E242: The Quoting Mistakes That Force You to Compete on Price

In this episode, we're going to focus on the quoting mistakes that force you to compete on price. Welcome to Trade Sales Made Simple, the show helping 7 to 8 figure trade, construction, and industry leaders finally end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so that you can close more deals and grow faster. I'm your host, Ben Wright, and over the last 15 years, I've helped hundreds of trade and sales leaders grow their businesses and generate over $200 million in additional revenue by simplifying their sales processes. Let's get started. So often I see customers losing quotes on price, and I'll be really open that in many instances I'm happy for customers to be losing a percentage of their quotes on price, because if we're not, it generally means we're too cheap. But this podcast is going to focus on those customers, and please have a think about if you're one of these who are losing too many quotes on price. And what do I mean by too many? If you are losing more than half your quotes on price, I would be deep diving into this episode. If you're losing less than half of your quotes on price, still worth listening to. It's only 10 minutes of your time, right? But I'd certainly encourage you in that instance to take a more higher level kind of macro approach to what I'm going to go through today. For those who are losing more than 50% of your quotes on price, you need to drill in really hard, right? And I'd encourage you to make some of these changes. Okay, so the first mistake that people are making is the first 7 seconds. It's the first 7 seconds of the qualification call and the first 7 seconds of when they arrive on site. So what does that mean? Well, it means in the first 7 seconds they are not making a strong enough impression with their customer that they could be someone they can work with. And I'd like to focus on the site visit in this example. These are things like being well presented, being on time, being engaged, smiling, looking people in the eye, bringing something with you to thank them for their time, taking your shoes off at the front door, smiling, asking them how their day was. The real basics when it comes to meeting people is where— and I mean this truthfully— is where I'm seeing many customers need to compete on price if they don't get it right. Because certainly my aim with every business I work with is to get you chosen early and often. And what I mean by that is that people have a great feeling about how you operate before you even quote, so that as they go through their journey, they're not deciding if it's you or Supplier B or Supplier C, but instead they've decided it's you and they are simply justifying you across the process. So we call that deciding emotionally and justifying rationally. So the biggest mistake I see customers make, forcing them to compete on price, is something as simple as not making that good first impression. Have a think about it. Do you do it? Number 2 is that the customer is not controlling their journey. And what I mean here is they do all the talking. So instead of listening and asking great questions— and we've spoken about that across episodes 239, 240, and 241. So if you haven't listened to those last 3 episodes, I encourage you to jump back in there. And I certainly made this mistake as a young toothpaste salesman when I was out talking to supermarkets and instead telling them how great the new whitening product was. Yes, it was when whitening toothpaste was just coming out. You can work out my age from that. If you can't, I'm 43. But that I was simply telling a customer how great the whitening toothpaste was rather than actually working out where they might have a need for it, rather than actually having the conversation that says, alright, how do you think your customers would enjoy a whitening toothpaste? What difference could it make to their life? What are the typical ages of people that shop in your supermarket? Right? And then when they were able to confirm back to me that they are retirees, okay, great, we can have that conversation. If they were small families or young families, great, we can have that conversation. And I would be able to then personalize what a whitening toothpaste meant to them and their customer base rather than just telling them how good it is. So mistake number 1 is they're not making a good first impression. Mistake number 2 is that the customer isn't controlling their journey because they are too busy talking. Now I will say that talking often comes from being a little bit nervous. So if that's you, I'd really encourage you to get in contact with us because that's something we need to try and work on to help you be more confident in front of customers. Because at the end of the day, in almost every instance, you are going to know more than them. So we just need to tap into that level of self-confidence. But I digress, right? So the third piece here that's forcing too many customers that we work with to compete on price is not being memorable. So they are arriving on site, they are making a reasonable first impression, they are listening a little bit, talking a little bit, but they come and go without the customer feeling any real connection with them. This is the part where I say to every sales leader, salesperson, business owner that I work with to show more of themselves. And I've got a terrific example of a customer that I'm working with at the moment. She's in, uh, heavy materials handling equipment selling, and her engagement in the program had been great. But across the early stages of her engagement in the program, I had seen a reasonably mechanical approach. This is a great story. I was going down to Melbourne to see a customer, and I mentioned on a call that they were both on that I would catch up with this customer. And the first response I had from this lady who's part of our program was, "What about me?" And at that moment, I saw this sparkle in her eye, this sense of engagement, and this real personality in here that I hadn't seen before. And I stopped and said, "Yeah, my bad, right? I should be seeing you, of course." But I said, "I want to see more of that in how you deal with customers. I want you to bring yourself and all the terrific things you can offer, which I can now see, right, through that brief moment, right, of engagement with you. And I want to really encourage you to show more of that when you're dealing with customers, because that's what makes us memorable. When we show our real personality, the parts that make us uniquely us, right, that's when we can start to build real relationships with customers." And we don't have to build them with everyone. But we certainly want to be building them as often as we can. So it's a little bit different, that approach that we took today around why I'm seeing too many businesses have to win business on price, right? Things such as not making a great first impression, not allowing the customer to feel as if they're in control of their own journey, i.e., they're talking too much. And the third one is not showing enough personality. So my challenge to you, as I say, I'm grateful, thank you for listening today, but my challenge to you is to think about where can you do better yourself as a leader, or as your team? And where can you encourage more of this? Because I would actually say that all three of those make the sales process more fun. When we are making a great first impression, we're more confident. That's more fun. When we are asking questions and learning more about customers, it's more engaging for the customer and more engaging for us. That's more fun. When we are showing our personality, it's better for the customer because they can have some fun, but it's also better for us because we're showing our normal self. If you're a Carlton Football Club follower, right, had a terrific run after they put a new coach in when some of feedback coming out of the club is that some of the players were able to play roles that were a little bit more about themselves. Right now, certainly not criticizing past or applauding new coach, right? But sometimes just small little tweaks. I mean, I think Michael Voss was a very self-aware individual and have a lot of respect for how he went about things. But sometimes when we get too close to things, we don't necessarily know them, right? And for me, when you can show your own individual personality, you are going to get far better results. I really encourage you to do that. So that's it for today. But if you're frustrated that you're spending hours of wasted time on sales quotes and you're not winning enough of them, well, the reality is that without changing something now, I think you're going to keep losing those deals, right? You're going to keep getting those same stressful results. It's going to mean you're working long hours, you're not going to have enough money in the bank, and you're going to be quite frustrated from it. So I've got a free quoting quiz. It will pinpoint exactly why you're not winning more jobs and then more specifically what you need to do about it to quickly grow your sales by that 20 to 25% mark. So click on the free quiz link in the show notes, get started. It takes less than a minute, and I'll review your response myself. That's it for today. Keep thinking about how you can be 1% better each and every day because it does make all the difference. Bye for now.