How To Handle The ‘Apples To Apples’ Price Comparison?

Clients comparing prices from one offer to another situs slot online terbaik 2021 is as normal as you choosing which is the better burger. In this episode, Sam Wakefield shares the secret to closing amazing projects and breaks down the pieces and parts of the process. There are ways to leave clients with no other choice but to choose you, and one must not also forget the importance of impression in the business. As Sam talks about how crucial doing due diligence is in the business, he also shares how to deal with the competition, how to handle price comparison, and how to harness the power of connecting with people emotionally. Learn all this and more and start making a difference in your close rate.

We’re going to cover one way to handle that infamous, “This other company is offering me a better package or the same package at less money. What can you do for me?” That price objection. I’m going to use a real-life example that I used to close an amazing project. We’re going to talk about that and I’m going to dissect it. I will tell you all about the pieces and parts. There’s some psychology behind it and a very simple principle that you can use immediately to start making a difference in your close rate. Welcome to the show.

Drive Time University

One of the things I love about is I realize because if you’re like me, you get a lot of road time. I like to call it drive time university. If you are not using your drive time, your commute back and forth between projects to learn, to get better, to improve yourself, start. One of the titans of the heating and air industry, Charlie Greer, he is a classic trainer and if you’ve ever watched Tec Daddy or any of the other things that he’s done, he was one of the very first people in heating and air to sell over $1 million a year. This is back in the ‘80s when the average sale was right around $3,000. That is selling a massive amount of equipment.

One of the things he says. I heard a statistic from him that in a twenty-year career in the heating and air industry, and as a service technician, a salesperson, a comfort consultant or we call them project managers, whatever you call yourself, or the salesperson. In a twenty-year career, if you added up all of the amounts of commute time and if you apply that by audiobooks, I love audiobooks and podcasts and those kinds of things. If you applied that and translated that time over a twenty-year career in the industry would be the equivalent of three separate PhD degrees by the amount of education you can give yourself in the amount of drive time that you have every single day.

I encourage you, if you have it yet, if you’re on this show, you have started your own education. I applaud you. I give you huge props right now for bettering yourself and choosing to grow yourself so your results can grow as you grow yourself. One of my favorite mentors, Jim Rohn. He said, “Set a goal to earn $1 million, not for the million dollars because the million dollars can come and go.” Set a goal to earn $1 million because of the level of the person you have to become to earn that million dollars. Your belief system has to change. The value you bring to the world has to increase. We know that the amount of value you bring to the world is directly proportional to the amount that you will be compensated for.

Bringing More Value

If you want to earn more money, bring more value to your clients and your customers. How do we do that? We do that by solving the problems that they have in their life. If you’re in this community, you are not about taking care of people’s air conditioners and taking care of people’s heaters. You are about taking care of people. When you take care of people and people’s problems, sales will happen because people know that you are connected to them emotionally and you care about their situation, their problems, their experiences, and how they live their lives. You’re there for them. Who else would they choose to install a new heater and air conditioner? Come on, it’s a no-brainer. It doesn’t make any sense for them to choose anyone else. If you show up with passion and purpose and focus at every appointment and you bring your A-game every time. It’s a silly question for a client to choose anybody else. That’s exactly what we’re talking about.

In this situation, I’ll give you the backstory of it. Our company uses Yelp pretty extensively. A message had come in across Yelp and it was inquiring. He read some reviews of ours and we have great reviews. You’ve got to get reviews. Every time you interact with anyone, ask for a review, ask for what you want. He read some of our reviews and he messaged into the company. I was the on-call person, which means anything that’s after hours or over the weekend, it comes straight to me. That way, I can respond. He was initially asking about the process. I picked up the phone and called him and talked about his situation.

Handling Price Comparison: If you want to earn more money, bring more value to your clients and your customers.

He’s in this big house. It’s a 2,400 square foot or so ranch style. He built the house, a 26-year-old system, or something like that. He gave up the ghost and it died. He had a home warranty company. Raise your hand if you are tired of dealing with home warranty companies. He was getting no results from them and was ready to take a cash-out and to have a contractor that he chose to come out and do this work. I interacted with him two different times and we’d set an appointment. I get over there Monday evening. We’re sitting in his house and we’re sweating.

Doing Due Diligence

One of the principles I want to talk about is doing your due diligence even when you don’t want to. Even when it seems like, “I know this construction, I know what the system is, I know what’s going on. It would be a no-brainer for me to move on because I know what is happening here.” What happened is I did my due diligence even though I didn’t have to. I chose to anyway because they need to see that you are looking at everything. They need to know that you are concerned about the details. They need to know that you have a special interest in their project as a custom project.

They don’t need to know that it’s identical to five 500 other projects you’ve done within the same neighborhood. The homeowner wants to know that you are focused on them, their house and their special needs as if it’s the first time you’ve ever seen these specific problems, and your sole mission in life is to figure those problems out right then while you’re there. When you can do that, that’s a turning point. In their minds, you’re building the confidence that you are there to take care of them. By the due diligence in this situation, what I mean is the system upflowed in a closet all the way across the house from the attic entrance. It also turns out that the cross-bracing and the joist in the attic in this house were like a spiderweb. It’s 120 degrees or so in the attic. My first real flop sweat of the season.

I’m up in the attic and I climb all the way across the attic. I took pictures of his supply air because I knew even though I’d seen it a hundred times in this neighborhood, the builder didn’t put nearly the right amount of supply air, so it starved for airflow. I get pictures, I come back down out of the attic. I showed him exactly what the problem was and what we were going to do to fix the problem, increase the airflow here and here. We sit down at the table and I show him the different options. In the full situation, he chooses a single-stage and we call for financing right then. I got him approved for financing on the spot and set the project up for the very next day.

Don’t Make It About The Price

I’m leaving there about 7:30 at night. I have another appointment after that. I’m driving home and it’s almost 10:00 and I get a text from this guy. Here’s where the story gets interesting and here’s where both the due diligence and the other tip and topic we’re going to talk about here come into play. I get to my house and I get a text from this guy that says, “Your competitor offered me a two-stage system for almost the same money.” After some discounts and different things, we were going to end up about the same money. Most people would probably answer back and start the conversation back and forth of, “Can you send me the quote, and maybe we do price matching” and all of this kind of thing.

How many of you, raise your hand if you ever told the homeowner, “We’ll look for an apples-to-apples comparison. If you send me their quote, we’ll take a good look and we’ll consult and make sure we’re looking at the same thing. At the end of the day, and then vomit.” Do not do that because all you’re doing is you’re turning what you’re doing into a commodity that anyone can buy off of the shelf. They could go down the line and pick a name and then it’s the exact same thing every single time. As soon as the apples-to-apples words come out of your mouth, you’ve completely taken your project and demoralized it, and turned it into a commodity that anyone can pick up like a can of beans. Don’t do that.

Handling Price Comparison: If you are a premium provider, if you are truly there to serve people, you will climb and don’t cut corners.

I get a little passionate about this because this is my passion to serve people and to teach you how to serve people in a way that you’re bringing value and you’re also getting value because it’s a fair exchange because you’re doing an awesome job for them. Sales, this is crucial, never commoditize what you’re doing. If you don’t know what commoditize means, join the Close It Now Facebook community and we could have this conversation, but I will tell you it is never about the lowest price.

Back to our story. He says, “This other company was offering me a two-stage system at almost the same money.” It turned out it was $200 less than what the single-stage system I was offering for. It’s the same family of equipment. It wasn’t too different. It was just one step different. Instead of going down that journey of, “How much can we discount and this and that,” I asked a question. At the end of the story, I never answered his direct question because he didn’t truly know what he was asking. I knew his timeline was short. My first question was, “Did the other company even come out to give you a quote?” Because initially, the red flag going off in my head is that they had given it to him over the phone. He says, “Yup.” He’s answering short with me. You match the tone. You’ve got to match the tone a lot of times. I came back with, “Did they even go into the attic?” Because I knew by doing my due diligence, no one else will do it.

That’s the thing. If you are a premium provider, if you are truly there to serve people, you will climb your happy butt to every corner of the attic or crawl space or wherever it is to check out the ductwork and look at all of the aspects of the home and don’t cut corners. I know that nobody else in our town is going to do that. I’m sure it’s the same with you. He says, “Nope, they didn’t go into the attic.” I asked, “Were they guessing at what the ductwork problem was or did they even ask about that?” I said, “If they’re guessing at that, I wonder what else they’re guessing at.” He responds, “Yeah, maybe.” He’s starting to turn the corner there. I asked him, “What was their solution for the lack of airflow?” Because in my mind I know at this point they hadn’t even diagnosed the problem. They didn’t even know there was one.

He says, “They were going to give me a free upgraded air filter.” This is all via text message. I’m cracking up at this point. The other piece of information here is the size system on the house was a three and a half-ton. The house truly needed a four-ton. I did a manual J load calculation and figured out that it needed a four-ton system. Upgrading the size of the system anyway, and it was already short of air supply. My response at that point was, “It doesn’t matter what system you install, a single-stage, a two-stage whatever, if the airflow is not right, it’s only going to destroy the new equipment if it lacks in that much supply air.”

I said, “You’ll be glad that you chose us because you’re not going to have these problems.” I put the thumb-up emoji right in the text message and he sends back the smiley face. “You’re right. Thanks for the confidence.” I go to bed because it’s super late. It’s like 10:30 at this point. Sure enough, the very next night our crews go out. We do an amazing job as your companies should. If you’re in the sales process, that’s the thing. If you’re making big promises, you’ve got to deliver. You have to have the people to deliver on those promises you’re making. There’s a whole concept of under-promise and over-deliver.

I think that is a complete BS. It should be over-promise and then over-deliver past that because that is how you get and keep lifetime clients. I respond back and I’m even checking on him, “How did the project go? How’s the house?” He sends me back this huge text message thanking me so much for the confidence and helping him get over the hump. He hails the system is 10X quieter than his previous system. It was one of his big concerns, having to turn the TV up in the living room every time it came on. How much he loved my crew because they’re very respectful. He goes down the whole list of every single thing that was positive. The very next day, there’s like five or six paragraphs worth of review on our Yelp page from this guy because he was so blown away by our service.

Handling Price Comparison: By doing your due diligence, you’ve got the ammunition.

There are two big lessons here. If I had not done my due diligence to know that the system was short on airflow and to climb all the way across that attic, I wouldn’t have known and I wouldn’t have the ammunition to instantly be able to come back to him when he was asking about the price comparison shopping and say, “What are they going to do about this problem?” Because I wouldn’t have known that there was a problem. That’s lesson number one. You have to do your due diligence. You’ve got to look at everything every single time even if it’s the end of the day and you’re on call number seven or eight for the day and it’s 11:00 at night. I know some of you do because I know I do. You’ve got to do your due diligence, feel like it or not.

Lesson two and this is the big one. This is the closing lesson of the week. If you’ve done your process properly, if you’ve done your investigation properly, if you’ve asked all of the questions and you should have a form with what questions you’re asking every time you’re in a house, don’t change from your system. Don’t deviate from a system. Establish a system and consistently use it A to Z. If you’re asking the right questions and they’ve given you all the information you need, that will take you right to the close. When they come back to you with, “So and so was offering this,” don’t make it about the price. Take it away from the price instantly. Don’t respond to that price question.

Respond in questions about how the other company is going to handle the situations that you’re easily handling because you investigated them and figured them out. It’s like I did when he was like, “They’re offering a two-stage at the same price as your single-stage, wouldn’t that be a better choice?” My question was, “How are they going to handle these problems? Did they even go in the attic? How are they going to handle this airflow?” He’s like, “Nope, they didn’t have a plan for that.” You just question, “At the end of the day if theirs only lasts half as long as ours or you have headaches, problems and maintenance issues when you shouldn’t have because they were only guessing at it, have they saved you any money? What we’re promising is that we’re going to do it right and we’re not cutting corners, let’s stay on the calendar.”

His response was, “Let’s go ahead as scheduled.” That’s the lesson. Do your due diligence and by doing your due diligence, you’ve got the ammunition. When objections start to arise, you can bring them up. This specifically relates to the objections of this about another company and a price. You can start to ask them how are they going to handle this? How are they going to handle that? How are they going to handle this? You have a plan of attack and it’s going to be an effective one because you are confident in the work that you do. You’re confident in your design because you study and because you get better, things get better.

That’s episode number two of the show. I want to hear from you. How can you do that? You can find me at SamWakefield.com. That is going to take you to my Facebook page. Find me, find my page on Facebook, like it, and join the Close It Now HVAC Sales Training community. We have a private Facebook group and we were building a group of HVAC sales experts who are dedicated to serving people and providing value so you can double, triple, and quadruple your income. We’re going to double your close rate. We’re going to double your average ticket price. Who doesn’t want more money at the end of the year? More money in your check, net in your pocket every single week. I know both of my hands are raised right now and yours should be too. This is going to be amazing and we’re going to crush it. If you didn’t know in the market across the world, there’s an enormous amount of pent up system replacement.

By that, we mean there are millions of systems that people have been putting off because of political changes, because of changes in economics, all those different types of changes, changes in the stock market. People have been holding off doing replacements. They’ve only been repairing up until now and it’s all breaking loose. All this pent up replacement in the market is coming due. You’re going to see a harvest bigger than you’ve seen. It’s already shaping up to be a record-breaking year for my company and I hope yours as well. If you follow these principles, you will be able to 10X your income even at that matter. Find me SamWakefield.com. Join the Facebook group. We are building a community of these dedicated salespeople of HVAC rock stars and I will see you on the next episode.