Does Scarcity Sell? And When to Keep Your Mouth Shut

Business brain the show for entrepreneurs episode four hundred and forty eight for friday casual friday may twelfth twenty twenty three greetings folks and welcome to business brain the show where we take all kinds of scenarios in our life and run them through the business brain and see what kind of perspective we can get sponsors for this episode include headspace dot com brain six zero where you get to go and try headspace free for sixty days this is something they've never done before that i've seen so you're going to want to check that out and also found dot com brain this is a business banking engine that helps you track your expenses and find write offs and track your income it's really cool so we'll talk more in depth about both of those in a little bit here for now here in durham new hampshire i'm dave hamilton and in.

Lafayette california i'm shannon jean happy friday.

Happy friday so shannon this week you and i have both had experiences with service providers that are worthy of running through the business brain yes they are yep i had we are and have been for a couple of years in the process of figuring out how to redo our kitchen right it's a thing we need to do before we sell the house so we might as well do it while we're still here and actually get a little bit of enjoyment out of it before we sell it to somebody else right and so we went through the process actually we went there's i could probably do a month's worth of episodes on what we've learned throughout this but we got some we have essentially what i'll call our final quote on what it's going to take to to gut the kitchen to rebuild it right rip everything out put new things new cabinets in and and even change the layout a little bit right like you know okay so we know what that's what that looks like and we've been through enough of these quotes where we have a a sense of you know what that costs and and if we were going to change some things we could make it simpler we could make it more complex right so and then lisa we're we're also redoing a couple bathrooms and that's happening as we speak so we're already in sort of construction mode in our house and.

The idea of feels like fun man.

Oh y idea of having the house under construction for an extra whatever four to six weeks for the kitchen is like you know okay so that's a little it's a big pill to swallow right i mean in the grand scheme of things no but it's probably a.

Lie it's probably twelve weeks yeah it's.

Correct well that's exactly it right so lisa started doing some research and she was like lisa's my wife she found a company that was talking about how much faster and less expensive it is to just reface your existing cabinets i was like okay so we did a little research into just you know in general what that is and i was like okay let's talk to him and they came out to the house last night and first of all the guy showed up with a really beat up car which is just a bad look yeah that's a good point he was a nice he was a nice guy and really understood what we were doing clearly understood the company and the products and all that stuff so it was just a weird first impression to show up with a beat up car with you know dents and stuff dings all over it but yeah whatever good point yep that's really tangential though so he goes through his presentation which was great he does all the measurements of the kitchen we talk about here's the different materials that we can use he explained how what refacing is and all that and if somebody wants to know email us at feedbackusbrain show i can i can tell you all about it but he goes through all this and you know we pick out colors and this that and the other thing and we talk a couple of this and that you know we get through and he's explaining everything together for about two hours which was fine and he gets to the end he starts showing us different prices for this right and you know for our kitchen it was going to be about thirty k let's say to reface everything which is less than what we would pay to have it all gutted out but not that much less because we have all these quotes right like we're showing them to him like here we are trying to decide and it was like okay so it's a little less maybe ten grand less but you know like is it worth ten grand you know so so like it.

Was brand new cabinets to not have.

Brand new right and there's there's some arguments on either side right like it's it's fine and so we're going through this and you know he asked the pricing of it was weird to begin with so he shows us the price and then he's like and we can either do cash or we can finance it of course interest rates are super high he quoted us at eight point nine nine interest rate which is probably not altogether incorrect in today's world you know that's right and so we joked about that and then i said he said well so would you be financing or paying cash i'm like well if we do this we'd pay cash like i'm not going to borrow money at nine percent like no way especially for one hundred forty four months or something it's like that's crazy yeah yeah yeah no there's no there's no world where that needs to happen and he's like okay well now the cash price actually gets lower if you're going to do cash like why do what so that was weird cause he showed us the cash price and then he showed us how it would break down if we were going to finance it but if we're going to pay cash the base price went down like by another two grand or something so it was like okay well this suddenly got weird like why is that but okay fine like never going to be upset when somebody says the price just went down so yeah okay fine and so he's like all right well that's where that is and they want you know thirty percent down and then another the remainder like when they come out to measure so they kind of want all the money up front which okay like that's that's their shtick whatever fine okay yeah i mean i'm sure it's negotiable i could say well i'm going to pay a third a third and then a third when the job's done you know if i if i screw you sue me or whatever but you know like like i got to have you got to have some skin in the game but we didn't even get to that point because i said okay well this looks good i said we're obviously not going to make a decision tonight you know it's now eight o' clock at night or something you know it's obviously we have these two things to talk about here and we're going to talk about him and we're going to make a decision in the next week or so and then like be done with this project that's been you know eating up our date nights for for you know two years or whatever yeah and and he's like well i need to tell you you know this price is only good for tonight and i'm thinking red no it's not like that's my first thought was no it's he's like you know you know i'm one of the sales managers and so i'm able to bring the price down but i can't promise you like this quote doesn't even exist after i leave here does that work and i'm also thinking no it's not like i could see if we were spending three hundred dollars maybe even if we were spending three thousand dollars you might get an impulse purchase out of us but this is thirty grand what if we had not already gone through the painstaking process of like building out a new kitchen which was probably you know eight to ten hours of time over many weeks with a designer and all that stuff if we hadn't gone through that we wouldn't even be at a point where we could possibly make a decision right right like there's no world where that like we are the most prime candidates i would think because we have all our information in theory we could have made a decision about this last night we weren't going to but we could have right we have that comment yeah it was well then especially and it's like he's like yeah he's like you know i'm like do you have a card he's like no we don't give out cards he's like you would just call like the the scheduling office and they'll send someone else out if you want to work with us and i'm like well that's the stupidest thing in the world and so it was just a crazy a really weird use of scarcity you know everybody talks about including scarcity in your marketing so that people feel like they have an urgency to buy and that's always communicated as a good thing right by by at least by business publications and this was a prime example where it was like he if he wanted to use scarcity he could have said look you know i can put a twenty four hour clock on this or a seventy two hour clock on this but you know to say that this deal walks away with me yeah it's ridiculous it's not true it's a hard.

No immediately it's not true yeah i.

Could call him today and offer him two thousand dollars less and they would.

Take it they would take the deal and that's if he wants to introduce scarcity there's certainly a better way to do it like you mentioned and it could have been hey here's the quote it's thirty thousand dollars if you book within the next twenty four hours i can take ten percent off or take three grand off it would love to have your business here's my information i'll call you tomorrow midday and see if you have any additional questions and that's you know that's how you incentivize that and the carrot not the stick yeah.

The carrot not the stick all right business brain listeners you know that your brain power is best spent on running your business right not on the annoying details of saving receipts calculating your taxes and categorizing expenses what if there was something that could take care of all of that for you and free up more of your time well there is and it's our sponsor called foundation found is a business banking app built specifically for the self employed it's all in one banking meaning it comes with the smart tools you need to run your business manage your income expenses taxes and invoicing all from the found app even sign up is easy it's free and it takes just minutes plus if you spend dollar one hundred with your foundcard within the first thirty days you'll get a twenty five dollars bonus in your account there's no commitment try found today and see what a difference it can make head to found dot com brain or use promo code brain to try found today terms and conditions apply and of course found is a financial technology company not a bank found's banking services are provided by piermont bank member fdic remember head to found dot com brain or use promo code brain to try found today and our thanks to found for doing what they do and for sponsoring this episode one thing we talk about often here on the show is maintaining our mental health right because listen if our brains aren't healthy then they can't be our best business brains and we can't apply them to things and get that perspective and our sponsor headspace can help immensely with this headspace helps improve mental well being through guided meditations mindfulness practices breathing and calming exercises and so much more these tools can help reduce stress boost your mood and help you sleep better headspace is fantastic i use it regularly here it really is nice to have someone guiding through those meditations and headspace provides that it's really amazing you've got to check it out and they've got meditations for different times of day but also just different lengths of time so if you only have time for a few minutes you can use one of their on the go meditations it's amazing you got to check this out and headspace has helped me and more than one hundred million people worldwide and they can help you too and listen up you do not want to miss this we've arranged something special for a limited time all of you can try headspace free for sixty days by going to headspace dot com brain sixty that's brain six zero you won't find this offer anywhere else you got to use our link h e a dash s dash p a c e dot com brain sixty to unlock all of headspace free for sixty days this is not something they normally do headspace dot com brain sixty and our thanks to headspace for sponsoring this episode all right what happened to you shannon yeah.

Here'S my story yeah what's your story.

Man here's my story related to this.

Home this home services type thing as well so as i've mentioned on the show we own vacation rentals and one of our homes i got a quote for painting the inside of it it was very expensive like many things are right now and i figured you know what i'll save myself the ten grand i'll go up and spe a few days and i'll paint the inside of the house you know all the rooms and it's a big place and everything so i fig great so while i'm doing that my wife runs these each home as a individual business so it's her deal she's great i work for her basically i'm the employee in that in that scenario so while i'm there she's meeting with other property management people interviewing some new folks about maybe taking over demand local management of this place and i'm listening i'm doing my my hardest not to comment right because i'm just employee it's not my deal and i'm listening to this guy and the way he's talking to renee my wife who's super sharp knows this running these businesses for over a decade and he's making comments and i'm listening and i'm thinking man you need to just keep your mouth shut and listen to renee as she's describing what our needs are for a local property manager not contradicting not pointing things out and as he's walking around from room to room he's making certain comments and i i hear renee saying well no actually no we do it this way no actually and i'm in the other room and i i'm painting and i hear them walk into the big primary you know bathroom and he goes whoa this is going to be hard to clean oh and i said man you've just lost yourself this this this project i mean there's no way you know she's going to be comfortable hiring you and so he comes out and we're kind of talking and i i did make a few comments and he he was sharp guy had seemed very successful came highly recommended but but he continued to talk about problems instead of solutions and it's kind of that on the same thing this scarcity mentality it's like hey no no no this is a giant home it's a huge opportunity for you it's not a problem to solve it's you're going to come you can present it as oh yeah we understand this kind of problem and our company is very good at solving it not oh wow it's.

Overwhelmed by this because that's what he's communicating to you is this is overwhelming to me it's yes and i just.

I kind of again i just i dipped in and out of the conversation a bit but then i kept my mouth shut and you know he as he walked out and then i just turned to renee and i waited and she's like oh we can't hire that guy or his company yeah you know he's he's already telling you there's going to be problems this is going to.

Take longer he has literally communicated that that's right yeah yeah and so the.

The the takeaway and i wish i could have just pulled him aside and said look you know you you obviously are are good at what you do and sounds like you know people are happy but you just need to keep your mouth shut and don't comment and or read the room and make your comments based on the comments of the other person as they're saying oh well these are problem areas we've had in the past the hot tub is this okay yeah well that's good to know let me write that down so i can focus on that issue for you.

Well yeah listen first of all listen to what the customer's telling you but then don't tell them that you don't know how to do it right or.

Oh this is going to be really hard because what you're doing you're just telling me that well the reason we're coming to you is because we're having some issues with the current service provider but you're telling me before i'm even hiring you that we're going to have.

Some problems yeah now that that idea of read the room is something i was thinking last night with with this guy with the with the cabinets because it was like dude we're right here like we're so close to this you could sell us on this like it's it is less expensive it's not as inexpensive as we thought it would be but that's on you to to you know prove the value proposition right and he he got halfway there like was there's a world where we would go with that company and we might even still but now we're going to head down that path with totally different attitude a totally different attitude that's right but that whole thing of like he should have seen that man these people are close and all it's gonna take is a phone call tomorrow and like even still if he called us today and said all right well look we'll do it for twenty five we'd be like all right you know what screw it let's do it it's fine if you're listening to this show man you have our number but it like you know because we kind of figured they based on how they marketed themselves we figured it was gonna be about twenty right and so they came in at thirty okay like that's that's more than then your initial marketing communicated to us which is bad you know yep correct there's a failure here already but okay fine that's how these things go it's never quite as good as you thought you know you know so but read the room take a look at what you've.

Got here yeah and i would say focus on abundance man we have way too much scarcity in our lives right now it's a constant crisis in our culture and if you can bring abundance into your conversation with your potential clients and talk about how great it's going to be and you're going to have a great experience with us we're faster than x a company that would do this it's better for the environment because we're not filling up this i mean all about making things better not about oh if you don't decide right now we're not going to do it the.

Deal doesn't exist it's going to be more tomorrow no it's not there hasn't been nearly enough time for that to happen yeah yeah like what's the difference the job's not going to start it wasn't like you were going to start right now you know they already told us they're you know they start five to six weeks out okay fine well then it doesn't matter if i choose today or sunday like it's just not going to make any difference so i.

Always it's like jerry maguire you know he's good in the living room right that was his pitch and i think i have that skill too but i know people that are super successful that don't have this skill yes they hired people that have that skill yes and so that's like the guy who was quoting us and gave lost a significant revenue source he shouldn't be the one doing it he's obviously very good at what they did but he need to hire somebody to come in that can just listen read the room and tell you what a great solution they have.

For us that's a that's it it's funny as you were as you were saying that i was reminded one of the one day when i was doing computer consulting with the computer nerds business i mentioned i walked into this house and it was easily like a five million dollar home right you know like it's just one of those things you know and this is probably fifteen years ago and i walk in and i knock on the door and this guy opens the door and it's an older guy and he's like you know covered in like he's in overalls and painting so similar to what you just described here yeah and i it was a woman that had hired me and you know had me come out to the house and so he answers the door and he's like oh let me get her i'm the painter or whatever and she comes to the door and she's like yeah he's not the painter he's the owner of the house you know awesome though yeah no no no but like it was an interesting approach approach that that he and i kind of figured the way like again reading the room like i'm pretty sure that while he is painting he is not the hired painter like i'm pretty sure he's the guy that you know and it turns out he worked in the stock market for years and he was a bond trader you know he earned a bunch of money which is great like you know but it was an interesting approach to be like oh yeah i'm just the fly on the wall and it's like yeah you got to sell that better but that's an interesting thing so yeah yeah that's good classic feedbackusbrain show folks that's where you are going to send in your stories we'd love to hear your anecdotes from this and if we read them on the show you will be entered to win a macbook air here in twenty twenty three we'd love to hear from you and we want to give you that macbook air so please do that headspace dot com brain six zero found dot com brain keep leading that charmed life and we'll see you next week.