Jon Bryant: Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Price. Sell. Paint. podcast. I am Jon Bryant here with my trusty cohost, Michael Murray. Today, Michael, I want to talk to you about something recently. I had a conversation with a sales rep who was starting out, they were new and they felt like they had good things going with customers and then the customer started to, it wasn't as good as they first thought. They would leave, I would talk to them and say, how'd it go? And then three days later be like, man, that person was a jerk. They never called me back. They told me all these things that weren't true. And so it got me thinking about this concept called, you know, the customer's lie, steal, cheat and hide. I don't know if you've heard about that before, but it's pretty common in the Sandler system. And I want to talk to you about that today.

Michael Murray: Yep. Yeah, I think customers lying is not a new concept. This whole thing, right? And I love it. So what game are we playing, I think, as sales reps? And what's the game that the customers are playing? And how do we kind of get past some of the barriers that we might experience every day? Love it. Let's do it. Yeah, let's dive into that concept.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. Yeah. So I always think about, and this was brought up to me by somebody else years ago, but this concept that we all do it, we all lie to sales reps. We all cheat, steal, hide. And the example that was brought up to me was, you know, every time we go to Best Buy and someone says to us, Hey, what brings you to the store today? And Michael, what do you always say?

Michael Murray: Yeah, no, just, I'm just browsing, just looking around, just checking things out here. No help. I don't need it.

Jon Bryant: But why were you actually in the store? Were you just looking for new tech?

Michael Murray: Yeah, because I'm so bored and I have nothing to do and I'm an incredible loser. So just wanted to walk around Best Buy or it's because I need a new TV and that's supposedly where I could go to get a TV. I didn't just happen chance into the store. So one, I might just be a pathological liar and I have problems or two, I don't want to be sold some BS by some salesperson.

Jon Bryant: So why did you say you were browsing? What was that all about? You liar.

Michael Murray: Probably two. I think, where did I learn that from? I don't know. I think it's like a defense mechanism. It's like, I think it goes back to my caveman ancestors when they went in the cave and somebody tried to sell them a stick they didn't need or something. I don't know. Where did I learn that from?

Jon Bryant: Right, it's like built into our DNA. First they looked at the sun for 30 minutes and then they lied to a sales rep. They were grounding, yeah.

Michael Murray: Yes, they woke up at four in the morning, did their workout and their other things.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, constant look out for prey and sales reps, right? I think it's so true. For some reason, I don't know where it comes from, but we do. I think it's conflict. We want to avoid conflict. And so we inherently try to tell these lies that avoid conflict. And I think sales is a conflict situation for a lot of people. So yeah, I think we prepared a little bit of stuff. I want to help everybody listening today with what you can do about this essentially. So yeah, go for it.

Michael Murray: Yeah. Can I give a real world example? Just to go right off this, literally happened this week. I was talking to, we have our sales training here at Textbook once a week, meet with our sales team. I go through different stuff like we talked about on the podcast. And one of the things that we were talking about is customers saying that your price is too high. We've talked about that as one of the episodes and I was telling, specifically one of the sales reps who stuck around afterwards to talk about an appointment, I was like dude look everybody says that. That is the most common thing when there's something else wrong. And I said listen, I'll give you a real example.

So here's what's going on at the Murray house. We have a squirrel that got into our attic and that's bad. And I care about it and my wife really cares about it. Right. So she's freaking out. We've got the squirrel and I'm just like, yeah, it's in the attic. Yeah, we need to get rid of this, but it's very high in her priority list. So now it's really high in my priority list. If you get what I'm going at there.

And so I call one of these pest control big companies, whatever. So this guy comes out, not good at sales and he's not there very long. Doesn't ask me a lot of questions. And he's just like, yep. All right. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to put these metal gutter guards all over your gutters. And I'm like, what? I already have gutter guards. There's leaf guards on my gutters that I put on a few years ago. They seem to work fine. I'm like, what does this have to do with squirrels? And some other stuff. Didn't really explain it all that well. A couple pieces of sheet metal on some of the corners or something. It's like, okay. That doesn't seem like helpful, but all right. How much is that? It's like $3,800. And I was like, $3,800 to put some gutter guards.

Dude, I bought these from Costco. They were like 250 bucks. I put them on myself. They keep the leaves out. What is it like? No, I'm just like, dude, your price is way too high here. I don't understand. He's like, oh yeah, the gutter guards and they're the super duper ones. And they're the gutter squirrel stopper 2000, whatever. And I'm just like, this is what? No, your price, I'm not paying 3,800 bucks.

And so here's what I was telling our sales reps, or my sales rep I should say, that the problem here isn't the $3,800. The problem is that he never took the time to understand what my problem was. Yeah, part of the issue is the squirrels. Sure, fine. But the real problem is I want my wife to not have to feel the stress that's coming from the fact that a squirrel got into our attic and she could hear it running around up there and it's keeping her up at night. Because when she's stressed, I'm stressed right? She's taking it out on me. She's saying hey look we gotta get rid of this thing. I'm upset you got to fix this problem as she should. It is my, I got to take care of this stuff. That's right, happy wife happy life here, right? It's not that hard.

And so but the guy never asked me any questions like hey, how is this affecting you? What's going on here? You know has this been going on for a while? Is it causing stress? He didn't elaborate on the actual problem. So I'm not feeling any significant pain here. I'm just like, yeah, squirrel. Somebody could just go up there and kill the thing or whatever, just get out of the house and let's just move on with our day. And he's trying to sell me some super duper thing that I don't even understand. And he's not giving me any options really. He's not allowing me to make a buying decision. He's just selling me something and not well.

And so what I did is just said, yeah, I'm going to get some other quotes and I'll get back to you. And I haven't gotten any other quotes, probably been like a week and a half because I don't have time. And I'm never going to get back to the guy. And so he leaves there and he's like, okay, yeah, that makes sense. The guy said he's going to get some other quotes and that's just what customers do. And so I still got a shot on this one. He's never followed up with me.

And I'm just using this as an example for our sales team of like, this is exactly what not to do. He didn't ask me any questions. He didn't explain the value. He didn't help me understand. Is there some guarantee that I'll never have another squirrel in my house ever again, like 100%? If there ever happens, they're coming out that day, they're fixing this thing for me. Like, okay. That might be worth some money here, but none of that stuff. It was just like, yep, here's what we're doing. Here's the price. Here's where you sign. And I'm just like, what? No, not even a little bit.

And so then I lied as the customer. I got to get some other quotes. I don't want to get other quotes. I don't got to get other quotes. There's no rule that says you have to get other quotes. I just don't like this guy. And so instead of saying, Hey, you're really bad at sales and you should listen to the Price Sell Paint podcast so you could get better at it. I was just like, Oh yeah, I need to get other quotes. Thanks.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. So this is pretty common, right? I think as sales reps, that guy, like you said, he's leaving. He's thinking, Michael's going to sign up with me for sure. He's going to get other quotes and he's going to call me. And we have to develop systems which help customers not feel like they have to lie, steal, cheat and hide from us. And that's something that is, I think challenging for most of us because I think as deeply ingrained as the need to avoid salespeople that goes back to our cavemen days is the fact that we think we know what a salesperson should be.

And so we've got this really negative loop happening where salespeople are acting the way they think that salespeople should and customers are acting the way they believe salespeople are going to act a certain way. Those salespeople are self-fulfilling that and then they are acting the way that they believe they should. And so we need to develop a system as professional sales reps, which help us move past that and get better conversations and better experiences for people buying.

Michael Murray: It's very like Pavlov's dog, right? As the sales professional, when we do and say the things that sales professionals do and say, customers are going to lie, cheat, steal, hide. So if we want to avoid that, we need to stop doing the things that all the other sales reps do. Yep.

Jon Bryant: Exactly. So why don't we get into this? Like I said at the start, we want to talk about, you know, what are these things and how to combat them. And by the end of this, you should have a clearer understanding of what's happening on the customer side and how to actually facilitate a great conversation. So let's go through first, obviously we talked a little about lying. Michael, you're a huge liar. Thanks for admitting that.

Michael Murray: So yeah, what's the first lie? So there's actually two lies in the system. So the first one, and then there's one towards the end. So give us some examples of that first lie. We used the TV example. It's just just browsing. I'm not serious yet. We're just getting some quotes. Yeah, we really don't have a budget yet. We don't really have any idea what this might cost. Some of the things that you might hear very early on in a sales appointment.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. Just browsing. Yeah. Just need a price, send over the bid, stuff like that. And we'll get back to you. So I think there's that upfront. And so customers are immediately trying to downplay the situation. Like I just called you and took an hour of my day to meet with you, but I'm not serious at all. So let's not pretend that I'm serious, because we're trying to deescalate constantly. So that's kind of the first thing. And what's most helpful here? Should we go through the solution to each one of these or go through each five of them first and then talk solutions? What do you think?

Michael Murray: I think we take them one at a time. So again, this whole Sandler system goes back to the customer system. Just to lay it out is lie, cheat, steal, lie, hide. So that's what we're going to walk through. So this first lie, again, things like we're just, hey, thanks for coming out, Jon Bryant. Appreciate it. Yeah, we're just getting some quotes here and you know, starting to figure out maybe we might be doing some painting this year. Not really sure. So yeah, if you could just kind of walk around the house and you know, give me some quotes. Give me a quote. That'd be great. Send it over.

Jon Bryant: So this happens all the time. If you're listening, sales rep, I'm sure you may hear this four times, five times today. We all do this. So what would you recommend to people to solve that?

Michael Murray: Well, first, yeah, first of all, it sounds innocent enough, right? I don't hear a major lie here. Just like you show up at Best Buy. Yeah. I'm just looking around a little bit, which is kind of true. I just walked in the store. I just kind of got to get my bearings a little bit, but it's like, yeah, it's kind of a half lie, half truth. Customers, yeah, we're just kind of starting to gather some ideas of what this might be. It's like, no, you already been doing some research.

Right. That's what we have to realize is that customers already are pretty well educated, even if you're the first estimate out at their house. They've already done a lot of research on your website. They've read Google reviews of you, your competitors. They've gone on some of the big home advisor websites and places like that to try to find pricing ideas. They've been on Sherwin Williams website to research about the paints they should be using. Probably been in some of the paint forums. Their homeowners are generally trying to do some self education.

Just like you would, right? If you show up to go buy a car, you probably have a pretty good idea that like, yep, I kind of already know what I'm looking for, but you walk on that lot, car sales guy walks up. Yeah, just, I just need to walk around a little bit here. Just kind of just checking things out. It's like, really? You already know exactly what car you're looking for when you show up. But we're doing that too. Yeah.

Jon Bryant: So what do we do? So we know this is happening. What's the secret to getting past it?

Michael Murray: Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing is just kind of meet them where they're at. It's like, OK, yeah, no problem. I understand at this point you're just looking to get some quotes and things like that. But to make sure that I do a great job for you, would it be OK if we just sat down for a few minutes so I could ask you some questions? I want to make sure that what I'm going to provide you in the quote is exactly what you're looking for. And so what that might cause for the customer is like a pattern interrupt.

Right. Most sales professionals show up and it's just like, okay, yeah, that sounds good. I'll walk around and start putting some numbers together for you. That's what they're expecting you to do. And so it's doing the opposite of that. It's taking the time to get to know the customer, understand their pain points. We've talked about so much on this podcast over the last year or whatever, asking good questions and really starting to develop some of the bond and rapport and all of those things and really just slowing down that process.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. So it's one, identifying it right? So you're identifying that lie and then acknowledging like hey that sounds great. I think a great approach, if you say, you're selling, this Best Buy example again, it's probably like hey, I'm just here to browse. Like hey, no problem. I mean pretty much everybody here is buying at some point but browsing, we get that. So would it be okay if I were to check in with you in like five or ten minutes and see how you're doing? Is that fair?

And so we need to move that along a little bit and say, I'd love to find out a little bit more what you're looking for and get their agreement, I think, to what the next step is in the process. So that word fair, I think has always been really helpful for me of like, Hey, that's not a problem. And here's my solution. Here's my next step. Is that fair?

Michael Murray: I think it also, I think it even just goes back to that first question though. Right. That Best Buy sales rep says, Hey, what brings you in? Can I give you some help? As opposed to a different question that isn't the one that we're so, again, it's Pavlov's dog, right? Sales rep says, Hey, what brings you in today? Or, Hey, would you like some help as you walk in the store? Hey, how can I help? And you're just like, no, no, I just need to look. But if they ask you a different question, right, whatever that might be, like, Hey, welcome back to Best Buy. Are you aware of our special gifts we have for repeat customers? And they're just like, wait, what? No, there's a special gift.

And I'm not just saying lie, but it's just like, as a retail business, you could have some way to greet people when they first walk in the store that isn't the normal thing. And it could be a bottle of water. It doesn't have to be something crazy, but it's just like, oh, suddenly we've pattern interrupted. And it's just like, oh, yeah, no, I'm not really familiar with that. I have shopped here before. What is that? Is that new? And it's just like, yeah, just got, you know, these nice bottles of water for people coming into the store. We'd like to grab you one. Would you like one? And it's like, sure. I guess. Yeah. Why not? Right. And all of a sudden we've just taken this normal interaction, this dance that everybody's so used to playing forever and we've changed it.

And so I think we need to start thinking about what do we do when we get to somebody's house? Does it sound like everyone else? Hey, Mr. Bryant. It's great to meet you. Thanks for having me out. I'm Michael from Textbook Painting. You want to show me what we're painting today? That's probably what everybody else does.

Jon Bryant: So what do you, I mean, I think the reason this works by the way, is that we're trying to lower the buyer's defenses and pivot to their concerns. I think whenever we see this as like a weird, you know, us trying to fight with the customer to win their business, that's never resonated with me all that well, but ultimately we're trying to make things more comfortable and combat that need to lie.

I think actually a big part of this one as well is acknowledging that they don't need to buy from you. And if we can do that sooner upfront, it helps. Like I don't get every job. Quite frankly, you know, I'm shooting for 50%. And if you feel that way at any time, that this is not the right fit, just let me know. That's a huge one actually to help just be honest about the situation and diffuse some of that need to lie, which is like, just be honest with me. If you don't like how this is going, just tell me. I always say, if it's not going great, just pull your ear and I will know that I should probably leave.

Michael Murray: I like it. Avoid that conflict.

Jon Bryant: So it's trying to get ahead of that a little bit, avoid making the conflict something that's like, let's just call it what it is. I'm here to help you. If it's not working, tell me and my feelings aren't going to be hurt. It's actually kind of a benefit. So, but the big thing here is understanding where the customer is at, understanding that they are conditioned. Like you said, Pavlov's dog to try to diffuse the situation, avoid conflict, get the information they want and not ever have to talk to you again if they don't like you. That's really what they're trying to do. Any other thoughts before we move to cheat?

Michael Murray: No, I'm good. Yeah, let's move on to cheat. I think most people kind of can feel that first one. I think there's a lot of examples of that. So cheat, what does that look like? How might a customer cheat within, how is that part of their system? Define that for us.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, so I think a lot of times people will, I mean, it's going to kind of hand in hand with steal, honestly, but they're going to try to get information from you and then they're going to use those ideas in order to benefit themselves. So like you get a free bid and you say like, hey, what would you do here? What kind of stain would you use on this deck? And meanwhile, they're trying to take that information and maybe use it for themselves or use it for another vendor, right? So that's the way I see it. Do you see it differently, Michael?

Michael Murray: No, yeah, I agree. Yeah, it is that like, give me your best, give me your expertise, give me your recommendations, and then I'll decide what to do with those, as opposed to having an upfront agreement sounding something like, happy to help you come up with a solution based on my expertise. But if we can agree to a solution and fit within your budget, would that give us an opportunity to work together on this project? Getting a client to understand that they're making a buying decision here as opposed to just stealing and cheating you and stealing all of your information as to the best way to do the project.

Jon Bryant: For sure. Yeah, we now have ChatGPT, so people don't have to cheat as much, because they can just ask, like my friend did last week. He was like, is this the right paint to put on my deck? And it was like industrial epoxy that ChatGPT had told him to use. I mean, fortunately, there's still need for our expertise out there. But yes, I mean, this is about trying to figure out ways to find that mutual connection and mutual respect, honestly, because if we think that this conversation's going great at the point of meeting the customer and the onsite visit, and meanwhile, you're just there as a sounding board that they don't have to go to the internet for, that's a problem.

Michael Murray: Yeah. Yeah. I think of it as I agree with you. And I would add to that and say, I think of it as being just super consultative. Right. So the customer's like, yeah. What kind of prep work do you guys do? And it's like, well, I definitely want to explain that to you. Can I ask you a few questions though? That's going to help me to give a proper recommendation. So how long has it been since you guys had the house painted? How long do you guys plan on living here? Do you know what kind of paint is currently here? Do you have maybe the old can from the last time it was done? Could I take a look at that?

And what you're hopefully seeing here is I'm creating a unique solution for this homeowner based on their current circumstances, their future goals and things like that, as opposed to just walking up and saying, yeah, I'd like the outside of your house. Yeah. We use the Sherwin Williams, you know, super duper whatever. And like, here's our paint, which again is what everyone else sounds like. So most homeowners are used to, what kind of paint you use? Yeah. We use Sherwin. Yeah. It's the best. It's just like, okay, cool. Well then that's what the other guy does too. And he was $2,000 less. So I guess I'll just go with him.

Jon Bryant: For sure, yeah, it's such a great example.

Michael Murray: So I think it's just like asking, ask more questions. Again, I keep coming back to it's like, man, sometimes it does seem that simple, but it's just once, right? When you're ready to answer the question from the customer, it's like, just pause, ask one more question. And then when you're ready to answer again, maybe I should ask one more question. Right. And just dig, dig, dig and be like, got it. Well, yeah, you guys are going to be selling the house in two years. Well, that's different. Now I might recommend something slightly different. And I'm so glad that I asked that which nobody else has asked yet. And so now you're providing the customer with a better recommendation. It might be more expensive, might be less, doesn't really matter because we're now providing them with what they actually need based on what they said, not just based on your assumptions.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. So it kind of flows its way into steal in a lot of ways, right? And to your point, asking questions is so imperative because if we don't, I think it comes back to this concept we've talked about a lot of times, which is, you know, a lot of people are just trying to sell someone a project they want to sell them. When in reality, we want to find the project the customer wants to do. And so there's a lot of variables in that.

Michael Murray: And fits within their budget and all the things.

Jon Bryant: It kind of fits their budget. Yeah. All the stuff, priorities, budget. And we don't know what's important to them at the start. So when we just go in and kind of, you know, I think the same show up and throw up, it becomes a problem because we're never going to get that job. And as much as we think it went well, customers are conditioned to make you feel good later. So let's go to steal. I mean, steal is very similar. It's, you know, thank you for the estimate. We'll get back to you. And then they take that information and try to save a little bit of money, give it to someone else.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I think exactly. That's where we're taking the verbal recommendations. And now it's like, yeah, if you could just write all that up for me so I can understand exactly what you're doing. Give me your quote, give me your best number, send that over. Well, you know, whatever. And all they're now doing is taking your recommendations and probably your price and going to other competitors and seeing what else they can get.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. Yeah.

Michael Murray: Let's just call this out. I think this happens in our industry on the other side. I think there's painting companies and owners who do this all the time as customers with our paint vendors. They go to Benjamin Moore and they say, Hey, what's the price on the super duper awesome, whatever paint doesn't really matter. And they say, Oh yeah, it's $50 a gallon. And then they turn around and go to Sherwin Williams and they say, okay, so they're going to give me the super duper awesome paint for 50. You got to do 45 on your wonderful, amazing paint or whatever. And it's just like, we're doing this to them, but we get upset when customers do it to us. That's what it looks like.

Jon Bryant: For sure. It's one of the interesting things. So to combat this, and I've had a few examples recently of reps going out to homes and then the person leaves halfway through the estimate. It's just like, yeah, cool, cool. Send me the estimate. That's a classic one. Just go to the property, send me a bid.

Michael Murray: Yep. Commercial rentals, all the things. Yep. 100%.

Jon Bryant: And at first it sounds like, great. Yeah. I mean, there's an opportunity here. It sounds great. Meanwhile, I believe there was never a chance to work with these people. They were just trying to get a budget number, compare your price to something else, see if you were cheap enough for them. I don't know all the things, but it's motivated by, I need a price. And so if you see it as anything but that, I think you're going to run into problems.

Michael Murray: For sure. Yeah. You've turned yourself into a commodity at that point. Yeah, you are providing, perhaps you're providing a custom solution, but because you're giving them all of the information of exactly what that is without asking for anything in return, then you're stuck there, right? You have nothing left for the customer to need. And so now all the power and control is in their hand and they're going to make their decision or not or whatever. And there's nothing, you know, they have all the leverage in that scenario.

Jon Bryant: So what do you do? I'll tell you what I do first and then I want to hear what you do. But I oftentimes, if people don't have the time, I try to reschedule. So when I show up, I'm always trying to figure out like, hey, do you still have 45 minutes? Because if you don't, this isn't a good fit. So I want to confirm that. Second, when someone will not agree to a follow up time, I will not send the estimate.

Michael Murray: I agree.

Jon Bryant: If I say, Hey, you know, the one thing I ask in exchange for my time is that we could get together for a chat and make sure one, I'm apples to apples. Because I don't get other bids to give you a chance to just say yes or no. And they're like, no, I just said the number. Like, you know, I'm going to be honest. I'm not getting the sense that, there's something off. Something's wrong here. Pretty much everyone of my customers is okay with that because it's helpful. And so...

Michael Murray: But I thought it was like a written rule somewhere that if you go to an appointment, it's like law, universal law that you have to send them a quote. Is that true? Like I don't have to send them a quote as a sales professional? Crazy.

Jon Bryant: Wild concept, yeah, wild concept, but no, don't do it. You're wasting your time. You're being taken advantage of.

Michael Murray: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, you're wasting your time. You're also just again, giving the customer all of what they want, which is like here's the how-to playbook on solving their solution based on the consultative approach we just took. Here's all the primers. Here's all the paints. Here's all the things that I would do and my price etc. And now they can go and shop that around and probably find something cheaper in most cases.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely, right? Well, in some cases, I've even experienced that too. They like us better as a vendor and they say, here's the other price. Can you match it? And so now you're just a leverage point for somebody to get a job down at a lower price.

Michael Murray: And it's a race to the bottom.

Jon Bryant: Race to the bottom, exactly. So to your point though, like this universal truth of having to always send a bid, what do you do when you're not going to send the bid? How do you handle that?

Michael Murray: Oh, I think, yeah, I think we're direct. That's going to happen at the home, generally speaking. Right. So to your point, we're having these questions. We send quotes all the time, don't get me wrong. But we're, you brought it up. We're having an expectation of, I'm happy to send you a quote. So first of all, we went over it together. We've answered all your concerns. We've gone back and forth on the objections. We've isolated those. We've done all the things that we've been talking about on all these podcasts and Paint Scout X and all the different things.

And a lot of times customers just are like, yeah, I'm really excited. I like you guys. I really think this is a good system. And yeah, it looks like it would fit within our budget, but I do want to just talk about it with my spouse or we want to get one more quote or whatever that looks like. It's like, okay, great. No problem. I get it. And so just to make sure that we're on the same page, if we don't work together, what would be that reason?

Right. That's a great, powerful question at that point in the conversation. I love to ask, see where we go. But at some point it's like, okay, great. Sounds like, you know, you're going to look it over. You need a couple of days. How about this? It looks like today's Thursday and probably going to get some quotes over the weekend. I'm going to give you a call on Monday to see if you're ready to move forward and get on the schedule. I know we talked about June. By then we're probably starting to book up whatever it looks like. Right. And what time on Monday are you going to be available?

And that's what I'm looking for, some sense of commitment as to what that next step is going to be. Is that in line with what you were just describing?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I'm not giving without getting something back. And do people always respect it? No, but I'm not willing to do this dance of send me the number and I'll get back to you. It's a futile one. The number of jobs I've ever won on that type of interaction is pretty, I want to say as close to zero as you could get, because it's not a relationship anymore. This is just about a number. That's all they care about. And I don't want to be a number at the end of the day.

Michael Murray: Never. And again, a lot of times it's such a defense mechanism. It doesn't even necessarily mean that customers are bad. Doesn't even mean that they're not going to book. It does mean though that you will waste your time on a lot of unnecessary followups and such with people who you think you have a good shot with, who you don't because we didn't have a good sales appointment or estimate. And we didn't ask the difficult questions and things like that.

So, you know, that's, I think what we're trying to avoid. We're not trying to avoid sending the quote. That's not the actual problem here. That is the customer's way of getting everything that they want, which is okay. As long as you're getting what you want too, which is just, yeah, that's fine. I just need to know what are we doing from here? And we need to have a concrete step. We can both have what we want here.

Jon Bryant: Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I'll add one other thing to that. So when we do not send an estimate, sometimes we don't do it on the spot. Something gets busy. We come back to the office. We're like, shoot, I should have not sent that. We've developed an email that just says, unfortunately at this time, due to our resources, we can't help you with this project. And it can be a variety of things. Maybe you didn't realize how rude they were or all these different things at the moment. You just didn't figure it out. So I think there's that too, where if you feel like this is the right customer that you're just going to have a problem and they're going to steal or just going to be an issue. I think that email works well. I know a lot of people will jack the price up if they feel like their stuff is getting stolen. I'm not as big of a fan of that to be honest, but...

Michael Murray: I think steal though, can be like somewhat misleading, right? We think of steal as they're stealing my proprietary information or my pricing or whatever. Actually, what it usually is, is just stealing your time. It's stealing your time at the appointment, stealing your time from the follow-ups and all the nonsense. That I think is really what we're mostly talking about because at the end of the day, what we do, you said it before, it's not that secretive. You can go find it on ChatGPT or whatever, even if it's not always accurate.

Jon Bryant: Industrial epoxy on your wood deck. Go for it.

Michael Murray: I mean, somebody can walk into Sherwin-Williams and ask them how to paint something and it's probably pretty accurate. All right. So lie, cheat, steal, lie again. I think, you know, we've kind of mixed this in as we've been going here, but this is going to be some of the most common. This is what we hear all the time. Right. So the front lie, that back end lie, this is the end of the appointment.

Jon Bryant, this has been great. I really appreciate it, man. Your hair looks great today. You smell wonderful. We really like everything that you guys are saying. We're just going to need some time to think about it though. Definitely got to talk about it with my significant other and stuff. So, yeah, give us like a week or two and we should be good to go, man. Yeah, you smell great. Thanks for coming over. Something like that.

Jon Bryant: This is a podcast, how do you know my smell? It's getting awkward. Yeah, I mean, not only have I heard that, I've actually said those words. I am that customer, man. Sometimes it's for lack of information, so I am being real with people. Yeah, we gotta think about it, we'll get back to you. But a lot of times it's more than that. And I think what you did was try to make me feel really good as if that's going to somehow make everything better and less confrontational. And I think as salespeople, sales professionals, we misinterpret that as a buying signal. But when in reality, it's just trying to let you down easy.

Michael Murray: Sales rep, yeah, in that scenario, you go back to the office, your sales manager's like, yeah, how'd that appointment go with Michael out there? You're like, he said I smelt great, said I'm wonderful, I got good hair, we connected, he loves me, we're booking, put that one on the board, man, that one's going to book. I told him we're going to paint that one in July, you might as well just hold that off, that's booking for sure, that's a for sure win, slam dunk. And you have no chance.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. Yeah. It's great. Yeah, yeah, 100%. Yeah, we're, yeah, there's no chance. Exactly. And that's, you know, I think once you condition yourself to realize that every part of this interaction means something, and that these are kind of some of the drivers behind this, you can start to position that second lie a little bit differently in your mind.

So I often hear blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Something's not working for me. That's all I heard out of that statement. I didn't put any deodorant on today, so I smell terribly. I'm wearing a hat. It's just a bunch of words. And then, okay, cool. Hopefully I'd never have to see you again. That's really what I'm hearing. And I think, exactly.

Michael Murray: Word vomit. I just want you to get out of my damn house. Like, yes, that's, and I'm a really polite person and I don't want to have a confrontation. And so just leave and call me never. That'd be super.

Jon Bryant: That would be great. Yeah. And once you realize that's what they're saying, you can start to say something different in return. I think that's the number one thing is identifying that this process is happening. And I would say, in my experience, this is happening in every one of our sales meetings if we don't get ahead of it. Like it's inevitable. This is the dance that we do as people in, I want to say in North America. I don't know if this is North American culture. Maybe it's not, I don't know. This is ingrained, like how we all laugh the same way. I'm not sure.

But I think some of the things you have to realize is that because the dance is happening, we can get ahead of it. And so with that, you know, always saying like, Hey, I totally get it, man. Yeah, we all need time. These statements you've said are so universally true. Of course. Yeah. You need time to think about it. I love thinking about things too, but you know, just so I can be helpful, can I ask just one or two more questions? To your point, ask a few more questions. And I think that if we don't do that, all we're doing is, you know, again, we're just self-fulfilling the whole thing where it's like, great, I'm just that salesperson that leaves, I never get called again. So do you have any lines that you like to use at that point? Because I know we align on this stuff. We've talked a lot about this.

Michael Murray: Yeah. I mean, I can't, you know, I'm not trying to trick anybody into anything. I'm just trying to isolate the objections, figure out if we don't work together, why would that be? Make sure that I've given them everything they want. Right. When somebody says I need more time, I need to think about it. I need to look it over. I need to get more quotes, what they're really saying is you haven't shown me what I was looking for within the price range of what I thought this was going to be. And so something's not lining up and I need to go do some more research or get my mind around that discomfort in my brain from what I was expecting.

If you show up and the customers have an idea of what the project should look like. They have an idea what the price is and you're like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. And we have a great conversation. We give them exactly what they're looking for exactly at the price point. They're going to book on the spot. We've all experienced that. Right. And so when it doesn't happen, it's not because the customer isn't good. It's because we didn't do what we were supposed to in terms of finding and meeting their expectations.

And so that's all I'm going to try to figure out at this point. Right. You said, you know, something along the lines of, Hey, Jon Bryant, appreciate the compliments. I work a lot on my hair here and my smell and you know, my cologne and all the things. I really appreciate you saying those nice things about me. That makes me feel really good. Hey, before I go, I just wanted to make sure that the process of exactly what we were going to do lines up with exactly what you want. Was there anything that I described today that doesn't seem like a good solution for you? No, yeah, no, that all sounds good. Okay, great. Just want to make sure I've captured this right. As far as the schedule goes, you guys were good with that time period in the middle of May here. Would that meet your needs if we were able to get it done in the middle of May? Would that give us a good opportunity to work together? Yeah, yeah, that mid-May works. Okay, great.

And I'm just kind of walking through the main points of my quote again, just want to connect here. And then I love that question I mentioned a minute ago. I get the fact that you're going to want to get some more quotes and you said that you're liking everything that I said. Sounds like there might be an opportunity for us to work together. Appreciate that. After you get those other quotes, if we don't work together, what would be the reason for that?

Jon Bryant: Well, it's mostly your hair and the way you smell. It just, yeah, it was actually all awful. So yeah.

Michael Murray: Perfect. Got it. Okay, no problem. Sounds like we didn't connect, Jon Bryant. So it sounds like to be honest with you, we're not kind of jiving. I'm getting the feeling that we're probably just not actually going to work together on this project, which is perfectly okay. Sounds like you actually don't even need me to follow up with you on this one. Is that what I'm hearing?

Jon Bryant: Yeah, man, dude, I love what you just said. So it's fearful for most sales reps, right? To believe that not every sale should be the sale. And once you believe that, it's such a wildly freeing thing. It's like, I don't have to close every job. I don't have to send every estimate. And once you actually believe that, you actually increase your win rate, surprisingly. So, man, I love that.

Michael Murray: I think I know what we've experienced. I've been so guilty of this. I'm still a work in progress. I think we all are. Most people fall into two buckets. They either book with us or we never talked to them again. And we just call that a loss. And it's just like, yeah, they didn't book. It's like, no, they didn't not book. You just never talked to them again. There's a big difference, right? That's like, we refer to that as a pending quote, this bucket of pending quotes is just perpetually growing. And they just sit in there forever and eventually after 30 days or whatever, we just kind of get it out of there. But we never actually got closure on that project, but we just assumed because we never talked to them that they went with somebody else or they were a cheapskate or whatever. And it's like, no, actually again, it's something that we needed to do better at the very beginning at the very initial appointment.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, I mean, it's so true. And thinking about that in terms of understanding the customer's point of view helps us position that conversation better and what they're actually saying to us and how they're trying to communicate different things, but they're doing it without conflict. And even pinpointing some of this stuff, like, you know, another lie is, I just got to talk to my spouse. And immediately my alarm bells go off, red flag. Really what they're saying is the price is too high. And so I'm like, oh, that's great. Definitely talk to your spouse. Can I just maybe just ask, is the price a little bit higher than you're expecting?

So now I'm starting to understand these signals of these lies and what they actually mean. And I would highly encourage everyone to think about that on their next few sales appointments to say, what are people actually telling me? What is actually going on versus what am I trying to do to get this job? That's really what this comes down to.

Michael Murray: I think it's this fear of losing a sale. I don't want to be direct. If I asked them, tell me, is my price in line with what your expectations were? That's too direct and I might lose the sale and it's like, you can't lose it. You don't have it. There's nothing there. You know, and that's the mentality that we have to go into. This is like, hold it with an open hand.

I'm not here to sell you anything. I'm here to help you make a good buying decision, whether it's with me or with somebody else. And I'm going to ask you some pretty direct upfront questions if that would be okay with you as we go to help you make a good buying decision. And the customers are going to say, yeah, I'd really appreciate if you'd ask me some really good direct questions to help me make a good decision. Because nobody else has done that yet.

Jon Bryant: Right, yeah. I mean, whether we say it or not, so this is something about me. I am mesmerized by amazing salespeople. And I'm always, when I'm in those moments, I just want to be in those moments forever because it is such an amazing art form to me when I feel like I am fully in control of the buying process and yet the other person is in control of that process.

You know what I mean? And I think that those amazing, amazing sales experiences that I've had show me that it's really about those questions to understand what the customer is looking for, and they're direct questions. We don't need to do this dance. It's just like, is this working or is this not working? Does this seem like a good fit or not? How's the price? Forget the word budget. It's just like, how much would you spend today? If it's not that, that's okay. Let's talk about ways we can make that different or better for you. And so I believe this is an art form and to your point, you're never fully, you're always learning this stuff but this is a beautiful thing when done correctly.

Michael Murray: Yeah. It's not about tricking somebody into buying something they don't want, right? It's taking them on this journey that they want to go on. They've called you out there. They have a problem. They are looking for a good solution and you're just helping them to understand what that is. And some of the time it's going to be with you. Some of the time it's not. And that's perfectly okay. And so yeah, just, I mean, to kind of wrap up the system, we've talked about it, but it's that hide, right? It's the customer that doesn't get back to you. It's the ghosting, if you will. It's that never-ending pending bucket that I was talking about a minute ago. And the opposite of that, how do we avoid that, Jon Bryant?

Jon Bryant: So I think first off, it's setting expectations around what the next steps are. You talked about that early on. How are we going to connect after I send this information that you want? What's the time? I always tell our team, you gotta bring up your calendar. We gotta make this concrete. A lot of people are going to say, yeah, just call me whenever. Whenever is never. Call me in a couple of weeks. Yeah, Tuesday is great. Just call me anytime Tuesday. And we want to lock this down to a time, a day and make it meaningful. So, Hey, I've got time Tuesday at two o'clock. Can I put that on my calendar as a time to call you? Can you check your calendar?

Michael Murray: I would add to that though. It's like so first of all, the question isn't when can I follow up? And if I use that phrasing before it was unintentional. It's when are you going to have a decision made as to who's going to do this painting project for you? How about next Tuesday? If I call you on Tuesday, do you think you'll have a decision made? Great. How about in the afternoon? Does three o'clock work or is five o'clock better for you?

Great, I'm going to call you at five o'clock. I got my phone out here. I'm putting on my calendar. I don't know if you want to put on yours, Mr. or Mrs. customer. So I'm going to call you at five o'clock so that you can let me know if we're going to be able to get you on our schedule or not. And it's okay if we're not going to be the right fit. I know there's other good providers out there. You're not going to hurt my feelings. If you could just let me know either way so that I don't have to keep wasting my time calling you and wondering how we're doing.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. And that whole idea of making them aware that no is okay is really a big part of this because people avoid you because they want to tell you no. And that whole, they're not calling me back, they're a jerk is actually just a self-defense mechanism. So yeah, to your point, which is great. The word follow up falls into half word. That's a little bit dangerous. I don't want to use that around my kids. So how do we do this to be the most comfortable? And like you said, understand that no is okay. And that this is a time to check in about the buying decision.

I do find that an apples to apples discussion is helpful. And so for me, I like that. Actually I think it's worth a shot, just asking about the decision point. But I like to frame it like, you know, in exchange for my time, the one thing I ask is to have a follow-up. This is really to your benefit. You're going to see estimates that are all over the place. Our industry is well known for having low prices and prices that are really high. And a lot of that has to do with the scope. And so you're going to see scopes that are all over the place. And I think the reason I ask that we have this discussion is to make sure that I've got the scope correct.

And so if you're okay, once you have those other bids, could we connect just to make sure it's apples to apples? Because at that point, I mean, they're probably going to have a buying decision in mind, but we're not doing the discussion for that purpose. It's actually to their benefit. Maybe you've overlooked something.

Michael Murray: Yeah, I love it. I think most people have a buying decision by the time you leave their house. If nothing, they might just be confirming that, right? They might need to confirm, I'm going to go with them or not. I'm not 100% on that. Let me just double check. I want to review it. I want to go online, read the reviews, you know, do the things that are going to make me fully comfortable in that decision. But most people are ready to go pretty quick.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, exactly. So, I mean, that's interesting that you say that because by the time you leave, they know whether they want to talk to you again or not, essentially. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

Michael Murray: I believe so. Yeah. I mean, personally, again, every time I buy stuff, I mentioned my example before, I'm not doing more research. I kind of knew right away.

Jon Bryant: Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. So, I mean, these types of things should help you have people hide from you less. So set the expectations, set the next step with them, understand specifically when that's going to happen. And, you know, at that point, if they don't respect it, I think a lot of times people are just uncomfortable to say no. And so they're not going to take your call because they won't tell you no. And so we want to close these things off though, because we, you know, as salespeople, I think we're either depending on the day, hyper, hyper optimistic or hyper pessimistic depending on how many sales we've made. And so it's like, if you're optimistic, it's like, well, those 10 jobs that haven't called me back, those are for sure going ahead. And we got to figure out yes or no, get that off the plate, close them out.

Michael Murray: I think too, we teach our team on that second time of touching base with the customer after the estimate, you call them, Hey, let's call on Tuesday. Great. I call you. You don't answer. I text you, I leave you a voicemail. Hey, just honoring that commitment. You asked me to call on Tuesday at five o'clock. Said that I would, you said that you'd have a decision today. So that's the reason for my call. If you could just let me know where we are, if we're going to be working together so I know if I need to get you on my schedule, that'd be great.

Person doesn't call you back for a day or two, you call them again. And at that point, I've heard this called a breakup email or a breakup message. And it sounds something like, Jon Bryant, second time I've called now, we were supposed to talk on Tuesday. Wasn't able to get a hold of you. We did have that commitment that you were going to give me a decision by Tuesday. Typically when I haven't heard from somebody for the second time, it means that they don't want to work with me. And so if I don't hear from you within the next day or two, I'm going to go ahead and close out that quote and just assume that we're not going to be working together anymore or if you just need a little bit more time to think about it, just shoot me a quick text, let me know that and schedule another time where we can talk.

And typically what happens is one of two things. It's that it's over and I don't waste any more time with it or they're going to send me a message. No, no, no, I'm really sorry. We just had a couple of games for my kids or we're out of town or whatever that looks like. We are still really interested. I actually just genuinely do need another day or two. We just haven't connected yet. Life's busy. But I know you guys need an answer. If you can just give me till tomorrow. Right. And I'm shocked at how often when I'm just direct and not begging them for the work that sometimes, you know, they'll come back and be like, wait, no, no. Don't close it out yet.

Jon Bryant: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah, I love that. So yeah, second calls, emails, perfect. So yeah, let's wrap this up, Michael. I mean, I think if you're having problems with people lying, hiding on you, I think this is our opportunity to use our system versus their system. If you haven't heard of the Sandler system, definitely check it out. There's a lot to be learned from it. But overall today, our system is about rapport, upfront agendas, discovery and clear next steps. And I think you're going to avoid some of those pitfalls and have better conversations with your customers and ultimately lead to more sales.

So thanks for checking it out. Thank you, Michael. Good stuff. If we're always told that we need to tell you guys to like and subscribe. If you've enjoyed the content, we'd love to continue doing this. And, you know, I want to say just quickly as we end, we've had such amazing comments and feedback about this podcast. People have been very encouraging. I know I felt that encouragement and we love making this content and every little bit of encouragement helps. So feel free to leave something in the comments and like and subscribe. Guys, thanks very much.

Michael Murray: Awesome. All right, take it easy.

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