Yes you do. Everybody has a budget. It would waste so much less of everybody's time if you would just give whomever you're shopping with a ball park of what you're looking to spend.

At least 25% of the inquiries I get state that they don't have a budget, they're looking at items that cost tens of thousands of dollars, and when you finally nail them down to something specific and give them the price they say "Oh, I wasn't planning on spending anywhere near that much!"

You don't say? So you DID have a budget, and I could have pointed you in the proper direction an hour ago had you simply told me what it was.

But I want the eleventybillion gun safe for the price of the 3 gun aluminum box they sell at Walmart.

Everyone wants to sound like a big spender until it comes right down to it.
Fella wanted to buy some hay a couple weeks ago.
I have a couple different ‘tiers’ depending on what I have invested as far as fertilizer, what meadow the hay came off of, and what not.
He is wanting ‘horse quality hay’.
But when we start talking money, the horse is all of a sudden not all that special. Why didn’t he just say he wanted the cheapest hay possible?

quote:

Why didn’t he just say he wanted the cheapest hay possible?

Right? Just say so up front to speed things up!

quote:

But I want the eleventybillion gun safe for the price of the 3 gun aluminum box they sell at Walmart.

More often they want a safe that would be insurable for over $1,000,000 worth of contents, but don't want to spend more than $500. Tell me you don't have $1 mil worth of stuff without telling me you don't have $1 mil worth of stuff.

Who doesn’t want a $500 safe that is insurable to $1,000,000 of contents? I’d get one for each of my $1,000 Rolex's and line the back wall of my garage with them right in front of my $10,000 Ferrari.

On the other hand, while most people would understand that there’s no such thing as a $1,000 Rolex or a $10,000 Ferrari anymore, they just don’t know $500 does not buy a safe. Ignorance is bliss.

I encounter this often in my business. "Just fix it, I don't need to know the price." Some repeat clients, yes, you can do that, but others, you want to call them with an estimate. Many people balk and refuse the work when they hear the real cost.

I agree, but sometimes it's on the vendor. Last summer, we considered getting our patio covered. We called 3 places, and none of them would discuss price over the phone. They all wanted to send someone out to quote it.

Well, it turns out my wife and I were incredibly ignorant about what it would cost to do what we wanted. I had researched online, but all the info I found was apparently pre-covid pricing and the quote came in about 3x what we had planned and had set aside. The guy that came out to quote it seemed a little irritated that we decided not to move forward, but that would have been prevented if they had been willing to shoot us a ballpark $XX to $XXX per square foot range before coming out. I understand they need to see it and discuss options to give an exact quote, but if we had a ballpark number in advance we would have known we didn't budget enough for it and wouldn't have wasted their time.

I view this more as a qualification issue with the salesman.
Any true salesman with any experience just know they are saying they do not know the market and are afraid to state a price.
Moreover, again a true salesman with experience they could gently inform the customer of a possible price range, then if they don't completely balk transition to solving the problem they came in for.
When you look at opportunities as something that are infringing your time then perhaps rethink your situation.
It is just another deterioration of the sales process now days, a lost art if your will.

Being in sales I do not make a move without knowing the budget, cash, cash down, payments and exactly what their needs and wants are. This usually applies to my first time clients

If you ask someone who retired from sales 30 years ago, I doubt they would tell you that that’s just how it is these days. I’d bet that has been pretty standard since the beginning of time. Timid tire kickers.

quote:

Moreover, again a true salesman with experience they could gently inform the customer of a possible price range,

In my case, that's the problem. The possible price ranges can be vast. There are safes that cost a few hundred dollars, and safes that cost over $100,000. If the person shopping could narrow that down ever so slightly it would save a bunch of time.

I know it's a bit weird in my industry, as many of my customers may not want to be exactly upfront with what their actual needs are as far as what they are putting in the safe, and what they will expect the safe to do. But imagine calling a large car dealership, telling the salesman you need a car, state you have no budget, you won't tell them how you're using the vehicle, and then you reject every single option they provide you because it doesn't fit into your needs or budget. Had you just stated those things upfront they could point you directly to what you need.

quote:

We called 3 places, and none of them would discuss price over the phone. They all wanted to send someone out to quote it.

This is certainly a two way street. People who hire us to move their safes fall into this category, and are usually much less problematic than those looking to buy a safe.

When I get these calls the caller is more often not prepared with all of the info we need, but I can generally have them send me a few photos and I can get them into a ballpark pretty quickly.

Yup, it would be nice if the customer did everything but sometimes we just have to overcome those objections or obstacles and do the best we can.
Who knows? Maybe a sale might happen then or someday.

quote:

Who knows? Maybe a sale might happen then or someday.

It would happen a lot faster if they would just say what they're prepared for upfront.

The time I invest in a six figure purchase is much greater than that I invest in a four figure purchase. When you spend two days of my time on the first, only to determine that you really needed the second, I'm already upside down in the deal. I have friends in this industry that have gotten to a point that they won't even start conversations on some of these request until you've paid a five figure retainer. I suppose that would root some of these guys out pretty quick, but I don't want to be "that guy".

quote:

It would happen a lot faster if they would just say what they're prepared for upfront.

Even better if they just lay down the cash on the counter and say "whatta got?" after all you are doing them a favor, right?

quote:

Even better if they just lay down the cash on the counter and say "whatta got?" after all you are doing them a favor, right?

Well that's not going to happen. They can't even be honest about their budget.

There is a very obvious flip side which you guys are pretending to not know or too polite to say out loud. It is the dishonest salesman who once they know your “budget” can push a product or a price that isn’t legit. You can blame consumers, you can just as easily blame sleazy salesmen. Not saying that is you but we have all encountered that guy.

On the other hand if your product range is between a couple hundred and over $100,000 I struggle to believe that it wouldn’t be easy to narrow parameters quite a bit right off the bat. Even without a budget.

Is there a way to create a webpage with a simple "good, better, best" view of the possibilities?

Good -- $1500-$2500 -- RSC
Better -- $3000-$75000
Best -- $75000-no limit

By putting your own price figures including safe and installation and ongoing maintenance, perhaps the prospect would respond better to your question...are you interested in good, better, or best?

I would just tell these people that don't have a budget that if money is no object then you can go as high as 6 digits for their project right from the start. If that doesn't make them spout out a number they can afford from there then they probably weren't serious anyway.

quote:

Is there a way to create a webpage with a simple "good, better, best" view of the possibilities?

The gun safe guys aren't so much the issue. They are notoriously "frugal" to start with. We know that regardless of who's shopping gun safes, 85% would like to be in the $500 range, with 15% being more realistic. The price range within the gun safe categories are also not nearly as extreme.

When I'm shopping for whatever, the two most common questions I am asked, and then answer, is what I'm wanting what I'm buying to do, and how much I'm wanting to spend. Houses, cars, watches, guns, appliances, shoes, whatever. I've never had an issue answering those questions.

And don't get me wrong. There are certainly those I deal with that have no budget, and the cost is the least of their concerns. They aren't the ones saying they have no budget from the get go.

I'm in final expense life insurance sales. If the prospect already has a policy, I know about the minimum they can afford. Yesterday I walked into an appt where the couple had no life insurance. Both mid-60s, heavy smokers. Before I could even ask, they said they needed something to cover their $220k mortgage balance in case one died. When they saw what that was going to cost, they settled for $25k on the husband only. I was a little worried about embarrassing them by showing them such a huge number I knew they'd never be able to afford. But they asked for it.