Sign on the spot with Tom Droste

Have you had a chance to hear our recent podcast with Tom Droste, CEO and Founder at Estimate Rocket? Listen to the audio here, or search for Estimate Rocket Radio on any podcast app. Enjoy the transcript below of our conversation!

Chris Shank  

We're talking with Tom Droste, of Estimate Rocket about a sales process that gets people closer to Yes. At the end of an estimate. Now getting people closer to yes might mean they can sign on the spot which you need a good tool to help them do that which Estimate Rocket is. But even if you don't get them to sign, getting them as close as you can to Yes, is pivotal for them making a decision in your favor in the near future. How do you keep them warmed up to you? How do you build trust? So they know you're the right one? How do you know that the door to other contractors offering quotes is slowly closing. By the time you leave that estimate Tom talks about these and more. Hey, Tom, welcome to Estimate Rocket radio.

Tom Droste  

Hi, Chris, great to be here. Always looking forward to our chat.

Chris Shank  

We had some good discussions. And I have the outline. And we know what points you're gonna get to and all that stuff. But a lot comes out in the conversation as we kick around the topic. And we hear from a lot of contractors, obviously we work with a lot of contractors. And so I think what a lot of people get out of these discussions is perspective. You know, what's happening in the industry? Am I the only one who does this thing? Am I the only one who has these problems? But, you know, I think we can learn perspective, especially on this topic of signing on the spot. And not everybody does it. Not everybody should do it necessarily. Let me ask you, why is signing on the spot important? Is it important,

Tom Droste  

It can be very important. Obviously, if you get your prospect to sign on the spot, then there's no opportunity for anyone else to close the deal, you know, another competitor or whatever, it shortens your sales cycle, you close on the spot. So, you don't have as much as long to wait until you finally hear if they're going to do it. I think it does depend partly on the type of work that it is, and how long it takes to do your estimates or proposals. Because if you're not comfortable going to the customer, evaluating what the work is on the spot, it's going to be hard to close the deal on the spot, unless you actually do like a sequence of multiple, multiple visits where the first visit is to get the information. And the second visit is to do a presentation.

You know, there's different closing on the spot that could be made up of different animals in one animal. I go out, I do the estimate, I show it to the customer and get them to sign. That's one model. The other model is I send an estimator out, the estimator does their work. And then I come in and or the estimator comes back with a presentation and tries to work on getting a signature on the spot. There's a little more time obviously involved in that operation. But in some cases, you really need more than, depending upon the size of the estimate and what's involved in it, may need the time it takes to do it. And have those folks still stay, hanging out there waiting for you to complete your estimate.

Chris Shank  

I know there's some options there. And I want to talk about the different types. But it sounds like maybe if there's an option or maybe this is an assumption of mine, that there's an option to sign on the spot. If it works for you, and you have the tool to do it. Should you develop that as an option as a kind of a turnkey option then you know how to use it. Is that something maybe we could say universally that probably if you're the type of business that has those types of projects, and you have the tool to do it, you should probably know how to do that sign on the spot. Maybe as a starting point.

Tom Droste  

Oh, absolutely. I mean, there's no question that that's not an effective method of selling. Part of it depends upon you, though. Not everybody is a, you know, close on the spot person. It definitely takes the professional sales mentality to do that. You know, personally, I'd have a hard time doing that because that's kind of not my makeup. But that doesn't mean it can't be done very effectively and it can and it can be done in a way that isn't you know, pushy or you know, makes the customer feel uncomfortable or some But like they're committing to something that they shouldn't be committing, like they're being forced to decide too quickly, it can be done in a good way. It's just tricky to do.

Chris Shank  

I imagine too, if you have a good process and a good system, I mean, I'm not trying to constantly refer back to Estimate Rocket software. But if you have the right tool, that it's kind of structured, to where you can crank out numbers really fast, show it to somebody give them the option without doing a hard sell, even if you don't like have a sales training, or you don't feel like it's your personality, but it's like an option that they have, it might, it might kind of skip that step of having to do the hard sell, I guess.

Tom Droste  

No, I mean, it's a very powerful tool. I mean, if you've got your estimating process down, and this can be for, you know, a wide variety of trades, you know, certainly painting, we have concrete lifters that a lot of them do the close on the spot approach. You know, obviously, in demand type, folks, and, you know, roofing might be a tricky one to do on the spot again, you'd have to really have things dialed in to know exactly how your process worked. Or you use the two phase process where you, you know, where you estimate is done, sort of prior to the sales visit, and then the sales visit, at the sales visit you do you, you know, you work on closing the deal. Yeah, and that saves you a lot of time, obviously, anytime you can get it done, when you're there, obviously, it's gonna save you some time, you don't want to have to make three visits to the customer site to close it. So if it's one of those situations where you feel like you're gonna have to, you know, come back and make that personal presentation multiple times, that gets painful. And I think there's also there's a lot to be said for, and I know a lot of people will ask the questions up front, I know Tom Rieber is really big on, you know, getting the customer doing like a pre qualification, phone call with the person to find out if they're really, you know, if they're a real prospect, because obviously, you know, this whole estimating and sales follow up process takes a lot of time.

So you don't want to waste your time. And if you can, if you can pre qualify them to a point where you feel really comfortable that, you know, you're gonna get it, that if you present things in the right way that this person is, you know, going to be able to afford what your you know, your prices and is interested in working with you. If you can get that out of the way up front, and even, you know, price bracketing, which I know is another, you know, pre qualification tool that people use where they say, Well, you know, these jobs typically go from five to $10,000, or, you know, 10 to $30,000, or, you know, depending upon because some, you know, if it's a remodel job, back back, you have no idea what you can you can give them the idea of the build out probably based on space and square footage and linear foot measurements, but there's no way you're going to know what they're going to want to use for appliances. So, you know, but again, a lot of people will handle that with a well, we've got the, you know, high, medium and low package for appliances. So, which option are you interested in? That's going to give you your ballpark price? So a lot of different techniques for that.

Chris Shank  

Yeah, I was gonna say, I mean, kind of what I'm hearing from you is there's a few things that can help one know what type of projects lend itself to set on the spot. pre pre qualification, assist that process. So in other words, removing the conversation back a little bit, to where instead of them being like this barrage of information and new stuff all at one in one setting and say, Hey, do you want to do this? Right? I started the conversation earlier with pre qualification, which is, there's a lot of good tools out there. Matter of fact, groundwork is an excellent video pre qualification tool that actual customers can use. I think they download something on their side, and they can take videos of what they're looking for. And you can start reviewing and assessing that before you get there. Start preparing people. Do you also help? I mean, if there's anything else in pre qualification, I'd like to know, but one thought is that that's almost escaping me.

Here it is, oh, I know, content creation, because content is king. We're all about content. Esna rocket puts out tons of content like this podcast, and we're even expanding the content of this podcast to video. It's already, you know, audio, we put little clips here and there. So it's all about you creating a little bit and making a lot out of that. But as companies are doing more of that in arming their customers with information, to know how to assess, you know, the different contractors that are giving bids, like how do I know what's the right kind of a bid? You know, how do I know when it's fair? How do I know when it's really meeting my needs for this company? But do you think that offering more of that kind of content via links or emails or texts or whatever before you get to that estimate could help as well?

Tom Droste  

Oh, sure, oh, absolutely a lot of people will do a, you know, a pre meeting campaign to the customer or the prospect of a variety of different things, maybe examples of your work in their area, you know, some stuff about their procedures, how you know, what to expect when we do work for you, and you can lay out the, you know, kind of that you're a white glove company, and everything's taken care of, and, you know, we wear booties, when we come into your house, and those kinds of things, you know, those kinds of things can all help to set the customer's expectations ahead of time, sort of to soften them up for when you get there to do your presentation. So that definitely helps.

Chris Shank  

Okay, is there anything else that can help a customer, I mean, again, given that this might be an option for your company, and that doesn't fit all cases, is there anything else that kind of can help move things towards a sign on the spot situation?

Tom Droste  

You really, if, again, depending upon the type of thing you're going to do, if you're going to try to do it in a one shot, you really have to have your, your process dialed in for what you do from the minute you pull in the driveway, till the minute you present them something, and that's a step by step, okay, and then go in, I'm going to do quick meet and greet 30 minutes, then I'm going to say, let's go evaluate your project and look at the spaces, then depending upon the type of estimate it is, you may have to say, Okay, give me a couple of minutes in this room, and then we'll move on to the next room or this area will move on to the next area, or exit area.

Okay, great, get an idea what you're looking for, you know, give me about 15 minutes or a half hour or whatever it's going to take, you know, whatever, you know, it's going to take you to do a walk around and get all the details for you. And then I can propose to you, you really have to know that you really have to have a process for that. And that process is, you know, that's an outline, then you're gonna probably have some tools that you're going to use to implement that process.

Chris Shank  

Yeah, okay. And I mean, you know, there are tools out there in We're, we're one that we've built, Estimate Rocket to anticipate that opportunity. I know Nick May, by design, has a very, really articulated system, very clear steps when their estimators go in there. It's almost like a checklist, you're doing these things you're talking to the customers about, about these things. This is how I forget if he does sign on the spot or not. But the point is like, Yeah, that could, again, if you need time, and they need to be informed, and then you feel prepared, we'll take the whole course of the estimating procedure to do that. And actually, as you were talking about that reminds me, I think it was a Paris painting.

They did a presentation at a conference called paint by numbers, and they were talking about their estimating process. And when they're going around on exteriors, and they're talking to people about what they're gonna be doing each step of the way, each side of the building, they're talking to the person and saying, Does this sound sound right to you, they're getting feedback, they're actually making it very interactive to where the person is giving small yeses all throughout, to when it comes time for a big yes, they're primed, they're ready to go. So I liked it. But it requires tons of planning, doesn't it?

Tom Droste  

It really does, you really got to have your you know, you really have to have a script done out that not every word you're going to say but all of the steps that you're going to take from the time you get there till you know the time you leave, otherwise, you're just going to be you're going to flounder and then the customer is going to sense that because you're trying to work to quickly or your your, you're going back to things you kind of want it to be sequenced in a in a, you know, moving forward way. And if you don't have that sequence done out, you're gonna be going back to some step later. Oh, why didn't you ask me that earlier, when we were covering those other things. So really having your ducks lined out for that stuff before you go in? Obviously, you're gonna have to do a few trials, you're gonna have to go see if you guys drummers to get that process nailed down, you're not going to, you know, it's not going to be perfect the first time you do it. But over time, you know, we keep tweaking those processes. And before you know it, you've got this thing that's just a well oiled machine that, you know, helps you close those deals every time on the spot.

Chris Shank  

Okay, so are there any challenges to doing this that we haven't mentioned yet? One is they may have not tried it yet. I mean, even having a trial and error saying, hey, does this process work? Let me try that out there and Oh, my promise, anything other things that might be challenges that people would need to work through and try to create that as an option?

Tom Droste  

Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest part of that is it kind of depends upon what type of job it is. I'm sure there's jobs that are so complex to like, maybe a good example would be a foundation repair. So you're gonna end up having to get an engineer on the site to come out and evaluate some of the things that may have to be done. There's a lot of you know, there's a lot more technical things involved. Hold, to do that estimate. So that's going to be a hard one to close on this, again, we talk about close on the spot. But there are two kinds of close on the spot. I go out to a farm, I greet them, I estimate it, I quote them, and I get signed. That's one. The other one is the two phases where you've got this, you know, first round of either qualifications and or, you know, site visit to see what's going on. And then you come back, and you may have to figure out what technology you might want to use for this. And again, it really depends upon it's very, very trade specific in terms of which ones really lend themselves to closing on the spot, and which ones you gotta do a two, phase four?

Chris Shank  

Well, then let me ask you, when you talk about phases, if you missed the sign on the spot opportunity, or they say no, or no, that that's not the right time to sign on the spot that you have, what are the next pieces? Like, you know, what do we see people doing? And what do we think is best practices for what should come after signing on the spot? If you didn't nail it, then?

Tom Droste  

Yeah, I mean, like, any other aspect of your project with your client is communications, you have to clearly establish what you're going to do next forum, if it's something that you just didn't have all the information for, or the one of the decision makers wasn't president or something like that, you just have to make sure you're communicating, you know, you know, frequently with the customer, and make sure that they know what's gonna happen next, and that they are in tune and set their expectations for what your expectations are in terms of what the next steps are, to get it completed. So it's really it's really communications and, and, and, you know, early and often is my catchphrase for how communication should be done. You really want to be communicating with them frequently.

Chris Shank  

Yeah, and I think, you know, that can sound overwhelming to some people to think like, Well, how do I, how do I do that? How do I keep up with, you know, once I do the job, I'm on to the next job. And I've got my team moving on to the next thing, everybody's moving forward. But I think part of that isn't about automation. And that starts at the beginning to create one having a tool that doesn't rock. Estimate Rocket does that. But you really do have to have something that you set, you set in motion from the time you get the customer or you get the lead, right and communicating that, you know, we have it in Estimate Rocket that every stage of the lead communication, scheduling the estimate, doing the actual estimate, any kind of follow up, like everything sits sets off its own campaign, that you can just wait on that period, but it's been worked for you. So that would be a big, important part of that. Why don't you say, Oh, totally, otherwise, it's overwhelming to think about doing all that yourself?

Tom Droste  

Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, without automated and automated, you know, follow up procedures are, at every phase of the project is not really just that sales time, it's at sales time, it's after you close before you start the work. It's while you're doing the work, it's after you've done the work, and then it's ongoing to you know, keep that customer coming back for more, even after a number ends.

You just gotta read and reach out to them on a regular basis. Because especially in in, you know, in general, in home services, people are constantly doing different things to their properties, you know, depending upon what your what your trade is, but painting for obviously, that's a recurring, you know, thing. Outside, it's almost like on a calendar, you can easily predict when they're going to need more work done on their exterior. It's almost like the person who does it. And if you have oil heat, you know, that somebody knows, how do they know to come and fill my tank again? Well, they actually have a system where they put in how many gallons they added, what are the what are they called degree days, they calculate, the government produces this thing, this degree day index, that will tell you how much heating you're gonna need between this time, you know, over this period of time, and then and they can calculate it out pretty close. But they know exactly when you're gonna need your next oil fill.

Chris Shank  

So that's, that's a lot of again, the premise of what Estimate Rocket was built for to help automate a lot of those things. And yeah, absolutely stay up on top. I just know people get overwhelmed when they think like, oh, it's one thing to start the job or to finally land the job. Now I gotta keep on right. Hopefully, you have the software tools, resources that help you do that, because it's impossible to do manually. All these things you have to be doing real quick about. I mean, this idea is kind of an afterthought, maybe but maybe closing on the spot. Part of the problem too is all the objections that Come up, when you know, people are like all the reasons why they shouldn't do it, you know, maybe maybe that's a little bit more of the not easier. But you do have to have a kind of a sales mindset and as a prepared script to handle objections, does that help correct? 

Tom Droste  

I think the big part of that is, again, the objections have to be part of your process. You have to plan on those. So you gotta keep your list of what are the objections, and you got to, you know, have know how you're going to address each of those objections in a reasonable way, that better if you're prepared for it, you know, most objections can be overcome fairly easily, unless you're just not a good fit, in which case, you probably don't want to do that job anyway. But there are reasonable, you know, there are set ways to overcome objections, right. And you just have to have those, you know, in your, in the can for you to pull up when you need them.

Chris Shank  

What would you say, like, have top 30 objections that you kind of rate yourself and your team on? 

Tom Droste  

I'd say it's a lot less than that, to tell you the truth. You can't, you know, what you want to do is kind of generalize the objections, you know, the objections typically are going to be price, they're going to be timing. And they may be a squishy concern, like, you know, do you hire your own people? Do they do background checks on them? Do you have those kinds of personnel type questions and who's actually going to do my work? But I think there's probably five or six, five or six areas that you'd be prepared for that you need to be prepared for with objections that kind of cover the bases, and most of them, price is probably the most common one. And that's the one that you just got to be prepared to talk about your company. And what you do that's your differentiator. 

Chris Shank  

I'm guessing even through the estimating process, you can almost build into again, your routine and your planned on script. As you're doing stuff you let people know, by the way, that it almost kind of, again, priming them so that they kind of already have the answers to it by the time they get to the end, right. But you could source some of that like, well, what questions people ask, what they'll talk to your team, ask what you write down what you've heard, ask your team what they've heard, put them into some category. So it's kind of easy to learn them, right STG sales transformation group, they do a lot of role playing. And they truly are given case scenarios for their employees for their sales team and running them through if you were asked this question, how would you answer and they make them answer as if they were the customers? 

Tom Droste  

Yeah, I think so. I think that's a great idea, though. Yeah, role playing is one of the best things you can do. You can accomplish a lot quickly with role playing.

Chris Shank  

The principle here is even if people aren't like you said, even if it's not a fit for everyone to sign on the spot, you're really getting them as close as possible to making a decision in their head that this is the direction they want to go before you leave. You want them more or less to think I want this company because if you leave they're not really sure I want this company. There's that's a big open door a lot of companies

Tom Droste  

an open door to door Yeah. So I think in the reality is there's a lot of are also a lot of a lot of charlatans out there there are selling you a bill of goods and you could get eaten by one of those guys, and well, you know, shame on the prospect for not going for the quality. You know, that happens. Now that there's some you don't want to lose to that. Right, you gotta be prepared. For sure.

Chris Shank  

It's good talk, I know, we're going to try to get to some very practical ideas like this. I know sometimes we stay with a big strategy, but I wasn't into it because we see a lot of the processes of the contractors that we work with, see what's working and see what's not working. So we're trying to get into the granular a little bit and say, Hey, I don't know if you guys know about this, but there's some tricks here. So I like it,

Tom Droste  

it really does boil down to the processes and just planning it out. And regardless of whether you close on the spot, having that process down is an important thing for you to do. It works, whether you're closing on the spot and your first visit or your second visit whenever you're doing it, having a process and knowing what the sequence is, is going to help you to a bit more confident when you're going in to do the presentations and to you know, to close more deals, you know, just being practiced and polished, gives people confidence in you that you know what you're talking about, and you're not you know, bullshitter and you're you know, you're you're someone they want to do business with.

Chris Shank  

Let me throw out my last name. You just take another five minutes to talk about but there's a salesperson who forgot what his name was. Maybe I'll put it in show notes if I think about it. He had this sales process. He said it was to get to know, keep getting people with the yeses. Yes, yes. Until you get to know something, because what you said until you have to think about this. He said that once they are able to say no, it's kind of empowering to them. But then you know where the edges are, and you could backup to get another? Yes. It's almost like you granted a customer their power back to say no to something. So they are manipulated, right? And you're saying, Oh, actually, I like knowing that that's not what you want. Is this more? So it almost is like you're giving them more of what they want, not just what you want them to want. I think that's an effective tool in that process.

Tom Droste  

I think that there's a lot that I think it's probably the opposite of what most of the, you know, sales gurus teach. But I do recall hearing and I can't remember who the person was, that pushes that one. But I get that it was the one you know, once you get to know, then I think the way I've also heard that is when you get to know, you've also found their pain point, potentially. Okay, so now you know what, you know, as long as they keep saying yes. All right, They're going along, but there's usually something and there's some hesitation or some, there's some no in there. And if you get them to know, then you know how to, you know, you know how to approach it to finish this off. Whereas until you get to that, that know, or I'm not sure or whatever, you don't know where that, you know, everything's going fine. Are they going to but are they going to say?

I guess the knowledge could be alright, everything sounds good. Are you ready to sign? And when will they? And they say no? And you go? Ah, okay, well, let's let's talk about this. What are your concerns, and you can find out what their real hangups might be? And it might just be? Well, I really have to tell my husband about it. Well, can you get them now? Listen, I'm not good at this, I will freeze. But I've heard people that are great at it. And they would say, hey, any possibility we can get them on the phone. It sounds like you know what we've talked about so far. Sounds like what you want to do if we get him on the phone, maybe we can talk to him? You know, because ideally, if you want to get this done in the short term, the sooner we lock it in, you know, the better chance that we're going to be able to get the job done for you when you want it done.

Chris Shank  

Yeah. And I imagined it sounded really good for Democrats. Yeah, that's really good. I think it's great. The other thing with that, too, is, hey, do you think that I can answer some questions that you may not know how to answer if your husband or your spouse was asking about it, right? And I can track a little bit easier on you, you're kind of relieving the burden to have to share all the details. And it sounds like I could sum up but yeah, I think those are all, there's a lot there. There's a lot of opportunity that's probably unrecognized. So that's unutilized by a lot of salespeople. So get your systems right, honing it, trying to do some trial and error for a few months, and say, Hey, we're not sure about these things. Let's see how it works out there in the field. And then you can build the answer right into your process that should probably be always evolving, don't you think?

Tom Droste  

Yeah. Oh, absolutely. And again, if you go out, and there's some great books on sale, you may read a couple books. And you may find that, you know, this one is just not, you know, sort of, like the story of The Three Bears. This one's like, now I can never do that, that's just not my style, I got it, you know, or, but there might be some good stuff in there. And then you, you know, check another was like, none, that's to that's on the opposite extreme. And then you find that, you know, the middle bear, the mama bear, and it's like, Oh, I like that. But I'm going to take these, this piece from this one and this piece from this one, and incorporate that in and then I've got my sales process, which is a combination of some, you know, all the different styles and things out there. Because, because you have to consider when you come up with your process, you do have to consider your business. Like every business is different. Every business has a slightly different focus. So you read this sales, you know, sales, methodology book, one person well, it may be great concepts in there, but those concepts might not apply specifically to how you want to do things or you need to take the things you need to win but not the things that are don't fit you or your philosophy or your personality or whatever, make sure you get a winning combo.

Chris Shank  

That makes sense. I think that's all good discussion. Thank you for your time today on Estimate Rocket Radio.

Tom Droste  

My pleasure, Chris. Always enjoy it.