Greg: [00:00:00]

So welcome to the Developed Coaching podcast. I’m Greg Wilkes, your host. Now. Today I’m just gonna talk about something that’s quietly costing most builders a fortune and almost no one is tracking this now. This is gonna be a really short podcast. Um, I’m just gonna blitz through this. We did a recent workshop on it too, uh, in much more detail, but, um, what we’re gonna talk about is your sales process today.

Greg: Now, when we sit down and we actually do the maths with our coaching members, the average builder is losing around 14,000 pounds a year on quotes that are going absolutely nowhere. So that’s painful, isn’t it? And the, the, the way we work that out, let’s say it’s 10 hours a week, 30 quid an hour, that’s 1200 pound a month.

Greg: That really adds up fast, doesn’t it, for people that are never, ever gonna say yes to you in the first place when you’re quoting.

Greg: So here’s the thing I want you to do. Before you price your next job, ask the client one question. What is your budget? That’s it. Now if they won’t tell you that’s a red flag, if their number is half of what the project actually costs, you’ve just saved yourself 20 hours.

 

 

[00:01:00]

One question, use it today. What is your budget?

Greg: Now, that’s just a start and I’m gonna walk you through in this podcast a five step system that completely changes how you win work. And I call it your conversion engine. Now one is gonna be qualifying your leads. . Two. Interview the client.

Greg: Three. Present a professional estimate. Four. Book a second meeting, and five, build a follow up system. Now I’ve coached hundreds of builders through this system and I’ve been in construction over. 25 years, so I know what works and what doesn’t. And I can tell you that the builders who do apply all five steps consistently are converting at 30% or higher, and most builders are converting less than one in 10.

Greg: So let’s fix that on this podcast today.

Greg: So step one. I just want you to be honest with me. Over the last month, how much time did you spend pricing work for people that were never really serious? Not, and you probably know the answer to this, you’ve probably been around to a property, you’ve walked through the door and within 30 seconds you thought to yourself, look, is this a complete waste of my time?

 

 

[00:02:00]

Greg: But you feel obliged to price it anyway. Does that sound familiar to you? Well, here’s what we need to fix here. We don’t even wanna walk through the door unless we know this person is worth our time. We don’t even wanna turn up, do we if if they’re, if they’re not ready. So before you visit, you’ve just got a, and you know, before you spend a single hour estimating, I want you to run them through a pre-qualification checklist.

Greg: And in this prequalification checklist, this can be done over the phone by your admin team. When they take the call, you’re just gonna ask simple things. Firstly. What’s your budget for this project? Um, if they won’t tell you that, that’s red flag number one. Um, people who hide their budget almost always have unrealistic expectations, and it’s not that you’re gonna try and come in one pound under their number.

Greg: You’re just trying to find out if this project is even in the right ballpark and is it the right project for you? Second thing, can you do a square meter rate sense check? Now you’ve probably priced enough work to know roughly what things cost per square meter.

 

 

[00:03:00]

If you don’t know the answer to that, you need to find that answer out.

Greg: And the way you can do that simply is by getting all your past estimates and looking at the square meters of those projects and dividing it by the total cost of the job. And what you will come to realize is you’ve probably got a very similar square meter rate on average. Now you can apply that rate and if a client’s maybe expecting a, a rear extension for a hundred grand, but the number says it should be 200 grand.

Greg: You know your answer straight away that you, you don’t, you know, there’s no point pricing for that client. The third thing question you really wanna ask is, how many other quotes are they getting? And they will answer this, um, if they get in six quotes, seven quotes. They’re just shopping around for price, aren’t they?

Greg: And you’re just gonna be one of many. So that’s a serious red flag. The fourth one red flag that you wanna watch out for is their timeline. Have they actually even got planning permission at the moment? Um, have they got a decision maker involved? Who’s not in the room? Are they ready to go or not? Or are they 12 months away from even starting?

 

 

Greg: [00:04:00]

So there’s lots of different red flags that you want, wanna look out for. There’s just a few there. But my rule is that if there’s three or more red flags on that checklist, don’t quote, it’s not worth it. Just politely say. Thank you. Really appreciate your time, but I’m probably not the right fit for you at the moment.

Greg: And you move on and you’ve just saved yourself hours of wasted pricing, hours of time, and you’ve protected your pipeline for clients who are actually serious. So that’s the the first thing that you need to do. Now, this is actually one of the first things we build for our coaching members. We, we have a proper prequalification system that they look at.

Greg: Um, we’ve even got scripts that are available that their admin team can use. So the builder really never visits a tire kicker and really is a game changer when you start to systemize it in this way. Step number two. So we’ve qualified the lead. That’s great. They’ve passed the initial checklist. Now, step number two, um, most builders will not do this step.

Greg: They’ll, they’ll do exactly the same thing. They’ll walk around the property, they’ll take some measurements.

 

 

[00:05:00]

Um, they’ll say to the client, I’ll get you a quote in a couple of weeks, and they’ll leave ’cause they’re busy. And that’s it. And this is where you can really lose out big time because you’ve just become one of maybe four identical builders who just did exactly the same thing.

Greg: They walk around, measure up and disappear. So the client’s got nothing to separate you from anything else. So what are they gonna base their decision on then? If there’s nothing to separate you? Well, clearly they’re gonna base their decision on price every single time. Now I wanna give you an example that that makes this really clear.

Greg: Um, let’s just imagine your pricing the same extension for two different clients. It’s the same project, same drawings, same spec. Now the first client is a young mom. Let’s say she’s pregnant. The baby’s on the way in six months, uh, and she’s got three other kids that are running around. She sits down and says to you, look, what’s really important to me, Greg, is that the site is clean and tidy.

Greg: I’ve got little ones I cannot be looking at, uh, a building site with hazards everywhere and standing ice left around and things like that.

 

 

[00:06:00]

I, I, and that’s really important to me that the site’s clean. The second thing that’s really important to me is I need this project finished on time ’cause our baby is coming, whether the extension is done or not.

Greg: So that’s client number one. And you’ve, you’ve spoke to the client, you’ve listened to them. The second client, let’s say, is a retired couple. Same work, same project, but they’re gonna go on three month cruise. And they say to you, look, Greg, we just want someone who’s gonna project manage the whole thing.

Greg: We want someone who’s gonna pick the materials, handle all the decisions, and then get back to us with a weekly update with photos. We don’t wanna have to think about it, we just wanna come home and it’s all done. Alright. Now just think about that. You’ve got the same project and two completely different buyers with different reasons for buying.

Greg: They’ve got different fears, they’ve got different things they value. Now, if you go and send both of them the same generic quote, which has just got a price on it and a list of items, what are they gonna do? All they’re gonna do is they’re gonna both be comparing the number at the bottom.

 

 

[00:07:00]

You’re just competing on price.

Greg: But let’s imagine you interview. This client first, and you actually ask them, you know, why are you doing this build? What is it that matters to you? What is it that keeps you up at night? Now, when you know the answer to those questions, you’ve really got some ammunition. Now, let’s go back to our example for the pregnant mum.

Greg: Your quote might mention your health and safety record. It might talk about your daily site cleanups. It might talk about how you guarantee a completion timeline. You might wanna say something like, you know, I personally come around at the end of every day to make sure your, your site is safe for your kids.

Greg: Something like that. Now what is that gonna mean for that pregnant mom? That’s gonna mean a lot, isn’t it? And for the retired couple, maybe your quote leads with project management, how we do weekly photo diaries. You have a dedicated site manager and you can say, look, you go and enjoy your cruise. We’re gonna handle everything, and you’ll get a summary from us every Friday.

Greg: Just so you know, it’s on track. So when you do that.

 

 

[00:08:00]

Neither of those clients is buying purely based on price anymore. The price still matters for some, but clients aren’t just buying on price. They’re buying on value. Now, specific value that’s tailored to what it, to what actually matters to them, and that’s the power of the client interview.

Greg: So step number two, you’ve gotta remember that here’s the key takeaway. Stop showing up, stop measuring and just leaving. Start asking questions. Really talk to them. Why are you doing this? Build? What is most important to you? What are you worried about? What would make this project look like a success for you?

Greg: Write those answers down and then use them in your estimate to build your unique selling proposition that speaks directly to that specific client. Now inside our coaching program, we use AI transcription tools to record these client conversations, and they pull out the key buying triggers automatically.

Greg: So it means you never, ever miss a detail, but even without that technology, just asking the questions and writing those answers on the back of your notepad will change everything for you.

 

 

[00:09:00]

Right? So now let’s think about step number three, which is your professional. Estimate. Now, I just want you to think about this.

Greg: How does your current estimating or your current quoting actually look right now? And I want you to be really honest with yourself here, because you’ve gotta think of your estimate like a shop window. It’s the one thing that the client looks at when they don’t know much about you. Now they’ll open it up and they’re gonna make a judgment on that estimate and about your company.

Greg: Within seconds, they’re gonna be deciding for themselves. Is this a professional outfit or is this someone working off their kitchen table? Alright. Even if you are working off the kitchen table, you want to give the image of a professional outfit Now. Recently, I had a builder on one of my workshops and a really nice guy does some great work, and he shared his estimate with the group.

Greg: And basically it was a spreadsheet. It was plain white background, rows of numbers, no branding, no images, no testimonials, just a list of costs.

 

 

[00:10:00]

And it had a, a very small covering letter at the beginning. And then I showed the group a different estimate, same type of project, but this one looked like a brochure.

Greg: It had branded. Cover pages with high quality photography of finished projects. It had client testimonials with five star ratings. It had accreditations, insurance details, a timeline, a breakdown that was clear and detailed, and the actual estimate itself was thorough because it was done by professional estimator, line by line, so the client could see exactly where every penny or pound was going.

Greg: So I just wanna ask you this. If you are a homeowner. Sitting at your kitchen table with both those documents in front of you, one highly professional, one that’s just a blank bit of paper that, um, has costs on it. Which builder do you think is gonna be trusted more? Which one are you going to be calling back?

Greg: And the thing about it is, is that the brochure style estimate might be more expensive, but the client might not care.

 

 

[00:11:00]

Because they felt safe. They felt like they trusted the builder that has the more professional estimate. They feel like that you’re dealing with a real company.

Greg: So you need to remember that, that if, if you, even if your pricing is slightly more expensive, when you’ve got professional estimates like this, it can swing it in your favor. So it’s really important to do that. So here’s what your estimate needs. Just a quick breakdown. You need a professional, you need professional imagery of your completing projects.

Greg: Really important. We don’t wanna see half-built sites on there. We want finished aspirational work. You want client testimonials. At least two or three with star ratings because everyone is, um, accustomed to looking at stars. You want your accreditations, maybe your insurance details on there. You want a clear, detailed breakdown. And if you can get a professional estimator involved for pricing, the bigger jobs, because the detail they produce does a couple of things.

Greg: Firstly, it gives. The client confidence in your price.

 

 

[00:12:00]

And then it makes the project management 10 times easier once you win the job because they know that every single line item is mapped out. And this is where one of the areas where our members get the most results, because we look at their estimates when they produce them.

Greg: We’ve got a QS coach in our group who is able to make sure that you’re including the right things in your estimates, uh, are you including your prelim, preliminary, the right way? And every month they get coached on the best way of delivering those estimates across to clients. So really important. And um, and if you work with me, I actually review your branded templates and proposals as well.

Greg: Now it’s really important if you can, to have before and afters on your estimate presentations. This is normally quite good too. Often looks really dramatic when you can show, you know, a, a rundown property that all of a sudden looks absolutely amazing. But, so case studies and before and afters also look amazing.

Greg: But the point is we need to upgrade your quote from a plain, boring spreadsheet to something that looks professional and that really set you apart from 90% of the builders out there.

 

 

[00:13:00]

Now step number four, this is the one I mentioned at the start. This is the one trick that virtually eliminates ghosting because we’re all sick of being ghosted by clients when we send them an estimate and we spend hours and hours pricing it, and then they don’t even acknowledge that they’ve got the estimate from you, then give you a thank you or anything.

Greg: Very, very frustrating. Now, honestly, this single tactic has been probably the biggest game changer for the builders we work with, and more than anything else, and this actually come from one of my clients. Alexandra, um, she’s one of our coaching members and she suggested this. Now, she started doing this and seeing the results were so good that, um, and, and told us about it.

Greg: That many in the group have now adopted this, uh, standard practice for, for many that want to improve their conversion rate. So here’s what Alexandra does when she first goes to that visit on the property. She’ll go around, discuss the project, but before she leaves. She books a second meeting there and then with the client, and she says something like this to the client.

Greg: I’m gonna put your quote together.

 

 

[00:14:00]

It’ll be ready in about a week. But what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna book a meeting with you to sit down and go through this together. We wanna walk you through every element. We wanna discuss anything that you want changed, um, anything that you want added or removed, we’ll fine tune it until we get it exactly.

Greg: Where you want. And that’s it. It’s as simple as that. It makes the client feel like you’re not just coming back to sell to ’em, but you’re gonna customize that quote for them. And the key is booking that meeting before you’ve even sent the quote. Now think about why that’s so powerful. ’cause most builders will send the quote by email and then they’ll wait.

Greg: And they’re waiting and they’re hoping, and maybe they’ll chase once or twice, and then they give up and the client just goes quiet. They ghost you and you never hear back again. But when you have that second meeting book, ghosting is basically impossible, isn’t it? The client’s committed to sitting down with you, you’re getting a second chance to be in front of them.

Greg: And this is the thing about winning sales.

 

 

[00:15:00]

The more times you get in front of a client, the more times you have touch points with them, the more they’ll feel like they know you. The more they’ll trust you and you’ll have a higher chance of converting that client. And the second meeting, as we said, also lets you handle objections in real time.

Greg: So if your price is too high, you can discuss, well, what can we remove out of this? If they’re nervous about timelines, you can reassure them face to face. Now you can’t do any of that over email with just an estimate that gets sent over. So let me just ask you this. Are you currently booking in a second meeting with your clients now?

Greg: I bet almost none of you are. Um, I know that because when this was first suggested in our group, almost no one was apart from Alexandra, and now almost everyone’s doing it. So when we asked this question, our workshops, same thing. No hands go up and that’s exactly why this is such a huge opportunity for you because your competitors are not doing this either, but it’s the builder that books the second meeting is the one that’s gonna win.

Greg: Most of the work, so don’t forget that. Now, step number five is your follow-up system.

 

 

[00:16:00]

Now, this is the last step, and sometimes this can be where builders let their ego get in the way. Because here’s what I hear all the time. Well, look, if they want me, they’ll call me back. I’m not gonna be chasing anyone, and I get that.

Greg: You know, chasing sometimes feels a little bit desperate, feels like you’re, you know, might be begging for work, but that mindset is costing you tens of. Thousands of pounds because here’s what actually happens when you send a quote, you send the quote over, the client gets it in their inbox, they have a quick look at it, and then things get in the way.

Greg: Life gets in the way. Your email. May even go into spam, um, or they’re meant to call you back, but it’s been three weeks now and now they feel a little bit awkward ’cause they had a question they wanted to ask and it feels a little bit silly to to ask it. So they end up going with someone who does follow up and makes them feel, um, a bit more wanted.

Greg: So you really need to think about your follow up system and, and here’s really how it should look. Step one, once you’ve sent your quote through, within 48 hours of sending that quote, have someone on your team.

 

 

[00:17:00]

It doesn’t have to be you. Have someone on your team call the client just to say, Hey, Mr. And Mrs.

Greg: Smith, just wanna check that you’ve received our quote, because sometimes they end up in spam and just wanna make sure you got it okay. And we’re able to open it. That’s it. Nice and simple opens the conversation and it captures the ones who genuinely did not receive it. And you’ll be amazed how many just feel like you.

Greg: They, you didn’t send it to ’em ’cause it’s landed in their spam inbox. So. Once you’ve done that, step number two. If you’ve booked the second meeting already, you’re already covered, aren’t you? But really, the meeting is the follow-up built in, um, for step number two. Step number three, after you’ve got that second meeting or after the quote’s, been sitting there for a while, send some value to them.

Greg: So maybe share a case study of a similar project that you completed, or you could send a pre-project Gantt chart showing how you are gonna manage their build. Give them something useful that reminds you, reminds them why you exist, without necessarily being pushy. And step number four, keep nurturing those clients.

 

 

[00:18:00]

Greg: Some clients are just not ready to buy. They might not have the funding in, you know, they’re, they’re trying to get their mortgage increased, and that might be taking a while to go through. Maybe their planning is being delayed, but six months from now, when they are ready, you want to be the builder. They remember because you’ve kept nurturing and you’ve kept following up.

Greg: So sometimes just a simple check-in. Every few weeks just keeps you on top of mind. And a lot of this can be automated. We have, in our, uh, coaching programs, we automate this entire follow up sequence for a CRM system that all our members get for free. So once a quote is sent, the system then automatically triggers the emails, the reminders, and the check-ins, um, without you even thinking.

Greg: So the builder doesn’t have to remember anything. But even if you do it manually, even if it’s just a reminder in your phone to call them back in a week, that will put you ahead of 90% of your competition. Just sitting there waiting for the client to ring them back. Now, I just wanna tell you about one of our members, George.

Greg: Um, George came to us. He, he said he was actually working 14 hours, uh, 14 hour days.

 

 

[00:19:00]

So he was working really, really hard, pricing up a lot of work. But he had disappointing margins. He thought he was working harder than anyone, but the numbers weren’t reflecting it. And what changed for George was his entire sales process.

Greg: That was it. He just built a proper procedure around his. Process. So he had set callback time, so every inquiry got a response within that window. He had scripted questions from the initial visit, so he knew exactly, um, what the client was after, before he even visited. And then he created a five page quote cover.

Greg: So it’s five pages before the actual estimate that went out before the client even saw a number. He had his story, his company, his finished projects, testimonials, the whole lot. And here’s what George said about that quote cover. He said, this is just a quote directly from George. He said The client is already sold.

Greg: Before they’ve even read the quote. So just think about that. By the time they get to the price, they’ve already decided they want to work with George and he backed it all up with his website. So everything the client saw in the quote was reinforced online. [00:20:00] And what started to happen, he won more work, better margins, his margins improved, his hours come down.

Greg: And really the big change for him was his sales process. So we wanna see the same for you too. So let’s just bring all this together. What have we looked at? Five clear steps. Qualify your leads so you stop wasting time on people that were never serious. Interview the client so you understand what they actually value.

Greg: And you can sell on psychology, not just price. Present a professional estimate that makes you look like the real deal. Book that second meeting so you eliminate ghosting and get a second chance in front of the client. And lastly, number five was build a follow up system so that no quote ever goes cold again.

Greg: So here’s what I’d like you to do right now. I’d like you to score yourself maybe one to five on each of those steps, and one means you’re not doing it at all. Five means you’ve got it completely dialed in. So just score yourself across the qualifying.

 

 

[00:21:00]

How do you get on interviewing, estimate, estimate, quality, second meeting follow up system, and add it all up out of 25.

Greg: Where are you currently? On a recent workshop we had most people, when they rated themselves, it was somewhere between like 12 and 13 on average, but after the workshop, everyone was going up to 20 to 25. So we really want you to be able to achieve that too now. If you are down there in the low, you know, maybe you’re down 8, 9, 10, or, or in the low numbers, don’t worry.

Greg: You know, that is normal. As we said, most people I know workshop are like that. What it does mean for you is that there’s a massive opportunity sitting out there right now to win more work, charge higher prices. Stop losing jobs to builders who are not as good as you. Now, I’ve put together a free workbook with the full qualifying checklist, the interview questions, the follow up templates, all that sort of stuff.

Greg: Um, everything we’ve covered today is laid out in a step-by-step system so you can actually implement it. So grab it from the link in the description. It’s completely free. No catch. Just, um, download it and start using it.

 

 

[00:22:00]

On your next quote, and if you want me to walk you through this live and actually help you with your conversion engine, I run a free workshop every single month.

Greg: Um, one is gonna be coming soon, so we’ll, uh, keep, keep an eye out for that when it, when it comes in, and feel free to register for that and we’ll show you how to improve your construction business. So look, just wanna say you are good at what you do. You build things that last, it’s time that your sales process match the quality of your work.

Greg: So go build that sales conversion engine. And I’ll see you on the next one.