THE HAMMER 🔨- Sell Jobs on the Phone. Binder #016 - Sales

One of the things I love so much about the pavement maintenance industry is that your barrier to entry is very low, and generally speaking, the quality of your competition from a sales perspective isn't great.

There are a lot of people who can stripe, seal, and do the other things that your company does, but not many of them have a really effective sales process.

Here's a great framework that you can use to increase your closing rate and decrease the time customers spend deciding to hire you, which results in you making more money.

Setting Up The Hammer 🔨

The Hammer is a framework you can use on the phone when dealing with inbound leads interested in your services.

It is built on acquiring only three pieces of information from your customer by asking tactical questions on the phone:

SCOPE: What is the scope of work you want to accomplish?

TIMEFRAME: How soon do you need the scope of work completed?

BUDGET: What budget are you looking to spend to achieve the scope?

Once you require the answer to these three questions, you then drop "The Hammer" - a question to the customer that contains the answer to all three of those questions in the framework, which forces them to give you an answer on if they will hire you.

Lets briefly look at these one by one. As an example, say someone fills out your website quote page requesting line painting for a commercial property. You called them on the phone, beginning to acquire answers to the three questions in the framework:

Scope: Before calling your customer, look up the property from Google Earth or another image service. Asking your customers exactly what scope of work they're looking for will allow you to clarify things you can't see in the Google Earth image.

The goal here isn't to gather every single bit of information so that we can give a precise quote. The goal of these types of questions is twofold:

1) Signal to the customer that you intend to provide the exact solution they're looking for, even if it's just a simple re-stripe of the property.

2) Identify opportunities to provide more value to the customer by selling other services, improving their line painting layout, adding stencils, or anything else that makes your services more valuable.

Once you have clarified the scope, you can move on to the next question in the framework:

Timeframe: Many line painting companies I work with falsely assume that every customer wants their project done immediately. This is especially true with re-stripes of parking lots.

However, by asking the customer, "Hey, when would you like this solution delivered in an ideal world?" you may discover that the solution they're looking for is not that urgent, which is a tremendous benefit to you. Or, you may find out that they are willing to prioritize hiring someone who can serve them quickly, in which case, you can charge a premium for your service. In both events, you are definitely signaling to your customer that you care about ensuring that their solution is delivered within the time frame they need.

Last but not least… the fun one.

Budget: Depending on the type of project that your customers are asking about will influence how exactly you ask this question.

Essentially, you're determining what they expect to pay for this service or what they're willing to pay.

This is very easy to figure out in our example of a re-stripe. Unless the property is brand new, they likely have been re-striped before, so it's just a matter of trying to find out what they have paid in the past. Asking them a direct question on the phone, such as:

"So, you had this property re-striped 3 years ago, so you're aware of what another contractor charged. What do you expect to budget for a project like this in 2025?"

This is a great question because it signals to the customer that the cost they paid for something 3 years ago might be different this year. This is especially true if they don't like the work produced in the past - they know that better will cost more.

If this is the type of service where perhaps they are new to the position, or they don't know how much they would charge in the past, you're going to phrase it differently by saying something like:

"Many contractors in this area have pretty wide-ranging prices, depending on what kind of value they bring. A low-cost option might be around 'x', and a premium option would be around 'x'. After this call, I can confirm our exact price, but our price is likely around 'z'.

What is the advantage of asking the tough questions on money? For one thing, you could save a lot of time preparing a proposal for a low-cost customer who can't move on with their budget. You are also gathering more information, which allows you to create the best proposal possible.

Bring It All Home: The Hammer 🔨

After those 3 key pieces of information are learned, you can now drop the hammer:

"Customer, this has been a great conversation. Thanks for sharing the details of your project with me today. We would be a great fit for what you're looking for. I want to ask you one more question: If our company can accomplish "SCOPE" at the property in the "TIMEFRAME" and have it within the "BUDGET", is there anything preventing you from moving forward with us today on this project?"

Hammer. Dropped. 🔨

The hammer is a soft close but delivered swiftly once the information is gathered correctly.

It can allow you to close deals on the phone or find other objections the prospect may have that are keeping them from moving forward.

If you are stuck in a "customers always choose one of three quotes" mentality, you may not understand how a customer could go along with this. However, the purpose of this method is that you are clearly signaling to the prospect that your company is 100% capable of delivering the exact solution they are looking for - and as long as the terms are reasonable there really should be no reason why they don't work with you.

Will this work 100% of the time? No. However, it forces the prospect to share their real objections, which you can then work with them on the phone.

The goal of the Hammer is eliminate all of your customers pain points so they can move forward with you.

Master the Hammer, and watch sales grow. 🚀