweaking to be the best that we can be. But I always tell the guys like, listen, Yes, you're not a master at this yet, but you're already 10 times better than the other contractors simply by showing up here and doing this training because they're not doing any of it. So you could actually suck really bad using the profit sales system, still win jobs, and still be way ahead of your competition. Because what the competition does is the customer calls and says, hey, I need an estimate on a kitchen. The contractor goes, okay, I'll run right out there and give you a free estimates, right? And you show out there and you get your little iPad out and you got your little, you know, you got your magic plan or, you know, whatever 3D rendering software you got because you think this is going to be amazing. You're going to impress the hell out of the customer. And you get your little iPad out and you say, okay, what do you want done? And they start saying this stuff and you're like, okay, you want new cabinets. You want new countertop. You want a tile backsplash. You want new appliances. You want new flooring, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Right. You're taking their order. Okay. And you get down to the bottom and they go, this is what we want. And you're like, okay, so I got a large fry, a Big Mac and a Coke. That's going to be, you know, $75,000 because that's what you sound like. Not you. That's what they sound like because that's how they've been trained to do it. Everybody's been trained to be an order taker to run out there. Take their order, give them a price, and then hope and pray they pick you. That's not sales, guys. There's absolutely nothing in that process that is sales. Now, you can do high-pressure sales where you're like, I'm not leaving your house until you sign this paperwork. I mean, you can do that if you want. You can apply high-pressure sales tactics. If you buy from me today, I'll give you a $5,000 discount. Those are all like high-pressure sales tactics. You can do those things, and they may work sometimes. But I don't know anybody who loves doing that. I feel icky inside if I use that kind of stuff, right? And we don't do that because this is a natural consultative style of selling. And when you do this, you don't have to feel icky about it. It's super easy. It's super natural. Your clients love it. It makes everything in the process so much easier. And now you're not out there doing free estimates anymore. The value that you provide is in listening to your clients tell you what's important to them, and then you being able to articulate back to them what's important and how you're going to make sure it gets done. The reason why you can suck at this process and still be ahead, because the guy who runs right out there and does free estimate provides no value. Whereas you get on the phone call and you say, is it okay if I share with you what I hope we can accomplish on this call? Right there, just that phrase, you've already separated everyone else because nobody else sets expectations. Nobody else asks for permission. Is it okay if I share with you what I hope we can accomplish? That's a tool, by the way. That's a tool that I teach and we use called asking for permission. Why? Because it makes the client feel like they're in control. This is psychological. This isn't just, oh, you know, here's your order. Here's your fries and Big Mac and Coke. That's ordering. That's order taking. This is sales. Sales is a psychological process. Cindy, is it okay if I just share with you what I hope we can accomplish on this call? She's going to say, yeah, that'd be great, Brad. Well, we always want to make sure that we have a good understanding of what you're wanting to do because we want to make sure that we are the right contractor to be able to help you with your project. And so I'm going to ask you a few questions just to learn more about your project. And if I believe that we are the right contractor, I'll even be able to share with you on this call. What other clients of ours have invested for similar projects? Would that be helpful? Now, if you just say that phrase and nothing else, you are 10 times,10 levels ahead of the, let me come out there and give you a free estimate guy. Billy Bob, you know, with his overalls, let me come out there and give you a free estimate. You're already 10 levels ahead of them because the client's going to be like, damn, this person's different. This guy is different than everyone else. This guy seems like he knows what the hell he's doing, right? That's providing value because you're actually instilling confidence in your clients because they actually feel, they feel it in their body. Holy crap, this person's different. I've never had a contractor say that to me. I've never had anyone in any service company ever ask me these questions or say this stuff to me. You will be elevated above them. Not the clients. You will be elevated above the other competition because they're not talking like you. I know you know what I'm talking about because all of you listening to this have gone and met somebody at an event somewhere, a social gathering where you were invited, a wedding, whatever. You were introduced to somebody that you didn't know, and then you have a small conversation with them. Or maybe you're just listening to the person that was talking to them. And you walk away from that conversation and you go, I really like that guy. He, you know, he seemed like a genuine, honest, you know, fun or cool or exciting or whatever, you know, whatever you want to use to describe it. But you walk away actually in a good mood, feeling good about that experience. That's what we do when we talk to the clients. And when you learn how to actually sell using emotion, that's the same kind of experience you can give your clients. That is added value. When you walk away from that, you know, wedding engagement and you talk to that person, you'd reach to your spouse. You're like, man, you know, John, right from the wedding. He's like, yeah, I know John. He was, I really liked him. There was just something about him. I really liked. Yeah. He's a really cool guy, right? That's value added. It added value to your evening. You had a pleasant experience. It made you happy on the inside. That's the same thing you're doing for your clients. And that's just the beginning. That's just one of nine questions. You go through this process and you're really asking questions that are important to them. You know, Cindy, I'm just curious, how long have you been thinking about doing this project? She says, well, we've actually been talking about it for about three years. Three years? Yeah, yeah, it's been a while. Oh, you know, what's changed that's gotten you wanting to do this now? Well, we actually, the kids just went off to college. They just graduated college. And so now we're trying to do a few things for us to kind of get the house to where we want. And that's really what's changed. Oh, that's awesome. Congratulations. You got your son in college, kid in college, whatever. You know, that's definitely, I can definitely see now why you would have, you know, potentially have some extra money around or whatever. And so like you engage in this conversation, right? Well, what's your, what's your timeframe? Like when, when are you hoping to have this done by? Well, I mean, we're not in a rush. We just, we'd like to have it done before the end of the year. Okay. Yeah. That's, that's not a problem. That definitely fits in our timeframe. We're, we're booked out to August right now. We're booked out to September right now, you know, whatever it is. So we can definitely get this in and have it done for you by the end of the year. So that's good. You know, and then you just go down this process. Have you, now let me ask you this. Have you ever done a project like this before? Well, yeah, we actually had our bathroom done when we first moved in. And so we moved in five years ago and we had it done right away because it needed, had the old pink tile and bathroom. Like, oh yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about. We call it the Pepto-Bismol bathroom. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. Yeah, so we had the bathroom done. Oh, okay, awesome. How was that experience? Well, it was okay. You know, when it was all said and done, it turned out okay. There was a few hiccups. A few hiccups? By the way, that is a tool that we use as a tactic. It's called mirroring. If you've never heard of the word mirroring before, then that is a clear statement. I'm trying to think of the word. That's a clear indicator that you've never had sales training and you don't know what sales is. Because mirroring is the most basic tool in sales, right? Well, yeah, we got it all done. And at the end, it was all done. But there were a few hookups along the way. A few hiccups? Yeah, you know, I mean, just nothing major, but it was just things like they would tell us that they would be there at eight o 'clock in the morning and they wouldn't show up till 10. You know, we would actually wait for them before we went to work. And so we'd, you know, we'd be waiting around and trying to tell our employers when we're going to be in. We wouldn't know. Oh, that sounds really frustrating. Yeah, it was a little frustrating. Well, so, you know, obviously we want to make sure that we're communicating well with you. And that we actually show up and do, you know, at time we're saying we're going to do it. Sounds like that's really important to you. By the way, that's called labeling. Sounds like that's really important to you. Well, I mean, it's, you know, we understand things happen, but it would just be nice if we weren't sitting around for two hours waiting. I totally understand. I would be frustrated. So, you know, we always want to make sure that we're communicating with you what's going on. Even if plans change, you know, we want to make sure we have a solid. communication plan with you in place and just communicate everything that's going on. Yeah, that would be really nice. Perfect. Got it. What else? You know, what was your favorite thing about it? What kind of good experiences you have? Well, they did a really good job of, you know, cleaning up when they were done. Like every day they would clean up really well. So we appreciated that. I get it. Want to make sure we're not coming in and just destroying your house. So having a neat area that's well protected from dust and, you know, organized, you know, sounds like that's really important to you as well. Yeah, that would be, you know, obviously, you know, we understand things are going to be everywhere, but we don't want to come in and like trip over things when we get home. I agree with you 100%.

18:55

Hey, just a quick time out from the show. If you're a frustrated contractor who's dealing with low profit margins, stuck working on the tools every day or doing free estimates for people who are never going to hire you in the first place. I invite you to my private contractor community, The Profit Club, where contractors just like you are adding two to three times more profit each year without producing any more jobs and finally getting completely off the tools to never do another free estimate again. So if you're ready to increase your profits, stop doing free estimates and get off the tools, then all you have to do is click the link in the show notes to learn more about The Profit Club. and see how I can easily two to three times the cash in your pocket, give you a proven sales process that will convert more jobs with ease and get you off the tools once and for all. And the best part is you can do all of this without having to produce more jobs than you currently are. Click the link to learn more. Now let's get back to the show.

19:50

You know, that's one of the things that we spend the most time on at the end of the day is cleaning up and organizing because when we're not there working, we want it to feel like, you know, leave as minimal footprint as possible. so that you're not inconvenienced at all or as little as possible. Yeah, that sounds great. This is just the example, right? These are conversations and questions you've never even thought to ask because you don't care. All you care is, are you going to hire me or not, right? That's the difference. Providing value is actually learning how to have a real conversation with real people. That makes them feel good about themselves when you leave that conversation. The whole, yeah, Brad's construction, not going to help. Yeah, we want to get a, you know, we like to get an estimate on a deck. Okay, well, I'll just tell you right now, we're booked out till August. So if you need it done before then, we can't help you. Oh, well, I mean, no, we can wait a little bit. You know, that's fine. Okay, good. Well, you know, what's your budget? Like, that's not a sales call. That's an interrogation. The old crusty contractors who have not understood this, they get to a point to where they're just like, well, if you're not going to fit into Mike, you know, fit all of the, into the perfect shape, you know, you can't, can't put a square peg into a round hole. So, you know, I'm, I'm a round hole. If you're not a round hole, let's just move on. Let's just get it over with quick and move on. Like that kind of mentality will cost you millions of dollars in sales. For some people, it might work. If you're the only electrician in town and you can basically be a dickhead to everyone and still get work, you may have a captive audience like that. But for most people that I know, there's a lot of competition that are cheaper out there and they can't afford to be a dickhead. Speaking of pricing, I get it all the time. Brad, this all sounds great. Sign me up. I love it. But you said you can make me more money. Yeah, I can make you more money. Well, how am I going to charge more than what I'm currently charging? The people down the street, you know, people that aren't here legally are doing it for a third of the price of what I am. And you're telling me I got to raise my prices. Yep, that's right. You need to raise your prices. Well, how's that going to work? Well, one, because you're not in competition with them. Yes, I am. What do you mean? I just lost a job last week to this company. That's because you lost a job to a person that was never going to hire you in the first place because they weren't your customer. What? Yeah. Not everyone that calls you is your customer. Matter of fact, most people that call you are not your customer. That's why you need to have a sales process in place that eliminates people that are not your customer. So when you provide value in this call, and then you get to the investment portion where you give out some ballparks to test the waters, and they completely balk at those prices, now you know they aren't serious. Now you can recommend the guy down the street so they can go get screwed by them. because they're not your customer. There's this misconception that if someone calls me, it's my job to sell them. It's not your job to sell them, right? And so what happens is you go out there and you get a lead. You go out there and you meet with them. It's a nice young couple, first-time homebuyers. They got this new house. They want to replace the fence in the backyard. And they call you up because they saw one of your trucks in the neighborhood. And so you're like, oh, cool. Yeah, this is a good neighborhood. I'll go out there. You talk to them like, yeah, you know, one of them is a teacher who doesn't make very much money. And the other one is, you know, I don't know. He he works in a warehouse. So you're like, OK, these people don't have very much money, but I really want this job. So let me figure out how I can sharpen my pencil real quick, you know, real tight and pointy so I can knock some money off so that way I can get this job. Guys, that is not your client a hundred ways to another. They were never your client. You are far better off to say, you know what, customers, I really would like to help you, but unfortunately, I can't help you. Now, if you're going to give someone an estimate, give them an estimate, right? If you go out there and meet with them and you're like, oh, these people don't have any money, you still give them an estimate. I'm not saying like, you know, screw people or not help people. You still give them an estimate, but they're getting charged full price. They're getting charged premium full price. They can't afford it. They can't afford it. That's not my problem. That's their problem. But you can weed out these people in the sales process. Providing value, again, has nothing to do with you whatsoever. It's all about the customer and how they feel. When they get off a phone call with you, And they're like, man, I've never had talked to a contractor like that before. That was actually really refreshing that I enjoyed that. That is the kind of experience that you want them to have. That's the kind of experience my clients' clients have because that's what we work on. It's not that hard, by the way. It's not hard to learn this. Now, we do have to practice because we got to get good at it. It's just like any other skill. Can't ride a bicycle the first time and then be a BMX. You know, racer takes years and years of practice to do that stuff. Luckily for us, it doesn't take that long, but it does take some practice. But you can be really good at it within 25,30 role plays. That's it. You can be pretty good at it. Now, for some people that want to continue to get better, like myself, I've done well over 500 role plays. Some of my clients have done well over, you know, two, three, four,500 role plays themselves. Those are people that are constantly seeking to improve and keep their skills sharp. That's there. It's available. But to do the bare minimum and still be good and win jobs, it's probably around 30, maybe 50 on the high end, depending on if you pick it up or not. But somewhere between 30,50 role plays, you're going to be able to implement this and have a ton of success. And here's the crazy part. Even if you hate sales now and you implement this, you will actually start liking sales. Because this isn't sales. There's nothing about this is sales. Now we use those terms because that's the most common terms that we use, but this isn't sales. This is actually communicating. So not only does this help you in your sales process, it actually helps you with your spouse. It helps you with your kids. It helps you with your employees. It helps you out in the real world talking to the Uber driver or the cashier or the server. These tools apply to all forms of communication. And if you were, you know, a type of person that wanted to use tools for evil, you could do that because you can manipulate people. It's actually fairly easy to do, but you can manipulate people once you know how to control their emotions and once you know how to talk and ask things and do things in a way that get people to trust you. Now, I don't work with those people. If I have a hint of, you know, if I smell a hint of deceit or, you know, bad. character, you're not getting in my program. I'm not even letting you anywhere near it, because you're not going to taint what we do. We have an amazing community. You're not going to come in here and screw it up. But in the sales process, it's about providing value, right? So you have these conversations. By the way, the nine questions that I was talking about, you can get those. They're in the sales. The best way is to get my book. If you get my book, it basically outlines every single thing that I talk about. you know, providing value is not that hard to do. You could read the book and get a lot of this information. There's nine specific questions that we ask, and it's really to, you know, help you get to the point of figuring out what's important to them. And then you can weed out the tire kickers, right? So page 116, key questions for discovery calls. There's nine questions you can say, you can get my book, you can go or ask for the sales. The No BS Guide to Eliminate Tidy Kickers, the questions are in there as well. But that's just the beginning, right? I want to talk to you, the second part of this podcast, I want to talk to you about what I call the yes staircase. Now, this is something that I made up. This is the idea of answering any concerns and or expectations, okay? So again, this is about providing value. This is how you provide value. If I were to ask you, you know, what are your client's main concerns? If you were to ask them that. They would tell you, well, price, obviously price, Brad. Yep. Timeline, you know, when's it going to be done? How long is it going to take? You know, maybe are you licensed, bought, and insured? Okay. Are you going to pull permits on this job? Yep. That's good. What are some other ones that you might, you know, that you might think your clients are going to ask you? You know, do you use subs versus employees? That could definitely come up, right? Those are just some of the things that you would say if I asked you what your clients have concerns over, that's what you would tell me. Have you ever thought that maybe clients are concerned about their pets? Have you ever thought they're concerned about their kids? Have you thought they're concerned about their neighbors? These are all concerns or expectations they have, right? I just had my ducks cleaned this morning by a company. Now, it's the same company that does my heating and air, which we recently switched to them because the other company that I had for many, many, many years... just started to go after the money that got bought by a private equity firm and they just started chasing money. Right. And so we're like, screw you, you know, bad service. We're getting away from you. So I go to this more locally owned family owned business. We use them. They've been great on the HVAC stuff with our equipment, but we want to have our ducks clean. So the guy comes out this morning and it was not a very good experience. Let's just say that. And I pay a lot of money. And it was probably worth about half of what I paid for, the experience and the service. Now, what's the expectation or concern? Well, the expectation is like, if I tell you that I want this, this, and this done, that whenever your employees come out, that's actually what I'm getting, right? That can be an expectation or a concern. You know, one of the things I asked them about was doing like a deodorizer or some type of treatment in the ducts after they're done. And they said, yes, we can do that. It's $85. I'm like. fine, whatever, throw it in there. The guy comes out and I said, now the day that they say anything to you about, or the day add on, and I couldn't remember the name of it. I was like, but put like spraying like a, you know, a chemical or something in there to spray it to kind of help it. And I did my brain. I couldn't think of the name of it. He's like, I don't know what you're talking about. No, we've never sprayed anything. We don't, I don't spray anything. I think one of the other texts, maybe he has something, but I don't, I don't ever spray anything. I'm like, okay, whatever. And then when we get done, he has an invoice that was pre-printed from the office that he brought with him. And on the invoice, it says spray deodorizer, $85. It's on the invoice that he's going to use. So what's he do? He just crosses that out and says, obviously, we didn't do this. I'll just take it off the list. Now, there was no concern on his part about whether or not I wanted that. Maybe that's really important to me. Maybe even if it doesn't work, maybe the deodorizer is a scam. But to me, I think it's going to, you know, psychologically, it's going to make me feel better about the cleaning or whatever, because I have concerns. Because actually, the reason why we're cleaning the ducts is because I do have, I have respiratory issues. I have asthma and I have problems I'm trying to figure out because. I'm having a hard time breathing in my house. And I think it's from pet dander that's gotten into the vents and recirculating. And like, this is actually a health concern for me, right? I'm trying to increase the quality of my life. And this tech, who's a young guy, and it's not, I'm not blaming him. It's a training problem. It's a production problem. It's not him individually, but this tech did not care and think about it or even try to fix it, you know? But that's actually one of the reasons, the main reasons that I called was because it's. It's for health reasons. It's not because I just want my ducks cleaned. I'm trying to eliminate things in my house that may be trying to kill me. That's important, right? Cleanliness of that, the deodorizer, even if it doesn't work or doesn't do anything, those things are important because it's for an important reason. If you don't know that information about your client and all you're doing is spitting out prices, then you're missing the opportunity to provide value. There's value in empathy. We actually call it tactical empathy because you're employing empathy in a very specific and tactically used opportunity. Even if you are a crusty old carpenter dickhead, even if you hate talking to people, right? You can still employ empathy tactically whenever it's appropriate. And that will actually elevate you as a person. And it makes them feel good about themselves. It's the most basic example of this is when someone loses a loved one. You know, my dad just died last week. My wife died. My dog died. Whatever. We don't go like, oh. We go, oh, I'm so sorry to hear that. That is actually empathy. That's what that is. And you're tactically. deploying that because you really don't care that much that their dog or person died. Right. Not that you're like, you know, no, I don't, I hate people. I'm not talking about that. I'm saying it doesn't affect your life. Like three seconds later, you already forgot about it, but we use empathy in that moment to be like, Oh, I'm so, I'm really sorry to hear that about your, about your dad. Right. That's empathy guys. That's exactly what that is. We can use that throughout the whole sales process. that provides value. I hope you understand what I'm saying. I can't teach you the entire sales process in podcasts, but this is what we go over in the Profit Club and what we talk and teach contractors and how to become amazing master salesmen without having to sell anything. Because I haven't sold anything in probably seven years now. I don't sell stuff. I just mute people. I try to help them as best I can. And if they want my help, I tell them what that costs. And if they realize that I'm the best person to do that job at that price, they hire me. It's that simple. There's nothing hard about this. It's actually very, very easy. It's very, very rewarding because you actually feel good about yourself when you talk to people and you sell them. It's way, way, way, way, way different than an ego stroke where someone's like, man, you do really good work. Wow, you're an amazing craftsman. Pat me on the back, stroke my ego. This is way better than that. But you have to provide the value through the sales process. And all of this actually happens before you even go out to their house. Because in the paid estimate blueprint, you're getting paid to go out there. You're not getting paid to go out there and then learn everything about their project. You're learning all the stuff about their project before you actually go out there. And then you're just getting paid to go out there to confirm everything and to give them a firm price. Maybe you're bringing samples, maybe you're doing design, whatever. But all of the sales, if you want to call it that, all of the song and dance is happening over the phone before you go out there and waste tons of time. Because I'm not doing an estimate for anyone until I know that they're sold and they've paid for it. I'm not spending one second on it. And you shouldn't either. And if you're not providing enough value in the sales process, and then you say, yeah, we charge to come out there, you're not going to sell jack crap. You're going to be like, yeah, we charge for an estimate. And they're going to be like, I'm not paying you. That's stupid. I've never even heard of that. That's because you provided zero value in the sales process. When you provide the appropriate amount of value in the sales process and they say, we have a small, you say, I have a small investment. It's $250. They go, okay, yeah, we understand. Your time is valuable because you just proved to us that you're actually really, really good. So I can only imagine that you're in extremely high demand and you have very limited time. So I'm going to respect you. And I'm going to pay that money because we're not messing around. See, what you're actually doing is elevating you as a person than being just a labor contractor, right? You actually, in their minds, you actually might be a little bit above them in terms of status because you've proven that you actually value your own self and your own time by charging for it because you know your time is worth it. And by the way, people that are successful, you know, whether it's a doctor, a lawyer, engineer, a businessman, people that are like that will actually appreciate others because they can sniff it out. They will appreciate other people that value their time and they're more likely to actually pay for it. Now, the single mom with 18 kids that lives in the trailer park. Yeah, she doesn't give a crap because she has an hourly mindset where she gets paid by the hour. And so everything that gets done is measured by the hour value. When you're dealing with a true client, a true dream client, they don't measure everything by an hourly rate. They measure it by the result. So if you're charging, you're elevating yourself in their eyes because you're saying, I'll come out there and meet with you, but my time is worth 250 bucks an hour. My time is worth 500 bucks an hour. And so if you want me to help you, you're going to pay the money. And they're going to be like, we really like you. And there's no one else that we've talked to that's even remotely close to seeming to have any type of comprehensible knowledge or confidence or anything like that, anything like you. So we are willing to pay for you because basically we already want to hire you. The only question is, can we afford you? You want people to turn you away, not because they don't like you, not because they don't see the value in you, but because they truly just can't afford you. They want to hire you, but they financially cannot afford you. That's the situation you want to be in if they turn you down. Well, we're going to talk to three other contractors because I've never heard of someone charging for an estimate. If you get that response, you provided zero value in the sales process. So you have to understand that. Like, it's all about emotion. We're going long here. I just want to close it up here. It's all about the emotion. If you can get the book and implement the nine questions and use, you know, some of the tools that I've talked about, use some empathy, use some mirroring and labeling and apply it in the sales process, it's going to make a world of difference. And it's going to save you a huge amount of time. Huge amount of time. One of my clients, Luke, he's a landscaper. When he joined, he actually figured it up. He's kind of a numbers guy. He figured it up. He's like, I did the math. He said, by implementing the profit sales system, I've actually saved over two months a year of my time. Eight hours a day times five days a week. It saved me over two months. you know, two business months, if you will, of his time by not doing free estimates anymore. That is huge. That's a huge amount of return on your investment for learning a very simple process, you know, implementing the paid estimate blueprint, you know, learning the profit sales system and implementing this, your business. So guys, that is the true secret in sales is in the value of emotions. All of the value for you lies in their emotions. When you can unlock their emotions, then you can use it against them to basically charge whatever you want. So that's the end of the show. If you want to learn how to use this process, reach out to me. inquire into the profit club because that's where we teach it is in the profit club. Learn about the profit sales system or how to implement the paid estimate blueprint. You can do this in your business. It does work in every industry, every location, does not matter. Population does not matter. Size of business. None of this stuff matters. It works. I have clients in every client in place, you know, two continents, every trade, it works. Okay. So if you want to implement this in your business, if you're absolutely tired of wasting your time with tire kickers and going out and not closing deals and losing them to the cheap people and not charging enough, that is what I help people do. That's what the profit club is designed to do. Go check it out. Let me know. I'm happy to share with you what that looks like. There is an application process. You don't just get in automatically. You have to actually apply and I have to approve it because I don't want anybody in there. It is actually kind of limited. You know, I only bring in five people a month because I limit it to, to keep, to control the quality again, to provide value for my clients. I limit the number of people that jump, that come in. Right. And I charge a premium because I just, I just got done teaching you how to do this. And if you schedule a discovery or strategy call with me, I'm going to use the same tools that I just told you on you in that call. The difference is you, even if you're looking for it, you won't notice it. It'll come out naturally. You won't even realize I'm doing it to you. Matter of fact, whenever the guys learn this and they come in and they learn the process, they learn the sales portion. And then I go back and I go, well, you know, I actually did this on you when you were on the call. And they're like, holy shit. Yeah, you did. I just realized that that's what you were doing to me. Because it works, guys. It absolutely works. So reach out. Let me know. Profit Club. It's worth every penny. And I'll help you implement this in your business. You know where to find me on the socials, guys. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast. And until next time, remember, profit is not a dirty word.