ECN Forum Forums General Topics of the Trade General Discussion Area Another day on the sales trail...

Welp - there goes another day, another tank of gas, another 20 flyers complete with references and business cards attached. Another 20 home builders who were either not there, moved locations, or simply laid the info aside and said, "I'll put this in my file and let you know if we need anyone."

Its almost worth it though when that one of the 20 looks at your info, recognizes one of your references and says, "I just might be looking for a new electrician..."

If only they'd call...

Ah shucks, just figured I'd share my morning - off to do some follow-up.

I can kinda sympathize. Looking for a job isn't as easy as I'd like it to be People either aren't looking for help, or they lead you to believe that they might need somebody, then they never call you. I had one guy that seemed interested and he told me that he'd call me back in a couple of days to let me know if he could use me....that was about 2 months ago. He never called back. The least he could have done was call me back and say, "I'm not needing any help right now." I'd have understood that. Oh well, I just keep looking and waiting.

Well - it never hurts to follow-up a sales call (or a job call) - of course then where do you draw the line? When is it a follow-up and when are you absolutely getting on someone's nerves?

Don't you hate that? People who are evasive or insincere don't do others or their own reputation any justice (although it's a good reference point for insight into their integrity or reputation).

I hope you find something soon and that you're not sitting idle while you're looking! If you have the opportunity to tap into other similar lines of work like telecomm, home theater, computer or networking or infrastructure it might be a little added bonus in your cache of training and knowledge.

Sale calls are part finding new customers. The ones that greatly irritate me are those who ask for a bid, then give the job to the guy who beeen doing all our work for years. The only thing they want is for numbers to check on "thier guy". I would rather they be up front, but too many would rather be what they think is diplomatic.

nesparky, I know what you mean. A couple of weeks ago I had a contractor tell me how he was ticked off at his current electrician and had me quote a job from prints.
I had to go to the job, meet with him, take the prints to Kinko's to copy at $10 cost to me, return the prints to him, spend 2 hours in the office doing a take off and typing an estimate, then faxing the estimate. He called me up and said I could have the job if i would meet the other electrians bid $ 11,200 vs. $11,500. I said OK. 5 days later he calls and says the project is on hold. The other day I drove by the job site and he was there, so I stopped. He said the bank made him take the lower bid. Bull S...! I would've beat the other bid if asked, he was just checking out the other guys bid.

How about asking up front "Is this a competitive bid, a second opinion, or a bid verification?" It may take your requestor by surprise enough to blurt out a reply that will give you more info to work with.

If they say, "Uh, y-y-yes" and give you that 'deer in the headlights look' then you'll know you would've spent too much time & effort and recouped zilch. In this case, you might ballpark it and perhaps give them a little piece of advice like "Well, just as a ballpark I'd say between $XXXX and $XXXX, but there'd probably be a more accurate estimate if I had some assurance that I'd get the work or if we signed an agreement for the time spent developing an estimate."

I've wondered if it would be appropriate to say something to the affect of "If you get an estimate that is lower than $xyz, then check the quality of the [xyz equipment or parts, appliances, fixtures, etc] or higher than $XXXXX then check the number of hours.

If they falter and say "Uh..no, no, I wouldn't do that.." you may have to read between the lines.

I did ask one builder up front once - he had me estaimate three jobs and I finally said, "Hey - I don't want to seem to blunt, but should I be treating these estaimtes as if I am getting these jobs?"

I think he actually respected that because he was very upfront with me and told me that I was the only one estimating two of them and that he was not 100% committed either way on the other. I can live with that...

At least the communication was there...