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J AY G R A N T o n b u i l d i n g Licensed to steal your time If you're not charging prospects for your pre-contract efforts, you're allowing them to steal your time, and your money f you lose money you can make it back, and possibly more. If you lose your smart phone, your wallet or even a key employee, they can be replaced. There is one thing in life that you cannot get back, however, and that is time. For a builder, I'm talking about the time you spend trying to convert a prospect to your client. Given the buyer's market most of us have been in since 2006, we have grown accustomed to treating prospects better than they deserve. Consider this scenario: A prospect initiates contact with you. During the initial sales phone call, you actively screen the prospect to see if he can afford what he desires and if you want to do business with him while simultaneously selling your company's abilities. You agree to a face-to-face meeting at the site if it's a remodel, or at your office if he is a new home prospect. The prospect tells you why he thinks he will hire you, as long as you can help him go from where he is to where he wants to be. He needs design and budget information. He makes you feel good that if you can share this information with him, surely he will hire you. You leave the meeting with a promise to the prospect to help him meet his needs and goals. H ow much time have you invested so far? Let's call it half a day. Add to this the time to prepare for the follow-up meeting and you are up to one full day or maybe more if you promised the prospect to research his design or budget questions. Add whatever time your staff spends to support your sales effort. You may have three full days invested by the time you return for the first follow-up meeting. 8 S E P T E M B E R / O C T O B E R 2 0 1 2 What's missing here? Did you leave something out? Unless you have a plan to return to the second meeting with a firm commitment to ask the prospect to sign as a client, you've left behind a license to steal your time — limited and finite time you have on this Earth to take care of your business, yourself and your family. When you relinquish control of your time to the so much of his time before he has a commitment? T he reason you naively, nay, innocently handed him your time is because you have been conditioned by your title and by the industry that as a builder, you sell building services and that is what you get paid for, but you have missed a valuable DURING THE INITIAL sales phone call, screen the prospect to see if he can afford what he desires, and if you want to do business with him prospect, he now has your approval and a license to steal your time until he decides you have performed well enough to deserve his business. And steal he will. He will ask you for more site meetings, more design work, more budgeting, more bidding, more explaining and more educating as to how his project can be built in the manner and at the price he imagines. You have empowered him to take your time for as long as you willingly give it away. This may be for a week, a month or over the course of a year. And he does not care if he takes 20, 40 or 100 hours of your life. Why should he care? He is not a bad guy. You handed him a license to steal your time until you either convert him to a client or he hires the other guy. What other professional do you know who gives away r e si d e n t ia l d e s i gn + b u i l d point. If you are a professional builder and remodeler, you have the right to sell your expertise in the design and budget phases of construction planning. It is not written anywhere that you have to give away this expertise to get paid for being a builder. Think about it. Let me know your thoughts. I look forward to hearing from you. ■ JAY GRANT, president of Grant Homes, a residential design/build firm in Mendham, N.J., focuses on building luxury custom homes and renovations/additions. He is the recipient of more than 20 industry awards including best website for granthomesusa.com. Grant is available for business consulting. Send email to granthomes@msn.com. Read past columns at ForResidentialPros.com. F o r R e si d e n t ia l P r o s . c o m