Mark: Today on PowerTips Unscripted. We talked to Jeff Borovitz, sales trainer of Sandler Training. Jeff specializes in working with Remodelers, and in doing so, he’s discovered some deadly sins that designers and production staff alike fall victim to. Curious? So am I. We’ll hear what they are in just a minute.

Victoria: Hi, I’m Victoria Downing and welcome to PowerTips Unscripted, where we talk about tips, tactics and techniques to help you build a strong, profitable remodeling company. I’m here with my co-host, Marc Harari.

Mark: Hey, easy for you is like,

Victoria: A little stumble there. You don’t get to leave. People know I’m real, right? I don’t want every two to professional.

Mark: Don’t want it to sound like it’s just a recording.

Victoria: That’s right.

Mark: Yeah, that’s.

Victoria: Yeah, I got to mess it up every once in a while. So. Got a good show today with a as a veteran who’s been on the show several times previous.

Mark: Yeah. This is going to be good. I’m curious what the deadly sins are.

Victoria: Yeah. Me too. you know, and I think it’s really cool because Jeff is really working with so many of our members now, and, and so these things are particularly apropos. And he’s learned a lot about them as he’s worked with all these remodelers from across the country.

Mark: Yeah. It’s cool. It’s when you see that’s the benefit when you start to specialize in something and sticking with it, you start to see patterns and trends.

Victoria: Niche. Yeah. Niche. Right. Whichever. Again, easy for me to say.

Mark: Depending on how pretentious you’re feeling that particular day. That’s right. We’ll go with niche.

Victoria: We’ll go with niche. Okay. I guess you are feeling quite pretentious.

Mark: Yes, let’s do that.

Victoria: Okay, so today we have with us Jeff for events. Jeff is a Sandler with Sandler Training, and he is the leader of both our sales edge and our Sales Management Edge programs, which are delivered exclusively to our roundtable members. Jeff’s gotten great reviews from these programs, and he always has a ton of great stuff to share. Whatever he’s on.

Victoria: PowerTips. Unscripted. So welcome, Jeff.

Jeff: Hi, Victoria.

Victoria: Great to have you.

Jeff: Be with you.

Victoria: Yeah. It’s always. So, hey, tell us, what are these deadly sins?

Jeff: well, you know, we we’ve developed we’ve really found that there’s a few deadly sins that, remodelers, especially the designers and the production people make that end up costing remodelers just an absolute ton of money.

Victoria: Well, how do you mean? Both, designers and production staff.

Jeff: Yeah. So every. So the first deadly sin is the need and desire to be liked. God.

Victoria: Okay.

Jeff: And, and, you know, it’s interesting because the, the worst two words that a any production person can use to, to a homeowner is the words. No problem. Because when they use the words no problem, it’s usually that they have just agreed to do something that is outside the scope of the agreement, and they are doing it at no charge.

Victoria: so but to back up for a minute, why is needing and wanting to be like this in?

Jeff: Well, because it’s only a sin. Because we often will do free work in exchange for making the client feeling like we can get the client to like us to do that, when really it’s essential that the client trust us. And there’s a difference between like and trust.

Victoria: What are those differences?

Jeff: Well, that’s what this magic tree. If you ever bought something from somebody that you didn’t like, but you did trust.

Victoria: I’m sure I have at some point in my life.

Jeff: And if you ever buy anything from somebody that you did not trust.

Victoria: No.

Jeff: Yeah. And that’s the difference is when we have this tight desire to be liked because we think it equates to trust, and as a result, we end up doing a lot of free consulting work. I’ll give you a great example. what am I reminded clients just told me a story that at the end of a kitchen remodel, the homeowner, the wife, at the homeowners, asked the production crew if they would help her hang a few photos back on the wall.

Jeff: Well, it ended up being a crew of four, taking 2.5 hours to hang photos all throughout the house. Not in the kitchen. Oh, and so that is eight. And, that that is what, about ten hours of man hours that the that the remodeler paid his people to do or her people to do and but they didn’t get paid for that work.

Jeff: Oh.

Mark: It’s that’s an awesome story.

Victoria: It’s sad. It’s what it is.

Mark: It’s just fantastic. I mean, it’s just taking you back yourself into something like that.

Victoria: Yeah.

Jeff: That’s the problem. When they say no problem and they have this high need to be light. They don’t. They don’t charge for it and they do it for free. Now, listen, if it’s turning, if it’s tightening a white plate or something simple, fine. But, 2.5 hours of four people hanging photos all over the house. Yeah.

Victoria: Not good, not good. Okay, so what’s another deadly sin?

Jeff: Well, another deadly sin. And this is the one that. Oh, my gosh, so many people do. It’s called mutual mystification. And it’s when you they where when the contractor, the salesperson, the remodeler, the the designer or the production person thinks they thinks they have one thing in mind and it’s not clearly communicated and confirmed with the client that it’s the same thing is the client has in mind and they think they’re saying one thing and the client thinks you’re saying another thing.

Jeff: And I’ll give you the best example that is not one. Remodelers told me this story about a month ago, which is, oh, the client got really upset with them and ripped them on Yelp. But matter of fact, because and when the salesperson was there and they were signing up to do their kitchen remodel, he said, oh, we’re going to set you up a temporary kitchen, which is pretty common practice for a remodeler to do right and say, however, they’re what the Remodeler meant was, we’ll move your toaster oven, your microwave, and and your refrigerator will set up a little a table for you if you have one.

Jeff: you know, so you have a place to get cold food and warmth and warm food up what the client or the homeowner heard was, oh, you’re going to set up a full kitchen with a sink.

Victoria: Oh, boy.

Jeff: And they they felt that they had been lied to. Oh are they. That was not the intention. And when one person thinks one thing, another person thinks another, it leads to mutual mystification. And and it’s just one of the deadly sins that we have to avoid because it will lead to hard feelings and sometimes some bad Yelp reviews.

Victoria: Oh, yes. And then you got to fight to get those Yelp reviews pushed down with all the good ones coming in.

Jeff: So what if somebody just told me this? it takes ten, ten really good reviews to push one bad review down.

Mark: Oh, yeah. So. So what can you do to avoid that?

Jeff: Well, it’s really important that they say when in Sandler we have something called a Palo. a if upfront agreement about how to get everybody on the same page and everybody to mutually agree upon what is being talked about, how long it’s going to be talked about for, what decisions are going to be made and what the outcome is.

Jeff: Okay. And so and, and and the client gets equal business stature in making that decision. And so that everybody understands exactly what’s expected of one another. And there’s no mutual mystification.

Victoria: But so in the example you gave right, the temporary kitchen, should they have spelled out exactly in on paper or just verbally what exactly that meant? And do they need to do that all the time? Because again, like you say, it’s so common. Most people get it.

Jeff: Yeah. I think you have to at least do it verbally. and get the client’s mutual agreement. That’s what they understood. You heard that you said, you know, you need to say say, hey, listen, we’re going to set you up temporary kitchen by temporary kitchen. We’re going to move your refrigerator, your microwave, your toaster oven over, for you.

Jeff: but there will still be no running water because we don’t we’re not moving plumbing for this temporary kitchen.

Victoria: Right? Right. All right, give us another. The best part of the year is the stories. Right?

Jeff: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And so the next one is the fear of talking about money. and it’s almost everybody in here. Almost everybody has this fear. And it really, it’s one of the things that they get to blame their parents for.

Victoria: You’re right. Like, we never talk about money in polite society, right?

Jeff: That’s right. It’s rude to talk about money, you know, when in reality, money is everything. Well, a money is a renewable resource because you can get more and be a when you go into remodeling, you are basically signing up to have to have a money discussion, whether you’re a salesperson, a designer, or even a production person on a change order.

Victoria:

Jeff: And so it’s really important that everybody in your organization be comfortable talking about money. And so, you know, you have to overcome the fact that when you’re growing up and mom and dad told you that it was rude to talk about money or, or when, you know, my, my dad’s favorite when I would ask him, hi, dad. How much money you make?

Jeff: He’d say, none of your business actually make enough.

Victoria: Right.

Jeff: And and my grandfather, my grandfather owned, several jewelry stores, and so. And he lived in this big house. So I always thought my grandpa was rich. And one day, when I was probably about 10 or 11, I said, grandpa, are you. Are you rich? And he looked at me as to why do you want to know? I said, well, you live in this big house.

Jeff: You have the jewelry stores. I’m just curious. And he goes, are you writing a book? And I had learned when my grandfather asked me if I’m writing a book, you have to say yes to have any hope, to get an answer. And, and so I said yes. And he said, leave this chapter blank.

Victoria: So what do you suggest? What are some tips or some techniques for bringing up money and getting over that?

Jeff: Well, you know, so the good news is we can all get over it because, you know, when our parents told us, another thing our parents told us was don’t writing strangers cars and everybody’s taken an Uber or Lyft at this time, right? And so we’ve been able to overcome that particular piece of advice for our parents. So we have to just overcome this when we have to look at the fact that the money discussion should be a natural next step in the process.

Jeff: And we can’t force it too early, because that makes everyone uncomfortable. We can’t wait to too late because that tends to really upset people. And so after we figure out what problems they have that we can solve is the time for us to talk about money. But really, the money conversation should flow from the client to us, and it’s really around three.

Jeff: We have to tell them that, hey, this is the part of the discussion where we usually talk about budget. And budget consist of three things. Money, time and resources. I’m sorry. Money, time and inconvenience. And when and which would you like to talk about first? Let them feel like they’re in control and you’re like 99% of them choose money.

Victoria: good. So that gets it right out on the table right away.

Jeff: Now they’ve given you permission. What? We. But what? Now, here’s the mistake that people make is they start giving them a budget. Well, you know, your bathroom is going to cost up a bathroom like this. Probably in the ballpark of $60,000. And that’s a horrible, horrible mistake for us to make, because most clients will be shocked by any number that you throw out.

Jeff: You want to use the budget step to get them to give you a number. And don’t be shocked when the client’s number is incredibly low. And one of the mistakes that people make here is they disqualify the client off of this low number. You have to understand, for most clients, this is the first time they’ve ever had to do a remodel.

Jeff: And they their only source of prices is what their friends tell them which they often lie. Or HGTV which we all know is not realistic numbers. Right. For sure. And so you know when, when they give you the number of, oh well we thought it was gonna be $10,000 to redo the bathroom and you could say, oh, okay.

Jeff: How did you arrive at that number? Let them tell you don’t don’t start to justify defend and explain what your number is going to be because that will that will lead to just them being surprised and saying no.

Speaker 4 What is your vision for the future of your business as we emerge from a crazy 2020? Are you planning properly? Are you putting the steps in place to ensure your business is heading in the right direction? My name is Doug Howard. I’m the director of consulting here at Remodelers Advantage. And I just wanted to take a moment to introduce myself, let you know that my consulting and coaching team is ready to put proven business strategies and industry best practices to work for your company.

Speaker 4 The mission of our consulting team is to join you on your path to success, providing the coaching, resources and support you may need to develop and implement strategies that will get you to the next level, and ultimately to your goal. If you would like to know more, go to. Got 15 minutes without the.com. That’s the number 15. To schedule a free conversation with me to see if we can help.

Speaker 4 I look forward to hearing.

Victoria: All right. You got any other things?

Jeff: I, I do. Failure to disqualify. There is a time after you’ve gone through their problems to see what they have that you can solve. You’ve talked to them about budget. And by that being money, time and inconvenience. and you’ve understood how they’re going to make the decision. If you don’t, if they don’t have problems that you can solve.

Jeff: They don’t have a budget that is reasonable for you to use. And they don’t have a decision making process that you want to participate in. It’s time to disqualify them before you present anything. It’s okay to disqualify a client because it will save you time from chasing after people who are never going to buy anyways. And and in the end, the most valuable thing any of our remodelers have is their time.

Jeff: Right. And where they choose to spend it.

Victoria: I think a lot of people are just, they just don’t want to let any possible piece of business go. How do you determine if, if something’s worth and what’s the sort of the breaking point? Is it worth continuing down this road with these people or just totally it’s it’s clear that it’s not.

Jeff: Well, I think you have to develop a set of red flags, and those red flags for you are going to be different for every remodeler. but, you know, some of my remodelers have told me it’s a red flag when they tell them, oh, my son is a contractor in another state.

Victoria: Oh, yeah. Right.

Jeff: or. Oh, the last three contractors we worked with, we had to sue.

Victoria: Oh, definite red flag there.

Jeff: Right. And and and it should also be a red flag when one spouse or the other refuses to participate until the presentation. If you’re not understanding the problems that each spouse has or what we call in Sandler, the panes, it’s impossible for you to design a solution that’s going to be acceptable to both people.

Victoria: Right.

Jeff: And and so one of the things that we have is pain is not transferable. So what the wife is upset about or or has problems with will not necessarily be the same as what the husband has.

Victoria: When I got started in this business I worked with exterior remodelers back in the day and we used to call it the one leg. You know, you’d never want to go on a one leg. But but isn’t it true now though, with some of the processes that full line design build types of remodelers use that they could go on the first call or possibly have a second appointment even with just one of the participants.

Victoria: Or do you want them to be involved right from the beginning? What if you can’t get both parties there at the very first appointment?

Jeff: A great question. If you can’t get both parties, we prefer to have both parties there at the first appointment and in the lead intake training that we have going on right now. That’s one of the things we teach the lead intake people to get agreement on if we can’t have them at the very first agreement. You’ve got to have them by the second, by the second meeting, because at that point you’re just throwing blindly, throwing darts against the wall.

Jeff: Right. I just had a remodeler, probably 2 or 3 weeks ago now that told me the story of, oh, well, they met, worked with the wife because the husband was a surgeon. He’s much too busy for this, nor does he care of the wife had complete authority to do whatever she wanted, and they went all the way through.

Jeff: They actually got a design agreement, which was great. They went all the way through the design process, selections, drawings, everything. They did the final design presentation and guess who showed up for the first time?

Victoria: Oh yeah.

Jeff: And the husband disagreed with about 40% of the project.

Victoria: Oh, no.

Jeff: And that led to a very big debate over the fact that if they wanted them to do all this extra work, they had to pay for more design time.

Victoria: Right.

Jeff: And because of that, again, the mutual mystification of not having both people there caused, they ended up not being able to get anything done and having to the remodeler ended up having to walk away from the deal. Yeah.

Victoria: What a waste of time,

Jeff: Oh. Everybody’s time. It’s.

Victoria: Oh, yeah.

Jeff: Wow.

Victoria: All right. What else you got? Well, they’re all making total sense to me. You know, I’ve heard these stories over the years.

Jeff: I got two big ones. Okay, this one’s really, really important. Too many remodelers suffer from what I call premature presentation syndrome. Tom. Where they hear one problem. Oh, well, the bathroom’s too old. Oh, wow. Well, we’ve, We, we remodel, bathrooms all the time, but let me tell you about what we’ve done. BA ba ba ba.

Jeff: And let me show you pictures. And they’ve knocked on all the rest of the qualification process to even know if the clients qualify and they’ll spend. I’ve seen a remodelers spend an hour doing premature presentation, only to find out that the person was just looking. They actually don’t have any money right now, and they’re probably going to be not be able to do anything for the next year to 1 to 2 years.

Victoria: Wow. So is that something that some that should be done any sort of qualification on the phone before the appointment is made?

Jeff: Yeah, some of it should be that, but we never qualify for budget on the phone. Okay. Like I said, clients don’t know anything about what their budget is going to be, and most clients budgets will change from somewhere between 25 and 50% from what they initially tell you. Okay. As they make selections that go through the process, the design process with you and they begin to understand what things really cost and that when they’re watching flip or flop and Tarek and Christina take the contractor through the house and he says, well, we need to gut this kitchen or knock down this wall and add an island and move plumbing, and change out the

Jeff: window. Yeah, we probably looked at 10 to $12,000.

Victoria: Yeah, right.

Jeff: Okay. And that year I was watching flipper flop on Saturday night with my wife as a change for me, for her watching the Super Bowl with me yesterday and and but that’s a that’s a direct quote from flipper or Flop.

Victoria: Holy crud. It’s amazing.

Mark: I’m still on the premature presentation syndrome. We should we should do a show on that. Do you suffer from.

Victoria: yeah.

Mark: We’re not going to do the premature. We’re not going to do mature.

Jeff: Premature presentation syndrome.

Mark: Okay.

Victoria: All right. So that was one big one. You got one more big one.

Jeff: And here’s the other one. Most people work two date because the result of this last headline said most people just work too hard. And it’s that they don’t ask for referrals.

Victoria: and I bet you that so few people make it a practice to proactively ask. So how? Tell us more.

Jeff: They most people don’t don’t ask because they think one of two things one. Well, if I do a really good job, of course they’re going to refer me. That’s just not true. And the second is they’re uncomfortable asking. You feel pushy. They feel salesy. Nobody wants to feel salesy. And so it’s because they don’t have a good process for asking for referrals.

Jeff: And so developing a really good process for asking for referrals. Important. And you should be. It should never be a surprise to your client that you’re going to ask them. You have to as part of no mutual mystification. You have to set them up to understand that, hey, at this point approach in the project, I’m going to be asking you who what other people you know that might want remodel.

Jeff: But more importantly, what what are you part of a homeowner’s association? Are you part of an elk club or, are you part of, rotary or what kind of associations are you in? Because they generally will gather with other people like them. And if they have the type of house and the type of income where they can afford to remodel the people, they hang out with generally do.

Victoria: Yep. Okay. That makes really good sense. That’s good.

Mark: Jeff. well I don’t want to say no problem. So I’m a, I’m if I just say you are you ready for the lightning round.

Jeff: Yeah. Let’s do it. Oh, and now here’s a remodelers advantage. Lightning round. It’s a draft.

Mark: Okay, we’re going to put 60s on the clock. Here we go. What’s your favorite business book and why?

Jeff: Ever split the difference by Chris Voss because when I, when I read it a it’s a great book and negotiating and B there’s so much Sandler in there and it turns out Chris is a Sandler graduate.

Victoria: Really?

Jeff: Yeah.

Mark: If you weren’t a Sandler sales trainer, what do you think you’d be doing?

Jeff: I wish I was playing Major League Baseball, but that that dream ended, a long, long time ago.

Mark: What do you not very good at?

Jeff: organization.

Mark: Your room, your desk or your car? Which would you clean first?

Jeff: the car. Because I’m a little bit fanatical about it.

Mark: Do you sing in the shower?

Jeff: No, I my family decided I’m not allowed to sing anywhere.

Mark: Are you a marvel universe guy or a DC universe guy?

Jeff: Oh. Good question. I love Marvel, but my favorite, my favorite has always been Superman.

Mark: Yeah. What’s the weirdest thing I’d find in your fridge?

Jeff: Oh, I probably some science experiment. Tupperware somewhere in the back. but probably the absolute weirdest thing that you’ll that you’ll find is the homemade dressing that my son makes for his salads.

Victoria: oh. That doesn’t sound too weird, but sounds like. Could be delicious. Jeff, thank you so much.

Jeff: He’s the only one that thinks it’s delicious.

Victoria: Jeff, thank you so much for being with us. Now, before I let you go, as you know, I want you to share your five words of wisdom with our listening audience and why they resonate with you.

Jeff: A confused mind says no.

Victoria: How do you mean?

Jeff: Well, a lot of times in the sales process, we will do things that either surprise people, are confused and then when we do their first, their first tendency is to say no rather than say yes.

Victoria: Okay. That’s awesome. Perfect for for your training and for how to make sure that your clients, the Remodelers clients, are clear. They understand exactly what to expect from this process. Awesome. Thank you so much. Yeah. Hey, now, Jeff, if people want to learn more about you, where would they go?

Jeff: they can go either to the Remodelers advantage, sag page and look at one of the SAG groups, or they can look at sales edge or sales management at. Or they can go to the website Borowitz Bureau, the ITC, Dot sandler.com.

Victoria: All right. Thank you so much. Appreciate you being here buddy.

Jeff: Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for having me on.

Victoria: That was really interesting, wasn’t it? He was able to sort of categorize these issues that come up. Yeah.

Mark: Well, you know, you see, again, when you’re in a niche. Yes. You, you start to see trends and these things start to pop up and it becomes not just this one guy or gals problem. It’s, it’s it’s a epidemic. I don’t know.

Victoria: It’s certainly something that is common across the industry for sure.

Mark: Yeah. The the first one was actually it’s funny because I mentioned it in my book too. It’s the psychological term for that is the desirability bias. the, the need, the incessant need for us to be liked by others. So, that’s a tough one. He had two of them. He had that one. And the, the fear of talking about money, those are.

Mark: That’s just something that I would think just need some self-awareness and some practice.

Victoria: Right?

Mark: It’s not just.

Victoria: Right, but literal practice. Right? Knowing the phrases, knowing the terms, saying them out loud and right.

Mark: Yeah.

Victoria: Getting used to it.

Mark: Yeah yeah yeah yeah. Yeah. It’s good. I don’t know, maybe he’s got some tricks in his, classes. Yes. I haven’t attended one yet.

Victoria: Oh, I haven’t attended one of Jeff’s. I certainly had his previous his predecessor. Yeah, I tend to quite a few. It’s good stuff. Yeah.

Mark: And we also got the. You know, anybody that suffers from can, can also reach out to Jeff. So they can do that. Yes. So yeah that’s good stuff. we want to thank Jeff for taking the time to share these deadly sins with us. And we want to thank you for listening week in and week out. I am Mark Harari.

Victoria: And I’m Victoria Downing. See you next week. This has been another episode of PowerTips Unscripted the Remodelers Guide to Business. Visit w w w dot Remodelers advantage.com to learn more about roundtable, our World Peer Advisory Program. There you can also find information about our business consulting services, upcoming live event, and much more. And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show and comment on iTunes.

Victoria: Thanks for listening to Beautiful Day.