How to Handle Price Objections [Painting Contractors]

Michael Murray: Hey John, I've been working with one of our new sales reps a lot lately and a topic came up this week on how do we handle it when the customer says your price is too high? Do you guys ever have that or is your price just super low over there?

Jon Bryant: That must be just an American problem. Because up in Canada, people are too polite. They just take any price we give them. No, I think this is a great subject. It's really interesting to dig into, especially from a training perspective or even seasoned sales reps where if you don't build your system right and if you don't understand the customer's journey through this pricing experience they're having, you can really run this thing wrong. So yeah, let's talk about it.

Michael Murray: Awesome. Where do you want to start?

Jon Bryant: Well, it's fresh in your mind with a new sales rep. Where are they hearing it?

Michael Murray: The first thing that I told them is the concept of price conditioning and talking about price early and often. That has really helped me when I'm out doing sales opportunities, quotes, and estimates. If I wait until the very end to talk about price or maybe I don't even ever talk about it, just send them a quote in an email and the first time they have any semblance of conversation around it is when they open up my quote and see what the price is, that can cause all sorts of problems. So having some budgeting conversations early, even maybe over the phone or when we first meet in that first segment of the estimate. Maybe we can start to talk about how might we talk about price before we've even calculated the specific numbers.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, it's interesting because I've had two situations happen in my week. One being on the receiving end of this experience and one of our sales team coming back saying someone was 65% my price and that was a waste of time. I think that's really what we're trying to avoid here with what you're talking about - to get that out of the way early. From our sales reps' point of view, they need to start having that price discussion from the second they talk to them. Whether that's an exterior they're looking at on Google Earth and evaluating, getting a framework for pricing ahead of time, or it's an interior and they're using rough square footages to at least get the price banding conversation out of the way. Like, hey, this might be a job that's 20 to 30,000. I just want to make sure that's a range that might work for us to be able to work together. Because if not, I don't want to waste your time.

I think that is so important. The situation that occurred to me this week is that we got a bid and the person didn't frame it at all for us. When we got that price, literally in my head, I thought I never want to talk to this person again. So the experience that a customer's having on the other side - we always think about ourselves first and think like, why aren't they responding? Why am I not getting this job? The fact is that price creates an emotional response. If we're not easing into that, prepping people for that, it's very unfair in that sales process to drop the bomb and then expect them to want to talk or want to interact.

In this case, I think the quote was something in the ballpark of like four times as much as I was expecting. The person on the other end of this company has no idea because they never talked price with me. Now they keep following up asking when's a good time to have a chat? Well, that's the last thing I want to do. I don't want to get on the phone. It's not even worth our time. So I think understanding both these sides for me has been a visceral experience this week to see what it's like to have sales reps talk about the customer and then also to be the customer and feel what that's all about.

Michael Murray: Let's stay there for a minute because I think this is so important to understand. It's like almost working our way backwards. I brought it up - how can we start our interaction with the customer well, having some budget conversations and things like that? But maybe we need to better understand what are we trying to avoid at the end? Why is this important? Because having budgeting conversations at the beginning isn't easy, but it's going to avoid problems and frustrations that sales reps often experience later on.

So I want to focus on what you just talked about - you're having this experience as a customer with that marketing vendor example. I've experienced this. I think probably most people listening have. If you've ever had any experience where you've been given a quote where you don't know what this should cost, so you're relying on somebody to come out and tell you. We've all experienced that not going well.

So let's go back there for a second. You mentioned they didn't talk about it beforehand. The price is about four times what you expected. And at this point, you don't want to talk to them anymore. You don't want to get on the call. They're trying to do their thing with their follow-up, which is fine. But they've so screwed this up from a making the sale perspective to this point that you're almost going to ghost them. Not maybe disrespectfully, but for other reasons. So maybe talk about that. Like, why don't you want to get on the call? Which is another way of saying, why does this happen in our industry where homeowners don't respond to our calls as sales reps?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, great place to start. For me, it's just a feeling - I'm not conflict averse. I'm willing to have conflict. That's part of who I am. I'm honest and straightforward, but I feel like the other party is going to feel disrespected or there's going to be an issue. And maybe it'll help them with their process, but honestly, I just feel as though they didn't respect my time. So why am I going to respect their time on the other end? To give them feedback on this price that's absolutely wild in my opinion.

I think this speaks a little bit to - as sales professionals, when we're dealing with people, you really have to put yourself in their shoes and say, if I were them, how would I feel if I did this? In this case, I'm sure it's a great company and a great product, but they didn't think about the customer first. They really just thought about what their business needs were. When that happens, I shut down because I don't know if they're actually thinking about me first. And that's probably why at a deep level I'm just like, this was a waste of time.

Michael Murray: And I would also just elaborate on what you just said - I feel like at this point, you feel like from the consumer perspective, from the homeowner perspective, you feel like there's really not any benefit left for you to get out of this interaction. I can see where, yeah, I could give this guy some feedback and tell them his price is too high and tell them more about the other options we're going to go with. And from the sales rep perspective in the painting industry, I always want to talk to a customer like, oh, tell me more, was my price too high, give me a chance to handle objections. But from the customer's perspective, they're like, yeah, I don't want to work with you and I feel like you're already wasting my time. So why would I want you to waste any more of my time? Do you agree with that?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I think that's why people ghost us. Reverse it back to the sales side where on our team, the sales rep is thinking about their own needs, closing the job, making money, winning the sale, whatever it is. And they use terms like, oh, the person ghosted me or I followed up a bunch of times and they never called me back. And they rarely think about - this is my tendency too, and having these discussions helps - but it's very easy to think about yourself first and why the other person is doing you wrong. They did nothing to you. You may not have facilitated the process well enough for them to feel comfortable discussing it with you. And that's where I think so many times we can get stuck in "us" mode and not think about the customer.

Michael Murray: Yeah, that reminds me of that quote - if you're having trouble closing, you had trouble opening. We're going to work our way back here to the beginning and come back through this process. I think though the other thought as to why might a homeowner not want to get back to us or why might you not want to talk with the sales rep in this example is because there's the risk that you might get talked into something that you don't want to do.

You don't want to spend that amount of money on this and you're comfortable in that decision. If you get on the phone with one of these super slick sales reps - and homeowners think of all sales reps in that way, all sales people have this negative connotation perhaps, especially with somebody who hasn't done well up to this point - the only fear I have is I'm going to end up spending more money than I should. I'm going to spend more money than I can afford, and I'm going to regret making this decision. So I'm just going to avoid that conversation altogether. And I think that's a very real scenario, maybe not for everybody, but certainly for some people.

Jon Bryant: Totally. And understand - this is conflict too, right? You're trying to defend your decision to someone else afterwards. And who knows how aggressive the other person is going to be on the other end. Saying no is hard for a lot of people because that also involves some conflict. So it's easier to - if we don't do a good enough job upfront, like you said, and I want to talk about how we do that better from a price perspective - we put ourselves in a position of making someone else uncomfortable. And that causes people to fight or flight every single time. It's just human nature.

Michael Murray: Yeah. And somebody has to admit that they can't afford it. I don't want to admit that I can't afford that. That's not a great boost to my ego. So oftentimes I'm going to say your price is too high. Maybe it's because my money is too low and that's sad. I don't like that. So I'm going to avoid that whole experience and conversation.

Jon Bryant: So how do we do it better? What did you tell your sales rep? How did you set that up?

Michael Murray: Yeah, we mentioned it - you started talking about the Google Earth and things like that. So we want to have these pricing conversations. One, on our website, we have pricing information. We have some guidelines that are only so helpful because we don't have specific information about your project and your needs and prep work and all those kinds of things. But I can give you some ballpark ideas on my website as to what might it cost to paint a bedroom.

You mentioned before giving some broad ranges - not everybody goes on our website. So before the sales rep goes to the appointment, they should have a phone call with the client or potential client and say, tell me a little bit more about your project. If they can, depending on their comfort, try to give some ballpark level of what the price might be. Ideally, that's probably more likely on exteriors where we can get some idea of what the project might look like before we get there.

Jon Bryant: How would you say it? So I'm the customer and you're calling me to get info. Maybe let's play that through a little bit.

Michael Murray: Yeah. Hey, John, got your information here. It looks like we're looking for an exterior quote. I actually have the house pulled up here on Google Street View. So I'm taking a look at it, looking at this pink house here that must be yours. Is that right?

Jon Bryant: That's mine. Horrible color, we gotta change it.

Michael Murray: That's why we're here. Happy to help you with that. Have you guys gotten any other quotes or anything yet?

Jon Bryant: You know, we just put the word out, we got a couple people coming next week.

Michael Murray: Okay, yeah, no worries. I don't know, have you guys had a chance to look at our pricing page on the website? We do have some pricing guidelines. Have you had a chance to look at that yet?

Jon Bryant: You know what, my wife set this up. I really haven't had a chance to take a look.

Michael Murray: Yeah, no worries. I mean, I know everybody's super busy. Would it be helpful if I gave you some ballpark idea of what a painting project like this might look like, even just while we're on the phone right now?

Jon Bryant: Yeah. I mean, it'd be phenomenal. Like that's the one question we have and we have no idea. I've never done this before.

Michael Murray: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, hopefully it's not something you have to do for a long time. And obviously you want to pick the company that's going to give you that best experience. So based on what I'm looking at - it's a little hard to say, we do a lot of work in your neighborhood though, so we've done similar style houses here - probably going to be in the range of about $15 to $20,000. There's a lot of prep work it looks like typically on these older homes. We need to do that. We do need to follow the EPA's lead paint precautions and certainly can tell you more about those things when we get together. But roughly, I would say most houses in this similar size and age are about $15 to $20,000 to get done. There's going to be some dependence on the type of prep and things like that. Is that in line with where your thoughts were? Give me some feedback on your thoughts there.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, awesome. I mean, that's a great - so then we get that kind of discussion going. For me, the statement I like to say at the end is, does it make sense for us to come and do this estimate for you? Like, I just want to know that your time's well respected and that we're going to be potential dance partners here. If not, that's a hundred percent fine. I just want you to kind of know where we're at and if it doesn't make sense to do that. So I love that. That's great. And I think it's helpful for lots of people to hear that. My sales team needs to hear that all the time. I need to hear that all the time, like how to do that well. So that idea of like, you know, does it make sense or the way you phrased it, which was...

Michael Murray: Give me some feedback on that. And then typically based on what they say, they're going to tell me whether or not it makes sense. They're going to say something like, oh yeah, okay, that makes - everybody says I have no idea what it's going to cost. And they do. And it's like, yeah, yeah. My neighbor said they worked with you guys and it was a little more than $20,000. So yeah. Okay, cool. Like that's good to know. And I'm like, great, that sounds good. I'll look forward to meeting you tomorrow or whenever.

Or they're going to say something like, well, my neighbor had their house painted. He said it was $10,000. And it's like, okay, well, now we can have the more direct conversation like, where do you want to go from here? I don't want to waste your time. And typically what we find is that even in that situation, more than 60, 70% will still say, well, yeah, still come out. I think there might be an opportunity. But some people will certainly say like, no, we actually got another quote that was $10,000. And it's like, you just said you didn't get any other quotes, but okay, sounds good. Customers lie.

Jon Bryant: At least now we're getting to yes or no as fast as you can. And I find too that when you talk about price, you get real information. It's not this airy fairy pie in the sky thing anymore. We're talking about actually doing it at a price. And that's part of the reason why I think a lot of contractors have a hard time talking about that because it takes them so long to formulate the price. So we still need to have those metrics upfront of how to do it, how to frame the interior price conversation, both of those things so that you can give a valid framework. Because if you're saying, well, this project's probably between one and a million dollars, how do you feel about that? The person's like, well, great, my neighbor had it done for $10,000. It's like, oh, okay, I don't have a clue what I'm talking about.

Michael Murray: I like it. I think though, the reality is I mentioned before, this came up with a newer sales rep and being able to give ballpark pricing is not an easy thing to do. Because I don't want to say, yeah, this is probably going to be $25 to $30,000 and I get out there and it should have been $17,000 because chances are they're going to tell me on the phone, dude, $25 to $30, there's no way. I'm not doing that. And I'm like, damn it, I just lost an opportunity. That was bad.

Nor do I want to be low. Because then it looks like I'm doing this bait and switch. Oh, yeah, your price is going to be $5 to $10,000. I get out there and it's $18,000. And they're like, what happened to the $5 to $10,000 you lied to me about? So we're attuned to that. I mean, you've been doing this forever. I know you like to make fun of me because I've been doing this more than half my life. It's easier for me to do that because I've done thousands of painting quotes.

But for a new rep who's been with us now about two months, they've not done that many. They've done maybe 40 or whatever. So what I told them is that it doesn't mean that we don't talk about price. It just means we don't talk specifically. And that can be having conversations about asking a question like, are you looking for the lowest price when you're getting multiple options here?

If somebody says yeah, then we know they're probably not going to be our customer because we're typically not the lowest price. Or what most people will say is, well, no, not necessarily. I definitely don't want to have somebody that's too cheap. And then we can have a conversation about, okay, well, that's fair. We're typically a higher price point in the market. We're not always the highest, but we're definitely not going to be the lowest. And here are some reasons why. Did these things that I just listed sound like they're important to you?

And then we're having this back and forth conversation. If they're affirming that and they're saying yes, yes, we definitely want that, we plan on living in this house for a while, we definitely want that warranty stuff and you guys can help with colors, that's amazing. I'm now able to find the things that are important to them that aren't price. Most people, if they don't go with us, they tell us it's because of the price, even if that's not actually the reason why. I think most people make their decision not based on price, even though they tell us that it all came down to the price. Is that kind of your experience as well?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, yeah, it goes back to this mindset that I feel like you need to have as a good sales professional, which is that we help people buy. And in order to help people buy, we have to find out what's important. In the painting industry, we're essentially creating a project while we're with the customer. The product is being created out of thin air and the price is being created out of thin air and they don't know, but they do know what experiences they've had. And they do know things that are of value.

If we make assumptions about that, we completely lose the plot on what they're looking for. We want to deliver the project they want, not the one that we think we should give them. I've heard that said many times and it rings true from a pricing perspective. It's only one of the variables. And if you start to understand price, you can start to price engineer if the value of your company matches with the value of your customer.

So now we're having a discussion about how to make it work to work with us versus how to make it work at all. And I like those discussions better. So find alignment on our values. Like you said, color consult might be in-house employees. It might be a warranty. As companies, we kind of stack up these values that we think are important to our company and to our culture and our mission, our vision. We need to find alignment with the customers that make sense. And if we don't do that, it's going to be a horrible experience for everybody. It doesn't matter what the cost is.

Michael Murray: Yeah, no, I mean, again, I think you've heard this before, but if we hear that your price is too high, the customer is saying the value is too low. I don't see the value in what you're charging me for. So everything you explained is worth, in my mind, $5,000 and your price is $9,000. Your price is too high. Because what you told me I would be getting, I value at a price point less than what you're telling me the price is. So there's two parts of that. And you just touched on it. There's the price, there's the actual number, which is too high. But then there's the value part. And that's really the part that as sales professionals and company owners and all of us in the industry, we need to be focused on that part. How do we provide more value or more perceived value than what we're actually charging? And that's when you're booking the projects on the spot and this just seems easy.

Jon Bryant: So let's talk about that. On the spot, you've made that first framework of here's a price banding. We've looked at things. In our world, we have another estimator meet with a new estimator and go through their estimates for the week and help give them a price band so they can at least have that discussion. And then now we're moving to the actual onsite visit. Talk to me about that. I'm sure you gave some coaching to this new rep on onsite. How'd it go?

Michael Murray: Yeah, I mean, again, we're focusing in on this price. At the beginning of the appointment, if we haven't done so already, we really want to have some of these budgeting conversations, price banding, price conditioning, giving some idea of what might you expect, at least expect the fact that we're not going to be a low price and things like that. We're certainly asking a lot of questions, trying to figure out what is important to this homeowner. And as we find those things, we're making sure that they understand the ways that we have solved them and the value that we provide.

So that's all the lead up. I like to think of an estimate happening in three acts - there are three big pieces of, let's call it an hour long appointment. The beginning part is where we're having this initial consultation. We're either sitting at the kitchen table, sitting out on the patio, front porch or whatever, and we're just talking about what are their needs? What are their expectations? What kind of past experiences have they had? I'm trying to figure out what kind of pain are they experiencing? Why am I here?

Is it because you hate the color? Is it because stuff is peeling and you've noticed some rotten wood? Is it because you're about to move? Is it because you just moved in? What are the circumstances that led us to be having this conversation? Which is then going to help me understand, one, is this a customer that we are possibly even a good fit for? And two, do they value this project in a way that might make sense to work with us in a higher price, higher customer experience offering? And if we're not, then we maybe don't go further than that.

We try to think of it as this phase one of the estimate is a yes or no - do we keep going? And it's okay if we have these great conversations with the homeowner and realize that we're not going to be the right fit to work together based on - for us to do this type of a project, the way that we do things is not going to align from a numbers perspective with what you're looking for.

Jon Bryant: Two questions. How often do you feel like you and your team walk away from a consult after 15 minutes or so? Does that happen often?

Michael Murray: I think the answer is not often enough because we have room for opportunities to do a better job here.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I 100% agree with that. I think too many of us sit in these conversations knowing full well it's never going to work. Second question, how does your onsite discussion of the cost change from your initial consult on the phone?

Michael Murray: I would say most of the time when we have a phone consult, if it's not exterior, we're not talking much about specific pricing because I feel like we're more likely to just not understand the scope of work. So exterior, I would like to think that happens quite often. I think the reality is that it probably doesn't happen as often as I would like because sales reps are busy and they called the customer, they didn't answer and then it ended up just being a text message. Hey, are you still going to be available tomorrow at three o'clock for that appointment? And they said yes.

Things don't always happen exactly like we draw them up. Sometimes we're too busy because we're spending too much time on a lot of the wrong activities. Which is such a hard thing for especially lesser experienced sales reps to understand that if they just spent a little bit more time having these conversations and vetting appointments, they would save themselves time and they'd have a higher win rate because they would be talking with more of the right people, even if overall they're doing a few less estimates on a weekly or monthly basis.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. Yeah, that's really well said. I mean, when we dug into that data about top reps, I mean, they don't do as many estimates as you would think. Doing 10 to 12 a week is manageable. But I think a lot of times it's that mentality of like more is more. And actually sometimes more is less, less is more. So, okay, so now we're on site with the customer, a potential customer - these are prospects still. And the prospect - you're doing, you've seen the job now and let's say you haven't talked price with them yet. Let's run through that. So again, I'm the customer. Are you coming back? You're sitting down. Let's go through a bit of role play.

Michael Murray: So just to make sure I understand, I've already measured and I have an accurate price. Is that what we're at? I think, just for the sake of time, let's get to that point. So we've had these rough budgeting conversations or we haven't one way or the other. We have put together our quote. We've walked around, got my measurements, put everything in a paint scout, I have everything laid out. I'm ready to present this quote to the homeowner or homeowners.

And I think this is going to be where most of the listeners are certainly familiar with this. What are some of these objections that are going to come up? I think the two big ones that we hear all the time are, well, your price is more than we expected it was going to be. Or, you know, you're awesome, thank you, but we're going to need some time to think about it.

Jon Bryant: Both those are saying the same thing. In fact, there's a bunch of other ways people phrase it. And trying to identify that is really a key part of a project consultant or sales rep's job - trying to - people try to divert away from conflict. We need to make it more comfortable. So talk to me about that.

Michael Murray: How might we make it more comfortable? Talk about that.

Jon Bryant: Well, obviously the sooner you talk about price, the more comfortable it is, but it also comes down to a demeanor. And it comes down to a demeanor of understanding that again, you are trying to help the customer buy and not every job is the right job for you. And every contractor is not the right contractor for them. And so if you can communicate this in an open, honest way, I've found people are willing to have open and honest discussions.

You gotta try to help them feel comfortable through the way you're saying things. And so I typically in my process, if I'm meeting with somebody, I'm constantly trying to bring it back to neutral, try to make them feel comfortable using words like maybe or it might or it can, or would it - words like that, where I'm not asserting myself above them in the discussion. I'm running the discussion, but I want to make sure they're comfortable. And so when it comes to that point of money, I've hoped that I've done a good enough job to at least set the framework that I'm okay to have that discussion.

And so for me, if say you were the customer, Michael, and we get to that point, I'd probably say something like, hey, Michael, I've had a chance to look at the job and I have a much better sense now of what this is likely going to cost. And I know money is one of those things that's just super important to everyone. And I want to make sure that I'm not sending you something blind and you're feeling uncomfortable with that because there's a lot of options here. There's a lot of variables.

We've talked about some of that value and I think there's a chance - I mean, you got to tell me if I'm overstepping here - but I think there's a chance we might be a good fit to work together. Am I off base there?

Michael Murray: No, I think it sounded pretty good.

Jon Bryant: Okay, great. Well, did you have a sense of the cost of this at all?

Michael Murray: No, that's why you're here.

Jon Bryant: Okay, great. Well, I just want to give you a sense of price. After I've entered everything in and looked at all this project, I'm between $12 and $14,000, depending on what kind of paint we use, there's some options there. Does that range seem like something you might want to move forward with and work with us on? And that question - every sales person, every sales professional in the world will tell you, once you say that, you got to shut up and you let them talk.

And the next person that talks - people say "loses." I don't like that word very much. I think it's actually that you now get a dialogue if you can let the customer talk first and just be quiet. Does that resonate with you?

Michael Murray: Yeah, no, for sure. So this, again, just to be clear, you have calculated the price and to your point, you have on your iPad your basic price is $13,000, but you know, like, hey, I could get you to $12,000 if we downgrade the paint a little bit and make a couple of tweaks. I can also get you to $14,000 if we make some upgrades and there's a couple of suggestions I might have here. But generally speaking, we were not just guessing off of Google Maps anymore, to your point.

Jon Bryant: No, not at all. No, I know what my internal price is, but I don't like giving an internal price down to the dollar, because I want that - I need to feel like there's still a dialogue. And when I give it a price banding and I reference the fact that there's a few variables here we should still discuss depending on what your priorities are, that still makes it feel as though the customer has control. Or sorry, prospect has control.

Michael Murray: Okay, so let's play that scenario out. So if we've done a really good job up to this point, you've told the customer probably going to be in the neighborhood of $10 to $15,000, maybe over the phone or when you first arrived and they're like, oh, okay, that makes sense. You put together your stuff. You're around $13,000, but you know, hey, I could be really between $12 and $14,000. If at this point, the customer says, well, John, I think your price is a little higher than we expected. How are you going to respond and what might you do at that point?

Jon Bryant: So I'm going to thank them for letting me know, first and foremost. Hey, thanks for letting me know. Like I mentioned, there's a bunch of variables here we could look at, but I need to understand a little bit more where you need to get to in order to work with us.

Michael Murray: Well, John, yeah, that's a good question. So we actually got another quote and their quote was about $7,500 for pretty much the same project of what you just talked about. I think there was a few things that you said that we kind of liked quite a bit that maybe the other guy didn't really mention. But I'll tell you what, I mean, that's a lot. We're talking $6,000 or so. $6,000 is a lot of money.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. And you know what? If I was in your position, I would be concerned about $6,000 too. Would you be open to having us just take a look at both contracts side by side just to make sure that these are apples to apples? And you know what? If they're not, and if they are, and you feel like that's a better fit, 100%, I think that's a better decision for you. And I'm open to that. Would you be open to having that discussion?

Michael Murray: Yeah, let me go get the - I think they just wrote it on this piece of paper, notebook paper over here and it's not a whole lot of detail. So, yeah, let me go grab that. Here. Here it is. So it's actually $7,800 or whatever.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. And now we're poking holes and now we're asking the questions. I think I've told you this story before - I got concrete work done in my garage and the person I hired was the cheapest. Shame on me. Should have known better. The contract was not well written out. And at the end of the day, I kick myself every day for hiring that person. I look at this garage that's cracked, uneven.

It's actually draining into my garage and it's very difficult for me to get rid of this decision. And I wish deep down that there was somebody out there in the process of me buying that would have said, John, is it okay if we just look at the other contract? Because I want to save you from yourself. And if you decide you still want to do that after you understand the whole landscape here, that's up to you. But I've seen it time and time again, my customers end up getting burned and have to pay twice. And I want to help you legitimately. And if you choose still that option, you got to choose what's best for you. But I'm here to help and understand where you're taking that risk. That's my demeanor.

Michael Murray: I like it. So here's something that we like to do. I will try to have the customer buy, to the point. And if I've done a good job up to this point, I've been asking a lot of questions about color selection and schedule and warranties and products and past experiences and things that I'm going to now reference.

So what I like to do is say something along the lines of, well, you know, John, in this situation, prospective customer, if our prices were about the same, which one of us would you want to work with? And they're going to say, well, you guys, I mean, definitely. This is on this piece of paper. You guys show up, you're so clean cut and professional. The other guy was here for 10 minutes. They didn't really spend a whole lot of time. You've been asking all these really good questions. I've seen your guys' reputation. I've been on the website. I know you guys worked at my neighbor's house, I think it was last year, they said really nice things.

And so, but again, that's a lot of money. And it's like, got it. No problem. I understand. So you mentioned that the warranty that we provide - I could probably save you some money if I didn't provide you that warranty. Would that be okay? It's like, well, no, no, no. I would definitely want to have that warranty. Oh, okay, got it.

And I don't need to play this whole thing out, but you can see that what I'm doing is helping the customer to compare between these two options without me having to do it. At this point, I might not even need to be looking at their quote. They've looked at it. And then I'm just asking them to basically compare us. Not in the framework of price. Because I started with, if our prices were the same, which would you go with?

It's like, well, you guys, you have that interior designer and you guys use better paints and professionalism and all the things. And it's like, okay, awesome. So now let's focus on those things. And what I'm trying to get them to understand is that they value those things. And because they value those things, they should be willing to spend more money to make sure they get those things. And then we're going to go down that path of just really focusing in on that side of the conversation.

Jon Bryant: I think it's so important to be unemotional. I think too, though, it's like these aren't value statements. I think too often in our industry, companies get upset with customers. Sales reps get upset with customers. Like, how could you go with that guy? You know that they're just using subcontractors or just the guy on the corner and they're just using crappy paint from Walmart. Don't they know, don't they know? And it's like, no, hey, they might not know. And maybe you didn't do a good job explaining it.

But B, that might not be important. They might be more than okay with the guy that was cash on the corner. Like, hey, I need you to come be a day laborer for me. That doesn't make them a bad person. It just - they were never your customer to begin with. And that's okay. I have no - you're not a good person or a bad person because you're my customer.

Michael Murray: Everyone has to make the best decisions for themselves. That's what I've had to tell myself. If you choose to work with us or someone else, well, that was the best decision for you. And I should be happy that you arrived at a decision.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. So let's talk about the end. Because I think the end is also - you alluded to it just now - sales reps get frustrated. Why didn't they get back to us? Why aren't we talking? The follow-up process. If you do this right, you shouldn't be following up too much because at least you're going to come to an end. What do you do?

Michael Murray: Well, yeah. And one, just one quick note, I think at some point we'll have a whole episode on following up and how does that work. But just note here that one of the things I want to do before I leave the house - most appointments end in a next step. Let's talk again a couple of days, maybe a week later, whatever that is. One of the things that I want to do when we train all our sales reps is to help the homeowner understand that there's multiple ways that this relationship or whatever can end.

So I'm okay if you tell me that we're the right fit and we're going to work together. That's great. I'm excited about that. If you tell me that we're not the right fit and you've decided that you're either going to not do the project or work with somebody else, that's great. And I'm excited about that. The one thing though that is not going to be a good outcome is if you just kind of don't give me any response.

So the only thing I'm going to ask you, Mr. or Mrs. customer, is that once you've made a decision that you are going to have that conversation with me to let me know what that decision is, and I am not going to try to trick you into working with us or whatever the case is. I will respect your decision. I'm just going to ask that you let me know what that is.

And by having some sort of conversation like that with homeowners, where we've shown them that, hey, I'm not a jerk. I'm not going to try to trick you or whatever. But I do expect you to treat me like a professional. What we find - we still get ghosted. Don't get me wrong. This isn't a foolproof thing. But it goes down significantly because most people, once they've verbalized that commitment that they're going to do it, want to be somebody who follows through and does the things they said they would. And they're going to at least let me know if we're going to work together or not. So that's key.

Jon Bryant: Okay, so for people listening, you get to the call and the person says, hey Michael, I wanted to let you know we're going in another direction.

Michael Murray: Your price is too high to be clear. So what we're talking about - should I assume our price was too high or what was the factor?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, maybe you ask like, should I assume our price was too high or what was the factor?

Michael Murray: Yeah, so what was the deciding factor? Well, you know your price was too high and again at this point we're basically right back to where the conversation we just had is. Got it. Completely understand. If I had the ability to provide you with a better price, would that be something that you'd be interested in talking about?

And the customer might say, no, we already signed with them, they already started the work. Gotcha, no problem. Completely respect your decision. I hope everything goes well. We'd love to work with you on the next project. Please keep us in mind.

Or what usually happens is they're going to say, well, yeah, I mean, we just kind of made this decision last night. I really haven't called them yet or maybe I did but I haven't really committed any money yet. So yeah, I'd be interested in chatting with you. I kind of liked you guys better. But like I said, their price was just lower. Yeah, tell me more about this. What are we thinking here?

And then I'm going to say, well to be honest with you, we don't really do price matching. But if our prices were similar, would we have an opportunity to work together? They would say, well, yeah, definitely. And then I'm right back to the conversation about value.

Jon Bryant: So no need to dig too far into that because we already went over it, but I definitely - going back to just general word tracks - when someone says we've gone in the other direction, I might say, well, would it be okay if I just ask you what the deciding factor was? So now I'm asking for permission, constantly asking for permission. And they're like, yeah, you know, it was just, it came down to price for us. It was too expensive. And I want to get to where you are as well, but I'm going to say, hey, thanks for letting me know. I really appreciate that. How open would you be to a discussion about us price engineering something to meet your budget?

And then I'm going to get the yes or the no - no, we've made our decision or yeah, I mean, we'd be open to that if there's room here, because some people don't understand there is room. And so I'm asking, are you open to it? And then I might say something like, when it gets down to the nitty gritty, I just say, you know, would it make sense here to pay a little more to get all those things you're looking for? Or if not, that's okay. But you said those were things were important. I want to make sure that we didn't overlook those.

Michael Murray: And one thing I'll add is, depending on the conversation, the circumstances - it really is such a conversational thing - but I also like to ask somebody, maybe they say that's more than we expected as opposed to your price is higher than somebody else. And my question is, well, at what price point would we have an opportunity to work together? At what price point would you feel comfortable?

Okay, gotcha. So just to hear you correctly. If I can give you a price that's around - let's say my price is $9,000 and they say, well, we were expecting it to be probably in the neighborhood of $6 or $7,000, but I think we could probably see maybe like $8,000 if we could do that. I'd say, okay, great. So just to make sure I understand, if I was able to figure out a way to provide you with the same or very similar project for $8,000, we would have an opportunity to earn your business. Is that correct? And they say yes. And it's like, okay, great. So now we're just basically getting closer.

It's essentially this negotiating concept of - we're no longer talking about $9,000 to $6 or $7,000, but we're now talking just that difference from nine to eight. And now I can say, okay, well, when we walked around, that one room, I don't really know that you need to paint the ceiling in there. I think you guys kind of agreed. So would it be okay if we took that off the scope of work? And that might've been $300. And so it's like, okay, now we're at $8,700.

And all I'm then going to do is get to the point where I feel like, okay, we're pretty close. I know you guys really want that color consultation. And you mentioned that that warranty we provide is super important. Is that worth the extra $700 to make sure that you have the peace of mind, to make sure that you have the interior designer to come over to make sure that you're going to be 100% satisfied with the colors in the end? And you can see again, what I'm trying to do is just isolate it down to that.

Jon Bryant: I think it's awesome. Super smart. Maybe to finish things off here, Michael, because I think those three phases are super important. So we have the one at the front, which is the beginning, before you meet with them, when you meet with them, and then after. And I wonder if it's worth just recapping the other side of the story, which is the customer's experience. Do you have experiences where you've gone through this recently through a vendor doing some work at your house or anything like that?

Michael Murray: As a consumer? Yeah, certainly. One of the things that bothers me more than anything else is, let's just say like software - you go on their website and just like, hey, I just want to know, give me some idea what this costs. And it's like, oh, I don't even care. I don't even know the exact price, but no, yeah, get a demo. It's like that kind of stuff just is so frustrating where if I can get somebody who can just tell me like, look, here's basically what the price is going to be. And maybe there's some customization. I so appreciate that because then at least I can say like, oh, that's not within my budget right now.

Doesn't mean I'm not interested ever. It just might just be a "not now" thing. But I don't have to spend all of this time. And again, that's what I think homeowners are at. I think many of our homeowners, especially once we're a well established company with an awesome reputation, they might be willing to wait to work with us to the point - to get to the point where they can afford to spend a little bit more, maybe not a lot more, but maybe a little bit more. Or they might be interested in a financing option or some of the other ways that we can bridge that gap. How about you?

Jon Bryant: I'll echo that too. I mean, when I think about this process with this marketing company and how that could have gone differently. And I think about essentially the buying experience, no matter what you're doing is fairly similar across the board. There's an initial consult of looking at something. Then you have to - this is person to person sales - you got to meet with somebody, get the final price. And then you got to decide.

Every time I've had somebody bring up price in a very helpful way upfront, I am far more inclined to have honest conversations with them down the road. And too often, a couple of things happen. One, vendors don't know how to get a price quickly because they've got archaic systems or they don't have a great system of bidding. And so you can't have that discussion. Or two, they're trying to hide it.

And they think that by hiding it is somehow going to get them in a better position. And that's what you're talking about from the software side, right? I remember having a conversation with a software company and took five minutes to find out the price. And then we were like, no, 100% no. I just wasted six hours of my time. I don't even like you guys anymore. You're pissed. I was mad. I was really mad.

So I think what's important through this whole discussion is thinking about how your customer, the homeowner, the commercial client, feels about their end of the process. They're trying to find how to - honestly, I believe they're trying to figure out how to get the work done within a budget, within a timeline, and at a quality level that they're happy with. They don't want to get screwed. If you don't address one of those things upfront and you make assumptions, the whole thing's off.

And so we need to learn that this is actually beneficial to potential customers in order to respect their time, respect them contacting you at all, and figure out how to get the price in their hands as soon as possible. Not only that, but the data shows it too. That when you talk price before and at the job site, project site, whatever it is, you win more often. You do because you're actually having real conversations.

If you don't have to get to that third stage of having the follow-up, it is amazing because chasing people down, finding that third time to connect, they might be uncomfortable. They might not want to tell you all those things we talked about upfront. So we're trying to generate a system here of talking about price, getting a price that allows the customer to feel comfortable working with you. It's about them. It's all about them.

And so I think a lot of people get - I've seen a lot of reps get scared to talk about price. Price is the magical thing that unlocks all the good discussions and get that sooner.

Michael Murray: Yep. And sometimes there's adjustments that can be made. You mentioned it in one of the examples before with that $12 to $14,000, but there's adjustments that can be made. Maybe we can break this project into a smaller project. Like, hey, instead of doing the entire inside of the house, what if we just did the first floor right now? Because that would definitely fit well within your budget. And you're going to see that we do provide that amazing, excellent experience, unlike anything you've ever seen before. And then when you're ready, we'll come back and we'll tackle the rest of the house.

And it might be a more enjoyable experience instead of having us in your house for two weeks. We can come in and in a few days get that first part done and come back when you're ready. Or maybe we can adjust the scope of work with not needing to paint all the trim or whatever it might be. Yeah, we've got to see it as like having the price conversation is when we can finally start to have some real dialogue with homeowners.

It's not the end of it. And I think too often that's where I've seen our sales reps that we've had in the past, where we don't talk about price at all throughout any of it until we get to the very end and we have calculated exact price. We tell the customer and they say, okay, great, we'll think about it. And I'm out of that house within two minutes. And they're like, yeah, it went great. They were so nice and they were such a nice person and they were smiling and they told me to have a great day. And it's like, they're not going to book. They're just a polite person. Don't get confused. They are in sticker shock right now and you have no chance and you're going to call them 10 times over the next month and get pissed because they never respond. And you have completely put them in this position.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, absolutely. Yep, it's our job to make customers feel comfortable, give them confidence we can do it. It's not their job to do that for us. So, cool. Well, this has been enlightening. Hopefully this helps with your rep.

Michael Murray: For sure. Yeah, no, it's great. I mean, that's one of the fun things about working with sales reps, I think, is that it helps me to better articulate these things and helps me to be better teaching it if you will. And then there's just like, it's just fun to see that light bulb moment where there's like, oh, that's why I was having customers ghost me or whatever. And now - Michael wasn't that crazy guy I thought he was. It's like, oh, that - remember that initial training stuff you went through? Now that you have some experience under your belt, let's go over that again.

Cool. Good stuff. Yeah. Anybody that found value in this, definitely like it, subscribe. We are going to be having a lot of sales reps join us as guests here in the coming weeks and excited to be able to go through some of these types of role plays with other sales reps and hear exactly how they do it. So if you find this interesting, definitely stick around. We've got some great stuff coming.

Jon Bryant: Cool. Thank you.

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