Contractors' journey to self-mastery requires discipline, integrity, and respect. Welcome to Hammer and Grind. Welcome to Hammer and Grind, the podcast built for contractors. Real contractors, true stories, real solutions. My name is Brad Hebner, and I will guide you on your journey to mastery of your construction business. You can find Hammer and Grind on all the social media platforms. Just search for Hammer and Grind Podcast. Now, if you're looking for more help, you can check out our free Facebook group called The Contractor Profit Group. I do free trainings in there and it's a great community to be a part of. Now, if you're serious about making more money, saving more time, and creating a business that supports your lifestyle, check out my paid coaching group called The Profit Club. I've put together a proven system for creating a winning business. Now listen, I'm so confident that you will succeed in my program. I'm now offering a 10x ROI guarantee. That means if you don't make at least a 10x return on your investment within a 12-month period, I will refund you the full amount. You can find out more information about The Profit Club at hammerandgrind. com forward slash The Profit Club. Okay, on this podcast, we're going to be talking about the hidden secret. to sales. Now, some of you may be saying, well, why is it hidden? I've already given you some of the tactics and the questions to ask and lots of other things about sales that you should know about in order to be able to be good at it. Well, the reason why it's hidden is because this isn't a tactic. This isn't a strategy. This isn't a tangible thing. This is something in your mind. This is more of a mindset. It's more of a an emotion. And honestly, I can't even really describe what this is other than it's not something that you hear people talk about. I've never heard this talked about on a podcast or a TikTok video or a YouTube video or a post somewhere. I've never seen this talked about before. Now, they may talk about it in other situations. They may talk about it in a different format. They may hint on it. They may get close to it, but I've never heard the word and explained the way that I'm going to explain it with you. And so that's the purpose of this podcast is to really teach you and share with you the hidden secret to sales. So what is the hidden secret to sales? Well, it's a combination of things, but the easiest way to put it into one word is you have to create an affinity. Now, what's an affinity? An affinity defined is the feeling of love or liking for something or someone or a natural liking for someone or something. So if we see a cute little picture or video of a puppy dog or a little kitten, we all automatically go, aww, that's a cute little dog, cute little kitten. Or we see a young child say something funny and we all go, aww. That's a natural type of affinity because those people are very innocent. Those dogs and animals and stuff are very innocent. And it's a natural feeling for us to have that. But how do we create an affinity? How do we create something that is essentially a natural feeling, right? I can't just go out and say, okay, produce affinity or make affinity or have affinity because it's a feeling. It's an emotion. It's a, it's a, It's a reaction to something or someone. And so that's what we're going to dive into on this podcast is really about how to create an affinity. But the first thing we have to do is understand that when we're doing sales, there's three things that have to happen. These three things have to happen on every single sales call before you can close them. And that is they have to know, like, and trust you. they have to know you exist. And I've talked about on other podcasts about, you know, it blows my mind a young store will start like a restaurant, a mom and pop will open up a little mom and pop restaurant on some strip mall or some road. And I'll never see any advertising. I'll never see anything whatsoever about that specific store or restaurant. And six months later, they're out of business. Well, that's because they didn't do any marketing whatsoever. And I've shared too about why you need to have websites and a Google My Business page and a Facebook group and social media. The whole purpose of that is that people know you exist. Okay, so they have to know you exist. If they don't know you exist, they can't call you. I think everybody understands that. If you're listening to this podcast, you now know that I exist. You know who I am. Even if this is the first podcast that you've listened to, You now know that I exist. So that's the first thing. The second thing is they have to like you. Now, like is not, you know, it doesn't mean like they have to love you or agree with everything you say. The definition for liking is a feeling of regard or fondness, right? It's just a feeling of regard or fondness. It doesn't mean you have to agree with everything they say, that you have to, you know, be madly in love with them. It's just you like them. And so they have to like you as a person. And some marketing people will tell you to be polarizing. And I've been very polarizing in a lot of my content because polarizing gets your attention, right? But the trick to that, the downside to being polarizing is that people can see that and then not like you. You can have a negative result from some people. that don't like you. Other people will like you because you're polarizing. Some people will not like you because of it. Donald Trump is the perfect example of someone who you either like him or you hate him. There's not very many people that are in between, right? And so he is a very polarizing individual. But that's how he won the presidency the first time was through being polarizing because it was different. People are different, you know. a new way of doing things, a new perspective. And so that was, even though he was polarizing, he gained a lot of affinity with a lot of the voters. Okay. He is a, whether you like him or not, he is a master marketer. Donald Trump understands how to create affinity with people. And that's why he's able to connect with a lot of people on a mass platform. Okay. So they have to like you. Now, some of you know who I am. And some of you may like me. Some of you may not like me. And so if that's the case, if you and I were on a sales call, I would have to get to a point to where you start to like me. Because if you don't like what I'm saying, there's no way in hell you're going to buy from me. Right? That's just a simple understanding of anything. You have to actually like me first. The third thing is trust. Now you can like me. Some of you may like what I say. You know who I am. You like what I say, but maybe you don't entirely trust me. You're a very skeptical type person. Maybe I've said things that you didn't quite agree with. And so that makes you a little bit skeptical. You think I'm just trying to sell you on my coaching program. You know, I tell you that it will change your life. I tell you that other contractors have increased their profits by hundreds of thousands of dollars in just a few months. And I tell you all these things. And maybe because of your experience or because of head trash that you have around certain things, it prevents you from trusting me, right? So I can't get past that barrier of trust. And for some people, it's listening to multiple podcasts. They have to listen to 15 podcasts before they finally say, okay, I trust this guy. or they watch a couple videos, or they see some TikToks, or they see some Facebook posts, or we have conversations. Whatever it is, at some point, you have to determine if you trust me or not. And so that is the part you have to get to with your customer. Now, all three of these things can happen before you even get on the call, the first sales call with that person, the discovery call. Those three things can happen through your marketing. and through your website and Google My Business and all that stuff. If I go to your website and you have lots of videos about your team and what you do and how you do things and before and after pictures and you have your mission statement on there and your core values and all of these things align with me and I see that you have 100 reviews, five-star reviews, even though I've never talked to you yet. I can actually trust you. I can see that I trust you based on all that information. This is also why it's so critical to have all of these things in place. I know a lot of you love referrals and you're like, I only work off referrals. I've been doing it for 25 years and all I do is referrals. And that's great. I've talked about this. I'm not going to go down that road. But you can build an affinity through someone before you even talk to them. I've had people get on the sales call and they've read my profile on the website and they go, oh, I see you go to this church or, oh, I see you were in the military or, oh, I see that you like to do competitive shooting. Those are things that I like or I like this or I like that. And it makes them trust you. There's no rational reason behind it. For all purposes, I could have everything on my website could be a 100% lie. It's hard to do that, and I would never do that, nor would I suggest you do it. But if we're looking at this logically, I could have complete lies on my website, and you could buy into it. And then when we get on the phone and I act like a totally different person, your radar is going to be going off like, wait a minute, did I misjudge this person? Did I miss the cues on this? Because this is not the person that I think that I'm going to be talking to. If I get on the phone and I'm having a bad day and I'm like, what do you want? Yeah, this is Brad. What's up? Well, I ain't got time for your project right now. This is the price. If you don't like it, take it or leave it. It's like going to blow them away. Like, holy crap, what happened? This is not the guy that I saw online on Facebook and his website. There's something's going on here. So they have to know, like, and trust you. That's the first thing. One thing you have to understand when you're talking to your clients on the phone is that in really all of your marketing across the board, all of your marketing, your website, everything, is that it's not about you. It's not about you as the contractor. Nothing that we do in the sales process is about us. And so what do I mean by that? Everything that's outward facing, everything on our website, everything that we do. Our process, everything is about the customer and how does it benefit the customer? What's in it for the customer? I've talked about on here about taking the I's and we's off your website because it's not about we are the best contractors in this area. It's what does that mean for them? That's all about me. If I put on my website, we're the best, we've won a bunch of awards, that's about me. Look at me and how great I am. that doesn't do anything for a customer. If you put something on there like, if you want to hire the highest reviewed company in the area, then hire us, right? Like something like that. I mean, I wouldn't put those exact words, but if you frame it in a sense that is for the customer, how the customer is going to benefit by hiring you, they're going to get the best experienced people, but it's just a simple word tweak. And so it's not about me as the contractor or you as the contractor. It's about what's in it for your clients. And here's what's crazy. Whenever we are buying something, it does not matter what it is. When we buy something, we have certain ways that we want to deal with a salesman, right? But for whatever reason, I don't know if it's like there's this weird block in our head or something happens whenever we go to sell something. automatically we believe that the way that we sell is totally different and that it's going to be the best for the client. And that's not true. We typically sell how we buy. So if you're a very difficult buyer, you're going to be a very difficult seller. If you're a very easy buyer, you're going to be an easy seller. And so we think like we can, if we were talking to another contractor, who said exactly what we say on the phone. We would be like, man, this guy is a dick. There's no way I'm going to hire him. Yet we literally do the exact same thing ourselves. And we think it comes across in a totally different way. And that's not true at all. If you don't believe me, do this one simple technique. Record yourself on your next sales call and then go back and listen to yourself. And I promise you that you'll probably be disgusted with yourself on how you say things because we're not aware, right? We're not aware of what we say and how we say it and the tone and the cadence and the spirit of the conversation and all these different things that go into it. We're just not aware. We're thinking, man, my schedule is booked up. I got three more people to call after this. This guy just keeps rambling on about this, this, and this. I just want to get him off the call. Oh, yeah, sir. Yeah, we definitely take care of all of our clients. Your clients are number one priority in our business. Man, I wish this guy would shut up. He just keeps going on and on and on and on and on. That's the kind of stuff that's going on in your head. You're not realizing that it's transparent through your conversation. So it's not about you, right? It's not about being perfect. This isn't about you have to be the perfect contractor that has the perfect business. and does the perfect quality work, and has the perfect processes, and the perfect marketing, and everything's perfect, perfect, perfect. Look at us. We're perfect. A lot of people don't even like that because it seems fake, because it's not real. We all know that things in life, because of social media, are not as they seem in real. We go on Instagram, and we see people are Instagram famous, and they have Lamborghinis, and mansions, and all that stuff. And then six months later, there's an article or something wrote about that person that says, oh, yeah, they're actually in bankruptcy. That car in that house wasn't even real. They rented the car for the day and they just took a picture in front of a house that wasn't even theirs. And people know this. They think that whenever something is perfect, when it's too perfect, you can't trust it. Because we all know that we as human beings know that we're not perfect. And so how can someone else be perfect? How can another business be perfect? So don't try to be perfect for your clients. The other thing is we don't have to know everything. This is one of the biggest things that contractors get wrong is that they think that people are hiring them because they know how to do everything. I've been in business for 25 years. Therefore, I know everything. That is not why people buy from you. It's not why they hire you. Sure, they want to know that you didn't just wake up this morning. and start a business and you've never even bought a hammer or know what it is. Like, yeah, they want to know you have a level of competency, but it's not that you know everything on how to do every single thing. And I would even use that to an advantage of, you know, Mr. Customer, yeah, you said you wanted to do this type of, you know, whatever it is, type of project. I got to tell you, I've never done, I've never installed one of those before. I've done others that are kind of similar. But I've never installed one of those before. So I can't tell you with 100% certainty that I'm going to be able to do that without having any hiccups along the way. I mean, I'm confident that I can get it done. And at the end, it will be a great experience. But there may be some hiccups along the way. And if you say something like that, people are going to appreciate the fact that you're not perfect. If they say, can you install this product? And you've never installed it. And you go, oh, yeah, absolutely. Absolutely, I can install that product. Oh, I'm just curious, how many of them have you installed before? Well, none. I haven't installed any of them. Well, then how do you know that you can do it? And so that's just an example of you don't have to be the know-it-all. You don't have to know how to do everything. It's okay. It's okay to ask. A lot of very, very, very successful entrepreneurs, millionaires and billionaires. They're not the smartest people in their company. They're just surrounded by the smartest people. Or they know where to go to get answers. If you talk to a billionaire who may even own a tech company, and he doesn't even know how to use his own tech, but he can pick up the phone and within 30 seconds get somebody that can answer that question or deal with that problem, then that is why they're successful. So you don't have to be the guy that knows everything. You really don't. And your customers don't expect you to know everything. And so when you act like you know everything, you come across as disingenuous or fake, and they can't trust you because of that. So here's another thing I want you to know about when you're talking to your prospects on the phone. They have head trash. You have head trash. If you're listening to any of my podcasts, you have head trash around different things. Okay? You have beliefs, limited belief systems around things that are possible. A lot of you listening to this podcast still have limiting beliefs or head trash around the idea that you can charge for a consultation or charge for estimates. Many of you don't believe me when I tell you that. That's head trash. If I can produce 500 people across the world that charge for consultations, that is enough evidence to prove to you that it is possible. And so therefore, it is head trash that you still believe that it's not possible. If I couldn't produce one single person, then you would have an argument to stand on. But yet you still have this belief that it's not possible. And so your clients have the exact types of head, not the exact type, they have head trash around different things when they're buying from you. And you have to understand this. So when you go into the phone call, Your job is to find out where their objections are, where the head trash is. They may have head trash around other contractors. They've hired other contractors in the past. And the two contractors that they hired, one of them took their deposit and ran. The other one tore their house up and did a crappy job. So right now, all of their experience with contractors is that all contractors are shady. That's their real-life experience. Now, they have people at work and friends that say, well, I had a really great experience. I hired this guy. I hired Brad, and he did a great job. You should hire him. And so they may say, well, maybe I just had two bad experiences, but I'm still really skeptical about contractors. And so if you get on the phone and you start talking about, well, you got to pay me half up front or I won't even do the job. And then all of a sudden, their head trash is blaring. The red lights are going off. Oh, remember that last guy that you paid up front, half up front, and he took all your money? That's probably where this guy's going. Of course, they're going to have objections. Of course, they're going to have head trash around that. And if you get pissed off and go, well, that's just the way we do things. And if you don't like it, then take it or leave it. I've got plenty of work lined up. I'm going down the road. And that's a lot of you guys right there. A lot of your attitude is, I'm so busy right now. I don't really care about you. Either take it or leave it. then that is the shittiest attitude you could possibly have. So you have to understand they have head trash. They may have head trash around contractors. They may have head trash around material prices that are right now. They may have head trash around processes. Again, like deposits. I've had people, you know, I've done a 40% deposit on big jobs, like a $60,000 job, and they don't want to pay $20,000, $25,000 deposit. And so I have to go through that and figure out why. What's the problem with it? Where can we come to a comfortable agreement? But it's the idea that just because they have a head trash or they have an objection or something that's happened to them in the past does not mean that they're a bad customer. It does not mean that they are going to be a problem during the entire process. It doesn't mean any of that. It just simply means that their experiences with other contractors has given them results that they don't like. And so it's your job. to understand that, what their objections are, what head trash they have, and to get around that. Okay? So if you understand that they have head trash, then you can understand how to handle that. It's not about you guys. It's not about you. It's about them. And so everything that we, all the tips that I've given you, the eight questions, all the different podcasts and content that I've given you, by now, you should understand that it's not about you. But I keep driving this home because it's so important. And so when you start tailoring your calls, your discovery calls around the customer and how it benefits the customer, then you start to gain that, you know, they start to know, like, and trust you. And you start to gain this affinity. Okay? So it doesn't matter what they're worried about. It really doesn't. It doesn't matter. why they have head trash, it doesn't matter what objections they have. None of that stuff matters. You just have to understand it before you go into the call that they may have different objections, no matter how silly they are, no matter if you think they're stupid or it's not even a big deal. Like, why are they concerned about this? This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard. None of that stuff matters. Remember, it's not about your feelings. It's about theirs. So when you build an affinity, You can't go into a call and if someone says something, you're like, well, that's a stupid reason to not want to hire me. You're not creating an affinity with your clients. The other thing is you don't want to give reasons. You don't give your clients a reason not to like you. I've said this before. You shouldn't make your clients wrong on a call. If a client says something to you, And you're like, no, no, no, that's not right. No, I've installed five of these before in the past. And I can tell you that that's not true. Whoever told you that is lying to you. I know for a fact that this is how it has to be done. Well, what if they're the one that went online and researched something and they came to that conclusion? You've now made them wrong and you've now made them feel like an idiot. Right? So don't argue with them and don't try to be right. And don't try to make them wrong. It's not about being right. It's about making them wrong. You can be right on the conversation about something without making them wrong. So don't do that. And lastly is, you have to create a winning opportunity. And how do you do that? You create an opportunity, a winning opportunity, through creating affinity. And it has to be a natural process. There's three things that make this up. So you have affinity, and you have reality, and you have communication. When you have all three of these, when you create an affinity, when you've aligned the realities between what they want and what you can provide, and you've communicated with them effectively, you've now created an environment that you can't lose in. And so what you want to do on a call, there's two best case scenarios. One, they love you and they hire you. Two, they love you, but they can't afford you. And why is that a best case scenario? Because even though they can't afford you, it does not mean that they can't recommend you to everyone else. And so that's why when I hear contractors say, well, we're booked up for a year or screw you if you don't like our price. And if they ask for a discount and you're like, no, that's what we do. Hire us when you want it to come back and fix what they screwed up. Ha ha ha. I'll charge a double then. When you guys say dumb shit like that. and you say a lot of it on social media, I get a lot of those comments on my videos and stuff, you guys saying that stuff, you don't realize how much you're shooting yourself in the foot. You don't care right now because the phone's ringing off the hook. But what happens when the phone's not ringing off the hook? But you pissed off 30 potential leads because you were like, take it or leave it. In reality, you could have created an affinity with them and they could have referred five other people to you even though they didn't hire you. I've had people refer me to other clients because they couldn't afford me, yet they referred us to others because they like this. So you can still have a win-win solution even if you don't help those clients, if they don't hire you, they can't afford you. So that's the two best scenarios. They hire you, they have an affinity, you create an affinity with them and they like you and they hire you. Two, you create an affinity with them, they like you, but they can't afford you. It should never be a scenario where they don't like you. And I'm not telling you to be not genuine. I'm not telling you to lie or be fake. You shouldn't do that. But if you use the communication, the questions, and you understand how to effectively communicate with people and make them feel like they're important, i. e. not doing a sales call on the way home from work, i. e. not having kids screaming in the background when you're on the call. i. e. not being short with them and actually pretending like you care. I say pretending because sometimes you may not care, but you still need to put on the fact that you do care. You need to act like you care. I mean, you should care. But even if you're having a really bad day, you should care. You should act like you care. And when you do that and you create the affinity and you have good communication and you align reality. And what I mean by reality is... You know, what they may think that they watch HDTV, TV show, and they think they can get a kitchen done in two weeks for $20,000. And you're like, no, this is an eight-week project and it's going to be $50,000. They have, the realities have to align. And so sometimes if they have head, that's head, by the way, guys, that's head trash. If they think they can do it in two weeks for $20,000, that is actually head trash. because they've watched the TV show. And so you have to educate them on the fact that that's not true. And then in order for them to hire you, this is the reality. But you have to give them time to adjust to that reality. You have to back up that reality with simple confidence and truth surrounded. And they have to accept it. They have to accept that reality before they can move past it. A lot of you guys, when you give pricing, you'll say, yeah, this job's going to be $50,000. When do you want to get started? Do you use some kind of high-pressure sales tactic? You just dropped a bomb on their head. You told them $50,000. They're thinking $20,000. And they're thinking, holy crap, that's way more than what we thought. Where did we go wrong? I really like these guys because they created an affinity with me, but I don't know if I'm going to go get that money. I know we're probably going to have to spend the money to get somebody because we can't find anybody else that's like this company. If we take some out of our 401k and then we borrow some from my parents, then we might be able to get this done. That's what they're thinking in their head. They're trying to figure out where to get the money from. And if you're just like, take it or leave it, you guys don't even realize how much damage you're doing to your sales calls. I bet half of the stuff that you guys get off the phone and go, well, those guys are... freaking wasting my time. Bunch of tire kickers, man. Screw them. If they don't want to pay my prices, screw them. Half you guys that do that, you've probably lost a perfectly good sale because you didn't know how to effectively communicate with them. You had your own head trash going into the call that you think customers don't want to buy, they don't want to pay. And as soon as they say, wow, that's more than what I thought, your head trash is going, yep, see, I knew it. I knew it. You lived in that specific zip code. I knew you weren't going to be able to afford it. I need to get off this call as quick as possible. That's what some of you guys are doing. And you're shooting yourself in the foot without even realizing it. So create the affinity, align reality, and use good communication to be able to do that. And when you do those three things, again, you will have one of two results. They love you. They want to hire you. They love you, but they can't afford you. Those are both wins. regardless if you think it is or not, those are both wins. So to kind of recap this hidden secret about sales is it's not about you. Understand that your clients have a head trash coming into the call. It's your job to figure out what it is and try to alleviate that. And don't give them reason not to like you. Don't make them wrong. Don't try to squeeze it in on your way home from work. Act like you care about their call and give them full attention. And then align the affinity, the reality, and use great communication. If you can do those things, you will have a much, much, much higher success rate on your sales calls. And it will actually make your business even better. Because you want people that don't hire you to still say good things about you. Don't get in this mind trap, this head trap, this head trash bull crap about, There's plenty of fish in the sea. And if those guys don't like me, then screw them. Because you may effectively piss off the mayor's wife or some marketing director's husband or somebody who has key power over the city. And they can make your life a living hell just for the fun of it because you piss them off. So treat every single prospect that you talk to like they're the most important person in the world. Because in that 20,30,40 minute phone call. They are the most important person in your world. So guys, you know where to find me. Hopefully this podcast was helpful. Look on all the social medias, Hammer and Grind podcast. We have our new Discord channel up. Make sure you follow us on Discord because we're going to be doing some live events only on there. Some personal coaching for free. Lots of content is on Discord. So make sure you check out. You can search for Hammer and Grind podcast or Hammer and Grind on Discord and find us there. I'm trying to build that up because I can post a lot of content on there. I can post my podcast links on there. I can post my YouTube videos on there. But you can find me on all the different platforms, TikTok, Facebook. Check out our free Facebook group if you're looking for help in your business. And if you want to level up your business, if you want to elevate your business, something you need to understand, your business growth. is directly related to your personal growth. So if you're not getting the kind of growth you want in your business, that means you need to elevate your personal growth. And so you can check out our paid coaching group, The Profit Club. That is my premium coaching. That is where I have the 10x ROI guarantee. If you don't make 10 times your investment in 12 months, I'll give you the full investment back. I've made it as worry-free and stress-free and fail-proof as possible. Go check that out. Hammerandgrind. com forward slash the profit club. And until next time, guys, you know what to do. Be the best version of you.
