A Simple Mindset Shift To Close More Jobs...You Vs The Average Contractor w/ Jon Valenta from General Pavingstones

Well, my question is, why aren't we spending more time making sure that we're spending, that we're investing that time with the right people? Welcome to the Sales Made Simple podcast. This podcast is dedicated to helping overwhelmed outdoor living professionals, landscapers, and hardscapers just like you increase your closing rate to over 75% without doubling your workload so you can build a seven-figure business that doesn't need you. I'm your host, Joshua Gillow. Let's dig in. [upbeat music] Welcome back, everyone, to the Sales Made Simple podcast. Your host Joshua Gillow here, and alongside me is John Valenza from General Pavingstones. What's going on, John?

Hey, Joshua. It's great to be back, and, uh, I think we have lots to talk about. It's, it's been a busy spring here with, uh, some good, good client interactions and, and experiences, and definitely, um, a better process, you know, following the guidelines in, in your, your book, The Core 10, that recently came out.

I appreciate that. And when you said good conversations with customers, I think I saw air quotes in the air, [laughs] right? So I think we're gonna unpack that here in this episode. So today, guys, I wanna talk about managing all the sales opportunities that are coming through the door. I mean, e- even if you're not, uh, been in business very long, spring is a usually a pretty busy time, you know, across America where the leaves are popping out and everyone starts looking outside and scratching their heads saying, "What am I gonna do out there this year? It needs to be, you know, spruced up," or, "I wanna do a whole project," or, "I wanna enhance what I have," or whatever it might be. But the phones start ringing, and just two, three months ago, we're sitting here scratching our heads like, "What are we gonna do?" Like, "We have, [laughs] we have nothing going on" or we have a couple of designs going on. And all of a sudden spring comes and everybody wants us yesterday. So how do we manage as an industry? How do we manage all of that demand all bottled up into a few months? Like, that's, that's what I wanna get to today. So John, tell me how you're managing that right now. I know you've got a lot of leads coming in. We've got a lot of leads coming in. Like, how are you managing it?

I'm managing it a lot differently than I used to, that's for sure. I used to be one of those guys, answer the phone and the first question they ask is, "Can you come out and give me an estimate?" And I would say, "Hell yeah," and I'd be s- smoking the tires on the way out of the driveway-

[laughs]

... uh, to go give them that free estimate, and typically ended up going nowhere. And now I'm slowing it down. I'm asking a lot more questions on the phone.

Mm-hmm.

I've had a few objections to my questions-

Yeah

... but then I've had a few really great conversations, and even had a really good one yesterday where we ended up, you know, misaligned on budget. But at the end of the conversation, he said to me, "I understand now why you have so many good reviews online based on the questions you asked me in the conversation we just had."

Yeah.

So didn't turn into a sale, but it also didn't turn into a trip out to