by Paul on August 4, 2010
In most cases a prospect that comes from a good referral is your sale to lose. The level of confidence and trust has pretty much been established for you. All you need to do is to live up to it.
Here is an example- A month ago I received an email from a customer for whom we did an addition and kitchen 8 years ago. She has a friend who likes what we did for her and her husband and wants a large deck built. That was all the information she gave me.
I sent back an email thanking her for thinking of us and asked her to tell her friend to please call us. We did not hear anything for a while so I gave the information to one of our salespeople. He followed up with a call and got what he needed to call these people and make an appointment.
Everything went fine at the appointment until he asked them their budget for the project. The husband said, “$5,000”. Our salesman smiled and said that this was not a $5,000 deck. What would they like him to do? The answer was to give them a price anyway. Then they added a few other things to the project.
I priced the deck based on the information that I was given. The salesman presented it and was told to prepare a contract. He then came back and said that the customer wanted this particular type of decking that is much more expensive and he should have told me before. I told him that we could not do the job for the price quoted and he had to call the customer and explain that we had made a mistake.
The salesman asked me how to handle it and I told him in detail. For purposes of this short article I can tell you that it worked out fine; but it certainly wasn’t our performance on the estimating and presentation that got us this job. We got the job primarily because the customer said he had talked to other contractors but he felt comfortable with us. It was the power of a strong referral from a good friend that the customer trusts.
Construction is starting today. I have already made it clear to the salesman that he is to make absolutely sure that this job proceeds with military precision and that the customer is very satisfied.
We cover more about the power of referrals and how to handle mistakes in our August Newsletter.
Many salespeople for remodeling contractors lose many more construction project sales than they make by talking too much and listening too little.
Every remodeling sales person knows that there is so much information and so many details in a remodeling project that you have to talk a lot to get across to the customer all the information the customer needs to pick your company, right? No, wrong!
Other than stating your name and answering direct questions from the prospective customer, almost every sentence coming out of your mouth in the first appointment should be a question.
“How are you?” Can we sit and chat for a few minutes? Build rapport and talk about their lives while answering questions about yours. When it is time to move to the next stage- the business interview- the questions should be more to the point.
“What do you have in mind?” “Can I ask why you wish to put your new addition here?” “Would you be open to any suggestions?” The questions should not stop and you should be taking notes on every answer; but do not make it an inquisition. Be conversational but keep the questions coming.
We have a career salesman who sold a large, very profitable addition to a couple by asking these exact questions and then showing them how they could save a substantial amount of money by placing the addition over an existing one-story side wing and entry area. His commission was around $10,000 for about 8 hours of work getting it reduced to paper and a contract.
In between questions it is fine to offer an observation here and there. “The reason I am asking this is because we just finished a job recently similar to what you folks (don’t say ‘you guys’, please) have in mind. Would you like to hear a little about it?”
Use the customer’s name frequently and ask if you can call him/her by his first name. A person’s name when used with respect is the sweetest sound to that person. Always be soft and gentle in your manner even if you are not the soft and gentle type. Do not come on in an intimidating fashion. You will lose for sure.
We outlined our own very successful sales approach in a series we did in our winter newsletters. These newsletters are still available online when you take out a one-year subscription. We will be spending a lot more time in future blogs about how to sell while appearing not to sell and talking about the mistakes that sales people make.
Remember- “Nobody wants to be sold; but people love to buy.”
