Mark: Today on PowerTips unscripted. We talked to Jeff, franchise owner of Sandler training, a remodeler that fears negotiate is like a roofer being afraid of heights. Negotiation skills are necessary to success. Jeff is here to share the seven deadly sins that remodelers make when negotiating with clients. They’re costing you tens of thousands of dollars and we’ll hear what they are in just a minute.

Victoria: Hi, this is Victoria Downing and welcome to PowerTips Unscripted, where we talk about tips, tactics and techniques to help you build a strong, profitable remodeling company. And I’m here with my co-host, Mark Harari. Hey, how are you doing over there, Mark?

Mark: I’m doing good. It’s beautiful, beautiful weather. I love the spring.

Victoria: No kidding. Me, too. It’s a fabulous time of year. Yes. And boy, do we have a great topic for our listening audience today.

Mark: I love negotiating talks.

Victoria: Yes, I you know, I don’t like negotiating. So maybe there’ll be something in here that’ll help me be more comfortable doing it. I don’t even know how to approach it.

Mark: Yeah, I don’t. I wouldn’t say I like negotiating, but it’s something you kind of have to be able to do from time to time. I can’t wait to hear what the seven deadly sins are.

Victoria: Though. So shall we jump into it?

Mark: Jump.

Victoria: Please. So today we’re lucky to have with us Jeff Borowitz. As Mark said, he’s a franchise owner of Sandler Training and the remodelers Advantage Sandler sales trainer. We know who gets fantastic reviews. So welcome, Jeff. We’re glad to have you.

Jeff: I’m sorry. Mark, thanks for inviting me on.

Victoria: You bet. It’s always nice to have you. And you know, you’ve been on several times and this is a new topic for us, isn’t it?

Jeff: It is. It is. I think you said you talk about an important topic.

Victoria: Yes, me too. I think there are so many people who, like me, don’t have a clue as to how to approach a negotiation properly. So I assume your deadly sins are mistakes we’re all making and things we should avoid.

Jeff: Yeah, they really are. Because I think it’s important to remember that everything we want and everything we need is actually owned by somebody else. And therefore we are constantly negotiating, even when we don’t when they don’t realize we are negotiating.

Victoria: Now. So explain that. What do you mean?

Jeff: Well, I know everything we want. Everything we need is owned by somebody else. Just simply means if you want, if you go to the store, buy food. It’s owned by the store.

Victoria: Okay.

Jeff: And, you know, one of the I just recently taught a group of young adults the story. And, you know, my son is a high school senior this year. And so I taught this group of young adults at the high school how to negotiate. And we did negotiation course. And one of the things that my assignment had to do our homework was to challenge and posted price and see if they could get a better deal.

Victoria: that’s great.

Jeff: One five kids in the class, all four and five came back the next week with a story of how they had challenged the poster price and gotten a discount.

Victoria: Really? That’s great.

Jeff: I’m an 18 year old. Kids are doing this right. There’s no reason professional remodelers should fall victim to it. They shouldn’t be doing it themselves.

Victoria: Okay, so what are these deadly sins?

Jeff: Well, so the first every sin and I think just this this really holds true for a lot of remodelers is we don’t necessarily realize when we go into a home to the end and we’re we’re getting on a job, we don’t necessarily realize what the person we’re talking to does for a living.

Victoria:

Jeff: And a lot of those people and it doesn’t say on their maintained profile or on their door blacked out negotiator It doesn’t say that anywhere. Right. So that’s why these people are pushing all the time at work and they are truly like the negotiators. And the first deadly sin is the failing is a failure to recognize when you are dealing with a blacked out share and how to deal with them most effectively.

Jeff: Now, most people assume that I think most remodelers are looking for a win win negotiation. Hey, we ran you when everybody’s happy. That’s not the case with a black negotiator. A black negotiator lost. You lose. In order for them, go in.

Victoria: Now, is it is it sort of a specific personality type or is it, you know, how do they come to be This.

Jeff: Is their they’re the people that the company says a pit bulls. They are is that they’re a whole purpose. Is that they are going to go out there and their sole mission is to extract a pound of flesh from the person negotiating.

Victoria: Right. Okay.

Jeff: And so it doesn’t matter if that was a black negotiator. It doesn’t even matter if your price is neither fair. But beyond fair in their favor, no matter what price you come over, they’re going to watch a negotiation, get a better price, and then slowly you’re like, Dave one, they won’t move forward. They will hold your feet to the fire.

Jeff: And and if you’re all and all need compromise, they will take advantage of that and they will make it so that you make a deal that’s good for them and not necessarily good for you. They don’t care if it’s good for you. They only care that it’s good for them.

Mark: So is there a sign that is a tip off that you’ve got a black belt negotiator in front of you?

Jeff: Yeah, I think a good, good sign, a chip off of a black negotiator is early in the process. They may throw up a an objection to something small or even something medium or large, and then they’ll just drop it all of a sudden, because what they’re doing is they’re testing to see what the resolve around it is. And then at the end, when they’ve got you emotionally invested into the deal, that’s where they’re going to come back and hit you with it.

Jeff: And and now and now we’re bedrock. Earlier is a big deal. Matter of fact, it’s such a big deal. It’s a linchpin that you read in moving forward. And when they when people do that, that is usually the sign of a black negotiator. Okay.

Victoria: So when that happens, what do you do when you as you recognize it? What do you do.

Jeff: As soon as you react, as you deal with the black negotiator, you’ve got to find a way to make them feel like they’re wrong. But not and that you’re losing without you really losing. Okay. And so you have to have to recognize that early on, if you get to the proposal stage and you recognize it, then it’s too late.

Jeff: Okay. You’ve you can’t figure out early on that day that they’re doing this. And usually, like I said, is that, hey, I got this. I’ve got this red flag. Objection. And then I just want to resolve it. And if it comes up again, it closed. Yeah. So when you hear those early on in the process, it’s really important that you start thinking about how you’re going to deal with it and counter it at the end of the process of the end of the sales process.

Jeff: Because if not, they’re going to have you got to keep both feet firmly planted in the real world because they don’t their feet are planted on the in the what’s in it for me world.

Victoria: Okay. All right so I know there are seven sins, but which sin costs remodelers the most.

Jeff: Say number three cost remodelers the most and number three is making unilateral concessions.

Victoria: What does that mean?

Jeff: Well, so have you ever, ever had a wet rag? You had to ring it out right away. Yeah. And when you bring it out, water comes out right?

Victoria: Yup.

Jeff: And when you stop ringing the rag.

Victoria: When do you stop bringing it? When there’s no more water coming out?

Jeff: That’s right. And so the reason I used this analogy is that when you make it really as a remodeler, we make a unilateral concession or we give something up and get nothing in return. We are training our clients to ask for more unilateral concessions.

Victoria: So can you give me an example?

Jeff: Sure. Hey, Joe. A remodeler just told me the client told them that, you know, this is about you know, this is just about $5,000 more than we really have to spend. And that And so I said, so if we come down to $5,000 from you, get the job, then? Yeah, I think so. And so why did the remodel where do they drop the price?

Jeff: $5,000. And then back to the client. To the client. Ask for another concession after the $5,000. Because what we need is, you know, by our concessions, it’s like running that rag on their back. We’re teaching them to ask for more unilateral concessions, And every time we make it a concession, they’re going to ask for another one until they run the rack.

Jeff: No water comes out. And so where we were recently when we made these concessions, what is the client’s incentive to stop asking someone? Right. And so we we have to use the Sandler rule that we talk about the sales manager all the time, which is never make a concession without getting a concession of equal value in return.

Victoria: So, for example, how would you literally say that if a client said, do you it’s $5,000 more than I have to spend, what do you do? Like, well, how would you respond to that?

Jeff: Well, that’s very question of what possible response that is to just want the soft worker out you them and ask them, So what’s the one thing they’d like to take out?

Victoria: Well, okay.

Jeff: And perfect. Put the onus back on them. We’re going to find out really quickly when we do that, whether that $5,000 is real deal or whether it’s just testing the waters to see if you’re willing to negotiate.

Victoria: Okay. All right. Great. All right. So we went from one seems to be sin one to sin three. So what’s to.

Jeff: Sense here is is really being neat is being in a weak pre negotiation position. And what I mean by that is sometimes we we really need compromise where we need this deal. We have to get this deal because this isn’t as good as it should be. With that gap in the schedule we need, we got to keep our crews working and really compromise in that or any compromise and tend to make deals that aren’t necessarily the deals we want to make and need to make in order to be profitable.

Jeff: And so the best defense for negotiation, send it to a compromised or repeat negotiation position is to have a strong pipeline.

Victoria: I love the.

Jeff: Stronger your pipeline, the less likely you are to be in a need compromised position that puts you in a weak negotiation position.

Victoria: Right. And one of the things that leads to that is to continue to invest in your marketing and to make sure the word’s out there. That’s great.

Jeff: You I have a room offer that said to me, you know, they said, you know, this is a so I can’t get out to all the leaves are coming in. So I’m just I’ve decided to offer a stop on marketing for three months. and, and it makes me interesting that whole shiver down my spine when somebody says that because I know what’s going to happen next.

Victoria: That’s right. It’s all going to slow down.

Mark: I’m sorry. I just.

Jeff: In the future, there’s going to be this big gaping hole in the pipeline.

Mark: Yeah, I just blacked out for a minute. What was a last minute? Yeah, I know.

Jeff: Yep. So and so. You know, it’s really funny. I you know, I think that when things are so good, people say there’s a time that people some people think it’s a time to pull back on the marketing or not invest. Not invest in training. Right. Because. Because it’s these are good. I want you to do it right now.

Jeff: This is the time when you have the cash, the time to invest in marketing, when is a time to invest and training is a time to upskill all your people because you’re not compromised right now. And when you get to the bad times that you’re going to be figuring out how you’re going to how you’re going to pay to do these things and how I’m going to pay for this, how much is that?

Jeff: I want to make payroll. And that’s not the time that you are going to be investing. Now’s the time when the market’s. So think back to 12 months ago. Yeah, every 12 months ago, everybody was in a panic. Right. Right. Thought that the sky was going to fall in on.

Victoria: Yep.

Jeff: Well, it turned out to be a pretty good year for. For design. Build remodeling.

Victoria: Yes. Yes, it the best ever in some cases. I’ve been told that.

Jeff: That’s what I’ve been told to. And so, you know, now’s the time when you want to take that windfall of revenue that you’ve had an investment to invest into your marketing investments, your coaching investors, your training, whether it’s sales or business coaching or whatever it’s going to be, you know, But upskilling your company, your people, working on your company, working to develop your people is all going to help you.

Jeff: A voice number two of being in a league pre-negotiated position by any compromise.

Victoria: Now, before we go on to number four, I have one quick question on this one. So I know you work with dozens of remodelers all over the country and you’re focused solely on sales and all the things that go with sales. If you were to say to somebody, you should have a pipeline that is about X months deep.

Victoria: Do you have a I.

Jeff: I think I think if you have a you know, some some remodelers have told me, well, I’m already nine months out. I don’t think that’s a problem. No, I think that’s good. You know, because people when they people are planning vacations right now for December and January, they’re used to planning in advance and used to making reservations to fly, but in general, to stay in a hotel.

Jeff: Why would they want to make reservations, to work with a borrower and work with a really good remodeler? Right. So I don’t think I don’t think that out 9 to 12 months to start is a bad thing. I don’t think it’s bad to be 90 days, 120 days for you to start designing. I think that’s good because think about it.

Jeff: Who would you rather deal with? A guy who’s got nothing to do and is available to come to the house tomorrow? Yeah. Or. Or that. Or the one who’s so good so much into that that they can start design for a guy who 120 days and he is you know we have to be smart survivors and we had that 90 to 128 lead time to start designing.

Jeff: We’ve got to give the clients a hammer so that they feel like they’re doing they’ve got some they’ve got some scatter game, have them put together a house book, have them, have them do how we start looking at appliances in my think because once the appliance time right now my.

Victoria: my gosh yes it’s awful.

Mark: It’s funny Jeff. It’s funny.

Jeff: Because running an article and they’re saying for the 18 to 24 months that is it’s.

Mark: Yeah, it’s funny that it’s what you just said because remodelers do that very thing when it comes to hiring. Right. If if if the person they’re hiring has been out of work for, for two months, that’s not a good thing. That’s. So why can’t this guy get a job in this market especially so, you know, they do it themselves, thinking more than likely they’re going to be busier in a job.

Mark: At the moment.

Jeff: That Mark, if you ever down next door that’s social. yeah. If somebody someone next door over the weekend was talking about that, they can’t find anybody to come to the kitchen here where I live in northern California is everybody that they call is out 9 to 10 months to start a kitchen job. And they got a lot of a new kitchen by Christmas and it just isn’t going to happen.

Jeff: And they said they said, does anybody know somebody who can start sooner and somebody response? A lot of people responded with some shocking on guys and then somebody responded. You have to think about this. You really want the person who can start sooner or do you want or do you want a specialist who to do it right?

Victoria: Yeah, exactly. All right. Let’s jump on to sin number four.

Jeff: That same number four is fucking too much.

Victoria: Okay, that’s a good one. So give us some examples of that. What do you mean?

Jeff: Well, and vocation or sales that matter. Information is power. And the person doing the talking is the one giving information. The person who is listening is the one receiving the information. The more you know what’s a win for the client? What is what their deadlines are the barrier able to craft a win win solution, you know, and you don’t find that out by talking.

Jeff: You only find that out by listening. And you know, you ever heard someone say something that their counterpart then used against them later?

Mark: yeah, for sure.

Jeff: Yeah. It’s daily done by it’s only done by listening. I have I have never, ever in my career seen anybody lose a sale or lose a negotiation by listening to us.

Victoria: Right? Right. Okay.

Mark: I got Jeff. This is my favorite tactic from a negotiation standpoint, because so many people are uncomfortable with silence. So if you just zip it and sit there, it only takes like 5 seconds to write and they’ll just start filling in the space.

Jeff: That and in Sander, we call that 5 seconds of plus. You’ve got to have 5 seconds of silence.

Victoria: I guess.

Jeff: Because if you don’t and you feel the heat, the incessant need to fill that dead air and it’s not good. And matter of fact, this is really funny. They did a study and they found that the average salesperson only listens for about the first 5 to 7 seconds of a quiet of a client’s talking turn, and that just before they start to form the response in their head after 5 to 7 seconds, the average person talks for 30 seconds, 75% of what they’re saying.

Jeff: And and then you’re following your response is you cannot listen and and think in your mind at the same time. You can hear them, but you’re not listening. Right, right, right. Key difference. Yeah. My dad used to tell me that you have one now. It’s you have one now for two years. I would suggest you use them in that proportion.

Jeff: And I always thought that was. my God, Jack. yeah. And you know, it. It turns out he was right.

Victoria: Who knew? no, You? Yeah. Okay, so talking too much said number four. Now, what’s the number five?

Jeff: The seventh biggest sin is becoming emotionally compromised. How to control of your emotions. You know, I. I have a friend. She’s a she’s a heart surgeon, and she there’s this certain type of surgery that is that there’s only, like, I don’t know, maybe 4000 doctors in the U.S. that do this surgery. And she’s like one of the best at and yet her mom needs this surgery and she is not allowed to do the surgery on her mom, even though she’s one of the top people in the world at it.

Victoria: Yes.

Jeff: And you know why that is?

Victoria: Well, I imagine because she’s got a lot of emotion tied up in that.

Jeff: That’s why when you go in for a surgery, I remember I went in to have a cancer in my wrist and they had to take a here and reset and right on my left wrist, not this wrist, both top and bottom. And then you had to circle the area on my right wrist where it was supposed to go with the arrow.

Jeff: Right. Because what I’m going to although I’ve seen the doctor before when I rolled into the surgery, girl, you all are. I have surgery number five for the doctor that morning. Right. And they are. And they’re emotionally invested. I mean, they all die on the table surgery, but they’re not emotionally invested in the outcome of the surgery. They’re they’re just doing a job.

Jeff: Right. And the reason that they don’t let doctors operate on that was because then the doctors emotionally invested and they start second guessing themselves and they don’t just operate off of top the normal skill and reflex. They start overthinking everything. And when we are, we’re more emotionally compromised and we lose control of our emotions. We we are react, we are responding rather than reacting and we respond, responding emotionally.

Jeff: We and when we do that, that’s when we can get emotionally involved in a nation come off as either desperate or needy or sometimes overly frustrated. I had a rebound in one of the sales classes last week who told me, Yeah, you know, I cost myself the deal this fee. And I said, What do you mean? And he said, Yeah, I this, this, this guy was changing things again.

Jeff: I lost my I lost my cool. He said he’d yell and scream and rant and rave. I just he could hear the frustration in my voice and it ended the deal. and he said, and when I thought about it afterwards, I needed to. I need to take a moment, take a deep breath and pause and get my emotions under control.

Jeff: So any time you feel yourself being emotionally compromised, slow down, take a deep breath, pause before you respond. And it’s the hardest thing in the world to do that on your way, to avoid it, to avoid steady state number five.

Victoria: Okay. All right, great. What about six?

Jeff: Six is probably the second biggest thing that people mistake people make. They enter into a negotiation unprepared.

Victoria: So tell me, what do you mean by that?

Jeff: Well, some people say, I don’t need to prepare for my negotiation. I’ve been doing this for 18 years or 22 years or 25 years. I’m just going to rely on my experience.

Victoria: Okay, That makes sense.

Jeff: And that sounds like a good idea, right? But sometimes when we’re under pressure, our experience abandons us. And we thought that’s something we didn’t expect based on our experience, because we didn’t take any time. You are call planning and salary sheets pre call plan this six steps every calls that in which probably would make a whole nother good podcast but one of those is to be a pessimist you know think of everything that could go wrong and call every objection, everything that the client may throw up at you in a negotiation, you know, March if you ever did your.

Jeff: Have you ever heard of Murphy’s Law? Yeah.

Mark: Yeah. I’m an expert at that one.

Jeff: Well, did you ever heard of O’Malley? Scott?

Victoria: Larry I don’t think so.

Jeff: O’Malley Scott O’Malley said that John Murphy was an optimist.

Victoria: my God, she is.

Mark: I like that.

Jeff: And so even if things go wrong and and and and when we’re preparing for a negotiation, you think of everything that the client may throw out and we need to prepare for it and think about how we’re going to respond, how we’re going to handle it, not emotionally right and what and what we’re going to do. Because even if the client comes back and doesn’t do any of those things and it goes smoothly, it was not a waste of your time because you were prepared for it.

Jeff: And if it did come up, it would not have cost you the deal. So many people are so busy. I’m so busy, I’m so busy and they want to see how busy they are, but they don’t want to take the time to do the basics. And we always have to remember to do the basics on one of those basics.

Jeff: As I recall, planning our pre negotiation planning to make sure we are high class.

Victoria: Actually that is going to be a good podcast topic for the future. Jeff I just wrote it down, so you’ll be getting an invitation from me on that one. Awesome. All right. And here we are down to the last sin. What is this last deadly sin of negotiating?

Jeff: The last of seven negotiating is taking that money is the real issue.

Victoria: Okay, How do you mean?

Jeff: So it’s the easiest objection your client ever give you is that it costs too much or that it’s too much money. And what I find is that budget investment is pliable in that the more pain we get, you don’t salary before you. We talk about.

Victoria: Pain all the time.

Jeff: Getting enough pain from a client regardless of getting 3 to 5 pains from the client. Distinct pains. And when you get more pain, it becomes more pliable. I just recently and you’re got a piece of paper and throw the dough up in the air.

Victoria:

Jeff: Yeah. I’ve always wanted to be able to do that. And. And so personally, although none of these places here offer advice on how to do that, and so my wife Bobby collapsed, and it was really, really cool. And what I learned the first time from the job, they are my hand up where my fingers lawyers guide those and my fingers punched a hole and ran right down my arm.

Victoria: Okay, Right.

Jeff: And then the next time I get it, they taught me to use a closed hand so it doesn’t puncture the job. And then I found out that my jaw was cracking because it didn’t have enough water. It was too dry. And so they said, is the part the perfect balance of power and water will make your jaw pliable.

Jeff: The perfect balance of pain will make budget more pliable.

Victoria: Also for our client.

Jeff: The more pain you get, you get five what we call EpiPens. You’ll be amazed at how pliable the client’s investment range or budget becomes because your they are feeling real pain when you go out quite a lot. What happens to often is a moderate get one pain is too small and we’re cramping it right one pain and that’s what they try to sell off of.

Jeff: And then once the client has a budget of $50,000 and it comes out at $150,000, they’re shocked and are amazed that client gets upset. And that’s probably the part of the deal where instead, if we are getting really good pain, we get three eye paints. You’ll be amazed at how the $150,000 budget seems perfectly reasonable.

Victoria: Okay. Right. Okay. So which one of these is the most mis misunderstood?

Jeff: I think the most interesting story. One is this the last one that we sent right to the money is is not money is the real problem. And it’s almost never is a real problem. It’s almost never that we got it’s almost always that we’ll get the pain.

Victoria: So how do conviction and belief relate to negotiation?

Jeff: yeah, I huge. It’s a huge thing if you if you don’t have conviction that what you’re selling is worth the money that you’re charging for it, then you are in big trouble right from the start. And that’s, you know, I had a closet design, dark closet organizer company come to the house once, and then they they caught a $50,000 supply for closet organizers.

Jeff: I laughed out loud.

Victoria: I have to think.

Jeff: Right. Okay. And when I laughed out loud, she went some 15,000 down to 10,000, Right?

Mark: Wow. Yeah.

Jeff: That’s the was her conviction low? Well, not.

Victoria: Very dang high if she was willing to make that.

Jeff: Sacrifice. Wow. So if you don’t have conviction of belief about the value of your service and the value of what you’re doing, that’s where we had the trouble with dropping prices. And by the way, that’s the number one area of mindset. So no area salespeople need to go work on. And so if you’re a revival out there, you have salespeople and you’re complaining that your salespeople are consistently discounting too much or that they have no conviction or belief about the value of your services, that’s what you need to be working on.

Victoria: For sure. So how could we avoid some of these sins?

Jeff: I think being aware of them is the is the first step in avoiding them. Let’s take a step. Is strategizing ahead of time doing your preparation for a negotiation and realizing that you, as I said, everything you want or need is owned by somebody else. You are always negotiating. Even in the discovery process, you are still negotiating everything you’re gathering.

Jeff: It’s information, information, power. And that information will allow you to negotiate much more power.

Victoria: Awesome. Thank you so much for that.

Mark: Jeff. I have a conviction and a belief that I’m going to ask you lightning around questions now.

Jeff: Awesome. Let’s do it. And now here’s the reminders. Advantage Lightning round. It’s a trap.

Mark: All right, let’s put 60 seconds on the clock. Here we go. What’s your favorite business book?

Jeff: And why am I here? This book is brand new. It’s called The Climb by Sameer Train, and it’s about climbing from sales person to sales manager.

Mark: that’s cool. If you weren’t a sales trainer, what do you think you’d be doing?

Jeff: Well, I might be playing Major League Baseball, but I was never good enough to do that.

Mark: What are you not very good at?

Jeff: I had trouble hitting the baseball at once. It got over 95 miles an hour.

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

Jeff: we talked about that before my car. I’ve seen that. My car, my desk is a disaster for the car. For some reason.

Mark: What’s the last show you watched on TV?

Jeff: So where are your game yesterday?

Mark: In one word, describe your high school self and nerdy.

Victoria: Okay, Jeff, this was really good. And I think that everybody can do better at negotiations. It’s just a skill that I think as you as you demonstrated, we can learn how to be better at it. So I think this can be very valuable for folks to really pay attention, to be be super aware of. So, Jeff, if people want to learn more about all the deadly sins and about this great sales skills that you train remodelers through Sandler, where do they go?

Victoria: How do they find out more?

Jeff: Well, I think the best place to start is website. They think they can look at the sales guys program that we have that right. That is obviously dealing with remodelers and competitive areas. All we do is work on sales training and work and sales shows. They can look at one of our strategic initiatives, right? Whether that be the leading tech train for when the phone rings or how to do it.

Jeff: We didn’t say properly or our client management that are profit supply master class that is for designers and production people or our management class that will just integrate versus for people who manage salespeople and really learn about how to have properly managed and properly coached and trained people. Great. And so the other and then I guess the other way would be they could look back on the website, which is part of this deal are the ITC at San Orbitz sorry dot Sandler dot com.

Jeff: Are they going to stay on that email and just that Orbitz Examiner.com.

Victoria: All right great thanks.

Mark: You know you know what, I think I’m going to do? I’m going to create a redirect. I’m going to link to all of Jeff’s courses and classes at remodelers advantage dot com slash Jeff.

Victoria: There you go.

Jeff: there we go. That’s a great idea. All right.

Mark: We’ll do that.

Victoria: Now, before I let you go, I want you to share with our listening audience your five words of wisdom and why they resonate with you.

Jeff: Professions, The enemy of Good, and the reason that so many people try to be perfect and as a result, they don’t do anything and they freeze. And sometimes you just have to be good and take action.

Victoria: Okay. All right. That’s great. Very profound. Thank you so much, Jeff. This has been great. We appreciate it. We’ll have you back on again and we’ll be seeing you at the Share summit.

Jeff: yeah. So excited for that. Good. Everybody gather to see people actually face to face.

Victoria: Yes. With real faces.

Jeff: Who?

Victoria: Yes. All right, Jeff, thank you so much. We’ll talk again.

Mark: Thank you. Thanks, Jeff.

Jeff: Thanks, Mark.

Victoria: So, Mark, which of those sins did you find the most interesting?

Mark: You know, they were all good. I mean, I’ve most it just resonated with me, the silence part, because I’ve been so successful with that. You’ve said, well, Mark, you’re such a good negotiator to me. And 80% of my success comes from not saying anything. I mean, I’ve done it on you at least four or five dozen times. I just sit there quietly and you’re such a talker, you can’t not talk.

Victoria: So, you know, and I have to admit, when I was a commission salesperson many years ago, that was the thing. You took the cart, you talked and you finished up the contract. You stated the price, turned the contract around, handed him a pen, and just sat there and waited. And it was so hard.

Mark: Yeah, it’s it is. It is hard. It’s awkward silence. It’s painful. I love how he did Jeff say that? They caught the 5 seconds of courage.

Victoria: I think.

Mark: Our guts. Yeah. 5 seconds cuts. That’s great. It is good. It’s hard. Try it sometime. It’s really challenging just to let the silence take over. But yeah.

Victoria: A lot of really interesting tips. I thought the unilateral decisions piece was the most interesting to me.

Mark: Yeah. You know, actually refresh my memory on that one.

Victoria: Well, it’s just making decisions based on what you think they’re going to want, right? Not asking for anything in return.

Mark: Right. Right. I don’t remember which number it was, but money is not. The issue is that was number seven, I think. Yeah. The last one. Yeah. That’s that’s a huge one. It’s rarely money. Right.

Victoria: So, so so I’ve been told, you know, I still get caught up in that once in a while though. Yeah. It’s very interesting topic. I think we can all learn how to be a better negotiator. So, you know, glad that Jeff came and shared these tips.

Mark: Yeah, me too. Yeah. All right. Well, we want to thank Jeff for for sharing all that great stuff. Like I said, I’m going to add that that link I think for mailers advantage dot com slash Jeff Clark easy way to find all of his offerings on our website. Great And of course we want to thank you our loyal listeners for listening week in and week out.

Mark: I am Mark Harari.

Victoria: And I’m Victoria Downing and see you next week. This has been another episode of PowerTips Unscripted The Remodelers Guide to Business visit W WW dot Remodelers advantage dot com To learn more about roundtable, our World-Class Peer Advisory Program. There you can also find information about our business consulting services, upcoming life events and much more. And finally, don’t forget to subscribe to the show and comment on iTunes.

Victoria: Thanks for listening to all.