No Deposit!

Drivetime University is back in session. I hope you’re having an awesome day today. I know I am. We gotta fun topic today about deposits down payments, all that kind of stuff, and having if you are not a member of the Facebook group, you’ve got to get in there. There’s so much awesome discussion. A positive group of people that support each other. So one of the guys in the group, Chris had this question. He had this issue come up so we’re gonna talk about it. Makes for a great topic for a podcast. And that’s the thing. If any of you are struggling with something that means more than one person is. I’ve come to personally come across every single one of these issues in my career, and I know plenty of other people have as well. So let’s talk about today’s topic of interest. He was at a better point. Probably about second or third or fourth, not the first person that the clients had other quotes his. Gave him his proposal. Turns out he was actually $200 less than this other company. But the complaint had a big issue because they didn’t. They liked him better. They said they told him they liked his company better. They liked him better the the project that he was proposing. But they had one big sticking point. One thing that was keeping him from moving forward. That issue was. They had been burned by contractors before. And didn’t, and now they don’t do they don’t give money upfront, they only pay contractors when the project is completed, and everything works correctly. Well, of course, his company’s policy was for a 50% down payment, which is pretty normal in our industry, right? So it turns out the other company, which was $200 more, had a zero down policy and working to let him just pay it when their work was completed. So that was the issue. Interesting, right? So stick around. We’re going to cover several ways to handle that, and what we can do. But before we do that, let’s talk about a couple of things. If you are not or have not checked out the high-performance coaching program you are missing out. We’ve got so many more and so many clients that have just doubled their numbers. If you could double your numbers this year, what would that do to your bank account? What would that do to the kind of life you could live? So check out the high-performance coaching program. It is a rocker and yeah, it gives you that next level. But so yeah, so that’s going on. We’ve got so many things happening. I hope you are doing great around the world we are in. Gosh 20-plus countries now as far as who listens to the podcast, so much is going on. We’re going to have. If you have an idea or a topic that you want me to cover in the podcast, message me, and let me know. Join the Facebook group and you can message me there. Put the question in the group or you can email me directly at Sam@closeitnow.net. And I will answer the questions if it’s if it’s something that we need to address. Heck, we’ll make a podcast about it and put it up so it can. You know we can answer the question for everybody. Have so if yeah, so if you waiting, struggling with what’s going on in the world right now. Where are you? Listening from. What is your friction point? What’s the struggle? Are you making all the money you wanna make making all the sales that you want to spank, are you? Are you a business owner and you are looking for a way to grow your bottom line by 20, 30? Forty fifty 100%. You want to double your bottom line. We need to chat. I’ve got some ways to do that I’m helping. Business owners all over the country. Basically, double their bottom line without adding more trucks to the road. No more ownership, headache of insurance, or workman’s comp. But also maximizing and. Geez, I mean he doesn’t want another game of bucks in your pocket every year. I mean, that’s something that is absolutely possible we’re doubling bottom lines all over the place, so reach out to me. We can have a great conversation surrounding you. Know how to increase your bottom line without changing anything, really changing a lot of what you’re doing. You don’t have to add any more resources to do this, but anyway, let’s get back to the topic. We’ve got a lot of stuff going on here. But this is a fun one. This is one that you know if you go into an appointment like that and it’s every your typical posture. And by posture, I mean your mindset, your philosophy. You go in as just the regular old air conditioning guy. The Positioning that you end up with is you the client. It was called basically a buyer in power. If the buyer is in power. Thanks that they get to set the terms for everything. Then they are basically telling you what they will pay. They’re telling you how they want to pay. They’re you know it’s it’s just not a good situation to be. When they are the ones that are you know, running the show, that’s a buyer in power, so this situation he was sitting. You know he goes in there as a buyer in power. And he is the the sales versus sell side of it. Without a lot of posture. Because the second that client said. We’re not going to do this, and here’s why we’ve been burned in the past by contractors. So. You know what he originally did is the offer. You know, OK? Well let’s we can cut it back to 30% deposit and end the rest on completion etc etc, but they still didn’t go for that. Now my advice and we covered this in a Facebook live if you didn’t know every Friday we do a one-hour free sales training in the Facebook group called Q&A Friday. So I covered this. And yet it was a good topic. But what we do, though, is in my advice was to do it like this. You listen to understand and clearly this client. The reason that they’re doing this came from a story. Start with getting their story, say you know, and really be concerned. Oh my gosh, this sound. You know you’re I can understand your concern. You know you we’ve all known people who’ve been burned by contractors personally or know somebody close to us. This sounds like. You have a story and tell me your story. Get them talking about their pad. Bad past experience. Get them talking about what happened that caused them to basically set their foot down the establish their own. Not company policy, but family policy of not paying any money upfront to contractors until the job is completed and operational. Get the story out of him. You’ve got to hear what’s going on and then dollars to Donuts. It was probably some fly-by-night company without the reputation. Just who knows what the situation was. But you’ve got to get their story first. Listen to their story, find out what’s happening at what caused that. Let them talk. Ask him about the details, how so how was it? And once they once, they tell their story to you once they really get it off their chest. Then ask him how many times that’s happened. Has it just been? Was it just at one time? Have you done other projects in the past? Have you burned by every single contr… burned by every single contract that they used, Or was it just a one-time experience? As a really get to factfinding. What’s going on because? There is not a single objection that you can have. That’s not solved by asking more questions, it’s 100% true. So find out what caused them to. Have this policy. So then, after you’ve done that. You turn that, then we start to turn the corner they’ve they’ve shared. They’ve gotten it off their chest. Then we really start to turn the corner. OK, well, you know I’ve been in business this many years and we’re going to use our referrals in our testimonies. And then, we’ll ask, say, did you read our reviews online? Did you see that? We’re a, you know, call it a 4.8-star company with Google. Did you see that we have 650 reviews? You know whatever your numbers are, user numbers. And I like Google a lot because it’s a it’s a number. It’s a review site that everybody knows about. Everybody reads those reviews. Ask them did they saw our reviews. Did you see our rating? Did you see how many reviews you have? So this is step one we have to make sure that they are familiar with the figures and the reason for that reviews are social proof. Because when we bring the reviews up, we’re going to tell him. So do you think that we would have so many four and five-star reviews from 650 clients just like yourself in our community? If we were out there taking advantage of people with price. If we were out there taking advantage of people and not delivering the work that we promised we were out taking advantage of our clients, and they’re not getting the delivery of what project that they are paid for, the project that they are promised. At that shut up and let them answer that question. Of course, their answer is going to be. Well, no, no, they definitely wouldn’t review that well. If that were the case, that’s when we say exactly. Now, here’s where we’re going to turn the ship for the posture. this is now in a negotiation conversation. It’s not an I have to do this or else. It should be kept in negotiation conversation conversation is now. Now Mr. Miss Homeowner. You just have a handful of projects that you’re making just very few, right? Right, OK? We deal with hundreds of clients every single year. Now I have been burned by lots of customers in the past, which means that’s the reason we have our company policy. Of 50% down. Now how do I know that you? Are going to pay me once the project is done because I’ve had. I’ve done our companies, done projects in the past where we didn’t get payment once we’ve done a project. From lots of clients and had to write off thousands and thousands of dollars worth of work. That’s why we have our company policy. What assurances do I have from you that you’re going to pay for the project. See ’cause I have hundreds of reviews from clients just like yourself, but I don’t have any way to verify or check or reviews for you as a buyer. Now I know that sounds kind of silly, but that’s why we have our company policy. It’s not about you specifically, it’s about the number of times that we’ve been taking advantage of in the past and we can’t afford to let keep letting that happen. Just like you can afford to pay money in a client contractor, not deliver. Now let me ask you Mr Miss Homeowner what do you think would be a good solution here? So now what we did is we completely turned around the posture. We turn the conversation around because, in all honesty, that’s true. As a company, you have hundreds of reviews, so in some cases thousands, but even it doesn’t matter how many reviews you have. You have reviews saying that you did awesome work. We have no idea if this client is lying to us or not. We take care of hundreds and thousands of people they might deal with one contracting project every year or two, or three or four. So it’s not about that, and that’s why we forget their story first. Was it just one time, or was it lots of times? How has this affected your life? And then you tell your story. Because of the reason we have this policy. Yes, we’ve been burned by lots of customers over the years. And we just put a policy in place to not let that happen anymore. How do we know that you’re going to pay your bill once the work is completed? What assurance do we have other than? A deposit upfront. So that’s asking the right question. And then propose, you know, have them propose something, say. Now I’m willing to work with you here. Our normal policy is 50% down or whatever your normal policy is. I’m willing to work with you here. And meet in the middle somewhere. What are you comfortable doing? Ask to get them to propose a number. So you… and clarify. So you’re you like us as a company you like me as representative. If you like the project that we’re looking at end your company with the price, it all makes sense, right, right, OK? Well, if that’s the case, and this is the only thing standing in our way, could you see? My concern here because I’ve had customers in the past who seemed like awesome customers that didn’t pay me once the project was done. Can you see my concern about getting paid? There’s nothing to do with you, Mr. Miss Homeowner specifically, but we had to establish a company policy for that reason. Now I’m willing to adjust it, but I can’t get rid of it altogether. What do you think we should do with this and ask them and that will? What it completely changes the mindset and the posture? Because it’s true we don’t have any idea how we have any idea if they’re going to pay or not. Sure, they might be nice people. It could be. It doesn’t matter who it is. It could be a, you know, a college professor or a pastor for church. We’ve all had situations where doesn’t matter who it was. They didn’t pay at the end, and they turned out to be dishonest customers. That’s why we have our policies. So don’t completely just get rid of your policy and you know cower The customers heard the clients demands to know deposit for whatever they’re demanding. When you have a company policy in place for a reason. Do you understand the raise your hand? If you understand the philosophy, the psychology behind what we did in that conversation and the conversation can be very powerful and we can and it doesn’t have to just be about the deposit it can be about lots of things that conversation can. You can turn it around for, you know so many things that you know a sticky point for a customer. Any objection they have that has to do with you know surrounding reviews surrounding trust surrounding you know they’ll be taken advantage of by a company or by a person in the past. You can turn it back around because, at the end of the day, we deal with way more people than they do. We have the ability to be taken advantage of way more than they do. But it doesn’t stop us from working for more clients does it now. If the fact that they were taken advantage of by one company doesn’t stop him from calling you to do another project, they just adjusted their policy. If that’s the same thing we did is adjusted our policy for deposit. So. That’s the that’s how to turn that conversation around by listening to their story first. Listen to the story. Get him to share all the details. Then get to quantify it. How many times did this happen? Then ask them you know what made the decision for why. Why did they call right and just start sharing? Say, listen, and ask him if they like to hear the reason we have our policy. And that changes the whole conversation. It becomes a conversation. Instead of just, it’s gotta be my way or the highway. So I hope this was helpful today. This is a big topic that I hear. Actually, I’m hearing more and more often, so there’s no reason that we should be doing work without a deposit. I mean, come on. And that’s and it’s obviously for the cash buyer. If somebody is financing their approved financing. You know, then, awesome. Let’s rock and roll. But if their cash buyer there’s got, they know they’ve got to be a deposit. There’s gotta be a deposit for a cash buyer, credit card, check whatever they have to get with the deposit don’t and the deposits that you get. Don’t let them. You know, if you’re in a state that all now and I know there’s a couple states across the country that you by law that you can’t take it deposit. I feel bad for you son because that just kind of sucks. That’s the silly silly law, but it’s customer protection. I get it. You have to work with where you’re at. But in most cases get a deposit. If you get a deposit that stops cancellations because now they’ve got skin in the game, they can’t just call you and say, oh we decided to go with somebody else. Get a deposit because it’s this. It’s sticky for going to projects as well, so that is the topic for today. I hope it was beneficial to you. Understand the psychology. It’s less about the exact wording and much more about understanding how to build the words. And build the verbiage into the answer to understand where somebody comes from. The reason for their objection, it’s not just about hearing an objection, it’s about understanding the reason for the objection. Only understand why an objection exists. We ask questions about that objection. An understanding of the reason for it, then we can have a great conversation about how to overcome that objection. If you’re at this point in the conversation, they like you, they know you. They like you. They’re starting to trust you. And if they truly trusted you, that wouldn’t even be a conversation either. But it’s a matter of figuring out why they’re buying and why they’re not buying, so that was helpful today. Go check out the new website closeitnow.com. The new websites have been updated. We’ve got a lot of stuff going on. All of the podcasts should be playing now. I know I had some broken links for a little while, but new podcast host. Everything is operating super smooth. Also, big announcement if you didn’t hear. We’ve got hats and shirts that are coming out have so hats? Captor caps. We’ve got T-shirts of some really cool Close It Now swag. That’s going to be rolling out. So go check the website. You’ll be able to end. The Facebook page will be able to find links to. Order that an otherwise go out there. Keep crushing it. Drop me a line. Let me know how you doing so you think that I can cover for you. Go save the world one heat stroke at a time. I’ll talk to you soon.