The Smarter Way to Sell Painting Jobs

Michael Murray: Hi everyone, welcome back to another episode of Price Sell Paint. I am Michael Murray, joined as always with Jon Bryant. Jon Bryant, how are you today?

Jon Bryant: Fantastic, Michael. Just such a great day today. Thank you for asking.

Michael Murray: Middle of the summer. I want to talk today—we had this topic come up in our sales meeting at Textbook. We're struggling to get closure on the spot. I think it's something we've always struggled with, but it feels maybe either worse or at least something that we're paying attention to. Our sales reps get very little closure, whether it's winning jobs or even just hearing a no while we're at that initial appointment.

I have a feeling that other people probably struggle with this as well. It's creating a lot more work in terms of follow-up and even just in our win percentages and things like that. So I was hoping we could talk about this. I'd love to learn from you. And hopefully this conversation can be helpful for a lot of people that are listening.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. I think one of the things I think about immediately is whether we should be closing on the spot. I've heard a variety of opinions. I think some people say they don't want to be a pressure salesperson. And that's never been my style. I hate pressure. I think most people don't appreciate high pressure sales, although it works. So sometimes I'm like, I don't know what's the right way to go here.

My opinion, and it probably resonates with you too, is that closure on the spot means a lot of different things. It's not just asking for the work, but I feel like it's the opportunity to have a real conversation with the prospect, the person who's looking to get that work done, and get real information as to maybe why they don't want to go ahead with you or whether there's an opportunity to work together. That's really in my mind what we're talking about here—getting real information.

I hope that's what we're going to be talking about today, just that we have a chance when you're with somebody to really get the best, most, the least diluted, least guarded information. And we want to be doing that as sales reps.

Michael Murray: Yeah, what I hear you saying is just having real conversations with this homeowner or property owner or whatever it might be—just having a real conversation and seeing if it might make sense for us to either work together or not, or continue a conversation or whatever that might look like. Am I reading that right?

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. Yeah. So my experience has been that if you don't get critical information while you're on site with a customer, you are often at a huge disadvantage to winning that work.

Michael Murray: What kind of critical information are you thinking there? Unpack that a little bit.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, part of our process has always been to make sure that we're trying to get ahead of some of these objections. And I think closing on the spot is one of those things where in my experience, if you don't try to close on the spot—at least like a "Hey, does this make sense to work together or get this in the schedule?"—you run the risk of never getting the true objection as to why you don't work together.

It's one of the reasons that I think it's so important to at least have someone might call it a trial close or some type of an ask as to whether we should continue, because so often we don't get those critical conversations done. And then you're chasing it, you're trying to find information after the fact. So I think that if we can talk about some of those objections—things we're trying to get to in that conversation to close the job—we can really help anyone listening understand what objections might look like in a contracting space and how to get ahead of those in order to be able to ask that question on spot. That sounds about right.

Michael Murray: Yeah, exactly. I think it's interesting. You brought up the "Should we even be trying to do this?" I guess I take that for granted. I think the answer for me is yes. And the reason why is, one, I think it's going to save our sales team a ton of time. Follow-up is very time consuming. And I think we underappreciate how much time that takes. It not only takes our time, but it also takes the homeowner's time.

I think the idea that when a homeowner isn't wanting to make a decision on the spot—I think that is somewhat not necessarily true. I don't know that most homeowners love the idea of getting tons of quotes and having to get all these phone calls and follow-ups and different things like that. I think many homeowners are just really looking for a good solution that they feel comfortable with, have had a good conversation with. Let's move forward. Let's get this thing on the schedule and just kind of get this project over with and move forward with my life.

So I think this can be done in a way where it's a win-win for everybody. I don't think it has to necessarily have any negative connotations, although to your point from before, I think it could be if we're pushy, used car salesman tactics or whatever. We're not good at this. I would say we're kind of wimpy if I was to put a word on it.

Jon Bryant: So you guys are pretty good at this, right? Over at Textbook?

Michael Murray: We are not. You know, that was the word I called our sales team earlier this week or last week when we had this conversation here. So yeah, we're wimpy.

Jon Bryant: So you say the word wimpy and I think I know what you mean, but maybe describe that a little bit more. Why is it wimpy to not try to close on the spot?

Michael Murray: Because I think really what it comes down to is we're avoiding the conversations that we just described. I've heard this described as green light or yellow light, red light. If all the conversations we're having at a sales appointment are green light conversations, there's no tension, there's no conflict. Everybody's liking each other. It's just flowing. We're all smiling. There's no awkward silences. Those are all green light conversations.

A yellow light is when you've asked somebody a question or we've brought something up that maybe there's a little bit of stress around this topic. Topics around money and budget and things like that might cause for a little bit of yellow light. And then red light is where we actually run into something where you can just tell this is something somebody does not want to talk about.

I've heard it described before from a sales coach that a good in-home sales appointment is going to involve definitely some yellow lights and maybe even the occasional red light. If all we're doing is talking about superficial things, we're not talking about money and we're not talking about whether or not we're actually going to work together and things like that, then we can feel like it all went great. We get done with the appointment and it was awesome. They liked me. I liked them. They were so wonderful. I'm sure they're going to book. I just got to follow up with them next week and you might as well put that one up on the board.

You all know where this is going. And we follow up and follow up and follow up and follow up and eventually they weren't serious about the project and it's the customer's fault and whatever. So no, we're not very good and we're wimpy. We avoid those yellow light and red light conversations.

Jon Bryant: And they hired someone else.

Michael Murray: And they hired someone else.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, which is somewhat natural. I don't think most people enjoy a red light conversation, but the people who can make that red light conversation palatable are the ones that win more often, in my opinion. So it's finding ways to get to those critical points that you can feel comfortable. And a lot of times it involves strategy. I think today, it's probably helpful to talk about some of that strategy because I think it's so easy to talk about a red light conversation, but when you get there, if you don't have some tools in the toolbox, I think you're really at a disadvantage, especially when it comes to talking about money, talking about reasons why they might not want to work with you, talking about reason—those objections or let's call them diversions.

"I just need to talk to my significant other. I got to—send me the quote and I'll get back to you." These types of things are trigger points that you know you're at a yellow light in your example and it's going to go to a red light. And a lot of people just move it back to "That's great. Cool. I love that picture on your wall."

Michael Murray: Green light, green light, green light.

Jon Bryant: And so I think to your point, if you're going to not be wimpy, we need to equip ourselves with a few key tools. And it's not like these are things that are going to make it more comfortable. Sometimes I found when I was working on this stuff, I had to almost look in the mirror at myself as I was talking just to see how it was actually going because naturally I'm not drawn to conflict, but I trained this alter ego of mine to be able to handle these types of situations. So let's go over a few that you were maybe less than impressed with your team about this week. Were there some things on your mind?

Michael Murray: Yeah. I think the first thing what I've realized is that a lot of our appointments don't—so I asked our sales team, I said, "Okay, so right now most of our appointments, like 90 some percent, end in a scheduled follow-up," which I think is maybe too high of a percentage, but at least we're scheduled on a follow-up. We gave the quote on the spot using our fancy Paint Scout software. And okay, so we've done some things well.

But we were looking through a few of the sales reps like, "All right, here's some of the appointments from the last few days." And I said, "All right, if this person—just say Mrs. Smith—if Mrs. Smith doesn't book with you, we've done the appointment, went well, we're going to follow up next week. Great. If she doesn't book with you, why not?"

And they're like, "Well, I don't know. They just need to talk about it and probably going to get another quote and she liked me and everything looked good and follow up next week."

I said, "Yeah, no, I got that part of it, but if they don't book, what's the reason?"

"I don't have any idea. I don't know yet."

And I'm like, "That's the problem. We haven't had any conversations." Did we check the boxes of: Does the schedule work? Do you agree with the scope of work that I provided? Does this sound like it would meet your needs? Price—is this within your budget? Do we need to adjust the scope? And that was the type of conversation that we were having that really kind of brought up this topic today of essentially just avoiding those things.

Jon Bryant: So what was your suggestion?

Michael Murray: Well, yeah, I said, "We have to leave—if you leave there and you don't have any idea what their decision is going to be made on, we've got problems. That's a problem, because you're not actually selling anything at this point. You're just presenting an estimate. You are an estimator. You are not a sales professional."

And that's a problem. We sell pretty well. We sell as a company at about 50% win rate of all of our bids that we do, but no matter what it is, there's an opportunity for that to improve. And this is really started because we're this time of year—middle of summer—we have so many open bids and just there's so much follow-up opportunity coming out of that spring rush. There's just a lot of activity going on lately. And so we're trying to help them to maybe avoid having tens or hundreds of people to have to follow up with.

So yeah, the first thing I said is, "Hey, we need to have better conversations earlier on in the appointment, figuring out what are the things that might get in the way of us working together at the very beginning, even before we have a price to talk about?" For example, schedule concerns and things like that. That was one of the biggest things I talked about—doing this earlier.

Jon Bryant: What does that look like tangibly? So in your process, you're gonna talk about early on the conversation. Is it in the first five minutes? Is it the first half an hour? Where are you talking? What do you think is most comfortable?

Michael Murray: Some of it, I think, yeah, some of it can even happen on the phone. We are—part of our process is what we call a setup call. I've heard it called a discovery call, all the same thing. It's we want our sales reps to talk to the customer before they ever even get to the house to just hear some of their thoughts and concerns. When do you guys need this project done? This week? Okay, that might not work. What are you looking to get done?

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. Yeah.

Michael Murray: Things like that, right? We don't want to show up and find out that somebody needs a dresser painted and we don't do furniture painting. And it's like, well, that's a waste of time. So anyway, so I said we probably could do a better job on those calls, but aside from that, I think it happens within that first 10 minute interaction when we get onsite. I think there's some—we've talked about this for bond and rapport. We want to get to know the customer, understand their hopes and dreams and maybe some of the pain points. Why are we here? What are we trying to solve? How can I make your life better?

But ultimately it's like, "Okay, great. So what's important to you with this project? Tell me about a time when you had some other work done. How did it go? Good or bad? Let's lean into that a little bit." And even price—have you guys put together a budget? Have you gotten other quotes? Have you been on our website where we have some pricing information? Do you have any idea of what this project might cost?

Those are all conversations that I think can happen and should happen within the first 15 minutes roughly of a 45 to 60 minute appointment. What are your thoughts on that?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, absolutely. One of the things that you allude to is that there's an opportunity to get ahead of some of these objections. And the reason I think it's so important to try to do at least a "Do you want to get in the calendar?" is that we need to cover everything. All the information you need needs to be covered in the conversations you're having on site and before you get on site in order for that customer to make a decision.

If you leave and you haven't given that information or had those conversations, you're at risk of—you don't even know. You're blind to the whole process. So in my mind, those soft questions that you're asking—have you worked with a contractor?—amazing question because most people, well, you're going to get people that are like, "Yes, I have. And that's why I'm calling you." "Okay. Great. Let's talk about that."

Or "No, I haven't." And that's just as good of an answer because now you have some real things to talk about. The timing thing is great. I think the asking around budget is really important and figuring out soft ways to do that. A term like "off the record" is really helpful and really helpful for me in my life of just "Off the record, did you consider this my cost?" And then they're inevitably going to say, "Yeah, that's why you're here." And then I'm going to say, "Great. So it's going to be between one and a million dollars. Are you comfortable somewhere in that range of moving forward with me?"

And then now we're laughing about the price and that helps soften it a little bit. So it's stuff like that though, where we need to equip ourselves with those tools, those little sayings, the little things that keep it neutral. "This may be a good idea. This might not be a good idea. I just want to get a sense of whether you feel like this makes sense."

Those types of little statements are so helpful because if you're not actively—there's that saying out there that says "Always be closing," like ABC. And a lot of people don't really know, I think realistically what that means. Does ABC mean in the first five minutes I say, "Do you want to go ahead? Let's put the pressure on"? In my mind, that's not what it means. It actually means we need to have active conversations pushing us towards a decision.

And so to your point, money, timing, decision makers, overall decision, how you're going to hire a contractor, what is this based on—this is the stuff we need to do. And I would suggest that maybe something we can do as part of this is to create a checklist of stuff to be talking about, because without that checklist, a lot of times in my experience, reps come back and you'll say, "Well, what were their pain points?" "I don't know. They want painting done. They don't like the color of their house."

It's like, those aren't pain points. Those are wants and needs. So I'm totally with you. And I think structuring it so that you understand which parts of the process—which parts of the conversation you have to get to—is really important. And getting that yellow and red light in a really comfortable neutral way is very helpful.

I think recently I've had two experiences that solidify that for me, which I've had an estimate to do some asphalt work and an estimate to do some landscaping. And in seeing other people's sales process, it's just really so fascinating what people think closes jobs. And so often it's feature related. So "Here's the paints that we use" or in the case of the landscaper, "Here's the shape I'm going to make around this tree. Do you want a semi-circle or a kidney bean shape?" I'm like, "I don't know." And then he leaves and texts me the price.

And at this point I'm like, "That's not worth that." And now he's giving options of things he can take off. And it's like, you should have had that conversation when you were with me because now I've gone on to look for another bid.

Candidly, we called another contractor because he wasn't clear. In the asphalt example, there was no attempt to close. It was just all of these extras they were going to throw in. It was like, "Here's the job. And I see that spot over there, but I'm going to put that in pro bono for you." It was trying to earn my business without having given me a price, but just being like, "I'm going to be generous." And that guy won the bid because he was really the only guy that we could get in the right time frame. So he doesn't know that though, right? He has no idea why he won that job. And just as much as we don't know why we don't get jobs, I feel like we don't know why we get the job sometimes.

Michael Murray: Fair. And I think we've all experienced—if you've been doing this for three or four years, two or three years ago, we were kind of like that asphalt guy or whatever, where it's just you could be really bad at this and still win more than your fair share. And the reality is, like I said before, we win more than our fair share. This isn't like preventing us from hitting our goals, but it is causing for maybe more work and more marketing money and more leads and more—we have to go on more appointments because perhaps we're not doing the best that we can on every single appointment.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, reps aren't making the money they should be making. And the whole thing could be better. And so kind of go back to that conversation that I have with people about "Should I close on site? Should I put any pressure on?" And it's like, I think we've totally mislabeled this in our minds as to what closing a job on the spot is. I'm looking for a yes or a no, and I'm looking for fit. Are we good dance partners?

And that's when I realized that—it took so much of the load off of what I was trying to do. I'm not trying to win it. If I win a bad job, that's a bad deal for me, for everybody. I just want the customer to be able to make a good decision based on having the information and me actually facilitating a conversation that gets us to the decision point.

Michael Murray: Well, I think that's part of it, right? Because it's like, what kind of information do they need that they're going to make the decision after we leave? To the point of maybe somebody that would say, "Maybe we shouldn't try to get closure on the spot. Let's let people think about it." If you come to my house and give me a quote, most of the time I'm going to need to think about it. I'm a pretty analytical person. I'm going to want to understand the options. I'm going to do some research. I'm going to want to go over the details and things like that.

But if somebody's really doing well, what they'll do is they'll send me some of that information beforehand. "Hey, here's why somebody books with us. Here's maybe why somebody doesn't. Here's some of the other options. We don't provide maybe the only type of a solution." Maybe I've got an old house and I'm thinking about getting it painted, but I'm also thinking about maybe putting some vinyl siding on it, whatever that might be.

And so that painting company could send out some information beforehand, comparing the option of painting versus the option of vinyl siding. Because maybe as a homeowner, I'm not just saying which painting company am I going with, but I'm comparing alternative solutions to kind of solve the problem of my house needs to be painted. And so that might be something I need to do to feel comfortable making a decision.

As a painting company or whatever, I can provide them with enough information where they feel like, as long as they give me kind of a decent price and I like these people, I'd be ready to make a decision on the spot. There's nothing wrong with that. I don't think that thinking has to happen after the appointment. It could happen beforehand to some extent.

Jon Bryant: No, absolutely.

Michael Murray: You also mentioned I think something that's pretty important is getting creative with the scope of work. What that allows for is homeowners then have options. Otherwise homeowners—they like to have the ability to choose what their adventure is going to be as opposed to "Here's my price, $10,000, take it or leave it. Yes or no." Most people are kind of turned off, I guess is the right word, to that type of a buying environment versus something that allows them to be a part of the process and really be the one who's deciding what the journey is going to look like. "I think I do want that and probably don't want that. And let's go with this option that might save me a couple of bucks, but I understand that it might not last as long or whatever."

I think most people want to feel some sense of control in the process. Do you agree with that?

Jon Bryant: For sure. Yeah, it's like, what's funny about this is we are people, Michael. Anyone listening, we are all people. Let's think about ourselves for a second here. And I think this is one of the things that can be so difficult and so helpful is to put yourself in a customer's position. When I first started, I was like, "Let me get some bids from a couple of different trades on my house and just see how everybody does it."

Newsflash: it's bad out there.

Michael Murray: Not well.

Jon Bryant: Not well. But it gave me a chance to actually learn and see what it felt like to be a customer. And I love buying things, man, when it's presented well and it gives me control over my purchasing power. It feels good. It feels good to spend money. What I as a customer want to feel that, and I hate being sold. I know this as a fact about myself. This ties into my mindset around selling is that I don't like being sold. I like to be—and this is not for everybody. Obviously there's different personalities out there—but I always prefer a situation where I get to be a part of the process of buying, understand, almost build like custom engineer a plan for me and have somebody that can work with me.

And that's my psyche behind the scenes is like, yeah, give me some options. Let me decide. Don't give me a package that you want to give me. Let me get the job I want. So I'm all for that. And that ties in obviously—Paint Scout is designed for that stuff and what we do, because you can develop packages, you can group things, you can give options and pricing, you can get things really quickly. So I like in building, taking that problem and saying we got to get an estimate in customers' hands in 10 minutes, it was because price is a major factor and we want to be able to get that in their hands.

Say, "How does that feel? Oof, I can tell by your face, it doesn't feel good. Oh, you got to talk to your spouse. That must mean it doesn't feel good. Oh, you got to get back to me. That doesn't feel good. So let's talk about the price." To be honest, I think 90% of the time price is a major deal. But to your point, be able to cost engineer things for people. Be like, "You know what? It seems like it's a lot, but maybe we break this up a little bit. Let me give you some options. We can use cheaper paint. I don't recommend it. It affects your warranty, some other stuff, but we could do that."

I always want to give people the control and get them to understand that we're upfront, honest, transparent in our process and they get to choose their own adventure. Hopefully it's not too much of an adventure, Michael. I think most people don't want adventure with painting, but...

Michael Murray: Well, I think to that point, maybe it's like, I don't need—if you're trying to give somebody 10 different options, it's like, that's not going to work. It's going to be analysis paralysis. But if I can give them two or three options, I think most people kind of like that control.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, agreed.

Michael Murray: You just mentioned something about "I need to talk it over with my spouse, significant other, the other decision makers involved." I know there's other companies for sure that will talk about a one leg appointment versus a two leg appointment, which would be basically one decision maker versus two being present. Do you guys do anything? Do you try to avoid that? Are you okay going on appointments when you know only one of the two spouses are going to be there?

Jon Bryant: So we're like—I mean, in my experience, we're kind of like you. We close at a high rate. We could always do better, but I don't think that really is a major impact on win rate per se. That said, we've never done it. We've never done the two leg approach. I think you have, Michael, is that right?

Michael Murray: We have not, no. So to be fair, we're pretty similar. I would say, again, I would call this probably wimpiness. Somebody listening who's doing window sales, I know this is a big thing where they just don't go on appointments if all the decision makers aren't going to be there. They just won't schedule. It's part of the scheduling process.

I think there's a lot of ways to really step on some landmines if you're not careful in how you're talking about this. I think it's absolutely possible that one person owns a house, whether it's a man or a woman, not everybody's married. And so we can really screw some of these conversations up if we're not careful, which is part of the reason that I feel like we've just tried to not even have those conversations.

But that being said, I also have some friends that are in other home improvement industries who say that they see dramatic win rate increases on a two leg appointment versus a one leg. And I can see that. We run into a lot of "I got to talk about it with my spouse."

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I wonder if the average ticket price is a little bit bigger in those industries.

Michael Murray: Some of it. The one though, it's like a $6,000 to $8,000 average ticket kind of project. And so pretty similar to most of our painting average job sizes and stuff. And so, yeah, certainly if you're—I think a lot of money is relative to everybody. We've talked about that psychology of money concept. But I would say for me, I'm probably not making a $6,000, $7,000, $8,000 decision or more without talking about it with my spouse.

Jon Bryant: I think my gut reaction tells me that—and I could be totally wrong, so I gotta admit that—but it always has felt to me like a diversion when someone says they have to speak to their spouse. And I love that diversion. I love any time I can identify a diversion. It hasn't ever impacted my closing rate when I did sales because it actually facilitated a much more honest conversation about what was going on.

And granted, I've never done the two-leg approach, but my approach was always, if I can get someone to say "I got to talk to my spouse," immediately I know we can have a conversation. "Hey, I get it. I'd want to make sure everyone's involved in the decision as well. Now, usually when I hear that—and I can be totally off base, so be aware of that—but usually something's a little bit wrong here. Is it possible that the price is a little bit more than you're expecting?"

And that is—even if your price has nothing to do with this decision, the second I get a diversion, I just go right to price because price actually gives me a way better sense of what's going on.

Michael Murray: How do people respond to that though? I would assume if you brought up to me in a sales appointment "This price—" what did you say? "Is price more than you expected" or something like that?

Jon Bryant: Is it possible that the price is maybe a little more than you expected?

Michael Murray: And so my feeling as a homeowner is, "This is my opening to get a discount." If I'm going to say, "Sure. Yeah. It's never lower than I expected. Prices are ridiculous these days. What can you do for me, Jon Bryant? Give me that best price."

Jon Bryant: Yeah, what's interesting though is it may be that that's the case for the customer, but I'm really just talking about comfort level in my mind. So if they go "Give me your best price," I'll be like, "I'm always gonna give you my best price. But it seems like maybe this is more of an investment than you were hoping to make."

And they'll say, "Well, yeah, we kind of talked about something a couple thousand dollars less."

And I'll say, "That's fantastic. Are you open to spending a little bit more on this project or should we talk about cost engineering this for you to see if we can get into that range? I can give you what we can do to get in that range."

Michael Murray: And so if somebody says, "Yeah, sure. What can we do to save a thousand, a couple of thousand bucks or whatever," you would rearrange the quote, take off some rooms or whatever. Is that kind of what we're describing?

Jon Bryant: Exactly. Take out something. It gets you those option points where now they understand how to bring down the cost. I'm not talking about changing the value of anything. We're not discounting because of that. Now we've had previous conversations about this where I am willing to—and I know you are too—push jobs into the winter. That's worth something to us. Give us a timing thing. Give us an exchange of value. We can talk about that. But sometimes people want their job done right away. So all I'm doing is going at the problem, which typically the problem is price. That's been my experience.

Michael Murray: So I still feel like we might end up in the same place, right? If we play out that scenario, you say, "All right, $10,000 to paint your house, whatever." I say, "Okay, great. I need to talk it over with my spouse. Can you give us a little bit of time?" And then you say, "Well, typically when somebody says that, it might be related to the price. Maybe, was this more than you were expecting?"

And I say, "Well, yeah, it was. To be honest with you, we thought it would be closer to maybe $7,000 or something." And you say, "Okay, if I can adjust the quote a little bit to give you a project around $7,000, would that be good?" I say, "Sure." You spend five or 10 minutes at the table and kind of go into Paint Scout, pull a few things out to the option line and say, "Okay, great. So now I've got here's the main things that you really want done. These are about $7,000. I put these other things on here as options. These other $3,000 are down here. Great. Where do we stand?"

And I'm going to say, "Jon Bryant, I really appreciate you taking the time to do that. This gives us a lot to think about. This is very helpful. Nobody else has done this for us yet. You're awesome. I like your hair and you smell wonderful. I need to talk about it with my spouse."

Jon Bryant: Great, absolutely. At that point, it's like, what's the next best step here? In exchange for my time, the only thing I'd ask is that we can connect after to talk about it. But I'm gonna say, if we're in that $7,000 range, what's the likelihood that we're gonna be able to work together? And so I'm gonna take that one step further without the spouse there, just like, what's the likelihood? If your spouse is gonna come in here, are they gonna shut this whole thing down? What can we expect?

Michael Murray: And this is, I think where our team, and if I'm being honest myself over the years—I haven't done this for so long—this is something I've struggled with, especially when I was younger. Okay, so I built this quote, which they're saying nice things about me. It seems like we've got something good going on here and they say, "Okay, yeah, this sounds great. Let me talk it over. We should be able to get back to you here in just a couple of days and let's schedule that time or whatever."

And I might say, or a sales rep might say, "That sounds wonderful. How about I call you two days from now, and hopefully we can work together. That's not good. Sounds great. I'm going to email this to you. Have a wonderful day." And that's the end of it. I think a lot of people—that's kind of the end of it. But what you just described isn't. It wasn't the end of it. You took it that one step further. So I think that, and this is what I was really pushing on our sales team, is it's okay to have to set up a next step agreement, which is what we're doing here, that follow-up, but that shouldn't necessarily just be the end of the conversation.

Jon Bryant: No.

Michael Murray: So talk more about that, because I think there's a lot of value there.

Jon Bryant: So here's the thing. We're trying to figure out, in my mind, whether we're good dance partners. And so we can look at diverting pain to later, or we can deal with pain now. What's gonna happen in two weeks when you get let down is the same thing that's gonna happen on site with the customer if they say, "No, this isn't gonna work."

And again, this takes a lot of balance to create those—you have to have a cadence that creates neutral communication. The words you use, the way you speak, it influences this. And this is where like sometimes, as I've talked about, that alter ego in a way—it's a bit like acting for me, where it's like, I am an amazing sales rep and you are a customer that wants to buy. And I start seeing...

When I get into those positions, I'm not seeing this as—I see that I wanna deal with everything I need to deal with in the moment because delaying disappointment has never been good for me. Disappoint me now. Give me the no. Let me move on. And I think a lot of people see the follow-up call as a way to avoid pain now, but we're all gonna deal with that pain when that no comes. So let's just figure it out.

And so this is where I was talking about the idea that you've got this time with this customer that you have to be very cognizant of what you're doing. And so you need to push just a little bit further when those diversions happen. So I identify price. The person says, "Okay," now they've given me more information. "$7,000 is what we want to do." I say, "Great, does this seem like a position where we can possibly work together now?"

And they say, "I got to talk to my spouse."

And I say, "Okay, that's fine. What do you think they might find to be challenging about this?" And I might give them some ideas. "Is it possible that they just want to be clear on what the project is? Is it possible that they're not willing to give some of these things up?"

I give the customer some outs and some ways to actually position what this conversation is going to be about. And then it arms me with so much more information when I'm actually going to have that follow-up call when it happens. So we've now had a chance to talk very candidly about this. And I encourage everybody who's listening to think about that when they're going through this, that they don't wanna get to a follow-up call. You wanna be able to figure out what's happening and get a close on the spot if it's possible.

Michael Murray: Yeah, and again, or at least walk out of there—to your point a minute ago—knowing if we're not going to work together, what would it be? If your spouse says no, if they're not on board with this project, what do you think the reason for that would be? And having that. And it's like, whatever they say, right? It's just like, "Well, to be honest with you, they've got a buddy at work who does some painting on the side and he said he could probably do it for some pizza and a couple hundred bucks. So my spouse thinks that's what we might do, but I think that's a ridiculous option."

And it's like, "Okay, got it. Talk more about that. What might go wrong if you went with that option or whatever?" And at least now we're bringing out of the homeowner that they're kind of making their decision in real time. It's kind of happening in front of us. And they're kind of convincing themselves. We don't even have to do the selling here because they're going to kind of do it for us.

And so anyways, yeah, no, I agree. I think this is where there's real value in—once a customer says, "Great, thanks, please email this to me. We need to get more quotes. We need to talk it over with our spouse"—the problem our team has is that is too close to the end of our appointment. Meaning we're going to leave within a few minutes. And what I was really challenging them to do is think of that as, "Okay, great. Now we get to have some real conversations. I love the fact that you're going to get more quotes. That's sweet. Cool. So in the next half hour that I'm here, let's talk about some real shit."

Jon Bryant: That's just the start. Yeah.

Michael Murray: Maybe it's not a half hour, but you get the point. It's that type of mindset. And this is what I was trying to explain to our sales team of, "Don't just accept that. You came, you gave me a quote, email me and then get the hell out because I am going to—I feel more comfortable as a homeowner letting you down over the phone or over an email. And it's just like, don't wimp out in that part of the conversation and lean in a little bit and get to some actual objections here." Maybe they don't say no, but at least you have a pretty good idea that it's like, "This person is not gonna go forward because the price is way more than they were originally thinking." And at least they finally told me that or whatever.

Jon Bryant: Exactly. Yeah. One of the things that I've always thought about in this type of conversation is that a lot of people avoid an objection. And I want to make something clear is that I actually try to pursue an objection. I want an objection to occur in order for us to have a real conversation. So when that happens, I can soften the objection in this—in the previous example I gave about talking about with your spouse. That for me is music to my ears because that means that I now have an opportunity to ask a little bit more information.

We're willing to talk now about the conversation with the spouse. We've completely moved it away from the price and everything else. Let's just talk about that. That seems like it's important to you. It seems like you guys make a decision that way. Am I overstepping if I do this? Am I—would it be too much if I were to do this? And now you can start to get a sense of what the actual decision is going to be made on.

And I think that's one of the issues that most salespeople miss is that objections they see as a negative. And I see it as a huge positive. I'm hoping you give me something. And it always comes. If you push on the spot—and pushing to me just means asking a question—in your previous example is a yellow light question. All of sudden I can ask a variety of green light questions around a yellow light thing. I don't have to go to a red light or whatever.

And so I think that was a major mind shift for me was that making an objection your friend is so important that I get excited now. "You got to talk to your spouse. Great. You want me to send this email over and get the hell out your house? Oh, okay, great. Let's talk about that because it sounds like we might not be the right fit." That's exciting. Then I don't have to do any extra work. I just can go on and live my life.

And so for anyone listening who struggles with that, I know there's a lot of people that do—this is, like I mentioned earlier, it's uncommon. It's uncommon to be good at this skill. And don't be confused. Being a sales professional is a major skill. And so we just have to kind of—I think if you're feeling like you're wimpy and you're hearing this conversation, you're saying, "Man, that's me. I struggle every time someone gives me—we just have green light conversations and I'm never asking for things"—it's like, change your perception around what this means.

And it'll change your ability to have healthy conversations with people, not only about painting construction, but a lot of people in your life too. It's kind of this art of crucial conversations in a way where you can do it in really healthy way. You can identify objections or hurt and start to actually pursue it in a way that is not combative. So that's my feeling on it.

Michael Murray: No, I love it. Yeah. I agree. I think the key here as my takeaway is just we need to go actively seek the objections. Don't avoid them. And understand that nobody's objecting to you as a person—to your last point—that they might be objecting to this proposal, to your company, to the role that you're currently fulfilling as the sales professional at their home. But this is not a referendum on who you are at an existential level as a person.

And I think too often we all can fall victim to that or whatever, where we get too wrapped up in "I am my performance." And it's just not true. And once we can separate those two things, it's just like I'm a professional, I'm a father, I'm a whatever, all of the different roles that you have. And this is just one of them. And in this role, it is my job to have good conversations, seek objections, help homeowners make good decisions. And sometimes they're going to book with me and sometimes they're not. And that's okay, because that's my job—is to help them to make those good buying decisions.

Jon Bryant: Nailed it. I think it's a great spot to end this today. And for those listening, give us a like and subscribe. We love doing this and we've been very encouraged by everybody out there. Just follow along with the content. So if it's helpful, do that and yeah, get out there. Sell more, sell better. And Michael, thanks for your time.

Michael Murray: Go get some nos. Seek some objections and yeah, don't be a wimp.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. And then get yourself some ice cream to soothe all the pain.

Michael Murray: Good stuff, Jon Bryant. Thanks.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, thanks, Michael. Thanks, everyone. Have a wonderful day. We'll see you soon.

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