How to win over a client who collects offers and chooses the cheapest one?

Today we will answer the question of Ivan Borikov, who wrote to us with a question for #AskMana

I work with quality and quality materials, and I cannot offer as low a price as others who work cheaply and with not-so-quality materials.

Thank you for the excellent question, colleague Ivan Borikov

To be competitive and to deal with contractors who undercut prices, we first need to ask ourselves a few questions.

• What do you want to achieve?
• What kind of clients do you want to work with?
• Is it necessary to take on all projects?

Once you answer these questions, you will know where you want to position yourself in the market.

1 Market positioning?

Do you want to work with clients who spend a whole month collecting offers just to choose the lowest price? They have wasted their time to save 1000 BGN, or do you want to work with clients who have the money and know what they want? They want the best quality, make no compromises, and work with designers and ready-made projects.

Whether you work with these clients or with those who try to save on everything and will stress you out, you choose what type of craftsman you want to be.

• Budget craftsman - you want to be accessible to everyone and work with people who don't have a big budget. They will look for a price, and for them, the price will be more important than quality.
• Inaccessible craftsman - your prices will be inaccessible to everyone.
• Exclusive craftsman - you work with a more limited audience of clients. Your clients will be affluent; they want the best quality and are willing to pay for it. Are you the person who can provide them with that quality?

Most people look for the cheapest option and cannot afford to pay. Our practice has shown that precisely these clients, who seek the cheapest price, have the most demands.

To work with the people we want, it is best to create filters that automatically filter them out. We are looking for our perfect clients, and the idea of these filters is to weed out the others. Not at any cost with every client, but we are looking for our perfect client.

1.The first filter we apply is: Price for a site visit.

The idea here is not to charge clients for the visit, nor to charge for the time spent.

Why do we do it?

The idea is to see if the person is willing to pay for this. If they are not willing to pay a professional who will save them many mistakes, time, effort, materials, and do the job well, then they are most likely not one of your perfect clients.

However, it is very important to specify here that we are very good at what we do, we are professionals and we know how to do it, and how long it will take us to complete the work, and we do not take on other projects until we have finished the one we started. As it is not professional to take on 3 projects and circulate between them every day. To be exhausted from work and waste time traveling between sites. Instead of focusing on one project and completing it in the fastest way within the shortest timeframe we have set.

2.The second filter we apply is: Price for an offer

There we filter out another part of the clients in order to reach our desired clients.

When price is not the client's most important resource

• But how can we be helpful to our clients?
• What more can we give them?
• Why should they choose us, and what can we offer them that others cannot?
• What can we offer our clients to make them agree to our price?

What can we offer them?

What we can offer them is their perspective. We need to put ourselves in our client's shoes and understand what they want. When we have positioned ourselves to work with affluent clients, we need to understand what these clients want. What is most important, is it money, or do they want the best?

They are looking for the best quality, and we must be among the best to be able to offer them that quality. Once we have reached these clients, we must be able to live up to that trust, because if we cannot live up to what we promised them, they will not seek us out again, and we will lose them as clients. If we cannot meet their expectations and protect their interests, they will not seek us out again.

Marketing and advertising: a key part of the client acquisition strategy

Acquiring each client takes a lot of effort and resources. We need to make sure that we win a client for life, not having to earn their trust repeatedly. This is our best strategy and our best advertisement. Such a client may have more than one property. They can create work for us again and again.

What clients do we choose?

When we choose to work with less affluent clients, the renovations they undertake are usually one-time over a long period. Or we choose to work with our ideal client, whichever type we choose, when we work with quality and have satisfied clients, they will recommend us to relatives and friends.

So, choose for yourself how you will position yourself in the market.

When working with solvent people, ask yourself what is most important to them?

Will the price be the most important factor for them (here we are not talking about industrial sites like malls, blocks, but about private clients). When quoting a high price, we should not be among the craftsmen who see quick money and rush things. You will take that money, but you will lose the client. Instead, we need to understand what they want and what is most important if it is not the price.

For clients for whom price is not the most important thing, time is more valuable. When we promise that a certain job will be done within the specified deadline, we must not mislead them, as this can cost us their trust and future opportunities to work with them.

Besides time, what else are these people looking for?

They seek quality. They know that quality costs money and are willing to pay for it.

Because these people will pay the price you ask, but you must complete the work within the deadline you set. This should be realistic so they can organize their property accordingly.

This type of people are investors who deal with this, and if you earn their trust, you will be able to work with your ideal client for years.

When a client wants the best quality, they will want the best materials, which in themselves simplify our work and allow us to work faster and with higher quality. But to work with these clients, you also need to be among the best and value their resources.

Because people who collect offers are limited by the resource of money, while those who have money are limited by the resource of time. Those who are limited by the resource of money have time, and those who are limited by the resource of time have money.

So, choose for yourself who you want to work with.

What should we know?

To work with your ideal clients, your main principle should be never to work with everyone, because when you strive to work with everyone, you risk missing out on your ideal clients and good projects. Your goal is to attract only your ideal projects and clients.

To earn more money than your competitors, you need to offer more. You need to be ready to tell them not only the deadline and price, but everything else it will cost. This must be a mandatory condition, because if you mislead with an unrealistic price and omit activities that you add later, you are deceiving your clients and losing them as such.

Don't work at any cost, because when you are pressured to work at any cost, you are also pressured to work with people you don't want to work with.

Work smart, not hard!