ARE YOU AT THE MERCY OF YOUR SHITTY CUSTOMERS?
When working with different trade business owners on a regular basis, you begin to see a whole range of different patterns…
And one of the patterns that we see quite often is a lack of structure when it comes to selling.
There is no set process, structure, and clear action items of what needs to be done to get the sale and lock in the contract, the job, the project, or the client… and the way people seem to sell or deal with new clients often changes depending on what they have on at the time, where they are, how they are feeling etc… and opportunities are lost, and results go up and down because of it!
All this is doing is putting them and their trade business at the mercy of all your shitty customers!
Think about what lengths some people go to just to win work.
They get a lead, schedule an onsite appointment, clean themselves up, get in their car, sit in traffic, burn through fuel, chew through Tolls, then once onsite, they start to do a tap dance where they try to impress the prospect, telling them how good they are and how great their company is.
After an hour or so, the prospect either says “I’ll need to think about it”, “I’ll need to talk to my partner”, “I want some other quotes”, or anything else along those lines…
So, they leave and head back to the office, type up and send off their quote, only to never get a response from them as if they went into witness protection.
In the end, they wasted about 3 to 4 hours of their life for no benefit.
Or they get a phone call and the first thing they ask is “How much do you charge?”, or, “What’s it going to cost me?” and they’re they stuck on the phone entertaining a price shopper…
Now, there’s no problem with clients doing their due diligence – especially with larger projects.
But here’s the problem...
Most contractors are running around, aren’t respected and have their time wasted with nothing to show for it…
You’re the expert, they called you, they have a problem to fix or a dream to build, so guess what?
You need to put them on your process, NOT theirs.
This is your process to qualify and protect YOUR time!
Otherwise, if you have 100 leads come in and you don’t have an effective sales process, then you’ll be left dealing with 100 potential clients, operating by their expectations, with no guarantee it will even be worth your time!
So, what is the point of all this?
You need a clear, structured and repeatable sales process.
It’s so important that you as the contractor have a sales process that you can walk people through when they enquire about working with you and your business.
When they enquire, that should ignite a whole other chain of events in your business!
So, when a prospect calls, what happens next? Then what? And then what? What’s the process? That sort of thing…
And when you have a process, it’s good for you.
You will always know where you are at with a client so if you are on the budget step of a sale with our client, you know where you’re at with the overall process.
You also know where to GO.
You can have a conversation about what’s important to the client, dig into their pain points and explore their motives, some of the things they are hoping to accomplish, and so on…
And you’re going to know where you’re at, you’re going to know where to go, and what I really like about it, is when you don’t get a sale, you will be able to identify exactly where you went wrong in the process.
You can go back and look at okay this is the place where I messed up, or where I blew it.
Maybe I rushed through asking them what was important to them, maybe I didn’t set proper expectations, whatever it might be in your process – you will be able to know where you need to look to fix something and improve!
A sales process is also good for the buyer, because when you follow the process, you’re ticking the checklist, you’re having these open and honest conversations, you’re going to be setting the right expectations with people and you’re going to be having less and less projects where you’re dropping the ball and misunderstanding people and that’s certainly good for you but it’s also good for them, because now, they are having a great experience with a contractor!
And that’s what we should be all about, offering an awesome experience that is worth the money that you charge, and, in the end, they have less headaches, less bullshit that they have to go through and less concerns or questions or fears!
Another great reason to have a sales process is so that you can teach it.
When everything is in your head and you’re winging it every time you go out and look at a job and talk to a customer (With everything in your head), how do you scale that? How do you ever get out of the centre of your business?
You want to be able to go take a couple of weeks off and still have sales coming in, right?
So, this is all important when you look to expand your team.
Having a sales process is not only about winning more work… but actually ALL about winning the RIGHT work!
You don’t want a conversion rate of 100%, because this means you will be working with anyone off the street, right?
You want a way to qualify your clients, and you want a way to do it QUICKLY so you're not stuck at the mercy of shitty clients being forced to operate on THEIR process!
So, if you don't have a structured sales process that you follow every time you go to make a sale - start there!
If you're an electrician, plumber, painter, carpenter, or any other trade business owner who is looking to take your business to the next level through help with your sales, click here to learn more about how our team can help!
