Does it matter if it makes sense or not? Doesn't matter if they waited too much. You could do that job for $30,000, but if they want it done sooner, you got to charge them $45,000. It doesn't matter to them. The price doesn't matter. The motive is the timeline and the quality of life for their family member. Here's another thing to hit on pain and pleasure. I know you said you needed this done by June, end of June. What happens if you don't get it done by then? What happens if you can't find a contractor to do it by then? Now what I'm doing is I'm installing future pain. Well, that would be, that would be a serious problem. I mean, we would have to, I mean, she could still move in the room. That's not a problem, but I guess we would just have to let her use our bathroom, you know, and, and she, but that room is, uh, there's a couple of steps in that to go to our room. And so like we would have, somebody would have to pick her up or move her, or we'd have to have a ramp installed or all of these other things that we would have to change in order to get that result. And that would be even more of a pain. So now they're thinking about, man, that's, yeah, we could do it, but that's going to be, that's going to suck even more if we have to do all those things. Now they're thinking about future pain, right? You asked the question, what happens if you don't get this done? How long have you been thinking about doing a project like this? Who else is involved in the decision-making process? Who else is excited about this project? Maybe I'm talking to the wife. The husband is the wallet. The wife's just talking to you to get all the pricing and then she has to take that back to the husband who's going to make the final decision. He doesn't want to be involved in the process right now because he's a busy professional. He's having his wife come and do all the legwork, but he ultimately has the decision-making power. Well, that could be a problem because the husband is not emotionally involved in this process. He's looking at it strictly from a financial perspective. If I get the wife on my side, if I could sell the wife, right, if I can get her seeing the dream, she's basically going to go back to her husband and say, we're going to do this and we're going to hire Brad or, you know, you're not getting any for a while or you're going to be sleeping on the couch or we're getting a divorce or whatever it might be. Like, you can sell the wife in that situation. And then he's, she's got to go sell the husband, but the better scenario would be to have both of them on the call at the same time. So if you're asking the question, like if you're having a quick call, like, you know, is there any other people that we would need to have on this call or having this meeting so that we can answer any questions they may have, uh, you know, and not slow up the process or whatever, blah, blah, blah. And they may say, well, my husband is also involved, you know, but he's, he's not really involved in this process. You can be like, well, I understand he may not be involved, but it is important that we have everyone on this call so that we can address any questions or issues that come up. Right. And so you can you can make a decision if you want to push that issue or not. But if you don't ask that question and you think the wife is all you got to sell and you spend three, four, five hours with her and estimates and all that, and then you follow up two weeks later and the wife's like, oh, my husband said we're not going to pay that much. You just wasted all that time. When you could have avoided it. So we figure out like, who are the decision makers? Not identifying decision makers means deals die later. There could be one person who has one opinion about one thing. And if you don't address that person and that opinion, that one thing, the deal dies because you didn't address it. Right? Everyone has different reasons for doing stuff. My wife and I have different reasons for doing stuff. We may both want to say, remodel the kitchen, but her reasons for remodeling the kitchen are different from my reasons for remodeling the kitchen. And if I don't know what the different reasons are, I could sell the dream to the wife who has all of these reasons, but I don't address or handle any of the husband's dreams or concerns or expectations. The deal's dead because I didn't address his. So you have to have all the decision makers. If price is the only thing they're deciding on, you skip discovery. So, I mean, price plays a factor for sure, right? But again, price to value discrepancy. If I didn't do any discovery, if I didn't figure any emotions out, if I didn't touch on any of those, if I didn't sell the dream or sell future pain, if I didn't do any of that, what I've done is relegated myself to just being a commodity like all the other contractors. If I don't have a difference or if I don't extract information that makes them feel differently or good about this decision. I'm now just a gas station on a street of 10 other gas stations. I'm a commodity. Now the only left to decide on is the price. And so now price becomes the deciding factor. See, a lot of you think you lose the jobs because of price. You're not losing because of the price. You're losing because you didn't offer any other value other than the price. And the price does not match the value of what they think they're getting with you. It's very easy for people to say, oh man, all contractors just want the cheapest price. You know, everybody's cheap and doesn't want to pay for anything. That is a straight up lie. There are lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of people that will pay premium dollar to get the result they're looking for. You just don't know how to do that. And so it's easy for you to blame the client than it is for you to take responsibility of the fact that you don't know how to sell. It's an easy out. Go to any Facebook contractor Facebook group where they're talking about sales and you will see 90% of the comments are, you know, people are just cheap these days. People don't want to pay for quality. Those are the contractors that are refusing to look in the mirror and saying, you know what, maybe, just maybe, I don't know how to sell jobs and it's not the client's fault. If you're listening to this and this is resonating with you, congratulations, you're not one of the 90% because you're trying to get better. You're trying to learn how to do things better. So you're on the right path, but you have to know how to do these things. Number four, and we're getting close. Man, this is going way too long. Sometimes I think it's going to be like a 10 minute podcast. It ends up being like 50 minutes. I should take my own advice here. Number four, talk less. You're talking way too much. Maybe I need to go back and watch my own sales training stuff. You need to talk less, right? Talk less. Talking more does not mean more value. Silence is where deals are made. The deals are made in silence. Why? Because silence is when the client is thinking about what's going on, thinking about and making the decision. You can't make a decision when there's all kinds of noise going on and people are talking to you. I know all of us have done this. You're doing a task. Your spouse comes in, says something to you. You recognize that you hear a voice talking to you, but you're so focused on what you're doing that you don't actually hear what they say. And you're just like, oh, yeah, OK. And they're like, what do you mean? Yeah, OK. Like I said that, you know, this or this and it's not a yeah or OK answer. So like that happens all the time. You can't do things when someone's talking or vice versa. Someone's talking to you and you're trying to do work. And you can't focus on what you got to do because they're talking to you. That's what happens in the sales process. When you just talk nonstop because you don't like silence, the client is silent because they're trying to figure out how are we going to pay for this? It's $10,000 more than what we wanted to. What if we can pull it out of our 401k? Or maybe if we do this, we can save some money here. They're trying to solve the problem in their head. And you're talking to them to try and quote, make the sale. Shut your mouth. Let them figure it out. When they're done talking or I mean, when they're done thinking about stuff, they will actually say, hey, are you still there? Yeah, I'm still here. You have to live in silence, guys. Contractors talk too much because they're nervous. They think more info equals more value. And they're trying to convince people to buy things from them. Exceptional salespeople only talk about 30% of the time. The client is talking 70% of the time. That's what we call the grandma's rule. It's one of the seven principles of selling. Grandma's rule is you have two ears and one mouth for a reason. You should be listening twice as much as you're talking. When you talk, you kill control. Talking lowers perceived authority. That's interesting. You mean if I talk more, it actually lowers my authority? Yes. There's a scripture in the Bible that says even a fool is thought to be wise until he opens his mouth. Mainly meaning is that you can be a complete fool, but if you sit in a corner and shut your mouth, no one's going to know you're a fool. But the second you open your mouth, everyone's going to realize that you're a fool and you don't know what you're talking about. So take that advice and talk less. Talking angles here, the power of silence after price. That's what I was talking about. You give someone a price, a ballpark. Hey, it's going to be somewhere between 80 and $60,000. Shut your mouth. Let them think, oh,60,80, okay. This is what they're thinking in their head. They're not saying out loud. They're thinking this, man, that's more than what we thought. You know, we only had 50,000 budgeted. 60 is doable, but anything over that's probably going to be too much. I wonder what, you know, what all is going to be included. What's the difference between 60 and 80? This is happening in milliseconds, but these are the things that they're thinking. And they're thinking, you know. I really like this guy. And I think, you know, even if it's going to be 70,000, I think we can make it work. And as they're doing that, you open your mouth and say, well, if that's too much money, you know, there's some other options available. And you just killed the deal right there. It wasn't about it being too much money. It was about they were trying to figure out how to make it happen. And you just literally pulled out the gun and shot yourself by saying, well, we have less expensive options. Shut your freaking mouth, guys. Shut it. Let there be silence. I've been on sales calls where literally three minutes goes by. I'm looking at the watch. Nobody's talking for three minutes. Some of you, five seconds feels like an eternity. Three minutes feels like it's the end of the world. You just keep your mouth shut. Put your phone on mute if you have to. Put it on speaker and turn it down. Walk away. Whatever it takes to keep your mouth shut. You wait three minutes and then the client goes, okay, yeah, we can do that. Because that three minutes was them figuring out how they were going to do it, figuring out if they want to do it. So keep your freaking mouth shut. I know some of you don't like the word freaking. I don't care. I try not to cuss. I am the cussing champion of the world. I was in the Marine Corps. Nobody can cuss better than me. Cussing makes you look ignorant. It actually makes you look stupid. I try not to cuss because I don't want to look stupid. Sorry if that offends you. It's anybody can cuss. That's easy to do. Not cussing takes skill and intentionality. So sorry if the word freaking upsets you or triggers you. I've literally had people message me, you know, you really shouldn't use the word freaking. I don't care. Sorry, a little rant there. Talking creates objections. We actually had this situation yesterday on our sales call. A client was talking, he's brand new to the group and he doesn't know any of the sales process, so it's not his fault. But he said, you know, a lot of times if we're talking to someone, we may say something like, we're talking about line item quotes. So like if they ask you for like, can I get a line item breakdown? Your first question should always be, what are you hoping to see? But he, I don't remember the exact word, but he added something to that of the effect of, I know there may be, I know there might be some questions around pricing. What are you hoping to see if I break down the price? That's an assumption that it's a pricing issue. And what you're doing now is injecting a conflict into the conversation by simply saying that. So if you don't talk very much, it removes the opportunities for you to say something stupid. If you say something like, well, you know, if price is an option. Maybe there's some other things that we can do. They never said price was an option. They just said, can we see a breakdown on the price? Now, some of you, you know, lose your shit whenever you, honestly, I just cussed. You guys may be cussed now. Now I look stupid. Some of you are, you lose your mind whenever a customer asks you, can we get a price breakdown? There's nothing wrong with that question. If you're scared of that question, you have some bigger problems to deal with. There's nothing wrong with a client answering that, asking that question. But if you make an assumption and say, well, you know, there's, There's different pricing options. Where are you hoping to see? They never said it was about price. And so you made that assumption. You inserted that. And now what you're saying is you don't believe the price is worth the value of what you're charging. So now the client's thinking, well, why did he say that? Why did he say if price is an option? Does he think that it's too much money? Is he overcharging me? So keep your mouth shut when you talk about stuff like that. I'm going to try to speed up here. I know we're going long. I got one more thing to go through. The last one, it's not a huge tip, but it's an important tip. The last one is always leave every conversation with a commitment for the next step. Always. Let me think about it and I'll call you back is not acceptable. It's not acceptable. You need to have a specified time. and date for the next contact. So if I'm on a call with someone, this happens a lot when I talk with contractors and they're like, okay, Brad, yeah, I hear all your stuff. I need to just think about it a little bit. And I'm like, I understand, you know, sometimes people need to think about it and I'll do my normal objection handling stuff. And they're just like, I just don't make any decisions, you know, in that moment, I got to sleep on it. I got to think about it. I need pillow time, whatever. Totally understand. How long do you think you'll need? to make that decision? Well, I mean, probably two days. Okay, perfect. So today's Wednesday. So by Friday morning, you think you'll have an answer? Yeah, I think so. Awesome. So here's what I'll do. If I don't hear back from you by Friday morning, I'll give you a call at 9 a. m. on Friday. Does that work? Or even better, let's schedule a follow-up call. Friday at 9 a. m. I'll just check in with you. If you have any questions, we can follow up. And if it's not the right decision and you don't want to move forward, no hard feelings, but we just want to check in and make sure. I'm scheduling the next call. Well, we're waiting on two other quotes from contractors. Okay. How long do you think it's going to take? I don't know. Maybe two weeks. Two weeks? Yeah. I mean, one guy's out of town. He's coming in next week, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. Two weeks. I understand. No problem. What about if we follow up on this date in two weeks and then we can go over all your estimates and then you can decide who's going to be the best one, best choice. I'm always getting a commitment. I'm never, ever, ever, ever leaving it in the customer's hand ever. Now, if I schedule a call for Friday at 9 a. m., does that mean they're going to show up? Not necessarily. But if I schedule something, I have a much better chance of getting that result than if I don't schedule anything. So I schedule the next commitments. I don't leave it open-ended. If they need time, give them the time they need. Just follow up. And then if they don't answer or if you follow up and they're still not ready, you just put up a follow-up sequence. The fortunes in the follow-up, you've heard that before, it's true. Fortunes in the follow-up. So follow-up, follow-up, follow-up, follow-up. I have clients and I've done it myself. Six months, a year later, they finally decide to do the project. It wasn't that my price was too much. It wasn't that there was any other problem. The problem was something happened in their life and they needed to take care of it before they could do this project. So with me following up with them once a week, once two weeks, once a month, three months later, four months, five, six months later, they're ready to do the project. And because I was the only one that was following up with them. They're going to call me back first. So you have to have a follow-up process in place to make sure that you're doing this. Now, there's different ways you can automate that, which is what I would recommend. But if not, the simple thing is like, just put it on your Google calendar or your calendar. Hey, they're going to, you know, Friday, I'm going to call them. Friday, we talk to them. They're still not ready. We need more time, Brad. We just don't know if we want to do it yet. Totally understand customer. Here's what I'll do. I'll just keep in touch with you. And then when you're ready, we'll be here. Sounds great. And then I put on my schedule two weeks later, send email to client. Right. And then two weeks after that, send, you know, whatever. One week after that, send a text. Like you could just schedule out those things if you don't have an automated process to do that. But you need to follow up with people. Just because someone doesn't buy today does not mean that they're not a buyer. And if you give up on them, you've wasted all the time that you've spent. to get to that point. You've primed them. You've got them ready to make a decision. And then they have a little bit of hesitation. Stuff happens. They got to take care of something. And you just totally abandoned it. And you just wasted four, five, six, eight hours of your life. Why would you do that? Why would you do that? They're a warm lead. Even if they don't hire you right now, they're still a warm lead. It takes no effort to follow up and say, hey, just checking in. It's been three months. Did you ever, were you ever able to get that project done? They'll say, yeah, we found someone else. They did it for us. Thanks. Perfect. I'll stop bothering you. Or no, sorry. You know, we had to deal with this. We're still interested, but it might take a couple months before we're ready. Totally understand. No problem, customer. I'll follow up in two months. I interviewed a guy on the show over a year ago. He's a professional photographer. And we talked about, you know, how to use photography in your construction business. He follows up with me like every two months. He'll send me an email. Hey, Brad, just checking in. See if you have any events because he does like live events. He'll come and shoot everything and make you look really good on camera. I said, no, I don't have any live events yet, man. Thanks for checking in. Two, three months later. Hey, I'm just checking in. He's been doing this for over a year. He's just checking in, just checking in. It doesn't annoy me. I'm like, cool. He's still checking in. He's still top of mind. Once I decide to do that and I need that services, he'll be the first person I call. Here's a bonus tip for you, and we'll leave with this. Your clients buy on their timeline, not your timeline. It doesn't matter how bad you really need this job. It doesn't matter how bad you really want this job. They're going to buy on their timeline. And if you try to rush that, you become the used car salesman. By the way, last thought, it's so much easier and less sleazy and very natural and you feel good about yourself to just be a consultant. When you start trying to, quote, sell people and, quote, close them, like some of the idiot gurus out there tell you to do, you become a bad person that nobody likes. So don't do that. Just don't do that. Just be a consultant. It's very easy, very natural. You feel good about yourself. And if you do it right, they will come back and hire you. That's all I got for this show, guys. Now, I do want to give you a bonus. This is a bonus for you for hanging out this long. You know, I have a book that I wrote. It's called The Contractor Profit Blueprint. A lot of the tips and sales things is in here. I have two chapters on selling. And you can get that information. So here's what I do. If you go to the website, you can buy the e-book for $7. You can buy the paperback book for an additional $19.99. It ends up being $26.99. I'm going to give you this paperback book and the e-book for just $4.99. It's a shipping, basically. I'm losing money on this. This book cost me about $5 and another $5 to ship it. So I'm actually losing money. But you can get the paperback book. You're going to get the instant access to the e-book so you can start reading it. And then once the paperback comes in four or five days later, now you have a workbook version because there is actually... things in here to fill out. It's an actual workbook. You get started with the ebook, you get the paperback book in a few days, and then you can start getting a lot more of these sales tips. So you can get all of that for $4.99, $5. All you got to do is go to the website, thecontractorprofitblueprint. com. We'll put the links in the show notes too. You go there, it's going to ask you to put your name and email. You go to the checkout page. It already automatically has the ebook. You don't have to do anything. It's $7. You check the box that says add the paperback, and then you use this coupon code at checkout. You put the coupon code 5TIPS. That's it. Number 5TIPS, all one word. 5TIPS. Use that coupon code, and you'll get $22 off the total cost. Now, if you go there and don't use the coupon code, you're going to pay $26.99, right? So use the coupon code 5TIPS, and you'll get the paperback and the e-book instantly for just $5, $4.99. That's for shipping. That's my gift to you. You guys can have that. A lot of the stuff in sales is in this book. A lot of stuff we just talked about is in this book. You can implement it in your business right away. Thanks for hanging out for me. Hanging out with me, not for me. Hanging out with me, guys. If you ever need help in your business, if you want me to help you install the profit sales system into your business, even if you need the automation side of it, we have a CRM that we sell and you can use as well to automate the entire thing. All you got to do is reach out to me. And I'm happy to show you what that looks like and see if there's something we can do to help you. You can always schedule a free strategy call with me. Happy to look at your business and see where you're at currently. And then we can develop a strategy going forward of what that looks like to get your goals. Here's a tip. I'm doing the same thing I just told you in the five tips. I want to figure out what your goals are, right? I want to figure out the motive. And then I'll be able to share with you. what that looks like. And if you want my help, I can share with you what that looks like as well. You don't need my help if you don't want it. But if you do want my help, I'll share with you what that looks like. It's free. It's an hour call. It's a full strategy call. You can do that as well. Just go to show notes and you can schedule that as well. That's all I got. Thanks for hanging out with me. You can always find me on any of the socials. Search for the Hammer Grind podcast. And remember, until next time, profit is not a dirty word.
