Selling "The Liar"

Storefront
1

Ok, so we’ve all had this happen before.

You walk past a shop, and notice that the windows obviously haven’t been cleaned in years. You walk in, and approach the person in charge, and they tell you that they have a window cleaner.

We’re professionals, we can tell if you do or not.

Now, some people may actually have a guy that only shows up once every year or so, but I’m guessing that when this answer comes up, 99% of the time they’re just full of it and trying to usher me out of the door due to dis-interest.

I AM a relatively aggressive, yet very polite salesperson. I have tried a few different rebuttals to this situation, such as the “Well, if you’d like I can give you a free estimate, and it will only take a few seconds of your time” and “Hmm… has your regular cleaner come around lately?”, but can’t find a surefire way to pique interest.

Any suggestions on how to close these, or at least reword my schpeil to gain the prospective customer’s interest?

2

I walked a whole block of stores like this and heard the same thing. I was getting really frustrated with being lied to so I changed my approach.

I walked into the next shop, handed my card to the person working there and said, “Hi! My name is Brett. I’m a window cleaner and it looks like you could use my services”.

I was cleaning their windows 10 min. later.

3

Honesty has always worked for me. When I hear that I say I can do a better job for you. Then you will hear I just lease the space I dont own the building. thats when I say you may not own the building but you do however own the view and I will take pride in your view. That particular line has won me more business than any other.

4

Awesome :slight_smile:

5

when I do storefronts, or small commercial, I walk in with the price, just walk around the building, takes a few seconds, so when they give me their line, here is my card, and this is how much I can do it for.

The guy that taught me the WCing business would write his prices on the back of his card go in and lay the card on the counter, at the end of the conversation he would tell them I already wrote some prices for you on the back of the card; he never had anyone not turn the card over and look at the price. Sometimes that opened it up to talk some more.

6

This approach worked for me as well when I was in the store front thing. I used to approach them with the line something like: “I thought I would stop in today to see if I could save you money on your window cleaning services”. Saving money is what store managers love to hear. Its their job to cut back on overhead. Alot of the time, I was nowhere near what they were paying but at least they gave me their attention and I found out what the other guy was coming in at on pricing. I landed a fair share of my sales calls with that line as well.

Steve

7

Back when I used to canvass for store front I would hear this all the time. Then I would look at their windows and ask how frequently he comes in and usually got another lie like, “oh every week or every other week.”

There were many times I was tempted to run my finger in a big X pattern through the dust/dirt in the middle of their window and say, “well I guess your guy will be here in the next day or two to take care of this.”

Of course I’d never do this. Some people (shop keepers, etc) lie out of nervousness. They don’t know how to simply say “no” so they make stuff up. In the end I don’t blame them, it’s all in a days work.

For those of you pursuing store front work day in and day out, I tip my hat to you. You’re troopers!. Me, I just can’t stand hearing the word “no” so many times a day, it really would get me down.

8

The budget plays a huge role in getting store-front.

There is nothing I hate more than going from building to building
because I have no leverage. I am first an intruder and need
to justify why I am there fast, and in a compelling way.

There is no magic sentence to get sales here, it’s timing. We
need to happen to walk into a business that is either having
problems with a current service, or has been green-lighted
to hire one.

In my opinion it is no easier to get the real dirty jobs over
the clean ones. I walked into a grocery store that had the
same window cleaning company doing their whole chain for
years. By freak chance this GM was tired of them not showing
up when they were supposed to.

That store broke off from that service and hired me on the spot…
a year later I had the chain of 15 stores. $25k a year because
of my experience working for a window cleaning company. I know
there can be problems bubbling under the surface.

Dirty windows tell me they have no budget or they are cheap (bad
prospect). Clean windows tell me they care and they are more likely
to hire a service like mine.

Clean windows do not equal happy customers, just like dirty windows
don’t equal a need for your service.

If you want to do this right you have to keep hitting places over
and over. It’s all about timing.

My sales pitch sucked by the way…

1 Like
9

Prospects have been trained to lie. How many times have you walked into a store and been asked “can I help you?” 9 times out of 10 we all say no. or not interested.

These shop keepers get pounded with phone calls and dropins all day. You think they are gonna just ‘give up’ 20 bucks on something they think is not a big deal.

You must create questions that will stir an emotional response to get them interested in what you have to say. Pretend you are selling to a 9 year old that knows the value of a dollar. Sell to the inner child!

Ask them for a business card so you can send some information so they can keep it on file, thank them and ask exactly one more question, just like this.
[B]“Thanks for the information, Listen, would you mind if I helped you out with that dirty door? Im already here and it won’t take but a minute.” [/B]

They will say yes (This is your first ‘yes’, you need 6 more before you close.
Knock out both sides of the door and leave.

As soon as you get home, send an email and a real letter. In the email, thank them again for thier time, and let them know an envelope is on its way with additional information and a few business cards. (You are now a professional company and you followed up on what you said you would do. (You’ve created trust)

They’ll get tired of looking at the windows and call you for a price. Don’t give it up yet! This is your chance for a few more ‘yes’ questions.

When they call, pound in that pain, ask yes questions, get them to tell you how great that door looked, and then go on site, give em an estimate and close. (For 25% more than what you would normaly do it for.)

The prospect is not telling you they don’t want clean windows, they are telling you they are not ready to buy…yet.

10

I don’t do store front and that’s one reason why. $10 and they can’t afford it. We all know they want to keep their employees working so the $5 smoe is getting the towel and windex out most of the time. It’s interesting because, again I don’t do store front but have been getting calls for it alot lately. Heck I got one the first morning of the seminar. Funny if I would have signed the contract with the Mr. Window Network I would have been required to pass them on to him as it was in the same spot as one of his stores. The girl got me before I had coffee and made me feel bad. So I’ll be hitting the store up this thursday. It’s a losing game my friend. Just get out while you can. The amount of back office work needed for $10 accounts is not worth it in my opinon. The longer you play that game the more you lose.

11

This is one reason I will not be doing any more store fronts !

Done with the lies and crap, I just gave away a store front to another window cleaner in my area, that means I am down to just 2 … LOL but one, I will never get rid off, they are just too nice ! Awesome office !

Restaurants - fast food - convience stores, realy not worth any effort at all !

12

Not BAD man…I think I will use that line…thanks

13

Send 'em my way brutha, all I’m doing at the moment is storefront… as long as they’re not too far south lol