Impress your prospects and win more work

Benjamin Dyer, CEO of Powered Now, shares ideas on how to sell more effectively & how to win more contracts.

“People buy from people” is a well-known saying in sales circles and it is largely true. That’s why it’s always worth ensuring that someone from your company sees all prospects face to face. This gives you a chance to start building a relationship but also to discover the prospect’s motivation and if there are any more opportunities. It’s amazing what can be discovered lurking behind an unpromising lead. Every contact also helps to build trust and this should be a major aim. People buy from people they trust.

Understand the motivation

There are a variety of reasons why customers want work done. While fixing something that has broken is obvious, there can be many other reasons. Is that extension needed because grandma is getting old and will be joining the family? Has the wife got a particular agenda? Are they maximising the value of their property before selling?

The important thing about understanding motivation is that it helps you to suggest the right solution. You can also talk about the job in a context that is important to your prospect, and refer back to this driver if the sale looks like stalling. That’s why finding out the motivation and empathising with it should be your number one objective when a new job comes up.

Your word is your bond

Building trust is critical to any sales situation, and I myself have gone with a higher cost option on a really big deal because I trusted the team more. That’s why you should see every single interaction as an opportunity to build trust. So it’s not just important to turn up when you said, it’s vital. The same goes for delivering quotes by the time you promised. It’s a failure to address these sorts of issues that lead disappointed trade businesses to complain that they don’t understand why they lost the deal.

In Powered Now’s recent survey of 1,000 homeowners, 83% said their biggest irritation was with trade companies failing to show up when they said.

Technology can help. James Chandler of Chandler Building describes how he works: “We turn up on a job to quote, do it all on the iPhone and send it to the customer from our app. We’ve noticed that getting the paperwork out to the customer quickly normally means we win the job”.

We’ve noticed in talking to several fast-growing clients that turning round quotes within 24 hours is a common theme. This is a simple way to provide a great impression and remains unusual.

Be easy to do business with

If your potential customers can’t easily contact you when they haven’t even placed their business, they will speculate very negatively about what you will be like once work starts. Having a helpful sounding answer phone message and getting back quickly represents the minimum standard. It’s what you would want if you were looking for help yourself.

Try to make sure that you note everything the prospect asks for, nobody enjoys having to point out things that have been forgotten.

Be credible

Demonstrating your professionalism enables you to establish credibility. For instance, few homeowners understand or have an appetite for completing complex paperwork for their local authority. So demonstrating your knowledge of what is required, without being patronising, helps you in every way. And if your customer doesn’t care about building regulations, it’s worth considering whether they will have a similarly cavalier attitude towards paying your bill.

Qualifications, trade association memberships and talking about similar jobs you have done in the past all help. Referencing pitfalls and lessons learned shows you know what you are talking about and discourages them from thinking that DIY might be a good alternative.

Set price expectations in the right range

Surprises kill sales, which is why it is vital to ensure that your prospect is thinking in the right ball park before you send them your quote. Failure in this area is why sometimes your customer will angrily reject your proposal and then inexplicably sign up with a competitor who is charging even more.

Close with care

Trust is the magic ingredient to making closing the deal easy, and with trust, closing can be done in a natural way – “What sort of date would be convenient for us to start?”

Because trust is the vital ingredient, word of mouth recommendations are much easier to sell to. After all, with recommendations the prospect at least half trusts you before they have even spoken to you.

This explains why doing a great job at a reasonable price remains the key to growth for companies in the construction space. The great thing is that this also comes with the satisfaction of seeing and interacting with happy customers.

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About the author

Benjamin Dyer is CEO and co-founder of Powered Now Mobile app for tradesman. Powered Now aims to take the pain out of paperwork for construction companies including gas engineers, electricians and other trades.

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