You’ve got a promising lead and you’ve booked an appointment to present your estimate. If you assume the job is yours, you may be thinking way too far ahead. There’s more work to be done to get the signature on the dotted line. So, whether you’re giving an estimate by telephone or in person, don’t make the mistake of falling into the following common foibles.

1. Not having both of the decision makers present. You’d be surprised at how many times a lead will fall through because the Mr. says “yes” but the Mrs. later vetoes the decision, or vice versa. To save yourself a lot of wasted time, get answers from both decision makers from the onset.
2. Being late or not showing up. This is your chance to make a good first impression and believe me, first impressions count! If you’re late or miss an appointment before you’re hired, homeowners will often translate this as a bad sign of things to come.
3. Not bringing pictures or a portfolio of your work. I can’t stress this more: come prepared! It’s similar to an interview process: you wouldn’t show up without a resume. Catch the homeowners’ attention when they are most interested in what you have to offer. If they don’t find out what they want to know when they want to know, you may be checked off the list early on.
4. Not asking enough questions to understand the customer’s needs. The customer knows and believes their job is like no other. It’s critical for them to feel that you share the same investment in doing the work the right way. Asking the right questions is one way to communicate this.
5. Not asking for the job! Homeowners realize how busy a contractor’s schedule could be. Not asking for the job could indicate that you’re simply not interested, or not interested enough.
6. Not presenting the pricing on the spot. This is, perhaps, one of the first questions homeowners have, even if they don’t bring pricing up on their own. If you don’t outline your pricing from the get go, the homeowner is left with a big blank on an equation they can’t fill. And chances are, someone else will fill the blank in for you.
7. Not building rapport with the homeowner. References, pricing, and ability in general are critical. However, if you have all of the above and the homeowner simply doesn’t feel at home with you, chances are they will not give you access to their home.

This entry was posted on Monday, April 14th, 2008 at 4:31 pm and is filed under Lead Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.