One of the biggest challenges we hear from custom home builders is that their prospects will not tell them the truth when they ask for a budget.

Not only that, but if they do somehow manage to get a budget, and then by some miracle manage to actually meet the client’s expectations and hit their budget, the client turns around at the eleventh hour and tells the builder that, “They are going with a cheaper quote.”

Those experiences leave builders feeling used, frustrated and disillusioned with the industry.

Which is why the first thing we did when we started working with residential home builders back in 2014, was to map out the exact sales process they need to follow for every new enquiry.

From changing their marketing to attracting the right prospects in the first place…

To building rapport when they first speak to a client…

To asking the right questions in the right order to qualify those leads…

To asking the right questions to discover the emotion behind the decision to build…

You see, people make buying decisions based on emotion, but they then justify it with logic…

So while price may be a contributing factor, it’s not the primary reason a consumer chooses a builder…

Otherwise they would all be going with the lowest price.

You Must Follow A Process

And after surveying hundreds of clients ourselves, and seeing the results from other associations who have also commissioned extensive surveys themselves to understand consumers' buying habits, we know that is not true…

However, we also know that going with another builder who had a lower quote is the #1 reason consumers give builders when they want to get rid of them…

So how do you become the builder that wins the job without being the lowest price in the tender? 

You follow a process.

However, even with the right process, some of our members were still struggling to get their prospects to open up and reveal their real budget…

And without a budget they either turned the prospect away, which resulted in a missed opportunity, or quoted the job anyway which resulted in a waste of time and money…

It made no sense to us, that two builders following the exact same process were getting very different results... 

Until one of our members, we’ll call him Mike, started using a CRM system that allowed him to record all of the sales calls…

And by reviewing those sales calls he could see very clearly that his salesperson was not following the process!

Why Prospects Conceal Budgets 

Because, instead of starting the call by spending time building rapport, before moving through the qualifying questions to see if they were a good fit, and then investing more time going deep and asking the discovery questions, he was jumping straight in within the first three minutes demanding to know their budget!

It was crazy, he expected someone that he’d never met before to reveal some very personal financial information that they had probably only ever shared with half a dozen people before…

And you know why prospects weren't revealing their budget to this salesperson?

Because without getting to know, like or trust the person on the other end of the phone first, they had know idea if he would abuse this information and use it to inflate the price of the build…

Now, of course we know that rarely happens because in business, market forces keep margins in check…

However, when a prospect has only been speaking to someone for a few minutes, that is what their subconscious is telling them!

It’s saying to them, “Danger! Don’t reveal your budget, they’ll just spend it all when you could have gotten it cheaper!”  

The prospect mistakenly believes that they are negotiating with you on price from that very first phone call…

But from the builder’s perspective, you are just trying to understand if this person is a good fit for you or not!

Can you see the disconnect?

And this is why some builders miss out on good opportunities simply because they failed to follow a sequence from the beginning…

Sequence is more important than speed.

Studies have shown that when it comes to the sales process, if you skip steps, then your prospects WILL feel assaulted…

In order for a prospect to trust you, they need to feel heard.

“No one cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.”

Put Your Phone On Mute! 

Which means that when you get to the discovery questions, you need to employ ‘Active Listening’.

Put your phone on mute if that helps, but let your prospects talk!

Of course, you don’t want to spend an hour talking to an unqualified prospect which is why your seven qualifying questions come first…

However, those seven qualifying questions do not include the budget question!

Because if it’s not real, then it's meaningless!

So save it for later in the conversation when you will get a more honest answer...and that still probably won't be the figure you end up going to contract on, but it will be something you can start working with.

And that is the difference between the builders that take the hottest prospects out of the market early, and the ones that are left saying, “The leads are crap.”

Max Mills in the US didn’t even have a sales process before he started implementing this as a strategy, but as soon as he started asking the right questions in the right sequence, everything clicked into place for him!

You may be thinking, “I don’t see how that would work for me as I don't have the gift of the gab.” 

But that’s the point of this process, you are not the one doing the talking, they are! 

The days of the fast-talking, super-slick salesman are over! 

To sell homes in today's market you need to be able to listen more than you talk! And that is not easy for a lot of people.

So that is how you get your prospects to tell you the truth when you ask for their budget...

If you’d like to discover some more tips on how to master the sales process for a residential building company, check out our latest book, Professional Builders Secrets.

Inside you’ll discover how to generate more quality leads, and convert more of those leads into sales at higher margins while improving the client experience.

Click on the special link below to receive your free copy.