This is the fastest way to double your close ratio.
Hi, everybody, I’m Steve Burnett with DYB Coach.
I used to drive out to estimates for an hour maybe up to an hour and a half only to arrive and realized this is not a good bid for us.
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And if you are anything like me this may have happened all too often.
So instead we took ownership of our calendar and started to pre-qualify the leads that came in.
So we want to pre-qualify the leads that come in to protect our time, to protect our health, our energy, and our resources, and our responsibilities to our company, to our body, to our mind, to our family, right.
So that we stay 100%. Now to pre-qualify, a lead comes in and we would basically ask these five questions and we have them right here in the pre-qualification process/ of the sales process.
So the first one is the source. We want to know the source, where does the lead come from.
Whether it was rotary, or chamber, or BNI, or a customer referral. Those are good leads.
The second one is we would ask for the address. Now whether this lead comes in by phone call or you can book me on your website, you can ask these question over the phone or on the form as well.
When they give us the address, we punch that into Zillow, Google Maps, Google Street view and while we are listening we are looking it up as well to see if it is in a neighborhood that we serve.
We check if it’s too far and to get a look at the project too to see if it is a good fit to make sure that we stay in our core target market; the three “P’s.”
Third, is this your personal residence? More times than not, those who are renting are not really expecting to invest in what it’s going to cost to hire a professional painting company.
So we want to make sure this is a personal residence and that they are the owners before we drive over.
Fourth, what’s the scope of work they are looking for?
We want to make sure it’s not too big, it’s not too small and it’s just right… like Goldilocks and the three bears.
So we ensure again that the scope is just right.
Five, how soon would they like it painted?
Now many times they are going to say as soon as possible, within a few weeks.
If you’ve discovered at this point that this is not a good fit, the “how soon” question is a great opportunity for you to refer them away.
Because we own our calendars, if this is a project that we wouldn’t consider until our slow time, then we would let them know, “Unfortunately for your project, our first availability isn’t for 4 to 6 months,” (or whatever that might be for you.)
However, here is where we save face and they don’t leave upset with us.
We say “however, we do have the names and numbers of two other painting companies I can refer you to, would you like that?” They always say yes! And they are happy for a couple of reasons:
- They don’t have to start over.
- It’s a referral
So now they feel encouraged to call these other guys plus you end up making friends of all your competitors.
So you might say, why do you send a bad lead to a company.
Well, it might not be a bad lead for them.
For them, this might be a great fit and they are happy about it and they are very grateful.
So you want to ask the source, you want to ask the address, you want to know if it is a personal residence, scope of work and then how soon.
So make sure that you pre-qualify so that you too can develop your close ratio.
Thank you, this is Steve Burnett the DYB Coach.
You’ve got this!
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