Sorry for the late post but I was in the hospital a few days for low blood sugar.
I am in the middle of saving a $15,875.00 job and also at the same time making sure my client understands that they are getting everything they have asked for and then some.
Now, since one of my sales staff has priced this job $4,000.00 less I need to find out why my price is much higher. Because if I was sitting in my clients shoes I would want to know why such a difference.
So I did something risky that I normally would not ever do.I ask for another appointment so that I could find out why my other sales staff was higher priced. But also for another reason of my own because I remember doing 4-5 jobs in this neighborhood.
So, once back to the office and a meeting with my sales person and a laptop price comparison I found the main problem. He had priced a concrete spray coating and design around the whole pool area and our client asked me for pool thin set pavers.
Bingo there was the $4,000 difference. Then I checked our data base and found that we had done 6 other jobs in the area and we had both types of installations. So I called 2 of my clients and asked if I could do a meet and greet with my new client. Of course they both said yes.
I made my new appointment with my client to see first the 2 different types of jobs and I also brought my salesman along this time for some education.
One more thing I what you to know about that one of my clients job had an outdoor kitchen that we had installed along with the pavers and this job was a show piece.
So ,we did our meet and greet and my new client fell in love with the outdoor kitchen and paver job. I mean to the point that I almost had to drag them out of the house.
On the way to my new clients home we were sure they would now go with a outdoor kitchen also. But first, I wanted to show my client both of our laptop prices to prove to them that we were not apples to apples pricing.
Of course they were fine with the price difference once we proved our case. But now of course they had to have the outdoor kitchen also and so we left the home with a signed contract of $34,267.85 along with a 10% deposit check. Yeah!
Now, let’s take a look at the impact of this mistake and what it cost our salesperson because to me he fell short of doing his job.
First, because I had to rehash the deal the salesman commission went to 5% instead of 10%. Then when I up selled the kitchen the house kept the 10% and the salesman received no commission on the kitchen. Plus the salesman did not get paid on the up sell of the $4000 for the pavers.
The salesman earned $593.75 commission but could have earned $3,426.00 only if he had done his job right. By right I mean he should have not been lazy and checked our existing client base first. Then he would have done what I did and he would have had no problem getting this job.
Now, for me this was a win-win for me and our company. First it continued my pride that after 25 years of doing this I still have what it takes to run with these young and cocky sales staff we have around here, plus it shows contractors all over the world that please take the time to rehash all of the jobs that go unsold.
After all you have paid for the lead cost and your overhead still keeps on moving along. So I hope this post can help you and if you liked it send it to your contractor friends and if you like more of these type of post hit the big orange RSS feed button.
Happy Consumer Selling
Glen Kohlenberg
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