Prospecting Strategies from a Top Painting Sales Rep

Michael Murray: Welcome to the Price. Sell. Paint., so today I'm really excited to welcome Mike Green joining Jon and I on the podcast. Mike is from Fitzpatrick Painting. He is a rock star sales rep, absolutely one of the top performers in North America. Mike, welcome to the podcast. How's everything going?

Mike Green: Going great, I appreciate you guys having me on. We did our last deal a couple months ago and couldn't wait to get back on and talk some more sales with you guys. So appreciate everything that you guys are doing for the community.

Michael Murray: Yeah, no, you did great at the PaintScout X conference. And you were one of the guys that we highlighted when we spoke at the PCA Expo as one of the top performers. And I know everybody's been clamoring to hear more from you and just to try to learn from some of your expertise. So excited to dive in.

Mike Green: Absolutely looking forward to it.

Jon Bryant: So Mike, maybe tell us a bit about how you got here. What led to all of this?

Mike Green: Yeah, that's a great question. So very, very unconventional. As I mentioned a little bit in the PaintScout X for those that were on it, no previous experience in the contracting world. I mean, before I started Fitzpatrick Painting, I mean, if you asked me what a fascia board was, I couldn't even tell you that. I had no clue. Yeah, I've been with Fitzpatrick about six years. So my background initially was in higher education. I did student recruitment all across the West Coast for a small university. So basically I was selling high school students in California, primarily Southern California, on coming to a small town in Oregon, Monmouth, Oregon, which I did pretty well at that. I figured, you know, if I can sell someone from Southern California to come to Monmouth, Oregon, I'm probably going to be okay, whatever I do sales-wise. So I did that for a little while. I actually got my masters in higher ed, thought I was going to go that route. Kind of flipped routes about four or five years in, was just looking for something with more flexibility. Worked in the private sector for a little while, cut my teeth, really learned kind of biz dev and just how small businesses operate. And then six years ago, I started at Fitzpatrick Painting, actually as a recruiter, and so I was in charge of hiring all the labor. And so again, had some pretty good success with that. Did that for about seven months and actually then moved into a sales role after that. It's kind of a cool story. So the way I moved into that role is, as you guys know, being in the painting world, a lot of other people know, wintertime, that's where there's some pain. And so we had three sales reps, I believe, at the time. I was doing recruitment. And about October, Tim Fitzpatrick, the owner, came in and said, hey guys, we've got a war on winter. We've got to figure this out. We've got to fill the calendar. Mike, you're going to be involved with this as well. Let's spend two months, have a competition. Let's figure out who can bring in the most self-generated business. So, not leads coming in from the office. Keep in mind, zero experience bidding paint jobs, zero experience anything like that and so we press go basically mid-October. And I went out and just leveraged my network started making phone calls started making connections. Utilize resources in the company to help me actually accurately bid the projects. And this is not a pat on the back, but I think I did about 70K in like two and a half months. The other three combined I think did about 25K and so from there I moved into the sales role basically full-time January of that, you know, after those couple months. So that was about five years ago. For the first three months, I didn't have any office leads. So everything I did was self-generated. And so any business, any job that I was closing was just me out in the community creating business. And so I looked back on that and that really was important and kind of shaped the way I guess my career has gone. And I love prospecting. I hope we talk a little bit about that today. I love business development. I love meeting with Mrs. Smith at the kitchen table as well. But there's a piece of that going out and hunting and finding new business that really gets me excited. So that's kind of just the brief 30,000 foot level of kind of where I came from, where I'm at now six years later, love my role, love my position, love the company and I want to keep growing.

Jon Bryant: Amazing man. Yeah. So for those who don't know, I mean, we keep track of how people perform here at PaintScout and Mike is the top residential performer. So congrats Mike. That's phenomenal. And so going from that to now be where you're at is really impressive and your numbers are staggering. So, you know, I mean, we can talk a little bit about some of the numbers a little bit later, but I'd like to kind of just dive into what you're saying about the, you know, generating leads. And I think there's a lot of people in the industry that, you know I talked to and that I, you know, you hear whispers of that say, you know, sales reps shouldn't generate leads. And what do you say to that?

Mike Green: Didn't know that. That's cool.

Michael Murray: Awesome.

Mike Green: Yeah, so I mean, so there's two ways of thinking. There's a lot of the painting companies, and not everybody, they're set up where you've got estimators, which the estimating role, that's more of leads coming into the office, go out, they're good at sitting down, they're closing 45 to 55% of those kind of residential leads. So that's kind of one way of thinking. You've got another way of thinking of, you know, here's this business development role, you're strictly going out, you're not getting anything from the office. I really like kind of the hybrid role. I mean, I think that truly the ones that are being successful are, yes, you're doing a good job with the leads coming in from the office, you're closing those at, you know, close to 50%, give or take, depending on the market, but you're also generating new business. So I think whether you're doing it for two hours a week, whether you're doing it 10 hours a week, I think everybody, just personal opinion, everybody in that role should be doing some sort of prospecting or business development type activity. And the reason I say that, it's really hard if you start picking up the phone in October and calling these people that you haven't talked to since the previous October. So it's something that you have to be doing all the time and you just build the habit. Even in the summer, I'm kind of busy all year round, I'm a little bit more busy, I'd say, in the summer. I'm still prospecting. I'm still making those phone calls. Number one, it just keeps me in the habit. And if you stop doing it, then it's really hard because, let's just be frank, it doesn't matter if you're good at it or not. Most people, like probably 90% of people, don't love prospecting. I like it. I don't love it. I see it's a necessity to hit the numbers and kind of go where I want to go personally and from a company perspective as well. So my take on that is everybody should be doing a little bit of it and everybody can do a little bit of it.

Michael Murray: So Mike, what do you say to somebody maybe even on your own team? You guys have other sales reps there, right?

Mike Green: Yeah, we do. We've got three others and actually a new Biz Dev guy that's starting here next week.

Michael Murray: Okay. So, you know, those, let's just say those three sales reps, let's, you know, maybe one of them is reluctant to do this biz dev prospecting stuff that you're talking about. You've maybe, again, you've probably had these conversations. So, you know, for anybody that's listening, there are many people listening, don't like this. They don't want to do it. They don't do it. And so help us to understand first of all, I guess, why is it so important? And then maybe let's get into some of the specifics of how.

Mike Green: Yeah, great, great question, Mike. So why is it important? Well, number one, practically everybody, at least that I've talked to, they slow down in the wintertime. So number one, the reason why it's important to be having these conversations all year round is to help fill those winter calendars. Those winter calendars are full, there's not as much resources going into rehiring, you're going to have more consistency with the team, salespeople are going to be happier because they're making, you know, frankly, more money in the wintertime as well. Like we're in sales because we like making money. I mean, that's the reality of it. So that's kind of the piece of why you should be doing it. And then, sorry, what was the second part of that question? Yeah.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I just want to get into some of the how. You know, let's, let's just start like, again, let's, let's say you're talking to somebody who's brand new. They've never done this before. They don't have, you know, because I think there's a big difference. Once you've started to get the momentum going, you have these relationships and now you can start to build. But, you know, and so you got to kind of take us back to when, you know, maybe when you were first starting, or again, if you're working with somebody who's just starting and let's say, you know, it's like, and we're coming into the end of the summer now. And so we still got a little bit of time before we get to winter, but you know, by the time this comes out, right. We're a few months away from kind of that slowdown. And so what are we doing? Like, who are we reaching out to? Are we calling them? Are we texting them? Are we emailing them? Should we stop in? Like, give me the very detailed plan.

Mike Green: Yeah, that's awesome. So I've got a cadence. I won't talk about my example, because I don't think how I started doing it is the best way. I literally had no choice. It's like, just go figure it out. I think, number one, it starts with training. So I think a lot of people are maybe hesitant, because they just haven't had the training. They don't have the process. And ultimately, action. You've got to go out and you've got to have action. But I think having a framework of, hey, let's start with a targeted list. And so let me just kind of take you through my process. Number one, you got to have a list. If you don't have a list, you're spinning your wheels. Like I'm not going to just drive around and, I'm going to drop in here, I'm going to drop in there. I've got strategic targets. And so I've got different verticals that I target. I've got five to six different verticals within those verticals. I have companies, I have contacts, I have secondary contacts, I've got very detailed lists. So it starts with the list. After you've got, yuck, sorry.

Michael Murray: Mike, Mike, hold on. So can you, I don't want you to give us the whole playbook, right? Because I don't need you to give us like the specific names. Obviously you guys have local competitors and things like that, but broad brush, like give us some ideas who might be on that list, right? Maybe different types of industries. What types of industries do you target or types of people or, you know, residential commercial, just give us a little bit more specifics there.

Mike Green: Yep. Yep. Great. Great. So on the residential side, so let me be clear on the prospecting. Like I'm not, we're primarily a residential company, but I'm not prospecting residential customers. There's a lot of people just through different referrals that I'll get referred out residential jobs. But when I'm talking like prospecting, biz dev, I'm looking at bigger repeat accounts. So higher education, you know, K-12, facility managers, senior living communities, commercial real estate. These are some of the industries that I target. The reason I target those industries, and there's some others, is they've got, one, a lot of different facilities that have a lot of potential for repeat jobs. And so, those are kind of the targets that I go after. You know, once I have the targets, I'm creating the messaging with AI and all these different things. It's not like it was six years ago where you've got to spend days trying to figure out your messaging and trying to craft it and get it perfect. I leverage AI and I'll put some stuff in there and then make it my own. Of course, probably a lot of people do, but get your targets, get your messaging, figure out your cadence. And so when I talk about cadence, am I going to send an email? Am I going to start with a call? Am I going to send a text message? Am I going to do a drop-in? And that's going to look different for everybody. I've got a pretty detailed cadence that I won't necessarily go into unless you want me to right now. All different activities, when you're going to contact, how frequently you're going to contact, and ultimately making sure that you're tracking that. So once you've got your prospects, okay, you've got your list, okay, you've got your messaging, you've got your cadence, now it's the action. You can do all of that, and if you don't take action, none of it matters. And I've seen people that have absolutely amazing messaging and on paper their cadence looks phenomenal. It's like, that's great, then you got to execute it. And that's the hard part, I think that's where probably the majority of the people are just not doing the activity because the activity frankly can be uncomfortable at times.

Jon Bryant: So how do you, like, because I couldn't agree with you more. I mean, like activity in this area always seems to equal results. It's so weird, right? Like we look at it as like an activity, we have an activity tracker. And so it's like, how much activity did you do? And usually that question comes out when biz dev is kind of low. It's like, you haven't really made any contacts. Let's see what your activity was like. Oh, It was like, you did nothing. Oh, that's funny. How did that happen? That's a weird equation. You got nothing and you did nothing. And so you're absolutely right. Like the cadence is so important. And like, I'm curious to know because like we, you know, I struggle with this too as some head trash, but what kind of cadence do you find works best for you? You're doing things differently off the start, but then maybe just some broad overview that might help people.

Mike Green: Sure, yeah, let me backtrack just slightly and then yeah, I'll get into kind of that cadence a little bit. So one of the things that I feel really strongly about is when I'm talking about cold outreach, majority of my cold outreach isn't purely cold. So what I mean by that, if I'm doing my job right and I'm asking other people for referrals or introductions, like even if I've never met someone, if I've got the landscaping contractor that's part of my networking group that just sold a job to XYZ, you know, facility, if he does a quick intro, that's so much easier when I pick up the phone and call that facility person. Now, yes, I will absolutely do completely cold drop-ins or calls, but I'd say probably 80% give or take when I'm doing this prospecting activity, I've got some sort of a connection or introduction, which the probability of at least setting an appointment skyrockets. And so that's my ultimate goal is setting an appointment and then from there figuring out, do we have some synergy? What are next steps going to look like? And so, kind of getting into the cadence, like, so I'm looking for a referral first. So if I've done my job right and, you know, ex-customers referred these five people out, I'm always asking for the introduction, whether that's, you know, an email or, they call, or sometimes it's, hey, partner's called ex-person and Mike, I've talked to them, go ahead and give them a call, so much easier. So I'm looking for that introduction first. Now, most of the time that happens. From there, I'm picking up the phone and calling people. I do it all, I email, I text, I do the LinkedIn. There's some people out there that say calling is dead. Yeah, there's other avenues that you can reach people, but picking up the phone or dropping in and having face-to-face or at least a phone conversation, that just starts creating that rapport so much quicker. And so I do like to start with a phone call from there, depending on how that conversation goes. Maybe it's a message, maybe it's someone that I actually talk to. If I'm leaving a message, there's a different cadence. I'm going to be following up with a voicemail, an email, a text, connecting with them on LinkedIn, so there's different strategies, and then ultimately looping back to a phone call. And depending on the prospect, there's a different timeframe that I'll be contacting or trying to connect with them. If there's someone I can't connect with and it's been a month or two, I'll kind of put it to the side and then we'll maybe revisit that six months down the road depending on how much of a connection that I want to make with them. So that's just broad terms. That's kind of what it could look like in some ways.

Jon Bryant: Gotcha. One thing that's super interesting, you say phone calls and it's funny because I couldn't agree with you more. Like a phone call, I think of it as sometimes like dating a little bit, business development. And it's like, whoever got a date from doing like a mass email, right? It's like, Hey, I'm looking for a date. Is anyone up for it? It's like, no, I'm not going to go on a date with you, you weirdo. So there's no chance. And so you got to like get this up in the level of, you know, you're being personal at the same time. And I hear that when you're saying, which is like, let's find out if we're a good fit for each other. Because it's kind of like a, this is like a business date in a weird way. It's like, tell me about yourself. I'll tell you about me. It's like this weird little dance we do. And so yeah, like I think it's really interesting that it's part of your, let's do everything to get to there. So I think that's super smart.

Mike Green: Yeah, and ultimately, I'll drop in as well. Even without a phone call, it depends on if I've left a few messages or called a few times. I'm in the area, I'll drop in. And usually, I'm getting the gatekeeper, which that's totally fine. I've got some strategies for that as well. But yeah, I'll drop into facilities or senior communities and just do introductions right there if I can't get someone on the phone. I don't have any issue doing that.

Michael Murray: Yeah. I, you know, so I think we've got a pretty, you know, good idea of like maybe what to do a little bit of how to get started. I want to go back to like how important this can be. So Jon you, you mentioned before you've got some of Mike's numbers, I think from last year. Is that right? So give us a little bit of context, you know, with some of Mike's sales numbers. And then I have a follow up question.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. So, I mean, it's interesting you didn't know this, Mike. We should let people know this stuff. But anyways, we're working on that. We're working on it. It's important for us here because we realize like we've lived in this weird like siloed environment where sales reps don't know how they do. You know it compared to the other three people, but did you know compared to the entire North American community, you're number one? I mean, that's a weird. Congratulations. Let's just say that. Well done. Yeah.

Mike Green: That's cool, man.

Mike Green: That's pretty sweet. I mean, sales, we keep track, right? We keep score. Like, I go back to my athletic background, it's like everything we tracked, you know, we were keeping score. And that's same thing in sales. Like, we want to keep score, so that's cool to know.

Jon Bryant: So let's tell people the score because I think for some people this might be shocking information. I'm sure for you it's like every day, like whatever, I got to push this, like this wasn't good enough, but total sales. I mean, are you comfortable sharing that? So like I'm seeing around 4.4 million. Does that sound about right for last year? So that's a big number.

Mike Green: Yeah, yeah, I've got no problem with that.

Jon Bryant: And I want to understand a little bit more what goes into that. But you also have some interesting other kind of facts, which is that your average job size is quite large. So I'm sure a lot of people might want to know about that. The, so you actually have, you've done a lot of estimates, but you've closed them out, which is an interesting fact, right? Like there's not a lot of open estimates from last year.

Mike Green: Mm-hmm.

Jon Bryant: So I think those are kind of three really interesting areas about your stats. Michael, I'm sure that fascinates you. Yeah.

Michael Murray: Yeah, so I want a couple of quick questions. John, do you have the number of how many estimates Mike did last year in 2023? Or am I putting you on the spot?

Jon Bryant: It says you did 865.

Jon Bryant: Is that true?

Mike Green: So that would be, I don't have my calculator, I turned my phones off. What's some quick math? So 865 divided by 12, so per month that would be...

Michael Murray: I got you.

Michael Murray: So you're at about 72 a month.

Michael Murray: If you worked every, you're at about 16 to 17 if you worked every week.

Mike Green: Yeah, I mean, I think that's pretty close. You know, some of those may be probably not a lot. Some of those may be initial bids that were like resends. There could potentially be some duplicates, probably not a lot. But yeah, I mean, that sounds fairly accurate.

Michael Murray: So I want to follow a couple of follow up questions I want to dive into. So I think we said 4.4 million in sales. Mike, do you have any idea what percentage of that comes from your business development activities versus leads that might be coming in through the office?

Mike Green: Yes, yeah, approximately. So probably, I'd say, a million-ish, give or take. We're probably, actually, last year probably a little bit more, because there was a very large job that I got that was not an office lead. So I'd say last year probably a million five was probably self-generated. And you can kind of maybe argue a little bit, what does that actually mean? Yeah, I mean, it's different people have different opinions on that. Like basically self-generated the way I look at it is business that I go out and create that was not called into the office. So probably last year was about 1.5 and about half million of that was one job.

Michael Murray: And I'm just curious, that half million, was that a job that you guys did in the winter or the summer? Do you remember? That's huge.

Mike Green: That is the job we did mostly. We did some in the winter and then a lot of it in the summer.

Michael Murray: Okay. I mean, yeah, again, it's anybody that's thinking, right? And, you know, as we're heading towards winter here, it's like, man, how do I make this winter? It's like, it could just be one job. And so it's like, you know, for many sales reps, you know, even adding a total of 500,000 in business development sales on top of, you know, maybe what they're currently doing significantly changes not only like their earnings, but the company's revenue and potential.

Mike Green: Yep.

Michael Murray: So it's huge. I mean, this isn't just, you know, like a small icing on top of the cake. This is a significant driver of success for you as well as the company.

Mike Green: Yep. I mean, I think if everybody out there, if they literally blocked off, you know, even starting with, if you did half a day a week just of biz dev activity, whether that's, and that can be researching, that could be drop-ins, that could be calls, that could be anything related to new business, if you did that over the course of a year, super reasonable to think that you could do half a million additional. I mean, that's, we're talking 40 something thousand a week. And a lot of times these jobs are going to close at a higher percentage too. And so you're not going to be spinning your wheels as much as you would sometimes with residential. Like that's a very realistic number. Just cookbook it. I mean, that's what my coach tells me all the time. I work with Mark Repkin and he, we've got detailed cookbooks. And if you just broke out your prospecting activity and average job size, like it's a very easy equation. Like you can work backwards and predict basically what you're going to do based on how many conversations, how many appointments, how many bids, average job size. And so that's a very reasonable number.

Michael Murray: Anybody that's listening thinking, what does he mean by cookbook? It's really just a spreadsheet. It's coming back to the idea, you know, John and you and I had talked about on an early podcast that sales is really just a math equation. And what Mike is talking about here is that, you know, we can get down to averages. If we know that for every 20 people we do a cold outreach to, we do four estimates and for every, you know, out of those four estimates, we sell two of them. And the average job size is $10,000, we can say, OK, we can predict what is it going to take to sell that $20,000. And then it's just a matter of start at the top of that funnel and just start repeating it. So anyway, so that's basically in a really simplified way. But that's kind of what Mike's describing when he says a cookbook.

Mike Green: Yep, yep, exactly.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, it's without a plan, any destination will do. You know, I think it's, yeah, it's telling. I mean, I have a question, a quick question here about this number of jobs open. So when you've got 865 jobs that you've bid and there's only, it appears 51 estimates that you haven't gotten a response on. And let's keep this in mind. I mean, this is, you know, start of the year to end of the year. So you may have done an estimate, you know, December 20th. It just wasn't closed out by January. What do you attribute that to? I mean, for those listening, this is a really key statistic in top performing sales reps. It's something you do really well, is closing out, getting yeses and nos. Maybe talk a little bit about that.

Mike Green: Mm-hmm.

Mike Green: Yep.

Mike Green: Yeah, I mean, for me, that's my goal is doesn't mean I'm there, but my goal is 100% closure. So I want a yes or a no on 100% of the jobs. And it starts with setting the table, you know, with the customer. And here's, of course, there's always going to be some of those outliers that just you can't connect with. But if I'm doing my job right, and I'm setting the table, I'm building that trust and rapport. Whether you go with me, yes or no, yeah, of course I want you to go with me, but if you don't, I want you to feel comfortable enough where you can tell me so you can move on and I can move on and we can still be friends. And so that's how I try to approach it. I'm very meticulous about, I'm in PaintScout all the time. If I get a no, I'm not cheering, but I'm like, boom, mark no, on to the next, on to the next. And that's just my mindset. Like I can't have that stuff hanging out there. Like it'll just consume my mind. And so I need, like for me, I need to get that yes most of the time, but I also need that no. And I'm okay with the no. I just need to get the no versus I can't get in touch with you. And so, and that just goes back to follow up process. Set the table, like I mentioned, follow-up process, being meticulous with that, and just trying to build that rapport with the customer, whether it is a yes or a no. If I've done my job and I've built that rapport, I'm going to get that no more often than I would just get a no response.

Jon Bryant: It's really funny actually, quick anecdote, I started to really perform well in sales when I actually just went for no's. It's like the weirdest thing mentally when you're just like, you know what, I don't even know if I want this job. And all of a sudden it's like this weird psychological hack that people have and now they want you more, blah, blah, blah. I don't know if I fully believe it, but at least for me, it gave me that chance to be like, no, their goal here is that the customer chooses what's best for them. And my target is 50%. Like, I think yours probably sounds like it's probably similar. That means half the people that we talk to are just like, not fits, let's just move on. I want to use my time efficiently. Time is what I don't have a lot of. So anyways, I don't know if you resonate with that, that's my impression.

Mike Green: Absolutely, yeah, 100%.

Mike Green: I mean, time is money. Like, I don't want to waste your time. I don't want you to waste mine. Of course, I don't articulate it exactly like that. I mean, yeah, we're not a fit. Let's move on. Totally fine. And I'm good with that. Yeah, I'm with you, John. I feel the same way. If it's not going to be a fit, it's a no. And the next one's going to be a fit.

Jon Bryant: Love it, man.

Michael Murray: Are there some, maybe like word tracks or, you know, like sample, you know, ways that you respond to try to help with this. I'm thinking about, you know, maybe you're give you a scenario, you're at an estimate, you present, you know, your quote. And customer says, okay, great. You know, thanks Mike, we're going to need to get some more quotes. And so, you know, give us a call in a few weeks. Probably have an answer for you. And then you probably just like, okay, bye. Okay. No, I'm guessing you don't. So walk us, yeah, you're not going to wimp out like that. So talk to us a little bit about how do you handle that? How do you handle that like need to get more quotes idea?

Mike Green: No, no. Yeah, that's very good question. And that's a common objection, price, getting additional quote. I mean, those are probably the two most common objections that we, at least that I see in the paint world. And so luckily I've had some practice at it. So one thing, and this is more kind of personal philosophy or style, like I'm not going to go in and push. So again, I go back to doing my job correctly. So if I'm in there and I set the table correctly and we talk about this is what to expect, appointment's going to take about 45 minutes, we're going to talk about X, Y, and Z, we're going to talk about price, we're going to talk about budget. At the end, there's going to be basically one of three things that are going to happen. You're going to say yes, great, we're going to move on, you're going to say, no, Mike, can't stand you, get out of my house, we're going to move on. Or the most common thing is, you know, I'm not quite ready to make a decision. And then at that point, all I simply ask for is for a next step. And so I'm always getting a next step. A lot of times people are not making a decision on the spot. I don't know my statistics, you know, during COVID or right after that, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. So we were all just closing stuff on site, super easy. I'm just guessing 20%-ish, maybe a little bit lower is what I actually close on site. And so my process is, well, it changes a little bit. If I'm the first bid versus the last bid, and I'm always asking who they're getting bids from, when they're getting the bids, so I'm gathering that data, and that's going to help kind of how I approach the next kind of questions or the scenario. So we'll just go back to your scenario, Michael. You know, I was the first bid. We sat down, we ran through everything. They're not ready to make a decision. They've got other proposals that they're still getting. I'm asking, when do you expect to receive those? Because what I like to do is if they tell me, which a lot of times they will, I'm going to get these on Thursday or I'm going to get these on Friday, I won't actually send them the bid. I'll schedule a follow-up call with them. So I'll run through the bid with them in their house. If they're not ready to commit, no problem, and I get that information, oh great, I'll have this bid out to you Friday morning, let's schedule a call at 8:30, does that work for you? Yep, works great. Let's run through everything, want to make sure everything's apples to apples. A lot of times people have questions, it's a great time just to review everything at that time. A lot of times I can close the job during that phone call once they've got all of the information. Looking back to it, I also ask, I make sure to know what's important to you about this project, what are you looking for in a contractor? And then if they haven't gotten the other bids, you can't really use that information or the apples to apples game. So I just make sure that I'll loop back to what they told me. Oh, Michael, you told me it was really important to have a 12 year warranty. You said prep was very important. You said timing on when you could get this project done was important. We talked budget and we are within the budget that we discussed. And so I will ask for the business on every project and sometimes, I don't know the percentage, but sometimes I can loop it back and still get that signature when they have other bids pending. I actually had one was at... Oh gosh, it was last week. So it was a woman that... Small residential, maybe six, $7,000 exterior job. We'd done work for her. I was at her mom's house. She met me there. I was the first bid, ran through everything with her. She had two others. She's like, no, I was going to get two other bids, but you already worked for me, we liked it, I'm going to just cancel those bids, let's sign the contract. So that can happen as well, and that just kind of goes back to the relationship piece, being in the community or maybe working with that individual in the past. So different strategies, I know I kind of went around in a circle, but there's definitely different strategies depending on where you're at kind of in the sequence of bids, whether you're the first bid, the middle bid, the last bid, sometimes people just frankly don't want to spend the time to get two to three other bids and everything. If you're checking all the boxes and you ask for that close or you ask for that business, sometimes the customer is going to be completely fine saving their time and moving forward on that. Other times, yeah, they want to get those other bids and then I just schedule a call, send them the proposal on that date so I can run through it with them and then still have a chance to close.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. Scheduled appointments. That's okay. I mean, there's a lot, there's a lot to take away there. I mean, for sure the schedule point, like you mentioned, Michael, so super important. I think also there's a few strategies on price, which is interesting there. Like sometimes waiting for other prices to come in and chatting with them once they have a better framework. Super helpful. And so yeah, really interesting.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I love that scheduled appointment. Great. No, no, you're good. That's great. I think the detail is awesome.

Mike Green: Yep. Yeah. That was long winded. Sorry for that.

Jon Bryant: Mike, I know you got to go here and we appreciate your time so much. So I think it's probably a good spot to wrap up. We'd love to keep the conversation going though in the future if you're up for it because there's so much to learn here. I think obviously your performance is next level and I'm sure people would love to know how you do that. So this is the tip of the iceberg for those listening. We'd love to have Mike back on and keep the conversation going. So thanks for tuning in guys to Price Sell Paint. It's always fun. We love chatting with top sales reps and just getting this information out to the industry is really important to us because it's been hidden forever. This old industry, you know. So thanks for tuning in. Feel free to give us a like and subscribe if you want to follow along and we'll catch you next time. So thanks very much, Mike. Awesome. Appreciate you.

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