Bill BrownFounder of ServiceTitan Hacks community (9k+ pros) | INC 5000 Contractor | Helping contractors win with AI & Automation

Master the "Contractor Question": Close More Sales by Building Trust

8 Mar 2025

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A brief sales-training transcript teaching the "contractor question": ask homeowners if past contractor work left them 100% satisfied to surface complaints. The speaker recommends probing for details, then using a concise company elevator statement (e.g., no upfront payment, firm upfront pricing) to reassure prospects and overcome objections about prior bad contractor experiences.

Thing that I really love for salespeople is it's called a contractor question. It's the contractor question. It sounds like this. It sounds like, hey, have you done any other projects on your home? And if so, would you say that you were 100% satisfied with the work that the contractor did? And about 95% of the people you talk to will say, yeah, we've had some work done on the home, we've done some other projects, and it didn't turn out like we thought it was going to be. And then that's when you would say, well, tell me more about that. They might say, well, halfway through the job, they found out there was some rotted wood in the project and our price changed. And that would be a time that you fall back to an elevator statement about your company saying something like, well, with us, we don't take any money up front. You pay upon completion. We do upfront pricing. So once your price is on the contract, that price will never change. So when somebody says, hey, I've been burned by another company, that's on you to find that out.