Have you ever noticed the cheaper the customer the bigger the pain

Tomdurbin

Tomdurbin

New member
I gotta say I have known for along time the cheaper the client the bigger pain in the a**. I don't know why I forget. Even when I am working the deal I hear this in my head. The problem is the other voice that says this time will be different. It is never different. I have had guys that I just wanted to throw out, but my greed or need said this time will be different. Never. I have a new thing now if they ask if its the best I can do I say yes however you can try..... This gets the pain out of my a** and puts it in my competitors. Thats why competition is good. Hopefully they will be too busy with cheapa** to make the next phone call.
 
I am with you all the way. I feel one of the keys to success is knowing which jobs to walk away from, hoping they keep the competition with their cheapo BS. The exception is if they are a referral from a past customer. My biggest job last year was one of those. During negotiations I got the sense they wanted cheap prices but loved my work. I spent more time on that job running over there to answer questions related to saving them money by cutting corners. I would have walked but for the referral situation from a past customer.
Fortunately, they saw what my work looked like from the person that referred us and that was my leverage to steer them away from cutting corners and I held my prices. Once they started to trust me, they added a bunch of additional work which I got top dollar for...go figure!
 
I always am concerned when they start to tell me that they are not going to be picky. I had that once with city garbage trucks. Then during the inspection that happened with every truck, after every wash, they would take out a pair of brand new gloves, and if anything came off on them, they would decline the wash. All of that for a stupidly cheap price. I called the contract administrator, and she ended up retiring over the deal because of the silliness of the situation.
 
All the way. I was doing a buffett chain here in atlanta. I attempted to work with them with price. They called me about everything. They must have had the cameras wired to their houses. One month I got an e-mail this time with pictures. The e-mail said that Kleen Crete, Inc was out here four days ago and we could not even tell. Thank the good lord for the pictures!! Honest to God, I had a picture of a cigarette butt and a spill.

This was after about 3-4 months of calls after the jobs were done. This time, I told him that I would swing by and take a look at it a few days later when i was in that area again. Needless to say, when I did not drop everything to rush to a cigarette butt, he found someone else. I think he was a bit shocked when he called me and said that he was switching and my response was "ok thank you". He was not worth working for and definately not worth the time to attempt to talk into staying with us.

Still dont miss them, and never will.
 
Jim have I told you how much I like your signature?
 
Negotiating is part of business.

When they start asking about cutting a price I ask: What part don't you want us to do?

Some work you can't afford to take.
 
I have had many a customer ask me if I can do better on a price. I have a stock response I came up with years ago.

I look them in the eye, shake their hand and say thank you so very much. It's nice to have a customer that really appreciates my quality. Then I immediately respond with a quote 10 to 15 % more than I originally stated.

They are usually flabbergast, Then they say, I didn't mean go up in price. I say, You said a better price, to me, that's what I gave you.

99.9% of the time, I get my original quote after that comment.
 
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