C (4:56)
I do. I do have a quick hard stop. But I am going to provide a ton of value. Listen, all right, if you want to stop being underpriced this spring, I want to share a statistic with you. 64% of contractors never, ever send a written offer. If you literally just send a written offer to everyone that you talk to, whether they agree to your price, whether you're too expensive, whether the timing doesn't work out right, whatever that looks like, if you just send a written offer to every single person you talk to, you will probably grow by 35%. And here's the beautiful thing. We don't always send just one simple offer. Oftentimes I'll send multiple offers. So I might give them the offer of like all of the biggest, baddest, most beautiful work that they want. And then I'll send another offer that's just maybe a little bit lower and an offer that's a little bit higher. Okay, you can send three offers to every single person you talk to. And that's so critical. That's probably the one nugget. If you forget everything that I say ever, if you've ever seen me talk before, just that one thing will help you make more money this spring. Because, see, here's the thing. Most contractors just submit one offer. Like, oh, this is my offer. Cause I talked to you and I think I figured this out. And inside your head, you start negotiating with yourself and you lower the price before you send the offer because you don't think they're gonna spend. And I just gotta keep my guys busy and the season's just kicking off and if I could just get enough work, then I'll be going. And then all of a sudden your season's over and you're like, I didn't make any money. Okay, so don't negotiate with yourself. Send them the offer for what they wanted and all the big beautiful things that you wanna do for the price that to be profitable as you need to be. And then send them something a little bit less. Because in your mind, you're thinking, if I just do it a little bit cheaper, they'll probably buy. Give them that offer. Write that offer up. Okay, that's the biggest nugget that I can share with you, but I'll share with you quickly. Seven things that you need to establish to make a sale. Every time you are talking to someone, you need to establish the seven things. First of all, you need to establish the decision maker. Now, some of you guys, some of you guys are well into the millions. Some of you guys are maybe just trying to figure out how to break 500 or 200,000, I don't know. But sometimes you're going to door knock and you're going to go to a commercial building and you're going to be talking to someone. You don't know if they're the decision maker. You might cold call someone, you might not know if they're the decision maker or not. You might get a phone call from someone and they're like, hey, I need to get a. Need to get a quote on a cut. Okay, cool. Are they even the decision maker? Are they just calling for their mom? What does the decision making Process look like you have to find a decision maker, okay? That's number one. Number two, we need to find out their wherewithal. We need to find out if they have the money. I'm not saying these go in order necessarily, but at some point, you need to talk to them about money. Okay? Whether it's in person, in a written offer, over the phone, however you want to do it, you need to talk about money. Contractors are really afraid to do that. And if you're not. If you're not training in sales, if you own a business and you are not training in sales at some level, whether it's podcasting, reading books like the 10x is better than easier than 2x, the 10x rule by Grant Cardone. If you're not reading, you know, some kind of messaging on how to be better at sales, how to communicate with better. I mean, it's like, it makes no sense to me. Just a little bit of studying every day on sales will make you more profitable and you will stop underpricing yourself this spring. Okay? So decision makers, wherewithal, you need to know that they're sold on the product. One simple thing. You guys aren't really pond guys. I don't think anyone's pond guys in the group. But, like, there's lots of products in the pond world. There's a pond with a bottom drain, there's a pond with gravel in the bottom. And I have to figure out what the person needs, and I have to figure out the product that they want, and I sell them on the product because there are two different products. And if you only sell this one product and you're trying to sell it to them, they might not be sold on the product. You will never get the job. Okay? And so maybe your marketing needs to change or whatever that is, but you need to figure out if they're sold on the product. And then fourth, they have to believe in you. They have to believe in the salesperson. So you have to. They have to believe that you're going to call when you say you're going to call. Hey, I'll call you within 24 hours. I'm on a lawnmower right now. If you call them within 24 hours, they're going to believe you because you did what you said you were going to do, okay? So they have to believe in you, your professionalism, the way you look, the way you show up. You know, like Naylor was talking about showing up with smoke blowing out and your stuff's all falling out. You show up to the Door. You're drunk. Like, you know what I mean? They have to believe in you as the salesperson that you are going to deliver the product that you say that you're going to do. Now, number five, they have to be confident that the product that you are offering will solve their problem. Okay? You might have a product that they actually believe in, but it doesn't necessarily solve their problem. And those two things need to align. If those two things do not align, then you're not set up to make the sale. Okay? So decision maker have the wherewithal to buy. They need to be sold on the product that you're talking about. They have to believe in you. And then five, that product has to solve their problem. And so these are the things that you need to find out in the sales process. Okay? And then six is what I led with. Okay? You have to give them a written offer. You know, I know you guys are busy chasing that stuff, chasing that money. You know, you're not making enough money to hire more people to help you in the office. And so you don't get around. I don't even have time to submit the offer. I told them a price. They said it was a little more expensive than they wanted to pay. I'm not even going to send them an offer. But guess what, 64% of the contractors aren't even going to do that. So the 36% of contractors that actually send a professional offer, that's how they show up. They start to believe in you because you're sending that professional offer. So that one step alone, if you get all the other steps right, it puts you way above the masses, way above everyone else. So you have to do that written offer, okay? And then at some point in the sales process, you have to create a little bit of urgency, okay? And I'm not sure exactly who's on the call, but there's different ways for different industries to create urgency. And that's why we do sales training, right? So in, in the pond world, we have our spring rush and you are trying to be profitable in the spring. So you do all these certain spring opens and spring flower beds and the flowers for Mother's Day and whatever that might look like. And maybe you're going into the snow, A lot of you guys might push snow. So, like, if you don't get on my calendar before this time, I will not be able to push snow for you this year. You're like, see, there's urgency in all these things. And I'm not trying to get you to do some magical, you know, weird stuff. It has to be authentic to you and your business. Hey, I don't clean ponds. After June 1, we stopped cleaning ponds. So I have some urgency this year. I let off. We're totally buried up. We're covered up. We got really warm in California early. I started calling my customers early, getting the decision maker on the phone, talking to them about the wherewithal, selling them on a product, which was, hey, listen, the reason for my call today, Charles, is, you know, we've had this incredible warm heating streak here in Southern California. It's affecting ponds in a little bit different way. Have you noticed any problems or any. Have you experienced anything new in your pond with all this warm weather? And they say yes, and like, okay, cool. Well, let me tell you, we are getting started early on our spring cleanouts because of this reason, and we only do them until June 1st. I'd love to get you on the calendar. Boom. I get them scheduled, and then as I'm getting closer to June, I call them back and then say, hey, listen, I just wanted to reach out to you. The reason for my call is to let you know we're almost completely booked out for the year. I wanted to give you one more chance to get on our calendar because June 1, we stopped cleaning out ponds. We're only doing construction the rest of the year. And that creates another sense of urgency. There's a way for you to create urgency in your business, and without urgency, there is no deal. Okay. Whatever their problem is, they have a wedding coming up. They have a birthday party coming up. You need to find that urgency within your sales conversation so you can. You can work it into your conversation. Hey, listen, Charles, you mentioned that you have this wedding coming up, and I, I want to really hit. Hit it out of the ballpark for you. If we can make an arrangement and come up with an agreement by such and such date, I can really hit. Hit it at home run for you. And so you can have this wonderful event on such and such time. So you create that urgency on that timeline. Those are the seven things. I don't know if you can put them in the chat. I don't have something to put on the screen, but I'll finalize them right now, and I'm going to pass it back to Naylor decision makers. The wherewithal. Do they have the money? Are they sold on your product, which is you, it's probably your service. Do they believe in you? Are you solving their problems? Are you giving them a written offer or multiples? And have you created urgency in working with you because you are a high value contractor that are in, in a lot of need and people are hiring you. Okay? So I hope you found some value in that. Give me a thumbs up in the chat, let me know you found some value. Let's go, Naylor. Take it over.