Mark: Today on Power Tips Unscripted, we talked to Jeff Borovitz with Sandler Training. Jeff has trained hundreds of remodeling salespeople, designers and owners to help them increase sales and margins. So we’ve asked him to join us here to share his top ten sales tips with you, and we’ll hear what they are in just a minute.

Victoria: Hi, I’m Victoria Downing and welcome to Power Tips 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, Marc Harari.

Mark: Good morning.

Victoria: How are you?

Mark: Pretty? Pretty good. Good.

Victoria: Yeah. You know.

Mark: Sales.

Victoria: Sales, right. We were we were both salespeople at one point, weren’t we?

Mark: Yes. And I’m not good at it. That’s why I’m here. Yeah.

Jeff: You know, I.

Victoria: Managed to make a living at it for a number of years, but I was never the superstar that one would hope. You know, so we want all of our members and all of our listeners to be that superstar. So we’re gonna bring this awesome information to them right in a moment.

Jeff: Okay.

Mark: That sounds good. You sound really eager.

Victoria: I am always eager, aren’t you? You know, I went to a tailor yesterday to get a skirt tailored. And she said to me, you are just so full of energy. And I thought, oh my God, I’m standing, getting a skirt hemmed. So yeah. So I’m enthusiastic about just about.

Mark: Everything, right?

Victoria: But for all of us in particular today. Cool. All right, so we’re here to say welcome, Jeff. This is his third, guest appearance on Power Tips Unscripted. And Jeff works with dozens and dozens of our members to help them improve their sales process. And today, he’s here to talk to us about his top ten selling tips. Welcome, Jeff.

Jeff: Thanks for having me on again. I’m looking forward to this.

Victoria: It’s always fun. You’re always an easy and easy interview.

Mark: That’s what we look for here. Easy.

Jeff: We don’t. I’m happy to be easy. In this case.

Mark: If the list less work we have to do, the better.

Victoria: So. So, Jeff. Okay. Top ten sales tips. Are these just for remodelers or can they apply to everybody?

Jeff: Well they certainly yeah. The top ten certainly applies to everybody. But what we’ve done here is really take the top ten and customize it to Remodelers for remodeling salespeople remodel, for designers and for owners and, and even for our production folks that are in the field of house to work and talk about change orders, which is really another type of sale.

Victoria: Right? Right. Okay, good. So, like, give us some what are these tips?

Jeff: So the first one is, always open and close every interaction with the client with a upfront contract or what we call it with the membership, we call a Palo. And it’s really an agenda setting statement to make sure that everybody’s on the same page about why we’re here, what we’re talking about today, what the client wants to talk about.

Jeff: Because and this is really important, because when we fail to ask the client what they want to talk about, we’re missing a golden opportunity because most of our clients will tell us exactly how to sell to them. If we’re just smart enough to ask and stop talking.

Victoria: Great.

Jeff: And and then and then we can share our agenda and we talk about as much as, as much as a client or potential client is so happy to have you in their home. They want to know when you’re going to be there, but they also want to know when you’re going to leave and putting some time on it.

Jeff: Hey, we’re going to be together for 90 minutes. And getting that understanding upfront is really important. So you don’t run into situations where, where somebody 15, 20 minutes and says, oh, you know what? I forgot to tell you, I have to go pick up Johnny from practice. So, we only have ten more minutes. I know we were supposed to have longer.

Jeff: So we want to know if that’s going to happen. We want to know upfront before the meeting starts. Okay. And then finally, the the last part is an outcome of making sure that both parties understand what decision has to be made at the end of the meeting today. And every meeting has some kind of a decision, even if it’s just to have another meeting, that has to make it has to happen.

Jeff: And we want to agree to that upfront with the client so that there’s no surprises at the end, because surprise ends up it ends up that surprises the enemy of yes. And we want clients to say yes. We can’t be surprising them. So we want to get their agreement upfront. Here’s a decision we have to make today. Is that okay.

Mark: So that you said it’s called pallet. What did the initial stand for.

Jeff: Purpose agenda logistics. And the outcome.

Mark: Got it okay.

Victoria: You know it’s funny I’m not funny. But I hear our members referring to the pelo in in their roundtables meetings when they’re in you just talking about sales and so on. So it’s a it’s a little phrase that’s become embedded in the roundtables culture a bit.

Jeff: So that’s good to hear. I’m really happy to hear that. And the other part of that is at the end of the meeting, after the decision has been made to move forward to the next step, whatever that is. We need to do a closing, Paolo, at the end of what? The purpose of the next meeting is what the client wants to make sure they talk about the next.

Jeff: We talk about the next meeting, but we want to make sure we talk about the next meeting. When the next meeting is going to happen, who’s going to be there? How what time is it going to start, what timescale and who’s responsible for bringing what our who with them and what decision will have to be made at the end of that meeting so that again, there’s no surprises and it just becomes, if you do it opening California, closing Palo, you will be so surprised at how much more smoothly your sales meetings run.

Jeff: All right. Great.

Victoria: All right. That was a great sales tip. Now, how about another one?

Jeff: Another one would be to you get to choose when you’re going to be uncomfortable.

Victoria: That’s an interesting one.

Jeff: And every sales process as a as a sales, as a salesperson in every in every time you’re dealing with a client, there’s going to be some point that you’re going to be uncomfortable, whether it’s talking to the client about about their pain and getting their pains or problems from them and asking the tough questions that will make the client a little uncomfortable.

Jeff: Some people are afraid to ask those questions, and when we miss out on asking those questions about their pains and problems, and we slip into more comfortably doing what I call the, the dream, questions instead of saying, you know, what is it? You know, what is it about your kitchen that frustrates you? Which is a pain based question.

Jeff: Instead, a lot of remodelers that really. And they as a result of this, they really struggle. They’ll ask the question, oh, well, tell me what your dream kitchen looks like. It’s much harder to sell to the dream than it is to sell to solve the current pain. So the client has. All right. And so when I say you get to choose when you’re going to be uncomfortable, you can choose, you can be uncomfortable.

Jeff: So early on. And having that pain discussion which is uncomfortable for you, uncomfortable for the client. Or you can choose to be uncomfortable later when you tried to sell to the dream and you can’t get to the dream, and you’re going to be uncomfortable later in the process. Personally, I would much rather be uncomfortable early in the process because we want to limit if the clients doesn’t have pain that we can solve.

Jeff: We want to know that upfront so that we can disqualify them and go find somebody else who’s going to say yes and sign a sign, a design agreement or, or a remodeling contract. Right. Okay.

Victoria: That makes a lot of sense. All right. Let’s go for number three.

Jeff: Number three is macro is what we call in Sandler matching and mirroring. Matching. It’s really important that we match and mirror the people we’re talking to, both in body language and in our tonality. And our rate of speech. Right. Because if the simple reality here is people tend to buy from people they’re comfortable with. And if you ever get, you know, they, we have a neighbor who she’s very touchy when she talks to anybody.

Jeff: You know? Anybody like that? Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, my my wife sometimes feels that after she has a conversation with this neighbor that she, she says, I feel like I’ve been molested because she’s so.

Victoria: Hard to match that, isn’t it?

Jeff: And so we want we don’t necessarily want to match that. Right. But if somebody is, if somebody is that is standing at a distance from you and you’re one of those touchy people, you’re going to make them feel very uncomfortable if they’re not a touchy person. So you always want to let the if they’re if you’re a touchy person, let somebody else touch your arm before you reach back and touch theirs.

Jeff: Right. And that’s an example of doing some matching mirroring. If, if they are somebody who talks, who talks super loud or, talks in rapid fire succession, you should match and mirror that because it really, really helps.

Mark: And from a, you know, from a psychological perspective, I assume is because we like people that are like us.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s exactly it.

Mark: You’re kind of seeing yourself in the person you’re talking to.

Jeff: Yeah, that’s exactly right. And and it’s the salesperson’s job to make the other person comfortable. It’s not our job. It’s not the client’s job to change their to change themselves, to match us. It’s our job to be that can million and go match and mirror what we’re seeing from our client. And in some ways that can be a little bit exhausting for salespeople, right?

Jeff: Because they, you know, you might go from there your first call at 9 a.m. with a client that is, you know, very, stern, very formal to your next call that’s at 11:00 or 1130. And they might be very loosey goosey, playful, and you’ve got to adjust just on the fly. Right. And match and mirror the person you’re talking to.

Jeff: And by the way, matching and mirroring also extends to using the client’s words back at them.

Victoria: How do you mean?

Jeff: So when a client, when a client will say, will use some kind of phrase, a lot of times salespeople tend to paraphrase it back and put it in their own words and say it back instead may actually mirror the client’s own words back to them. Because when you do that, then you’re using their words. They’re, you know, they’re already comfortable with their words.

Jeff: And here’s the most amazing thing I’ll say about this. People never argue with their own words. They will, they will often argue with yours.

Victoria: Oh, okay. That’s great. That’s great. Why? Cause an argument if you don’t have to, right. Yeah.

Jeff: Right.

Victoria: Avoid it.

Jeff: Okay, good. So number four is tonality matters. And by that I’ve.

Victoria: Already talked a little bit about matching tonality. So what do you what is this one. How is this one different.

Jeff: This one’s like I call it the late night FM DJ voice. Yeah. You know, remember you ever listened to late night FM radio, like, at 2 a.m.?

Victoria: Not often. Second.

Jeff: Oh, not often, but you’ve done it right?

Mark: Absolutely.

Jeff: And as you guys got this, it’s always the guy gal got. They’ve got that silky smooth voice. Yes. Right. And there. And so when I say late night, there’s some deejay voice. I’m, I want you to have that that silky smooth, that sitting, that silky smooth. Sound your voice. But more importantly, I want you to measure your rate of speech when you talk.

Jeff: Because, yes, we want to match mere a little bit of rate of speech. But a lot of times, what happens when you run into a roadblock in your sale, when somebody says something you don’t, you don’t expect, or they tell you they’re talking to two other, remodeling companies, or they ask you the question. My favorite, the favorite question everybody gets right is, well, why should we do business with you versus somebody else?

Jeff: What’s so special about your company and what happens here is, you know, the salespeople who struggle a little bit tend to speed up their rate of speech when they answer that, and when they speed up, they know most people talk about, most people talking about 122 words per minute in America. That’s the average. But when when they get that, when they get that, that unexpected question, it salespeople who struggle.

Jeff: Well, actually speed up to about 154 words per minute. And when they speed up, it makes them seem, it makes them come across as flustered and and lacking confidence. And so instead, what I want you to do is take a deep breath and slow your rate of speech down. And if you were at 120 to go down to 100 and slow it down, because when you slow down your rate of speech, you sound more confident.

Jeff: You sound, you sound more confident, and you sound more comfortable, which will make your client less guarded.

Victoria: Okay, that makes a lot of sense.

Mark: I like, you know, and I like what you did in in in the act of slowing down your rate, you had longer pauses between ideas. And I assume that’s part of it, too. Absolute pauses are a great tool in general, right?

Jeff: Yes, absolutely. I, you know, salespeople tend to be afraid of. And maybe that’s tip number 11. Don’t be afraid of silence. Just free tip.

Mark: For.

Jeff: Everybody. You know, maybe, you know, it’s silence is your friend write a a. There’s nothing about a pause in a conversation. When you pause, a lot of times your client will think that you are giving careful thought and consideration to what they just said. And not just coming off with some off the cuff or canned response.

Jeff: Right.

Victoria: It also doesn’t silence. Also add a little bit of pressure to the sale clothes as well I remember.

Jeff: Oh yeah.

Victoria: You sales person. It would be a push. The contract and the pen over and then you just stop and wait and not say anything.

Jeff: Yeah you can certainly do that and that, that works. Also when you want to add there’s a press technique that interviewers do called the Silent Lamb. And then the Silent Lamb. They’ll at a interviewer will ask the interviewee a tough question, and then the interviewer will stop talking, and they’ll stop talking for up to 10s. And it’s and it’s really amazing because over 90% of the time, I right around seven seconds, the interviewee who doesn’t want to answer that question feels so much pressure that they start to talk anyways.

Jeff: And it’s something they actually train interview interviewers on how to do this. And and it’s funny, I trained a large global PR company and they teach their, they teach their clients who are the ones being interviewed how to resist the silent alarm. And most of them still struggle to do it even with training. That’s great.

Mark: It reminds me of Glengarry Glengarry Glen Ross at the end.

Jeff: Yes.

Mark: Machine just talks about he stood there holding that pen for an eternity in silence.

Jeff: Yeah.

Mark: Anyway. All right so number five right. Yes.

Jeff: Yeah. Number five is practice positivity. You know mindset really really matters. And when, when we, we all have a baseline intelligence level, when we have a neutral attitude. Right. And when we’re positive, when we have a positive attitude, it’s amazing. We feed dopamine into our brain with positivity and and that dopamine makes our neurons and our brains fire faster.

Jeff: And you get this neurochemical reaction that actually they have they’ve done studies and shows that when you’re in, when you’re in a positive mindset, you are 31% smarter than you are in neutral mindset, you’re a 31% better problem solver. Wow. And you’re 31% more persuasive.

Victoria: There you go. It just going into it with a positive attitude.

Jeff: Yes. But yes, that’s easy.

Victoria: But you do that.

Jeff: And they and and guess what? They studied it also when you’re, when you have a negative frame of mind or a negative mindset going into it, you deny the dopamine to your brain. It makes your neurons fire slower and that you lack that neurochemical reaction. And they found it. Your 31% dumber one year and 31% less intelligent, 31% less good at problem solving.

Jeff: And you are much, much less persuasive.

Victoria: Okay. So good argument there.

Jeff: And and but here’s the great part. You ever been do you ever hear anybody say, well, you know, Vic, you just got to be positive, right? And Dick probably doesn’t ever have anybody say that because as she said beginning the Taylor even noticed this how positive she is. But but you know. Yeah. Vic, your daughter, your your daughter went to University of Michigan, right?

Jeff: Yes. Yeah. And and so when she was growing up, did you ever tell her. Oh, you just gotta be more positive.

Victoria: Probably.

Jeff: Yeah. And. And so the truth matter is, a lot of people say that. But is it easy to go from negative to positive? No no no no no. So what I’m going to tell you is if you’re negative first work on getting to neutral.

Mark: Right.

Jeff: Just by going from negative to neutral, you’re 31% smarter than you were negative.

Victoria: Right?

Jeff: Right right. So that delta between positive -62%, that’s that’s really a lot.

Victoria: Yes it.

Mark: Is. Yeah. So 31% less of an blankety blank.

Jeff: Yeah that’s true too. And so but and so let me give you everybody this tip. All you need to do to help yourself and to start getting that dopamine firing is go in front of a mirror and smile. The, the working the muscles in your face have shown it’s been shown that, that, that read that muscular move of smiling will fire dopamine.

Jeff: It, your body starts to fire dopamine and you get that hit a dopamine into your brain. That helps the neurons kick in. And you can move from negative from, from negative to neutral. Okay. All right. Just by going in and doing a little bit of smiling at Amir.

Mark: Cool. Jeff, real quick before you go to number six, I wanted to just tell everybody this listening. You’ve just agreed to be one of our 27 speakers at the summit in September. Yeah, excited for that.

Jeff: Me too. Yeah.

Mark: Yeah, it’s going to be great. And so to let everybody know the summit has been locked in, it has been set. The Remodeler summit for 2022 is going to be at Gaylord National Harbor in Washington, DC. It’s going to be September 21st at the 22nd. And the tickets are going to go on sale in April, but we’re going to have a pre-sale of that tickets going.

Mark: You know what, pre-sales like Pre-Boarding. But it’s going to be like a private sale only for people that are like listening to this show in our community are going to have access to that. So, for the pre-sale only the tickets are going to be on sale for that day, only for 50% off. So wow. If that’s great.

Mark: Anybody wants to check that out. It’s a secret for our listeners and our community. So go to Remodeler summit.com and get on that list so you can get access to that that one day sale. So and Jeff among 26 other speakers are going to be there. And we have some great ones lined up.

Victoria: Very much so very excited. Yeah. It’s a beautiful facility.

Mark: Oh my gosh. It’s you should go to Vermont or summit.com just to see what the the facility looks like. It’s amazing. Yeah. Anyway just a quick aside, but we we’re excited to have you there Jeff. Yep.

Jeff: So I’m excited to be there. I went to the last one in September. It was in Phoenix. And that was that was outstanding. And I can’t wait for, Washington DC this fall.

Mark: Yeah, it’s going to it’s gonna be awesome. So number six.

Jeff: Number six is when you’re asking questions, avoid asking questions that begin with who, when or why. Because the reason we want to avoid asking questions that begin with who, when or why is because those are questions that are defensive in nature. And it’s because when we were growing up, you know, Mark, were you ever when you were growing up, did you touch the thermostat in the house when you were a kid?

Mark: Not if I wanted to make it to the next day.

Jeff: That’s right. Right. Because if that if dad woke up in the morning as mom and dad woke up in the morning and the thermostat was set at 76 degrees, what was the first question they were going to ask?

Mark: Yeah, it’s all about what?

Jeff: What did you what did you do? Yeah.

Victoria: Who or who touched it?

Jeff: Who? Who moved the thermostat to 76 degrees and that’s when. Mark, do you have any brothers and sisters?

Mark: Yeah. Younger brother. Yeah. So he.

Jeff: So that’s when you that’s when you’re you you told your parents that the third child they didn’t know they had did it, which was not me. Right, right right, right. And and so question from all of us had the same childhood. Right. And so who what? I’m sorry. Who, when and why are questions that that prompt a defensive response just from growing up in our childhood.

Jeff: And it puts the client on the defensive, throws their guard walls up. We don’t want to do that. We want to ask questions that begin with the words what and how. So? Because when we ask questions that begin with what and how, it opens up imagination and it makes and they become more open. And when they become more open about what?

Jeff: When they’re answering the question, they’re giving you more information, rich and longer answers, which is very, very valuable to you. And that’s how you gather information from the client. And by the way, you know, we we want to use what and how questions to get the client to be more talkative and when we ask good what and how questions, they’ll give us all of the pain and problems that they have, which in the end, pain, the pains that we get and what we call, you know, the problems of clients have.

Jeff: And Sandler we call pains. And the more pain we get, it’s like lubrication for the sales process is just reduces friction and makes it easier to get to a signed agreement. Great.

Victoria: Okay, I like it. All right. Tip number seven. Right.

Jeff: Oh yeah. Tip number seven. This is my favorite. This is one of my favorite ones. Always use the F-bomb. Not that one. The problem here. Yeah, the F-bomb I’m talking about is the word fair for air. Because here’s the thing. When you incorporate the use of the word fair, into your sales and your into your conversations, every client that you go see as a remodeler, they want to make sure that they’re being treated fairly.

Jeff: It’s their main concern. Am I getting a fair deal. Am I being treated fairly. You know, and it’s their number one, fear. And the more you can get them to agree that things you’re talking about are fair, the less fearful they become of that, and the less guarded they become, and the more. And once they’ve agreed that something’s fair, they’ll spend the rest of their time with you trying to look for how you’re being fair versus worried about whether or not they’re getting a fair deal.

Victoria: Okay.

Jeff: All right. And so what? Yeah, there’s a company out there called, labs. They all gong. They’re an AI company. All they do is record sales calls, okay? And they analyze them and they the millions of sales calls, and they’ve determined that the top performers, that top sales performance across every industry is used. The word fair in a conversation with a client on an average of two times per conversation.

Jeff: Okay. All right. Great. Bottom salespeople use the word fair 0.2 times per conversation, meaning it takes ten conversations for them to use the word fair twice versus a top performer who uses it twice in half in one conversation.

Victoria: That’s really interesting. Just just the use of that term, can affect the results that much.

Jeff: Got it. Yeah. It’s amazing because, you know, the remember we talked, tip number one about always use a parallel. Well, at the end if, if at the end of it. I’ll just skip the P in the a the L for the example I’m about to go. But if the at the end of our thing, if our agreement is, you know, hey at the end of our time together today, we’ll just have to make a decision about whether we want, whether or not we want to move forward.

Jeff: If you decide that we’re not a good fit for you, would you be nice enough to let me know? Yes. Yeah. And if I decide if I come to a conclusion that we’re just not a good fit for your project, is it okay if I tell you that and give you a referral? Somebody who would be? Yes. And if we both agree that we want to move forward, Dick.

Jeff: Then we’ll go ahead and take the next step in our process, which is to sign a design agreement that has a nominal fee attached to it. So that sound fair? Okay. You see how I work that fair in. Right at the end.

Victoria: Yeah. Okay. Great. Good. Thank you.

Jeff: Yeah.

Victoria: All right. Tip eight.

Jeff: Tip eight. And this is the one that I think most remodelers mess up on okay. And so one that causes them so much heart rate so much heartburn, so much grief and so much stress. Never give a budget number to the client before they give you their budget number.

Victoria: Now, why do you say that?

Jeff: Because no. Most clients when you first of all, we walk in and we give a ballpark number. Right. Well I think this kitchen is going to be $150,000. How do you know that? I mean, a if you’re using historical precedent, which a lot of Remodelers do, is that even relevant with today’s price increases?

Victoria: Probably not.

Jeff: Right. And I can’t tell you the number of people that call me and say, Jeff, I got a problem. I gave him a budget. I gave him a ballpark range of $150,000, and now it’s coming in at 2000 at 240. Well, you’ve killed your credibility at that point, right? Right. They’re not going to trust you. And it’s hard for them to trust anything you say after that.

Jeff: Yep. And the reality is most people want to give that want they want they want to give that budget because they’re afraid the budget, the client’s going to give them so low. Right. Because clients, clients get their budgets. Really three places. They get their budgets from HGTV. Right. And those we know are not accurate. Okay. They get their budget from Google also not reliable.

Jeff: Right. And then third place they get the budgets from friends who have remodeled. And guess what. Friends who have remodeled don’t always tell the truth about how much they spent. You know we had some we had some. We remodeled our kitchen. We had some friends over, and they asked us how much we spent on remodel the kitchen.

Jeff: And Molly said, oh, it’s about $100,000. It wasn’t. And after they left, I said, why did you lie to her? Oh, and Molly said, well, I don’t want them to think we spent that kind of money on the kitchen. I don’t want them to think we have that kind of money. And so people, people don’t tell the truth for different reasons.

Jeff: Right? Right. And so and so we understand clients when they come in, they will it will take them months to settle on a final budget. That’s what the design process is for. And what you want to know what what we really want to know is the budget conversation in a in our first call when we’re doing discovery is a one way discussion.

Jeff: Them to us. And don’t freak out if the client says well I think it’s going to be $85,000. I think we’re comfortable spending $85,000. Don’t freak out because you think the kitchen’s going to be 200,000. So instead ask some questions. Remember I said ask what and how questions, When we want a question we might want to ask, there’s oh, wow.

Jeff: Okay. How did you arrive at that number. Find out how they got there.

Victoria: Right.

Jeff: Is it the number they saw on television. Is that number a neighbor told them about. Or is it the number. They just are. They just have in the bank. Right. Yeah. And then the next question we want to ask is and I call this the magic budget question, is if that turns out not to be enough money to get you everything you want, need, where, where will we find the rest?

Jeff: And the key there is the. We. Right. We want to be pulling on the same side of the rope as they are. And when I say we, I mean let me be very clear to everybody listening to this, I am in no way shape or form advocating that you ever discount.

Victoria: Right.

Jeff: Totally agree. I, I am the we is a we have the client in us. Where will we find it. It may be reducing scope.

Victoria: Right.

Jeff: Or a magically clients may have some stock that they forgot to mention that they could sell to add to their budget. Or maybe they’re willing to take out a home equity loan. Right. But the we as a generic we yes, it is not about us cutting the project or ice cutting our prices. Right.

Victoria: All right. Tip number nine.

Jeff: Tip number nine is never answer an unasked question.

Victoria: How do you mean?

Mark: Well, the best.

Jeff: Salespeople we tend to have this brain fog or in our heads, that we take statements that people make and we make them questions. For example, when a client says, what if I says, oh, well, that was more than I was hoping to spend. And we start to justify, defend and explain our price. Did they ask a question?

Jeff: Know why are we answering it? Right?

Mark: That makes me I just watched, really? I used to watch The West Wing long ago, and it was out, and I saw a rerun of it just the other day. And the the office, the the white House counsel was talking to, the press secretary preparing her for to take the stand. And he says to her randomly, he said, do you know what time it is?

Mark: And she goes, 1145 and he says, you need to stop doing that, to stop answering questions that weren’t asked of you. Now, I’m going to ask you again, do you know what time it is? And she says, yes.

Jeff: Oh, I remember that episode. I was a huge fan of The West Wing, I remember.

Mark: Yeah, and that was great because, you know, of course, but it just really struck me because I’m thinking somebody says, do you know what time it is? The answer is yes, not answer the time.

Victoria: Right? Right.

Mark: It’s funny.

Jeff: Anyway, sorry, I just mark.

Mark: Pops in my head.

Jeff: There’s a funny story. Larry, I heard Larry King tell this story once. Larry King was on a day. I said, speaking of that with Yogi Berra, the, Yankee, the Hall of Fame Yankees catcher and he and Larry had forgotten his watch in his hotel room. And he looked at Yogi, said, do you know what time it is?

Jeff: And Yogi says, you mean right now?

Mark: That’s great. I love Yogi Berra.

Victoria: All right. Tip ten.

Jeff: Tip number ten is apologize tactically, in today’s society, we overuse the word sorry. We’re sorry for everything. We’re sorry. Sorry. I’m a minute late. Two hours in, sorry to have to ask you this question. Sorry to bother you, but I do have one more question. Any of that sound familiar? Yeah. Yeah. Instead. And so we use sorry so much that we actually that we actually end up diluting the, diluting the word that it has no impact and no meaning.

Jeff: And so instead of using, sorry all the time. You can somebody came up with the idea of using the word remember the word. Pardon. Oh pardon my tardiness. Right. Pardon my lateness. Right. But or or just if you’re a minute late to zoom, don’t even apologize. Just get onto it. Okay. Right. But when you say the apology save the sorry for when you really need it, it will have much more impact.

Jeff: And so when they are asking, when they’re asking you, well can you cut the price by $7000 or $17,000. You can come back and say really sorry, I really wanted to be able to get to that number, but it just wasn’t doable. Again, I’m really sorry. The word sorry has a lot more impact if it’s the first time they’ve heard you say it.

Victoria: Right.

Jeff: And they and you, you are putting yourself in there’s a psychology term called a drama triangle where there’s one tip of the triangle. There’s somebody that’s the aggressor. And another tip, there’s somebody who’s the victim. And then at the other tip there’s somebody who’s the rescuer. Okay. When you come in and you use your sorry there and it’s the first time they’ve heard it, you’re putting yourself in the victim mode.

Jeff: And the client either can choose to to be the aggressor or they can choose to rescue you. More times than not, they’ll choose to rescue you, and you’re actually making your negotiation easier by having not use the word sorry all the way through the sales process and saving it for when you really need it. And so that’s what I mean by I apologize tactically.

Mark: Well, pardon me, Jeff, but it’s time for the lightning round. Are you ready for that?

Jeff: I am ready for that. Oh, and now here’s a remodelers advantage. Lightning round. It’s a draft.

Mark: All right, I’m putting 60s on the clock. Here we go. What is your favorite business book, and why?

Jeff: My favorite business book is asking questions the Sandler way. Because I think it’s one of the best books out there on what is probably the most important sales technique, which is to ask good questions.

Mark: If you weren’t a sales trainer to Remodelers, what do you think you’d be doing? And.

Jeff: I wish I was playing, I would I would be playing Major League Baseball, but, I couldn’t do that. So I guess I’m stuck. I’m stuck being a sales trainer.

Mark: What do you not very good at?

Jeff: Not very good at organization and cleanliness. As my wife and daughter told me last night when they came over to the office. Yeah.

Mark: Well, that’s next. One’s interesting. Your room, your desk or your car. Which do you clean first?

Jeff: Interestingly, it’s always my car. I am fanatical about the car. The car’s always clean inside and out.

Mark: Name something you refuse to share with others.

Jeff: By what I call my left column. Thoughts? Okay.

Mark: What was your favorite sitcom growing up?

Jeff: The Brady Bunch. You know.

Victoria: This. Hey, this has been great. Jeff. Thank you for sharing all these awesome tips. Now, this a couple things before we let you go. One is how do people learn more about you?

Jeff: Well, they can they can go to the Remodelers advantage, sag page and look up our sales edge program. They, they can also look at our, increasing profits, through better client management class for designers and non salespeople. And they could also look at our when the phone rings, training for, lead intake for, people to help you do better at getting lead and taking callers and getting qualified leads.

Jeff: All right.

Mark: Great. Yeah. All those can be found on the website. Yeah. We’ll put we’ll put links to that to in the show notes.

Victoria: Okay. Great. So now before I let you leave, I wanted to share with our listening audience your five words of wisdom and why they resonate with you.

Jeff: Sure. People always spend money emotionally, meaning that that sales or sales are sales are made emotionally and justified intellectually. And I think that that resonates with me because most people think they’re selling to the adult in the room and reality. Most clients make their decisions emotionally through needs, wants and desires and which is a which are all child personas, thoughts?

Jeff: They live in our child persona and our child voice in our head. And so we the only time the adults in the room, the intellectual portion is in the room is when we talk about money, to verify money and to sign contracts. The rest of the time when we’re talking about problems, needs, wants, and desires that the child’s in the room and and people will spend money to solve emotional needs.

Jeff: They don’t spend money. Nope. Let me be very clear. Nobody wakes up in the morning, says I want to spend $185,000 on a new kitchen. Nobody wakes up in the morning and says that, but they want they will spend money to solve the emotional needs they have as a result of having to deal with the kitchen that they have.

Jeff: And so when we can get to the emotional needs or pain, third level pain, that’s when people will spend money. So that’s why people always spend money emotionally is resonates with me.

Victoria: All right. Great. Thank you so much. This has been awesome. It was great having you on again. And we are super looking forward to seeing you at the summit. In September.

Jeff: Looking forward to being there. Thanks a lot for asking me to be on.

Victoria: You bet. Appreciate it Jeff. Thanks. Thanks, Joe.

Jeff: Thank you.

Victoria: Man, that was a lot of good information in one short podcast, wasn’t it?

Mark: Yeah, it’s a lot.

Jeff: Yeah.

Mark: So what the pauses pauses are great. And you know what? Pauses are great in almost everything in life except for on a podcast.

Jeff: Yes. You know.

Mark: You don’t want pauses on a podcast.

Victoria: The one of the one that stood out to me the most was the use of the word fair.

Jeff: Who would have thought?

Mark: Yeah, fair. You know, there was a couple of those things I remember from, very similar to the, what’s the book? Never split the difference. Yes. He he refers to fair in that book and and he’s explicit. He talks about that FM late night DJ voice.

Victoria: Really?

Jeff: Yes. Wow.

Mark: And, so that was ringing true to me there, but it’s, it was very funny.

Jeff: Yes.

Victoria: Philly, you almost got it there. That almost got a little deeper.

Mark: I just don’t quite have it.

Jeff: Yeah. So.

Mark: And the mirroring thing, I’ve, I’ve noticed people in general, I’ve, I’ve noticed people accidentally start mirroring other people, you know, and I’ve done it before. I’ve caught myself getting, like, a southern twang or something in my speech, just from being around somebody that’s talking that way. Right. It’s kind of funny. He’s had, you know, be a chameleon, right?

Jeff: Right.

Mark: I’m a karma chameleon. I come and go. Yeah.

Jeff: Hahaha. Yeah. All right, that’s good.

Mark: That was that was fun. We want to thank Jeff and definitely check out today when you get out of your car, get home, get wherever you’re going, go to Remodeler summit.com, take a look at where this amazing venue is. And you can see a couple of the keynote speakers. We’ve got a couple surprise announcements coming to and get on that list so that you can exclusively get the only time we’re going to offer them at 50% off.

Mark: That’s the only day we’re going to do it. So don’t call me a week later, a month later saying, hey, can I get that 50% off price because it’s not happening. So Remodeler summit.com check that out. So that was a great episode. We want to thank Jeff for being here and sharing his ten tips for Remodelers. And we want to thank you for listening.

Mark: Weekend. And we got a Mark Harari.

Victoria: And I’m Victoria Downing. See you next time.