Tough People To Sell To.

ultimatetouch

Is it me or are people from India extremely hard to sell to. Every time I go on a sales call with somone from india its all about price. I keep an open mind but the first words out of there mouth are how much, give me a good price. Even before I met them. I never generalize or stereotype. I will contiue to run leads but there is definitely a pattern here.

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Ultimatetouch
Illinois Remodeling Company, Kitchen Remodeling Chicago, Room Additions Illinois

lawndart

I don't have a problem telling someone over the phone, I don't think my company can help them. I do it quite often, and it helps my closing ratio. I always qualify a customer on the initial phone call, because I have the right to pick and choose who I want to work with.

nlgutters

indian, chinese any of them are cheap. make them feel like they are getting a deal!!!! with them i come back from the truck with the estimate and say i just called my boss(which is me) and we are working in the area i can give you 20% off if u sign right now. they almost always take it. pf course i always mark it up 30%. make the feel like they are getting a deal. i dont know why they are so cheap but they are

silvertree

We have a significant East Indian population and I have done work in the community. People from India living here probably came from a wealthy family. They had servants and got work done really cheap. They called the shots. In India a carpenter would be from a lower caste, same as a plumber or electrician. They think price is negotiable even after signing a contract. Having said that, most times they want a cheap price first and quality is different from their prospective. I don't go out to bid their work, but I would imagine that some Indian Homeowners will pay for professional remodeling, I have not seen this myself. As a group I like them, to work for, I have not had good experiences.

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Vote for Pedro
Kitchen, bath, St Paul remodeling
Minneapolis Remodel Blog
203K Loan Consultant Minnesota

Teetorbilt

Every other culture on this planet 'deals'. Americans are the only ones that pay a 'set' price.

Learn to deal and you can get discounts from anyone including the box stores (they have room to play too).

In dealing with other cultures, mark yourself up and negotiate to where you need to be.

IMHO, Middle Easterners are the worst. I always add in a 10-15% (aggravation factor). You can chew up a lot of time just TALKING to these people.

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You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

MIbeachbuilder

You have to consider that people from other countries, especially countries with much lower income ratios than the US, get a bit of sticker shock when they see the prices we pay here.

Imagine having a siding job installed including the siding for 30-45 per square back home and then getting quoted 200+ per square here. If I were from another country such as China and India I would be longing for the prices back home....and haggling too.

Mike Finley

I'll never forget the time a long time ago with the customer who we had wrote on the contract install 32 feet of base molding as part of their job... it was a number based upon a very cut up room that required (2) 16' pieces of molding cut up into about 9 different pieces which if you measured each 9", 18", 25"... section the actual running footage was something like 28' 8" and he wanted a refund for the difference.

I tried to explain to him that it was just an overall number meaning it would take two 16 footers, but he was adamant that he was being cheated for the 3' 4" of waste.

MattCoops

I would have just gave him the scrap and called it a day.
What teetorbuilt said was right. If you know how to deal you could have said: "I can give you this scrap you paid for. Or I can refund your money. Now with the refund there is a restocking fee for the returned materials. Which would you prefer ma'am/sir?"

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Matt with Cupan Custom Tile & Paint of Lowell, Massachusetts
Design and installation of ceramic tile and natural stone for floor, wall, and countertops
(978) 601-8774 | cupantile@gmail.com | view tile pictures and more

RobertCDF

Did you start to change your contract to say "approx 32' "? Or install base on north wall in living room?

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Robert Shaw
Colorado Springs Custom Decks
Colorado Custom Decks
Custom Composite Decks

MattCoops

North wall. Wow, that's something I need to get, a compass. My GPS only tells me where "due North" is.

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Matt with Cupan Custom Tile & Paint of Lowell, Massachusetts
Design and installation of ceramic tile and natural stone for floor, wall, and countertops
(978) 601-8774 | cupantile@gmail.com | view tile pictures and more

MattCoops

The thing about that is people come to the country and after they taste our food and women they can never leave.

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Matt with Cupan Custom Tile & Paint of Lowell, Massachusetts
Design and installation of ceramic tile and natural stone for floor, wall, and countertops
(978) 601-8774 | cupantile@gmail.com | view tile pictures and more

Patrick

This is VERY true Especially at home depot

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Originally Posted by Celtic
Like I said...I'm sure you are very good at what you do ~ whatever that is and where ever it happens.

MIbeachbuilder

They don't impress me very much.

Putty Truck

The "foreigners" don't rely on credit cards or easy credit to get what they need (note the word need over want). When you are used to paying hard earned cash for everything, you tend to be more conservative.

They suck, anyway. Give me a good ol' American fool with his Visa card any day.

MattCoops

Turns on Shanai Twain on CB radio and plays, "that don't impress me much" - Feel Like a Woman.

__________________
Matt with Cupan Custom Tile & Paint of Lowell, Massachusetts
Design and installation of ceramic tile and natural stone for floor, wall, and countertops
(978) 601-8774 | cupantile@gmail.com | view tile pictures and more

Grumpy

I try not to be racist. Sterotypes are made for a reason, and loosely based on reality BUT I treat these customers as I would any other.

I just had a mutual release of employement with a salesman, not because he was racist, but he was a god awful racist. I would hand him a lead and the name would be somethign like Shania Jackson, for example. The first words out of his mouth would be "What is she black?" He would then go on to mock her name in a partially southern, partially ghetto accent. Because of it I adopted a loose "racial tolerance" policy which basically copied and pasted from some site on the internet. when I printed it for him and put it in his inbox, he asked if it was a joke. I told him I didn't want to hear anything racist out of his mouth again. If their money is green, I don't care what color their skin is.

After that I started to pay attention, and took note that within my own company indians and jews were commonly insulted in casual conversation. So I had to make sure everyone knew that it is not accepted and if I hear it, there will be problems. A large base of our customers are jewish, and discriminating against them would be foolish to say the least. And if I ever find out one of my salesmen are qualifying leads based on any crieteria other than "Is it a service we offer and are they within our service area?" I will flip my lid. Qualifying is really just disqualifying.

We just completed work for a nice gentleman from Phakistan. He's got a house worth half a mil, very well kept, and doesn't smell like curry. He hired some painters to replace his basement windows which didn't turn out since they used off the shelf home depot sizes and there are 2-6" gaps all around the windows. When we gave him our price to install the new custom windows, he said it was twice what the other guys charged him... and signed without asking for any discounts.

Had we disqualified this customer based on race, we'd have thrown out a perfectly good sale right there.

Susan Betz

That's too bad. I love the smell of curry.

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Fences of Distinction, Ocala, FL
http://www.fencesofdistinction.com

Mike Finley

Yep, he taught me a lesson, now it just says trim to be (material).

Hey, if the guy was willing to get down on his hands and knees to measure every piece of base... I guess that is impressive in it's own strange way.

I forgot he was also the guy who only wanted to pay for the acutal square footage of the tile in the room. The waste, all the unusable cut waste he thought he shouldn't have to pay for either. Something along the lines of "If the room is only 44 square feet, why are you charging me for 54 square feet of tile?"

That's okay though, you know, it just makes the good customers that much more enjoyable to deal with.

Teetorbilt

Mike, maybe you should have put all of the drops in a 55 gal drum and left them. He paid for them, they're his.

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You can't solve you're problems with the same level of thinking that created the problems.

Albert Einstein

Tiger

99% of my clients are very nice and sane people. Once in awhile I run into a lunatic. Early in business I took it personally, like there was something wrong with me. Later as I saw the average response to my work, I knew it wasn't me. I've run into about a dozen problem children in over two decades of business. There wasn't anything that they had in common as a group regarding race, gender, nationality, or level of income. It might be a precarious business position to prejudge anyone before getting to know them.

Dave