Evan Carmichael and Stephen Kelly debate whether builders care only about price. Builders do watch cash flow closely, but they also want products that reflect their reputation and craftsmanship. The winning pitch combines a strong ROI case with a story that connects to the builder's pride.
Next up, M. Soezy. Hope I pronounced that okay. He's saying he designs smart homes. He's saying he agrees that when he's working in B2C market, all they want to hear about is the story and why he created his business. When he's selling to builders and is in B2B, all they care about is price. They don't care about a story. All they care about is offering something cheap. How do I overcome this? I want to make more money selling B2B.
Yeah, I think it's the case a little bit in some, even in houses. I think there's a kind of blurring between kind of B2B and B2C. And yeah, everybody wants a story in terms of, you know, you think about you're going to buy a house, it's your dream, isn't it? Especially if it's your first house. I can remember the day we walked in and took the keys on our first house, and I still remember as if I'm there today. How it just kind of thought, wow, you know, what a sense of responsibility. Did I really make this? This is my own place, you know. And, and the level of the clean rooms, the, the hoovering, all that sort of stuff went up through the sky. Now builders, obviously they've got an economic model, they've got to make money, they've got to be profitable. And in that business, kind of builders can live hand to mouth. They've got a lot of subcontractors, they've got a lot of people that need pay like every week. And a lot of their payments in that business are staged on kind of milestones of completion of building the house. So I think you have to be sensitive to that, but also I don't know anybody in business, and builders are the same, that don't want to do a great job. They want to build great houses. They want to make people proud. And that's the story you could connect with. So that not only, you know, great house builders get talked about in communities, that everybody wants one of their houses. They'll go to, you know, whether they go to the golf club or a dinner party or kind of some sort of chat room, and they'll be there and someone will say something awesome about that house that was built by them. They will be swelling up with pride. So I would find the story that connects to them, being very cognizant that they have to make money out of it, and the sensitivity of you standing in their shoes. And to Evan Carmichael's point of going where the audience is with the builder and understanding their business model, and it's very kind of cash constrained, and they've got to kind of make money, and that comes down to cutting costs. But more than that, everybody— I know everybody who's an entrepreneur and everybody's dialed into this— yeah, you want to do things great for your customers, you want to do things in terms of treating the company's money as if it's your own and making sure every expense dollar gets a kind of return on investment. But more than that, you want to do it the right way. You want to build awesome products. You want to build awesome, awesome houses.
I think to echo Stephen's point from the very top of the show, as long as you're dealing with a human, stories matter. People care. People are guided by their emotions. They want to feel connected to you. Now, not every customer will be able to afford what you're doing, right? If you're, if you're dealing with a high-end product and you're dealing with very price-sensitive customers. They may love your story, but it doesn't mean they can afford it, right? The stuff that I do, not everybody can afford it, and that's fine. So I think— I don't think the story hurts you, but it's not everything, right? Like, the story is not gonna— the story will win some clients over that if there's a competitive situation, you'll get the business, but you also have to give them a good business case, right? If you have a bad product or you are too overpriced, the story is not going to be enough just to get you over that hurdle. So I think it's just understanding, understanding your customer base. I would disagree that all B2B people only care about price. I think there's a lot of emotion that goes into every business deal that happens. Just looking at my own business, I get opportunities to work with a lot of different companies and brands, and the ones that I say yes to are the ones that I connect with the leadership and their story and what they're all about. And I think they connect with me because of my story, what I'm all about. And it's not just, hey, can you do it for $1,000 cheaper? And then that's what, you know, makes the shift. As long as you're dealing with people, stories are going to be important, whether you're selling to customers in the B2C space or B2B space.
Hey Evan, I think on that as well, the power of what you said is when your story becomes the audience's story and the connection between your story— and this is where the heart kind of kicks in. I, I don't know. And a story could be a question as well. So if you asked a house builder, how did you feel when you took the keys to your first apartment or your first house? That individual will go back 20, 30 years, 10 years, and the emotions will flood in. And secondly, I think it's really important. I don't know any house builder, if you ask them the question, what was the first house that you built How did that feel? I guarantee they put the best taps on. They would've been really proud of their house. They would've wanted that house to be the best house, the best home experience that was on the planet. And they'll remember that first house they built, just like as an entrepreneur, I remember the first sale I made. I remember the first customer we had. I remember the first employee we hired, 'cause those things connect your heart totally and your head and your memory. And you get flooded with emotion, and that's the way you unlock the human.
