Sales is all about the art of asking. It's not about the science of telling. Hey, it's Brad here. It's 2026 and you're still using a tape measure and grid paper to do your drawings. That's why I'm excited to tell you about today's sponsor, iGUIDE. With the iGUIDE Planix R1 camera and laser system, you can capture an entire home in about 45 minutes. All of your measurements, photos, and a detailed floor plan. all at once. No hand sketches, no guessing, no more. Was that wall 10 foot or was it nine foot? Or, oh man, I forgot to measure the window offset. You just hit start and walk away. That's it. You're starting the job with accurate as-builds and you can export straight to DXF, DWG, or RVT files so you and your team can get to work immediately. Miss something? Well, you don't have to worry about that because it's all right there in virtual land waiting for you. This is how you avoid costly mistakes. This is how you reduce change orders. And this is how you run a tighter operation. And more importantly, it's how you protect your margins. If you're serious about operating like a pro in 2026, it's time to upgrade. Go to hammerandgrind. com forward slash iGUIDE. That's I-G-U-I-D-E to order your iGUIDE Planix R1 camera today and start running your jobs the right way. Hey, welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Brad. And this is a part two of our three-part series on the things that we've learned working with my coaching clients. Now, if you missed last episode last week, you need to go back and listen to it. That was on marketing. This episode is going to be on sales. And so what we've done here, just to catch you up, within my coaching program, we record all of our coaching calls. And so obviously with the use of AI, we've went back. about six months or so. And we've uploaded all of our coaching calls and we've analyzed it to see what are the top three things that contractors are struggling with in three different categories. Last week was on marketing. This week is on sales. And then next week will be on just general business items. So let's dive into the sales aspect of it. Now, I want to put one little caveat here. So when people come into the coaching program, the Profit Club, and they're brand new, They obviously are going to make a lot of mistakes. They're going to do things wrong. They're going to have more issues as they stay in, as they go through the program, as they get coaching, as they network with the other community and they get better, then they have less of these issues. And maybe it's some different issues. So a lot of these issues are really more beginner issues, if you will, people that are new to the coaching program. If you've never taken any sales training of any kind, then you're more than likely going to have these issues when you come into the program. So just keep in mind, like these aren't like just across the board. I have, you know, I have clients that have been with me for two, three years. These aren't the issues they're struggling with, but these are the most common issues that come up within the coaching program on our coaching calls because that's the most common problems for new contractors joining in. It's still relevant. We still have these issues even when we're seasoned pros. So it's good as a refresher. even if you have had sales training. So let's look at these three things. Here are the three things that AI has identified. Number one, contractors are losing control after the estimate. Number two, price objections are really budget, value, or wrong client problems. And number three, contractors are talking too much and missing motive. So number three is probably the most important one of these. Make sure you stick around to the end because this is going to be one that comes up a lot. And it's probably the, even though these are, you know, one, two, three doesn't mean that these are, you know, one is the most important and three is the least important. It's just these are the three things. Number three, in my opinion, is one of the most important or at least the one that happens the most. So make sure you stick all the way to the end. So let's dive into number one. Contractors are losing control after the estimate. I'm just going to read this here. This is from AI. This shows up as I need to talk to my spouse. We're getting other quotes. Send it over. Send over the estimate or we'll get back to you. The problem is not that customers need time. The problem is that the contractor leaves the next step vague and up to the client. Okay. So a lot of us, I'm laughing because it's bringing back flashbacks of myself. A lot of us live on Hope Island. If you've never heard the term Hope Island, it basically means that you talk to a client. It seems like it's going really well. It seems like you've made a connection. It seems like the client is all in. They just got to do one little last thing. They got to talk to their financial advisor or their spouse or, you know, whoever. They just got to do one little thing. And you're living on Hope Island. You're like, man, I hope I really get this job. I feel like I'm going to get it because it went great. But you're hoping that you get this job. You're hoping that you land this job. And we call that Hope Island. And Hope Island is where dreams go to die. It's where sales go to die, right? Because there is no such thing as hoping. Either you got the job or you didn't. Either you sold the job or you didn't, right? There is no hope, okay? And so, like I said, Hope Island is where deals go to die. Verbal excitement is not a sale, guys. So within the Profit Club, people are like, hey, I just, you know, I always ask for wins. We get on calls. I always like to get wins like, hey, what's some wins you guys have? And sometimes we'll get, hey, I just talked to a client about a $50,000 bathroom model. And, you know, I'm pretty sure we're going to get the job. And I have to kind of crush their dreams a little bit. And I'm like, hey, sounds great. Awesome. Hope you do. However, in the profit club, nothing counts until you have a check in hand. That's just that's just the measuring that we use. You don't have the job is not sold until you either have a signed contract and really not until you money is exchange place, you know, exchange space, places, game talk, exchange hands, right? Even a signed contract, even though it's signed doesn't mean you got the job because they can still get out of it, right? But when they start paying you money, for the most part, that's what we consider a job sold. And a lot of times we'll, you know, we always encourage our guys if they get a check to like post it in the group, obviously blocking out any personal information. But like share, we share our wins in the group, you know, Hey, I just sold a $75,000, you know, flooring job or whatever. 72,000 are a flooring job. Um, you know, our biggest one to date, or Hey, I just landed a $300,000, you know, remodeling job. We like to do that in the group because it's, it's motivation, right. For others who are coming in and like, Hey, people are doing this. People are selling jobs at a 50% gross profit, blah, blah, blah. So that's what I'm just, I'm laying out the carpet here and laying out the. the foundation of like a job is not sold until you have money in hand. Right. So Hope Island is where a lot of people go and they, they take their vacation there. They go to Hope Island and, and then they get crushed. They get crushed whenever the client never calls them back. They get crushed whenever the client calls them back and says, sorry, we decided to go a different direction, right? So Hope Island is where deals go to die. Verbal excitement on either party is not, it's not a sale, guys. It's just not. You have to understand that most people on earth, the general public want to avoid conflict. Nobody likes conflict. I mean, just nobody likes conflict unless you're a psychopath, right? Nobody likes conflict. Maybe if you're a veteran, you might like conflict. Nobody else likes conflict. By the way, there's not that much difference between a psychopath and a military veteran. I don't know if you guys know that. It's like one degree of difference. Nobody likes conflict. So people will avoid conflict at all costs, right? They will lie to your face to avoid conflict. It makes no logical sense. Like, you know, if you have a person you're talking to, and they're the parent of a kid who's on your kid's baseball team, meaning you're going to see them for the rest of the season, right? They can't just hide from you. You're going to see them. They will still lie to your face in that moment to buy themselves time and then make up excuses later on. Now, I'm not trying to say that everyone's a liar and a bad person. A lot of this happens subconsciously. They will lie to you in the sense that they're not planning on hiring you. That's a fact. But they're going to somehow try to ease it down, like let you down softly. They don't want to just come out and tell you, sorry, Brad, we're not going to hire you. We hired someone else. A lot of people don't want that conflict. They don't want you going, well, I don't understand. I don't understand. You know, I thought you said we were the best and you're going to hire us. They want to avoid that, right? So people are going to not tell you the truth. I remember one time. When I have my business, I got a referral from a friend of mine who owns a roofing company. And they don't do, you know, they'll do roofs and skylights and all that stuff, but they don't do the inside the house stuff. Like, so if they put a new skylight in, they don't do the trim, redo the trim or drywall repair or whatever. So he usually just refers them to me, right? The customer calls me directly. I'm not working through my friend. And we had a job one time, this lady had like three or four skylights and they needed us to trim it out. So we go there to do some work. And while I'm there working, This customer is complaining about the roofers, right? She's complaining about a lot of things. And, you know, they sounded like legitimate complaints. Like it wasn't like she was just making up stuff. And so me being a business owner and understanding how other business owners are, I called the salesperson of, you know, of the roofing company. And I just said to him, hey, man, I just want to give you some feedback, right? That this person was complaining about this, this or this. I just, I'm just, you know, This is a courtesy call of letting you know. I don't know if it's true. I don't know the situation. I'm just letting you know so that maybe you can go back and talk to your crew or whatever and figure out if this is true or not. And I told him, I said, hey, just don't call her. Whatever you do, don't call her and ask her about this. So what does he do? He calls her immediately. And what does she do? I never said any of those things. She lied. Straight up, bold-faced lied. I never said any of those things. That's what she told him. We loved you guys. You guys were great. Now, one, I didn't want him calling her because now it makes me look like an idiot because she told me and in confidence, now I go and rat to the sales rep. So he calls you back. He's like, hey, I called her and she said none of that stuff's true. And I'm like, dude, what? I got pissed. I was like, what are you? How stupid are you? I didn't say this. I'm thinking in my mind, like, how stupid are you? I just told you not to call her because she's not going to admit to it. I'm not making it up. I have, there's no benefit to me to make this up. Right. And so he's like, yeah, I called her and she said, everything's okay. So I don't know what she told you, but you know, whatever. That's sealed the deal. By the way, I never, I never recommended my friend's company again ever because of that one sales rep, because his stupid actions of calling that client, you know, he's like, I'm not in high school. I'm going to get to the bottom of this. I'm like, how much of an idiot do you have to be to not understand how people act? The reason why I'm telling you this whole story. is because that's how people are. People will avoid conflict and they don't want to hurt your feelings, especially if they like you. If they like you, they don't want to hurt your feelings. So they will make up things in order to let it down easily and hope that you just go away. They live on Hope Island and the fact that they hope you go away, you're living on Hope Island because you hope you get the job. Hope Island is where dreams go and deals go to die. All right. So... The one thing that what's happening here with a lot of my clients is they're always leaving the estimate or the sale in the hands of the client. The client's like, okay, I got your estimate, Brad. Everything looks pretty good. We just got to talk over my husband or my spouse or whatever, figure out what we want to do. I mean, everything is in line. We're excited. Let me get back to you. I'll talk to him here the next couple of days and we'll get back to you. You're like, okay, yeah, that sounds great. And then you never hear back from them. And then a week goes by and you call them. They don't answer. You leave a voicemail. They don't call you back. You email them. Nothing. Crickets. Ghosting. Has that ever happened to you before? Raise your hand. Everyone should be raising your hand. Yes. That's them trying to let you down softly. Okay. So you don't ever leave. You never leave the conversation in the hands of the client. Meaning there should always be a follow-up. So you've heard the term fortune in the follow-up. It's true. You know, if you have a nurturing sequence, whether it's emails, texts, or a follow-up process, you should have some type of follow-up process in your sales, you know, in your sales process. You know, not everyone's going to buy on day one. Not everyone's going to buy immediately. I always tell my guys all the time, people buy on their timeline. They're not going to buy on your timeline just because you really want to sell the job and you really need to work and your schedule is blank. That's not a reason for them to want to buy now, right? They're going to buy on their timeline. Sometimes it's three months, six months, a year later. Happens all the time. People call back, say, hey, we're ready to get going. And you're like, who are you? I don't even remember you. Oh, I talked to you a year ago. You know, you gave us an estimate on our bathroom and now we're ready to get going. That happens a lot. It happens a lot because people are buying their timeline. Things happen. Stuff comes up. They're ready to sign the paperwork right now. And they get a phone call and their son just got into a car accident. Now they got to buy a new car. Guess what gets puts on hold the bathroom remodel. Cause now they got to go spend money on a new car. That stuff happens. Stuff like that happens all the time. So you have to understand that there's a follow-up process to it. And if your follow-up process is, I just hope to hear back from them, that's not a follow-up process. You just spent all the time meeting with them, talking to them, doing the estimate, going out there, and then you have no follow-up process. That should be a crime. Like it should be at least a misdemeanor. If you invest all of that time and then you don't follow up, there should be some law or crime associated with that because it's dumb. Why would you spend all the energy and effort to do that and then never follow up? So you have to have a strong follow-up process. Now you can use automations or CRMs. There's all kinds of things you can do. You just have to have some type of process and you never leave it up to the customer. So if I go out and I do an onsite consultation with someone, and let's say I have to go back to my office and do the estimate because it's a big estimate. It's going to take me a couple hours. I can't do it onsite. I tell the client, hey, it's going to take me a little bit of time. We do our estimates on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Today is Friday. I will have an estimate to you no later than Wednesday of next week, right? You give them a hard timeline. So let's schedule an appointment to go through the estimate Wednesday morning if you're available at 9 a. m. or whatever. So we'll schedule it and then we'll go over the estimate. Now, this can be over Zoom. It can be over a phone call. It can be in person. I don't care. But you have some type of follow-up process. So you get on the call and you go through the estimate with them. Now, what I would recommend doing is like you get on the call with them, do a Zoom. I would recommend doing a Zoom or whatever, Google Meet, doesn't matter, video conference. And then as soon as you get on there, then you email over the estimate. You do not email the estimate over ahead of time. You email it once you get on the call because you want to go through it with them in real time. Okay. Now, some people are like, oh, no, just send it over. You have to kind of stand your ground. Like if they say just send over the estimate, we don't, you know, that's fine. We'll look at it. They're probably not interested in what you're doing. Right now, they may be busy. That's not 100% guaranteed that that's the issue. But more times than not, they just need your estimates for a comparison or whatever. They're not that serious. Most people will be willing to jump on a call, at least a minimum of phone call. Now, I'm not saying you have to go out in person. If you put them in order of what's most important, in person would have the most impact. Secondly, it would be a video conference. Third would be a phone call. And then the last one would be just sending over an email. So in that order, that would probably be the priority of like what you can do. Obviously, the size of the job matters. If it's a $5,000 job, you don't need to be in person to go over the estimate. If it's a $300,000 job, I would probably go in person, right? Just it's going to depend on what you're doing. So you're going to go over, you're going to schedule a time for the next meeting. You're going to do the estimate. By the way, when you give yourself a deadline like that, you're like, you know,90% more likely to get it done in time. When you have unlimited time of like, I'll do my estimate when I have time, then you just keep dragging it out and time kills deals. So try to get to it as soon as quickly, as soon as possible. And then you have the follow-up. On the follow-up and they go, everything looks great, Brad. We just need some time to think about it. Now, this is where there's a fork in the road. You could try to, you're not trying to be high pressure. That's not the goal here. But it is to call them out or to push back a little bit harder. That's the better term. You can push back a little bit. Not too much. Just a little bit. If someone's like, this is great. We just need some time to think it over. You can push back a little bit and say, yeah, I totally understand. It's a big purchase you got to make. Usually when someone tells me that they need to think about it, it's because they don't have enough information. to be able to make a decision, or I didn't explain something very clearly to you. You know, which one of those would apply here? Because that's true. Like when you know you want something, you want it. You don't really think about it too much. Now, there are certain times you got to think about it. There are certain people who live by the decree of I have to sleep on it. I never make a decision until I sleep on it. Those people you're not going to convince, right? There's some people that are just, they have their little... process they go to, and you're not going to change that with them. And you just have to be able to identify what those are. But if they're like, well, we just need to think about it, that's a common objection, right? That's a very common surface level objection. They don't need to think about it. What they need to think about is, do we like you? Do we trust you enough? Of the options that we have on the table, are you going to be the best option? Those are things they're trying to think about. Not whether or not they want to do the work, You know what I mean? If they want to do it at all, they may tell you that. That's usually not the case, usually. So you can always push back, you know, and say, hey, I just, you know, I totally understand. It's a big decision. You know, some people need some pill time to think about it. But usually what ends up happening is one of these two things, you know, is one of those things happening here. Because if you don't have enough information, I can give you some more information. Or if you don't have enough clarity about something, I can be more than happy to, to be more clear or, you know, try to explain things a little bit better, right? Like that's what you're trying to figure out. Is it one of those two things? Now, again, that doesn't mean they're going to tell you the truth, but they're more likely to give you, if you push back a little bit, they're going to give you a little bit more inclination of what they're thinking. If you don't push back at all and just say, okay, sounds great. I can't wait to hear back from you. Deal's dead. Now they may call back potentially, but you have no control over it. Great. I understand, Mr. and Mrs. Cusper. It's a big decision. You think about it. How much time do you think it's going to take? When are you planning on making a decision? What's your timeline for making a decision on this? And they say, well, we'd like to have something decide by the end of the week. Perfect. How about, I just follow up with you on Friday afternoon. I can give you a call like 4 p. m. Would that work? I'm not asking for their permission. I'm like... telling them that I'm going to follow up and then I'm scheduling a time to do it. You need to schedule this. You always schedule the next follow-up. You never leave it open-ended. If they say, well, we don't know, maybe a couple of days, maybe next week, blah, blah, blah. We're going on vacation. We're leaving tomorrow for a week. When are you going to be back? Oh, we'll be back on the Friday the following week. Awesome. Here's what I'll do is I'll give you a call Monday morning, you know, after you get back from your vacation. I'll give you a call at 9 a. m. How's that sound? Like I'm always scheduling the next appointment. I'm never leaving it open-ended. I would rather them to give me a hard no than a maybe. Maybes are where jobs go to die. Maybes are where deals go to die, right? So someone says stuff like, you know, we got to think about it. We're getting other quotes. You know, those are all doorways to the real objection. Those are not the real objection. Now, people can definitely get more quotes for sure. And then you just simple, simple question. I totally understand, you know, it's, it's, you know, do your due diligence, you know, get all the quotes you need. I do have just curious though, what are you hoping to hear from them that you haven't heard from me yet? Right. What are you hoping to hear from them that you haven't heard from me yet? Or when you're sitting at, I understand customer, you're going to get all these questions, you know, all these other quotes and stuff. I just kind of would like to know, I'm just curious when you're, when you've gotten all of your quotes, And you're sitting at the table, you and your spouse, you and Chris are sitting at the table and you have all the estimates in front of you. What criteria is going to help you decide the right contractor? You're doing that to figure out like what's the, what are they using to decide with? What's the criteria? Is it price? Is it timeline? Is it, you know, things about your company? How long you've been in business? Do they trust you? Is it types of material that maybe you offer and then the other ones don't? Like whatever it is, like what's the criteria, right? Now again, most people are not going to tell you price because price is usually not the number one answer. I know everyone thinks it's price. It's usually not. Price is number two or number three. Number one is almost always, do we trust this contractor? Do we feel like this is the right contractor that we're going to get the best result from? That's almost always number one. Price is number two, number three sometimes. But they may say price. I don't know. I guess just when we feel like it's the right price with the right feeling and gut, you'll hear all kinds of crazy stuff. It doesn't really matter what they say. It's just kind of a doorway to get more information and figure out where they're at. You can't stop them from getting other estimates. If you seem desperate, this is where you will lose the deal. People can smell desperate. You need to act like you don't care if you get the work. Like you're so busy. You have all kinds of work coming in. You don't need their work. Take as long as you need. Get as many estimates as you want. Doesn't matter to us. You know, do what you got to do. It's almost like the whole, you know, pretend like you're not interested dating technique. You know, if you're too interested and they don't want to date you, but if you're mysterious and... You act like you're not interested and they want to date you. It literally is that kind of psychology. If you act like you really need this job and you're really desperate and you'll do discounts, you're just shooting yourself in the foot. Now, I'm not saying you tell them these things. I'm saying your mental state should be, I don't need this work. So take as long as you need. Ask as many questions as you want. Get as many estimates as you want. You're just asking them. What are you hoping to see? Because that's going to help you figure out what is the decision process. Like what are they going to use? What's the criteria? So, you know, here's a word track you can use. I kind of said it a while ago, but totally understand, you know, you want to look at a few options. Let me ask you this. When you compare those options, what are you hoping to see that would make one contractor the obvious choice? It's a simple question. Use it. You can tweak it a little bit, but you're basically saying what's going to help you make that decision. summarizing that it's just you after the estimate is given you just like disappear and hope that they call you back you have to have a control process they don't just get to just call you back whenever they want you have to have a scheduled time you never leave one commitment without another commitment ever if it's in person if it's on the phone if it's an email you never leave a commitment without another commitment scheduled so that's the follow-up process where you know you're losing control by just trusting them, they're going to get back to you. So number two, price objections are really budget value or wrong. Client problems kind of got into this a little bit, but let's dive into this here more. You know, price always comes up. I don't care, you know, even though it may not be number one as the most important concern, it's probably still going to come up. So within our coaching calls, pricing came up constantly. Members are saying, or they're hearing you're too expensive. We got someone cheaper. We thought it would be 20K or can you do it for 27.5 instead of 38,000? In one example, a client held onto a two-year-old $7,000 bathroom number, even though the current realistic number was over 25. This is the AI is reciting a specific case. So sometimes you think you've lost the customer because of price. However, that's not always the case. They will tell, they may, again, remember? Sometimes your clients will lie to you. They may tell you it was a price situation. And sometimes it can be a pricing situation. Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying price never is a factor. I'm just saying it's usually not number one. But it can also, number one can be they don't like you, but still number two could be price, right? But they're not going to tell you they don't like you. They're just going to say someone was cheaper. So I'm trying to say like it's not, even if they tell you you're too expensive, that doesn't mean that's the number one reason why they didn't hire you.
