Service Biz Coach

How do you answer your phone?  It can mean the difference between getting a job and going hungry.  A professional will always answer the phone with

• The Company Name
• Your Name
• And a short phrase like how may I help you?

Okay, easy enough right?  Now that you have them on the phone and they know who you are what next?  When I answered the phone as a home inspector… the most common question from potential clients was:  ”How Much Do You Charge?”  Used to drive me crazy…………..until I realized that they didn’t know anything about home inspections other than they were told to get one.  So what else could they ask?  So being the nice guy that I am I would fill them in pronto.

When they call and  asked “how much do you charge?”  I would go into my “get the sale now” script, which goes something like this:

Thanks for calling,  I will need to get a little more information before I can quote a fee to inspect your new home.

Can you tell me the square footage of the home?     How old is the house?  How did you get our number… who referred you to us?    Do you have any specific concerns about the house?  See we are asking you about your concerns not telling you what we think we will find or our concerns (age, location etc)

After getting this information…notice we are building rapport with the client and we don’t even have the job yet. I ask them have you ever done an inspection before? (NO) Well let me tell you a little about what we do. I proceed to tell them what it is we do and also mention our strengths in the process. (yes)  Great, you will really appreciate the awesome job we do and the big difference between us and our competitors. Then tell them same thing as the no answers.

At this point 90% are sold and we book the job without ever mentioning the price.

What about the ones that say they want to shop around?  When they tell me this I am the most helpful guy in the world.

“absolutety you should shop around. but let me help you out here.  Here are the questions you should be asking!”

Then I give them my prepared list of ?’s they should ask of my competitors.

• Are they insured?
• Hoe long have they been in business?
• Are they a member of a professional association?
• Etc.etc   each industry has different ones and you know what yours are.

Of you can answer all of the questions  in the most positive way.  :~)    Whenerever possible include your own Unique Selling Proposition.  The thing that makes you different from your competitors.  They can’t possible answer that one right!

At this point I usually get about 8% of those remaining.  When I ask them why they choose us here is the most common answer; “You were trying to help me out even before you got the job, I figured you would be really good if I hired you!”

Of the 2% left usually about half of those will call back and book the job because the others they called couldn’t answer the questions right.  The one percent that we do not get are the ones that call back and say I got a lower price but would prefer to use you, can you meet that price?  I politely tell them that we do not negotiate our fees.  We offer a premium product at a standard price.  I have a Wednesday morning or Friday afternoon open which one would you like?  IF they say I have to go with the cheaper one, I wish them luck and remind them that spending hundreds of thousands on a house and saving $30 on the inspection may not be the wisest decision but best wishes, hope it works out for you.

Frankly we don’t want to work with the folks that are price shoppers, they only appreciate low prices not quality work.  So they are tough customers when value is not part of their vocabulary.

So selling on the phone is easy when you do the same things every time.  So write out your script and use it until you get it down.  Make note of the things that work and more importantly, those that don’t  Adjust your script as you need until it is perfect,  THEN LEAVE IT ALONE and follow it faithfully.  It won’t be 100% but it will be close and the ones you lose will be a nightmare for your competitors!  I love when that happens.

Tell me about your script, or if need help with one leave a comment.