Are you losing deals because you’re quoting one-off projects like repeat customers—or treating repeat clients like strangers?
Most sales strategies focus on chasing more leads, but the real wins often come from mastering the leads you already have. In this episode, we dive into the subtle—but powerful—differences between quoting for first-time clients versus repeat customers, and why small adjustments can dramatically boost your close rates.
By listening, you’ll learn how to:
- Build trust and create value with one-off clients to increase your chances of closing the deal.
- Deliver consistent, exceptional value to repeat customers and avoid letting laziness hurt your relationships.
- Apply the “1% better” approach to quoting and customer interactions, turning small improvements into bigger revenue.
Tune in to discover the key tweaks in your quoting process that can transform both first-time and repeat client wins.
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This podcast helps the entrepreneur, founder, CEO, and business owner in the trade, construction and industry segments, regain focus, build confidence, and achieve measurable results through powerful sales training, effective sales strategy, and expert sales coaching—guiding every sales leader, sales manager, and sales team in mastering the sales process, optimizing the sales pipeline, and driving business growth while fostering leadership, balance, and freedom amidst overwhelm, stress, and potential burnout, creating lasting peace of mind and smarter decision making for every California business and Australia business ready to scale up with excellence in sales management , through refined sales processes, proven trade sales techniques, and strategic sales leadership that strengthens sales process execution, accelerates sales team development, builds stronger sales teams, improves time management for sales, drives resilience and results, increases team results across the construction industry and wider industry sales sectors, and supports sustainable trading growth that continues to drive results through an effective management process in modern trade sales.
Episode Transcript
Ben Wright:
In today’s episode, we are going to consider if the way you quote should change for one-off projects or repeat clients that are coming back to your business again.
Intro:
Welcome to Sales Process Made Simple, the show helping seven to eight figure industry construction and trade, sales and business leaders finally end the stress of inconsistent sales by simplifying your sales systems so your team can close more deals and grow faster.
I’m your host Ben Wright, a leader who has been building businesses and sales teams just like you for the last 20 years.
Ben Wright:
By the end of this episode, you should be able to consider if you need to slightly adjust your quoting process for projects that are once-off versus projects that are repeat customers. And this is a powerful topic because after 25 years of experience in the sales world and tens of thousands of quotes and deals that I’ve had personal experience with, the subtle differences between one-off and repeat clients are quite significant and can absolutely move the dial when it comes to your close rates. And what I really like, I should say about this topic before we get into it, is that we don’t need to worry about here creating more leads, creating more leads to win more business.
What we actually are focusing on here is how we can do better with the leads that we have and just taking that small 1% better approach to making sure that we recognize the situation we’re in to nail that business. So as we roll into this, I think a great example I can give around how we will focus on once-off customers versus repeat clients is to think about the value that we’re creating. And in fact, this is going to be the main theme for today is around how the value equation differs slightly for one-off projects versus repeat projects.
So when you think that you are out on a sales call or people in your team are out on a sales call, doesn’t matter whether it’s a home or a commercial premise, and we’re meeting that customer for the first time, it’s our first real engagement. A time when we probably haven’t built a lot of trust. We don’t necessarily know that customer very well, nor can we guarantee that they like us.
Side note, we talk here about people buy from those that they know, like or trust. So think about when you’re first meeting people, you’re on site and you generally don’t know who they are, but more importantly, they don’t know who you are. In this instance, the value creation piece is much more than just delivering a product or a service for them.
It’s actually about creating value that they can trust you. Creating value that your business will deliver. So for those projects where we’re one-off, a real focus for super successful trade, industry and construction businesses is around rapidly building relationships with their customers.
So spending a little bit more time creating that warmth, understanding what they need, finding out special elements of their project that you can deliver against, and then aligning your business against what’s important to that customer. We’re spending more time communicating and building some common ground around our business, what we do, us as individuals, and how we can align what we do to the value that’s needed for the customer, and less time around the specifics of the project. We can move on to specifics once we’re really clear on what the value creation looks like, i.e. what are the most important things that the customer wants from this project.
Is it speed? Is it price? Is it quality of the construction? Is it how the water tastes in the swimming pool? Is it how easy it is to clean windows or the heat that they hold out of the home or the commercial premise? Is it the equipment that you’re buying? How it looks? If you’re cutting grass on a right-on mower, how much grass it can cut at once, at what speed, or more about the price, right? And these are examples that are jumping in terms of all different categories. But we’re starting to think here about value creation is aligning to what the customer wants. In one-off projects, I couldn’t argue more heavily for focusing on creating value that aligns with the customer, thinking about what they need, and then tailoring your pitch, tailoring your communications to exactly what it is that they need.
So, in one-off projects, we’re thinking about creating value for the customer but also building the focus around whether or not a customer knows, likes, or trusts you to be able to keep stepping forward in that deal. Okay, so we’ve covered this quite a lot across previous episodes. I’d go and have a look at episode 176 and 178.
They’ve both jumped into these similar type of topics. But where we’re going to differ here slightly now is around repeat business. So, what happens when we’re dealing with customers who know who we are? They have a level of liking us or trusting us or knowing us and have bought from us previously.
So, we’re walking in as a much more known quantity but not necessarily with a guarantee that we’re going to get the project. Because whilst repeat customers generally close at a higher level, I also see many businesses, particularly in the trade and construction and industry type of segments, go into these quote processes lazily, put their prices up too high, or just drop off from that great level of service that they delivered when they’re trying so hard to win that customer. And where I’d really encourage you to focus on here around repeat customers is value delivery.
So, you know what the customer wants. You know what ticks their boxes. You know what’s important to them.
Focus on delivering it really well again just like you did the first time. Don’t let the laziness, and forgive me if that elicits a bit of an emotional response, but don’t let laziness get in the way of delivering the outcomes that you did the first time around. Have a think back to what really worked for that customer.
Repeat it to them. Hey, in the first project that we did with you, when we built your house last year or when we completed your renovations earlier this year, what was really important to you was how we worked around your family, the speed of the build because you had a really expensive off-site rental, and making sure that when we finished, the project was completed to 100% rather than having a long tail of other things that we needed to work on. Are those three things really important to you in moving into your next renovation or your next build or your next installation of whatever product or service we have? Confirm that that value delivery is exactly what they want.
Hopefully, you get a yes. And if you don’t get that confirmation, then that opens the door to be able to understand what’s changed, why it’s changed, and how you can deliver to that. So, the focus here really for repeat customers is all around making sure you deliver that value just like you did in earlier projects.
We want to make sure that we are sharp, crisp, and really doing everything well for that customer because whilst they already know us, they’re more likely to trust us. It doesn’t mean the works are guaranteed. And over time, it can be a very slippery slope from the immediate early levels of service you gave through to a deteriorated or a rapidly reduced outcome for the customer.
So, that’s today’s episode in a nutshell. How do we approach quoting differently when we’re aiming for one-off projects or first projects versus when we’re looking at repeat customers? And for one-off projects, we’re really focused here around creating value. So, understanding what the value is, understanding what the customer wants, aligning it to what you deliver so we can take steps forward around that no-like or trust path.
When it comes to repeat customers, it’s making sure that we are focused on value delivery. So, hitting exactly what we delivered in our first projects or services and at a minimum, making sure we deliver that again. But an even better approach here would be to be thinking about how we can deliver again and again and again with that 1% better thing.
So, we take what we know about our customer. We’ve got an advantage over everyone else and we deliver an even better result for them next time around. So, as we finish up today, I want you to have a think about if you’re focusing in the one-off or the repeat customer business but particularly in the repeat customer business, making sure that you are just as sharp with your customers on the second, third, and fourth interactions with them versus when you are in the first and not letting laziness or apathy get in the way.
Grateful for everyone listening today. We are rolling out episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Please keep that focus on being 1% better each and every day.
It does make a difference and can’t wait for our next episode. Bye for now.
Are you struggling to grow your monthly sales numbers? Feel like you’ve reached the sales ceiling, are involved in every deal or have no real sales system in place to help you grow? And is that causing a level of worry or stress about how you can get more sales in the future? If that’s you, that’s exactly why we created the Sold Out Sales Teams programme to help you get month-on-month sales growth with less stress.
In just the first week, we will lock down your quoting process to grow sales by 25% to 30%. That’s just week one.
For the first three podcast listeners that we speak to this week, we’ll offer you a bonus one-on-one strategy session with me to make sure you can pay off your investment even faster, which by the way, for most businesses is only one or two extra sales.
To book in, click the link in our show notes. It’s a direct calendar link so you can instantly confirm your meeting time.