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I was a contractor for many years. I truely believe that one of the biggest if not THE biggest problem in residential contracting is "The contract". My customers always knew exactly what they were getting because I wrote "Detailed" contracts. When I say detailed I mean detailed, right down to the type and length of nails I would be using, the brands of everything that was going into the job. My competition could never figure just how I oversold them by as much as 50% on a lot of projects. A lot of it was in the contract. The customers knew exactly what they were getting, how much of that in quantity sensitive apps and that gave them a lot of confidence in my proposal and in my company. They would look at another proposal that was way less money but they really could not see what exactly they were getting for their $$$.
I have had customers who said to me, "I know you well enough, we really don't need such a formal contract". I'd say to them, "Mr. customer, your job is very important to me. I talk to hundreds of prospects all the time. If I don't have this detailed out the way I like to, then how am I going to remember just what I told you we will be doing. Not only that but the contract is something that protects both you and me. If something bad should by chance happen and it happens to everyone sometime no matter how good they are then you are covered and if I do my job the way it's written then I'm covered in case of any eventuality. By using that kind of strategy I could close close to 100% of all my sales calls if I wanted to. Because I was no longer in a "sales game" with my competitors I also made enough profit that I could afford to give my customers great service.
I was a salesman before I was a contractor and what I found is that a lot of really good tradesman are horrible salespeople, not only that they are horrible business people. That fact got them into never ending trouble with their customers, suppliers and the worst, the government. I persuaded quite a few of them that they would make more money and be way happier just doing their thing and not worrying about obtaining contracts, buying materials, doing all the book keeping and all the rest of the things that must be done to be successful as a company doing millions of dollars in sales. These guys worked for me for years and made great money, bought new cars and homes and were stable in their lives whereas before their lives were chaos. It all boils down to a well written and executed CONTRACT. After all we are CONTRACTORS.
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