What's Wrong with Most Sales Presentations?

Foreign. Hey everybody, welcome back to Contractor Radio and another episode focused on you, the home service contractor, to help you exceed, achieve, accomplish all those dreams that you have out there as being an entrepreneur in the contracting world. In today's episode, we're going to be talking about sales and maybe what's wrong with most presentations or proposals and hopefully some action steps that you can take to help you refine and improve your sales, process your sales skills out in the field and help you to achieve a little bit higher closing percentages and probably a little bit more profit. We we have an amazing guest today. He's a guru in this industry whenever it comes to sales and I cannot wait to bring him on board. But before we do so, we gotta pay the bills around here and I wanna make sure that we highlight our sponsors and our first message today is going to be from signpost.

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Now if you want to get more reviews, Signpost is a great way to do that and also to interact with your client, lead them to the sales process and then when we lead them to that sales process, we actually have to deliver a great experience. And if we don't do that in a way that seems logical and makes sense to people, we have this opportunity to get set up for failure. So I wanted to bring in the best of the best that I know whenever it comes to presenting and demoing. And this can be either for retail. You know, you guys out there that are cash oriented jobs, maybe you do financing, maybe you're in insurance restoration. All of us need to approach this with a step by step presentation that leads people to the decision of yes, you are the logical choice for us. So without further ado, I want to bring in our master of sales here at Contractor Coach Pro and one of the most renowned gurus in the home services in home selling aspect of our business. Chuck, welcome to the board. How are you doing, man?

Man, I am doing phenomenal. Especially right after top rep. I'm ready to go.

Yeah. So you and I just spent this past Monday and Tuesday with Dozens of sales reps teaching them this top rep sales process. And part of what we were doing is going through a presentation, how to present and what that might look like for somebody out in the field. So today's episode is about what's wrong with most sales presentations and proposals. And so, you know, what are the, you know, maybe two or three things that you see out there that where people fail at this presentation aspect of things?

I'm gonna tell you when it comes to presentations, several things. So the first is that the sales rep has no idea how to give a presentation. That is the first and probably biggest issue that I see. And then when. Also when you get into presentations, there's so many pages that should not be there. They're just fluff. Nobody cares about it. And I'm not gonna name any big manufacturers, but a lot of these big manufacturers will send the dealers these presentations. And you'll have the serenity page. And, you know, this, this, this. Whether maybe it's a sighting. This sighting is so surreal. And you're gonna. And nobody cares. It's just taking up a sheet of paper or it's a taking up a slide. So, you know, it's. You always have to be educating the homeowner, whether you're educating them on the company, what the company can do, and then what they should be more worried about or the homeowner should be more worried about, which is what's about to go on their house.

Yeah. So. So one of those things that I see, that's like one of those biggest problems out there in this home services world where smaller companies, sometimes we don't even have a presentation. Like, the presentation is actually determined by the person that we go and see. And they direct everything, which puts them in charge of the whole presentation. And we're in this role of really being more information giver because they're asking us a bunch of questions instead of actually truly presenting a valuable thing that we offer. And what happens whenever we do that is it's not repeatable. One time it sounds like this. One time it sounds like that. Then we bring somebody, we hire somebody new. And that new person, we tell them, hey, I don't have anything like that. I don't have a person. So just come listen to me. Come listen to me. You'll learn it. You'll gain it through osmosis or magic or something. I don't know what it is that they're expecting them to get, but it's not repeatable. So we can't perfect it. We can't measure it and there's just no tool for it, which I think is a big disservice to anybody that comes into our teams. Would you agree?

I will. And with that being said, I don't care if It's a flipbook, PowerPoint, engage any of those. You have to do something. It can't just be, I'm going to sit in front of them and I'm going to talk them to death or I'm going to use our trifold and hopefully sell off of it. I mean, they really have to sit. And I understand where a lot of these companies say, oh, the customer doesn't care about it. They will tell you that they don't care. But when they go through that presentation, it's really what sells the deal if they do it right.

Yeah, I think we listen to our customer too much. You hearken back to Steve Jobs, he's one of my heroes. And they did this big market survey of like what people wanted in a phone. And after that whole big market survey, all they wanted was like a regurgitated BlackBerry. And he's like, nope, that's not what we're giving them at all. We're gonna give them this whole different thing that they don't even know that they want yet. And I look at our presentations like that. Like, hey, they are all they want from you, you believe is an estimate. Like, give me an estimate, tell me how much it's going to cost. And so we sit back and that's what we're focused on. Getting some measurements, some pictures, and then maybe some type of proposal with a price on it. And we listen too much to what they want and we're not able to create any kind of true value in what we do that way. Although there are some pretty cool proposal tools out there. Most guys proposals are, here's everything we're going to do and how much it's going to cost. Right. Like that's about it to it.

And I'm G.L. you mentioned that. And so when we work with sales reps, we always say, you need to understand what they want, but know what they need.

Yeah, exactly.

Know what they need.

And that want that they want usually comes from a bunch of questions that we would do in addition to our presentation. But so, so let's take this that now we know we need one, right? We know that we need a presentation. What are some of the first steps that somebody could do in order to create that presentation? I mean, do they just start taking what it is they do out in the field and start putting it into a slide or a flip book or something like that.

So when I started doing presentations, we did a storyboard. Just as if you're going to do a commercial, movie, whatever. We did a storyboard. And that storyboard is going to help you when you're putting it on a whiteboard, blackboard, whatever you're going to do. What does a customer want to see? And what we found was that, first of all, you can't get a customer to even listen to you until they buy into the company. So the first thing that you need to start talking about is the company and yourself. Once you can get them to buy into the company and to the rep, now they're willing to let to open up enough to allow the other information to sink in. If you don't start with that, then their guard is still up until you can get them to be okay with you and the company.

So why would we want them to know about our company and know about us? What are we trying to accomplish there?

So remember that when you're looking at the company itself, and I've seen many of these presentations where it's got the old Ford truck, and this was my granddaddy's old Ford truck, and the customer does not. They don't even find it interesting, let alone do they care. You know, they. You have to realize that the customer just wants to know you're big enough to handle their situation. And you've been doing this long enough that you have the experience to do it. Right. You know, do you have good reviews? I mean, you really have to bring the. Who you are and the credibility.

Yeah. So things like what you may have achieved if you've won some awards, some certifications, whatever credentials you may have. And so all of those things, whenever I look at them, I kind of think that they. What they're doing is they're building some trust into this company or this person that's sitting in front of me. And people buy from people that they know like and trust. So we gotta get that part out of the way first. So that's the first piece of our presentation. What comes next?

So what I do like is when you're talking about your reviews, you're talking about where you stand. You know, anybody that has seen our presentation at Top Rep, that they understand that we talk about the top 500 and that you don't have to be that big to be on it. You know, and if you just talk about it. Right. You really position yourself as, you know, a true player in the Industry.

Yeah. So that again, we're establishing a little bit more trust. This top 500 remodeler or home service contractor, building that up more. So we've got that established. We've got some trust in us. What's the next thing that we've got to get done? Who do we have to become?

So you have to be the expert at that point. Yeah.

And so how might we be able to do that? Some of that's been done a little bit in our own personal credibility, our credentials and who we are and what we're about. But what else would you probably include in there?

So you might jump into. These are all the sales reps. And here's me. I would click on my picture. Or if you're using a PowerPoint, maybe it's just your slide that, hey, we have a lot of different sales reps. But I'd like for you to understand who I am. Why should you even be listening to me? So a little bit about your credentials, but remember that they don't really care about that as much as, are you a human being? Do you have a family? You know, they. I know that they've said that, you know, poor salesmen have skinny kids, you know, so we all laugh about that, but sometimes it can be true.

Yeah. So we've gotten this trust in our business. We've gotten this trust in us. We started creating ourselves as the expert. But we're also about this, like, creating us as somebody that they know, not somebody that's a stranger. Nobody likes salespeople. And it's just, we all know that, like, we were right there with attorneys, and they don't like either one of us. And so we have to become something different. And in order to do that, we have to share a little bit about ourselves that might be more personal. For example, like where we grew up, what high school, we went to college, we attended. If we're married and we have kids, hobbies that we like doing. Because what that'll do is that'll switch on this ability to create some more rapport where we go from being a salesperson to maybe at least an acquaintance and maybe even a friend or neighbor that we have a conversation that you would normally have between friends. And so I would guess if once I have the trust and that I'm starting to create a little bit of an expert aspect, the next thing that we probably would do would be maybe set some expectations. What does that look like?

So setting expectations, as far as what's going to happen here in the house, we might Also be doing some price conditioning, you know, that kind of goes right along with setting those expectations. You have to set the homeowner at ease because they're going to have this mental block until somebody's going to tell them how much this thing's going to cost. And you never want to remember that once price is given, game's over. However, there is a way of doing this without giving them what the price is going to be. The other piece of this is understand that when you get there, you know, they're going to be here at the bottom of the ladder of where what they're willing to spend, but yet your price is up here. And so we need to be, you know, let them know that, hey, the average price is maybe it's $800 a square. And in Cincinnati, that's right where it is. If you look at cost versus value, it's at $800 a square. So when we show that when it's a 30 square roof and like, hey, I'm sure that you were expecting to pay about 23, 500 and their jaw hits the floor.

Yeah, we got to think about it like the buyer, right? When was the, when was the last time a buyer had one of those things done? Whether they got, you know, an epoxied concrete floor or they had a new bathroom or a new roof, like maybe never. Or if they did, it might have even been while they were at their parents house and it was like this much. Right. And now it's this other number because it's been so much later. So we've got to work on setting these expectations. I think those things would be like, what are we going to do on our inspection? Like, what does that look like? What are they going to get when we get our inspection done? And whenever that inspection is done, we're going to give some other expectations, like price conditioning like you're talking about, so that we can establish where the price really is today. So that if we can hopefully come in below that number or somewhere around that number, it's not so egregious. When we get, later on in the presentation, actually give them the real price. That's good. That's great.

So you mentioned something real quick and I'm glad that you did because this is the contractor. And so let's just say that this is a bath. And so when you get onto the cost versus value, it tells you what a complete bath remodel is. And that complete bath remodel can be like 30 or $40,000. But most bath remodelers such as Rebath, Bath Fitter, you know, Bath Planet, any of the BCI dealerships, you know, they're only doing the wet area. So what we do is we look at this and we'll take a sheet of notebook paper and we're going to write down the 30 or 40,000. We say, all right, well, let's look. I mean, how much is a toilet and how much is the mirror? How much is the flooring? And when we get down to it, what we find out is that WET area is 70% of the cost of the, of the job, and it's still so much higher. You know, you're thinking maybe $10,000 is what a typical wet area is going to cost, but it looks like it's going to be $20,000. And the homeowner's like, oh, my gosh, I'd have never thought that. I know that's going to be right around 30 or 40,000, but I would have never guessed that 20,000 of this would have been my wet area. Yeah. So then at the end, when you quote $10,000 for their wet area, they're like, man, I'm so happy this isn't 20,000. And when you got there, they were thinking, I'm not going to spend more than $3,500 for this.

Yeah. And that's, that's absolutely critical to us. Being successful is saying establishing by a validation source. That's not us. You talk about cost versus value, something people can Google, go check it out, and it'll show what the average price, which should tell you as a contractor, if you're charging less than that, you might want to question where you're at in the market, because somebody's getting it to make that the average, and somebody's getting more than that. So we have established some trust, some rapport. We're an expert. We started to set some expectations. In the rest of this presentation, we're kind of setting these expectations. What's the next step? Are we going to. We're going to involve them in the sale at all? Like we're going to take them around, show them anything. What are we going to do?

We are. But before we get into that, I want to share the give back, you know, that is.

Yeah, you don't want to miss that.

You know, that give back. And I have to tell you that I don't know how many jobs I have sold simply because of how a give back is done. If you do it. If you do it right now in PowerPoint, and obviously a flipbook it's hard to do. So you'll see a lot of logos of different charities. But if you have the opportunity at some point, whether you're going to use Engage or any other type of software, maybe if you just have the video to play, but have a video of how your company, it's not just the charity, but how your company gets involved and picked a charity that you are really going to get your entire company involved with. Ours is the Dragonfly Foundation. But I mean, if you can get your entire company, even the sales guys involved in it, the emotion that they're going to give off is going to be so much more genuine than. Yeah, the owner really likes this charity. I don't know much about it, but man, it is really cool. But they have the opportunity to show a very heartfelt video and has some. It's the only, only part of your presentation that should have any sound whatsoever. And so maybe there's some, some music just to kind of pull at the heartstrings a little bit, but let them know what the company does inside of that, that company and you know, we call it the make me cry story, but it truly does. Whether it's going to make them cry or me cry. I've. I've shed a few tears myself. I mean, it's, it's very, very. It does pull at the heartstrings for what we do.

I really like the way you look at that because it's one that you get behind that's in your own community. Right. Like everybody's heard of, you know, Ms. Society or St. Jude's and all of those are great things. Wounded Warrior. They're all great things. I think we should all give to them. But when you get back in your own community where it. There's a personal attachment to. Has a different level of meaning to it because we as the, the contractor ourselves can get involved, you know, like Ms. Foundation. Yeah, I can go ride a bike and do that kind of thing. But can I really work with somebody that has ms? Maybe in a small circumstance. But if I can get behind something that is community oriented, I'm doing something that is, you know, it might be some food shelf thing. It might be. There's one out there that the guys did that. It's here in our actual area. One of the churches they build ramps for older people so they can get into their house once they reach that age. That's not a national organization or anything, but boy, I guarantee you it's something that you can help with and do you're a contractor so you can step up and be a part of and it's going to tug at the heartstrings of people and not just your clients, but the people that are coming to work for you saying, you know what? I want to be a part of this. This is bigger than just being, you know, this contractor that you are. A great call out right there. That is something that we should definitely include in our present now as we're talking about this. This sounds like, man, this thing's getting long and a lot to it and all the other good stuff. It's not. You're going through each one of these things fairly quickly to establish certain things, whether that's trust or an emotional attachment. They go pretty quickly. So now I've done that, created trust. I'm an expert, some emotional attachment, set some expectations for what's about to happen, what they're going to get, maybe they're going to get a rapport or something like that. What comes next? You're actually like, go inspect.

Yeah, we're going to go up, we're going to inspect and then once we get back, we're going to, you know, show them the video, show them the pictures of what we had. And now it's time to show them the culprit of what's going on up.

There and how we gotta create some need, right?

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah. So we, and when we create that need, we're using all types of tools. We got maybe a report that we're going through with them. We got some photos that back up that report, that proof a video works really great. I'm a big believer in the video because like, for example, if you're doing roofing, when was the last time somebody was on a roof, right? They haven't been on a roof in forever and probably don't ever want to be. And you start showing them, you know, where the squirrel chewed through their soffit, where the, the rubber is failing, on their neo boots, nail pops all over. Like, man, we created some need. There's some fear that something is going to happen to my most valuable project. One of the other things I try to create and you tell me if this is something that you do, but there, there is types of trades out there that aren't fear oriented. Like something's going to damage, right. The one that really comes to mind for me is the, the guys that do the concrete stuff, you know, they do decorative concrete or they do the epoxy floors and that type of thing. I can't really create a lot of fear through, you know, need, through fear on that, there's not going to be a consequence. Like, it's like, I can't park in my garage if you don't do this. I kind of have this other one that's fulfillment, right? Like, there's joy, there's almost bragging rights that I got this cool thing that nobody else has. How do you go about doing that? Do you teach much of that, Chuck?

So with the garage floors or just the floor coatings? When we look at the garage floors, what you have to look at with garage floors, can you imagine if your garage floor cracked? You can't jackhammer that up. It's attached to your home. It's going to crack your foundation. So if you don't, I mean, again, you can. There's not. There's very few trades out there that you can't bring at least a little bit of concern if not fear. And so the other piece of this is, is once you get this thing, this coating down, I mean, it's. You can't get fuel can drop on it, oil can drop on it. It's never going to permeate the surface. And all you have to do is wipe it right up. I mean, it's just an amazing product itself.

Now you see why Chuck is the guru. He was able to create fear in a place like, wow, man. I really don't worry too much about my garage floor. Right? That's, that's really good, Chuck. That's. That's great stuff. But there's still this part of, like, involving them in the story of what it's going to be like after, like after I get this thing done. There's this fulfillment feeling of, dude, you're gonna have the, like, if you go with this garage floor, you're gonna have the coolest garage floor. Are you planning to have parties here and stuff like, oh, yeah, like that person's now starting to picture what that might be like. We have to create that emotional attachment in our presentations when we go through them. But that's not necessarily that I'm going through a presentation at that point. I'm giving the results of my findings, right? Like a few found this. There's a report. I'm still using a tool. It might not necessarily be the slide by slide presentation, but I'm using a tool, photos, videos, things like that. So we've created need. Now they know they need. My garage floor is about to come apart on me if I don't do this thing. And then oil and Crap's going to be everywhere. So I need to get this garage floor or, hey, my roof is going to leak. Once that's been done, what's the next thing we do?

So we need to bring them into how. What makes the company different. You know, remember that when you're, when you're trying to make a company different, it's got to be more than something that is your customer service or whatever. So what is it they can touch and feel that truly brings them into something that the customer's never seen or heard before, especially if they're the third person in the door? Like, you know what, no one else said that to me. So that's, that's going to be important as well as the process itself. When you're talking about garage floors, you know, that is one of the main pieces that enabled, you know, someone like Garage Kings to bring their pricing, you know, two to three dollars more a square foot above everybody else. Because no one else talks about the process itself. You know, how they will differentiate.

So if I, like, just break it down to brass tacks. What it sounds like to me is this first part after the inspection is we created a problem, right? We created a problem with that. And then the next piece of it is, hey, we had this breakthrough that everybody else was doing it this way. But what we found is that if we do it this other way, you're going to have a lot less stress, gonna be a lot less pain to it. It's gonna be cleaner, safer, better installation. Like all these cool. So we're the solution, right? Like, here's the problem. Not only is this the solution, but this solution is unique and different from everybody else. We kind of have this breakthrough moment, and because of that breakthrough moment, we said, this is our cool system. So you got a company like, let's call them Game Day Construction. They've got the All Star system, right? Like, they got this cool system that's theirs and there's alone. So many of us rely on the manufacturer to really kind of be our system. But if that's our system and somebody else can sell that manufacturer in our market, it's not really different, is it?

That's right. And someone like, well, I don't want to name the system or the name the companies, but they all have these roof in a bags. And so you got to remember they're giving it to everybody in town that they work with. And so you have to be able to do something different, show something different, talk about it in such a different way. And I like how you mentioned it. And we really do have to bring out the villain and then show them the hero. You know, this is why, you know, like with roofing, we're going to come down off the roof here in Ohio and talk about nail pops because we don't really have much hail, but we have a ton of nail pops because we have all four seasons. So I'm going to show them, you know, 50, 60 nail pops on their roof and then I'm going to hand them the smooth shank nails. And this is the culprit right here. This is why their decking's 20 years old. The moisture's gotten into the glue and the decking and it's made it nice and soft so that these nails are coming out. So then that's the villain. And then we show them how we're the only one that can be the hero as well as. And I love the fact that, that how you will bring in the systems itself because no one talks about any type of system. No one's going to talk about how you're going to talk about the initial inspection and how that works as a system. Now everybody's going to talk about, I'm going to get up on your roof, take some pictures and come back down. But you made it a system as well as the installation system, how you're going to protect them and their neighbors, that whole system.

The part I like about that is I can actually say that to every customer that we go to. Now, most contractors that you're going to talk to are going to say, hey, we're going to go do an inspection. And what do they do? They go take a few pictures and come down and say, hey, this is what I found. But they don't have a systematic approach to it. So it's different each time. And so there's lost communication. It's not documented, it's not taken back to the next people in line and the homeowners end up with a poor experience. What we're all about is ideal experience. And that's why we have a process to it. That's why it's called our pre game inspection. We're getting ready for the actual game day. And so there's ways to position these things where it becomes something that people perceive as more valuable and truly is more valuable because you have systemized it. So, okay, we got cool proprietary systems. There's all kinds of ways to do that with taking care of their house, how you clean up, how you install things. That's a lot of how you build Those out. So I've shown them all that they saw everything. What did they see? Do they. Did they see just average or did they see kind of good, better, best?

They see the best. You have to show the best.

Why is that? Why do we have to show the best?

Remember that everybody wants the best. Everybody wants to see something that is extraordinary. You know, people don't watch TV just to see a bunch of average people on the tv. They see people that are movie stars. I mean, they want to see the best. We watch sports, you know that. You know, to watch the best. And so if you come in with a bunch of average project or products, they don't want to see that. They want to see whatever is the best. Now, they may pick a good system or they might pick a better system, but they want to see what is available to them.

So hold on for just one second. We got to get a word in from our sponsor, but when we come back, I want to talk about why that is, why people buy that way versus maybe what we think as contractors out there. But before we do, let's go ahead and get a word from one of our amazing sponsors. Let's. Let's listen a little bit from Hell Trace. We just. We just did a road race with those guys, raising monies for roofers in recovery. Amazing company doing great things to help people that are struggling with things under the influence. You're not using Hell Trace.

It's definitely worth the money.

That money invested was one sale was already bought. We got from deny or declined 2x of being bought just because of Hell Trace and storm reports that they give us.

Not only do I know where the.

Storm'S at, sometimes as they're happening and I can already head right there to the storm.

But also after the fact, when I'm.

Out knocking on doors, I can show homeowners the map and what kind of.

Hail was in their area.

We've seen a huge return on our investment, and I have no doubt that you will, too. So for you roofing and restoration guys, if you aren't using hail Trace, you're absolutely missing out. There is nothing better out there to prove. Like, this part of our presentation is something that we show to homeowners and we say, hey, there's a map of the storm and there's your house right there in it. It makes it real for them. So it's important to have tools like that for your presentation to be successful. Now, a little bit of bragging here. I got to brag a little bit. One of our head Coaches, the head coach nowadays, Nathan Thibodeau was out there for that race yesterday, and he finished third, which I'm a little disappointed, to be honest. I have my money on him to finish first. He's a crazy speed guy, but I will say this, the guy that took first, former, like actual race car driver. So maybe a little bit understood. Maybe a little bit.

He knows how to cut the corners just right.

Yeah, exactly. So we have now gone through, show them all of our proprietary cool stuff that is ours and ours alone. And then we're showing them the best of everything. And so now we need to make a transition. And that transition, we're going to like take that and say, hey, this is what those systems look like. How would we position that? Like, which one are we showing first? And that type of thing.

So you want to talk about the process and, and you're going to show that process all the way through. Whether you have a graphic where you can show them where the, what it looks like with the roof off, or you're able to do a video of them taking the roof off, them putting on drip edge, whatever the case may.

Be, or any other trade, like, whatever. Like do a video of one of you, do a fast acting video of one of your projects to show them what that looks like so that they can truly picture. Oh, from start to finish, this is what's going to happen. Because if we leave anything out, we leave a piece of the puzzle out and we get this, the worst possible objection in the world at the end. I need to think about it, right? Like, I hate that objection. And they can't tell you, they can't tell you what that is that they need to think about because they don't know what it is you left out. But you left out something. So not only do we have to go through all these steps, but in those steps we have to like paint this picture so that it's clear, it's logical. It goes boom, boom, boom, boom. Okay. All of that stuff, these guys are the best. I'm gonna go with them. You leave one little piece out and they can't tell you what it is. I need to think about it, right?

I'm glad that you bring this up because with Windows, there's a difference between a vinyl siding install and a brick install. You know, you. Whether you have stops or you're looking at using brick mold or whatever, I mean, customers don't know that. And they also don't know to ask you the question until it's installed and they tell you they don't like it.

After the fact. Never good.

I mean, it's amazing if you do it right. Same thing with, you know, with siding or even the garage floor. You know, they don't understand that you're going to bring in some, you know, ten thousand dollar grinder and grind up the first, you know, quarter inch of their garage floor so that you can get the oil, get the gas, everything that's inside there, as well as the old sealer, get it off so that the permeable epoxy or the polyaspartic actually has the chance of getting into the concrete. So unless you show them how that works, they just don't get it. It's going right over there.

And so it clarifies how things work. They understand a process. It also sets proper expectations of what's going to happen. Right. Like there's no surprises in the end. Super important in that part. And I've gone through everything, like I've shown them all. It's amazing. It's the most amazing presentation they've ever seen. And I'm going to go to my next piece of my presentation which is the comparison between our systems. Like, hey, here's our two systems. And I said two for a reason. So many people sell good, better, best. And Chuck, you and I have had this conversation about good, better, best. What do you think about the way that we deliver that approach?

Until I saw your approach, I've always done good, better, best and I completely changed. I love the better, best and fall back to the rest. As soon as I, as soon as I heard that from you, I'm like, that is absolutely genius. Because you can do the better and the best. And when they tell you that they can't afford it, their bills, there's just no way. Then you let them know, let me show you something else. But at least they're not going straight to that good. They have the opportunity to get something they probably should have rather than something they feel that they can afford.

So this is one of those biggest problems that I see in most presentations. If you go out and you watch, I would say probably 90 or 95% of contractors, unless they have really put some time into a study and stuff like that, they pitch. What is the base thing? Like, hey, here's this. But if you want this cool thing on top of that, that's this price. If you want that cool thing on top of that, that's this price. And each one of those steps are a step up or a price increase, increase. And as nobody likes anything That's a price increase. Just go look at the gas prices today. I haven't liked looking at the gas price. I gotta keep going up, right? But boy, if they go down tomorrow, I mean, hey, that. And so you think of that thing that's happening, human behavior wise, it's emotional. It's this emotion like, oh, decrease that feels good. Increase, that sucks. I don't like it. So I believe as contractors, we show the best and then we come to a slide that shows better and best. And we know what they're going to pick. They're going to pick the best. They want the best. We haven't talked anything about price or anything like that, but here's our two systems, which. The best system shows everything that we just talked about, includes all the cool stuff. And there's the better one over there. It doesn't have all that cool stuff in it. And I want that one. I want that one. Right. All of that is based on psychology. Human behavior studies have been done on the way that people buy. We all want the best. Now it's much easier that when they say they want the best and they've picked out whatever product they want because we go through and show them that, that they have the best there. So when we get to price and it shocks them, everything from there is a price decrease. Okay, well, let's take a step down. Let's take a step over here. Do we go to the better system where we take a lesser product and we end up in this situation of every single time we take a step down? I feel better. I feel better. Oh, this is joy. I can't wait to buy from you. Right. Like, it gets into this different way of looking at things for our buyer. Are there any other problems that you see with the way people present?

Not that comes to mind right now. I will tell you that a lot of presentations come to an abrupt end and they don't know how to transition.

How do I do that?

Yeah. Or they'll say, you know, do you have any questions? Rather than, you know, what questions do you have? You know, I just covered a lot of information. We talk back and forth. But truly, what questions do you have as somebody that you plan on doing business with? You know, obviously, you know, that's. That question in itself is you're going to do business with me, and I just want to know what questions you have before, you know, we decide to put this relationship together.

Yeah, there's. I'm glad you brought that up. Transition is a big thing. And we're. Transitioning several times throughout this, we're transitioning from, you know, this rapport and expert aspect of things to how we set expectations. We got transfer between those two things and exactly how do we do that? And so some of those transition statements, like when I first get to the door, I've got this introduction statement that happens, but then I got to transfer over to rapport because I got to build some rapport up really quick. And I have a transfer statement. Hey, Mr. Jones, I noticed this, whatever that thing was. I noticed the kids toys in the yard. I noticed a cool boat in the garage. And I want to ask questions about it to get them talking about who? About the things that they want to talk about. They don't want to talk about the new bathroom or the roof or anything. They want to talk about how amazing they are. And so there's these transition statements that happen all throughout a presentation. Maybe we'll do a whole podcast on transition. But now I've shown it. Let's talk about this particular one. I've shown them all the stuff. Everything is amazing. Here's all the cool products and systems and which one you want. And they figured out, I want the best of everything. Then we're going to ask a really key question. What's that question?

Well, before we get into that key question, I like to do. Because you never know when you're going to encounter a shopper, and you always want to knock down anybody that could put something in front of you, a roadblock. And so if you are comfortable, and I will say that there's companies that are comfortable with it and companies that aren't, but if you're comfortable with it, to put in some sort of price and value guarantee that states. And this is kind of how this goes, is Mr. And Mrs. Smith, just a few years ago, you know, the president of our company, Jim Johnson, decided that he wanted to, you know, bring, you know, bring peace of mind to the home improvement buying process. He wanted to really help the homeowners out that wanted to shop. And when I got here, it really seemed like you were wanting to shop things out. Am I right? And they're like, oh, my gosh, right there. They're just like, yes, this is all. This is what I've been waiting on. And so we have created a system and a program for people just like yourself. Now, what I mean by that, this, you know, we. If you can find somebody that can do exactly what we do, you know, exactly how we're going to do it, and they can do it for less Than what I'm. The investment that I'm about to show you. You know that I need you to bring that to me in writing and I'll refund you the difference, plus give you $100. Is that the peace of mind you were looking for when you first called Game Day construction? And these people are like, well, yeah, that's fantastic. And then I'm going to fall right into our trial close, which is. Well, then I guess that other than price and payment or price and affordability, you know, there's no other reason why you wouldn't want to go ahead and get put on the production calendar while I'm here. No, everything sounds good. So you put them into that euphoric. Euphoric state, and as Gary V. Says, then you hit him with the right cross.

Don't do that. We're actually going to. We're actually going to give them the price. Yeah. So a price presentation can go a variety of ways. I think we. We will save that for another podcast, if that's okay with you. But we're presenting along the way that in the end, when we ask this question, other than price or payment, is there any reason we can't put you on the production schedule that we have become the logical choice? The only thing that stops us at that point is price. Right. And so we'll get to that in a future podcast. But with this podcast about presentations. What's wrong with presentations? Presentations don't have an order and format. They sound different each and every time. They're led by the buyer and not by the seller. When you put yourself in that position, you get off on rabbit trails, and there's no uniformity to what you do. So you can't teach it, can't train it, can't perform, affect it, and we end up with, you know, 20% close rates. Just because they like us is really what it comes down to. We want to get into those 40, 50, 55, 60 close rates in the retail world and maybe 80, 90% in the insurance restoration world if we present it right. Chuck, any final comments on presentation pointers that people might take and say, that's a good idea.

It's how you practice the presentation. Sales managers should never, ever let a salesman go and do a presentation until they videoed it. They're happy with it. The sales manager is happy with it, that they understand the information, it's not just being regurgitated, and that they can put some emotion and tonality into that presentation. They don't sound very monotone. You know, they may have done it a hundred times. And I think it was 50 Cent that said, my next. My next pitch is my best pitch or whatever. I mean, it's. You're always looking at the how do. How can I do this the same way, but yet make it better? And through my tonality and engagement with that.