For over a year, I have been trying out different ways, methods, and strategies for hiring people to work on my house. As an owner builder, our most important job is making sure the people who work on our houses are doing a quality job. Maybe that person is you, but I would guess that all of you will hire at least a few different people to work on your house.
After hiring a couple of people, I started writing down what worked and what didn’t work as far as hiring my favorite companies and getting the price down low enough that I could afford them. I started seeing results when I did certain things, and people actually started accepting my offers.
Let me show you what the results were of my first 4 offers vs the results of the last four offers I have made:
Company #1- Said no and lowered their price $0
Company #2- Said no and lowered their price $0
Company #3- Said no to my offer, but gave me a counter offer and lowered their price $500
Company #4- Said no and lowered their price $0
Now let me show you what the results of the last four offers I made were:
Company #1– My favorite company happened to also be the cheapest and they still dropped their price $600 for me.
Company #2- Accepted my offer for a $2,500 price reduction or 24% off the total!
Company #3- Accepted my offer. Dropped his price $1,200 AND threw in a few freebies for me.
Company #4- This company met my budget price and accepted my offer of $4,000 less then the average quoted price, coming out to an 18% savings for me.
Alright you can’t tell me you don’t see the transformation here loud and clear.
A few hires in, I began writing down exactly what I was doing each time an Elite company accepted my offer. Over the next few months, I developed a system that I now follow every single time I hire someone.
I get to hand pick the company I want working on my house, and then through a serious of steps I prepare them for my offer.
Every company that I have hired with the Elite Hire method, has either said yes to my offer or given me a huge price reduction.
But the best part is that these companies are not chosen for their price, they are chosen for the job.
I now get to hand pick the companies that work on my house, and then I get to name my own price.
But in order to achieve that, I use a very specific process that I developed. You need to build a relationship with the company, say the right things, do the right things, and talk to the right people. You need good timing, and you need to say the RIGHT things and ask the RIGHT questions. You need to prepare the company to actually receive your offer, or else you will just make a fool of yourself. Trust me, I did this way too many times before I figured it all out.
I used to think it was all about the offer. The first offer I made, I was terrified! I mean like sweaty palms, pacing the floor, and even wrote down my entire script word for word before I made the call.
But now the offer isn’t even a focus of mine. The real work is done before, and as long as you have prepared the company for your offer, and decided on your perfect number, the offer will be a very unexciting thing. You will even have a pretty good idea of what their answer will be at that point too.
This system is almost backwards of what you naturally want to do when you hire someone, but that is exactly why you aren’t getting people to lower their prices thousands of dollars! Once I figured that out, the results were instant.
Choosing the perfect number is something I get asked about a lot.
How do you know what the right number is to offer someone?
In Step 5 of Elite Hire, I answer that exact question so you can take all the guess work out, and give them a number that will work for both of you.
Here is a little excerpt out of Step 5 that I wanted to share with you right now:
Our budget on this house was extremely low. Running out of money was not a question of “if”, it was a question of “when”. So when I made my budget, I didn’t use exact numbers, I used percentages.
I needed to find a way to shave off an extra 20% on everything or we weren’t going to make it. Therefore, my offer price revolved around that fact. If the company I chose was already the cheapest one, then I usually asked for 5-15% off. If the company I chose was one of the more expensive ones, then I asked for up to 30% off. It all needed to average out to around 20% savings.
But that’s not 20% off of the lowest bid, that’s 20% off of the average bid. Shopping for lower bids accounts for part of that percentage.
For example, when we were gathering quotes for one trade, the numbers ranged from $15,000 all the way up to $32,000. The average of all the quotes we received was around $23,000. So even if all we did was take the lowest quote, we were already saving ourselves 35%.
However, we decided we didn’t want either of the lowest 2 quotes because they were not the high quality brand we were looking for. So assuming we could get the better brand for that low price would be unrealistic. We had to raise our budget amount a little to compensate for the high quality we were looking for.
After taking all of this into consideration, our budget price was set at $19,000. That is just shy of 20% off, but we thought it would allow us to get the better brand we were hoping for. We literally couldn’t afford any higher than that, so we either had to get our favorite company to accept our offer, or we had to go with our second option who didn’t have the brand we wanted.
Thanks entirely to the Elite Hiring method, the guy I had been working with the whole time went to his boss and convinced them that he wanted my job even if it meant lowering their price. He actually told me that he had never done that before, but that he wanted this job.
They lowered their price over $2,000 for me. They met my budget at $19,000 and they treated me like royalty throughout the whole job. They even did a few extra jobs for me while they were there, because of the relationship that we now had.
You MUST pick an exact number to offer them. Do not say “can you lower your price at all?” or “We just need a little bit off.” Their counter offer will be a fraction of what you are asking for. No business is going to just offer a $1,000 decrease in price unless you specifically ask for it.
This example is no longer a rare thing for me. Using Elite Hire, the question is not IF they will lower their price, but HOW MUCH they will lower it.
I also love that I get to hand pick the best companies to work on my house. In fact, finding the best company is the best way to get your price lowered.
Farmer and I wanted a high quality custom home. We also had an incredibly tight budget and needed to find a way to save $200,000 on our $500,000 home.
A huge part of our savings comes from the way I hire everyone. Now I want to tell you how to do that too.
When you are on a very strict budget, sometimes you just CAN’T pay what people are asking. Then, if you can’t get anyone to lower their price for you, you have to make the impossible decision of… run out of money early- or- wait several months until you have a little more money to cover the higher cost.
Well, we have a very strict budget. Our reality from the beginning has been “get the prices lowered to meet out budget, or don’t finish the house.”
Because of that reality, I devoted myself to figuring out how to get these companies to lower their prices. After a few months of writing down what worked and what didn’t work, and experimenting with countless strategies and ideas, I finally came up with a system that gets me results every single time.
In fact, on the complete opposite end of the FIRST six companies I hired, the LAST 6 companies that I have hired have all lowered their price for me.
Yes I said EVERY SINGLE ONE of them.
My research paid off, and now every single company that I make an offer to either says yes, or lowers their price a considerable amount to meet my budget.
I have already told you guys those numbers, but just for kicks and giggles let’s look at some of my most recent price reductions again:
$600
$2,500
$1,200
$2,000
That’s $6,300 guys! just by knowing how to correctly ask for a price reduction.
Let me ask you how long it takes you to save $6,300? Months? Years?
Well I am always working on hiring someone for the next job, which means, I am now saving us around $2,000 every week!
Now I can assume that since I didn’t have this system in place for the first several weeks of hiring people, I missed out on around $10,000.
Ten grand because I didn’t know how to prepare someone to receive my offer! Ahhh that’s frustrating!
It was right after realizing the amount of money I lost out on, that I decided I wanted to share my system with you guys.
I want to teach you guys how I consistently get every company I hire now to drop their price 10-30%
Even better than knowing how to ask for a price reduction, is knowing how to make a great relationship with a company so that even after they lower their price, they still do incredible work for you. Since implementing Elite Hire, I have had companies throw in extra jobs for free, bring me materials at no extra cost, make special deliveries for me during off hours, and talk me through ways to save money and secrets of the trade. I can honestly say that I LOVE the last several companies that I have hired, and there is no doubt in my mind that is because of my new hiring strategy.
So that brings me to Elite Hire sign ups-
There are 9 emails that will be sent out over 9 days.
I will tell you how and when to do each step, of my 8 step hiring process.
I have included sample conversations so you can see exactly what I said or wrote to companies that accepted my offers. You can even just download these conversations and insert your own specific information if you don’t want to come up with your own.
I will tell you what questions you need to ask, and when to ask them.
We will talk about the RIGHT way to make an offer so companies say yes instead of laughing at you. (sample conversation with this one)
And I will tell you what you need to do after hiring someone to make sure you don’t get taken advantage of.
People tell me all the time that one their greatest fears about being an owner-builder is getting taken advantage of and having someone run off with your money. There are ways to avoid that, and they actually aren’t all that complicated.
The real problem I ran into when I first started hiring people was knowing WHEN to do things. I always made my offers at the wrong time. I didn’t prepare companies for my offer, it just came out of no where and then no one would even take me seriously.
I ended up embarrassed for even asking. I didn’t know there were specific questions I should be asking before any offer was made. And I sure didn’t know that I needed to do several more things even AFTER I hired someone.
I didn’t figure out how important step 7: Being present, firm, and unexpectedly awesome was until two or three months after we started our house! Now, that’s my very favorite step because at that point, it only takes 1 thing to completely change the situation from a business doing a paid job, to favors and freebies.
Seriously, unexpectedly awesome is the part I look forward to every time I hire someone.
Here is what you will receive when you sign up for Elite Hire:
- 9 emails over 9 days
- My 8 step Elite Hire process
- How to prepare companies for your offer
- How to be sure the company really is as great as they seem
- Detailed conversation specifics
- Sample conversations
- Extra downloads
- Question lists
- The right way to make an offer
- How to negotiate a price
- Rules before your hire
- How to write up a good contract
- What you need to include in your contract
- How to protect yourself from getting taken advantage of
- 5 Elite Hire big no-no’s
- And plenty of encouragements and advice
Don’t miss your opportunity to learn how I get the best companies to work on my house, and every single one of them drops their price 10-30% to meet my budget.
Take charge of your house! You are the owner builder, you need to know how to get the right prices for YOU.
Some of my favorite moments have been calling Farmer and telling him I got our favorite company to accept our offer and that I just saved us another $2,000. Even better when I can tell him they threw in a few free bonuses and that they will be starting exactly when we want them to.
Elite Hire is responsible for thousands of dollars that we have saved over the past year. It has helped us to build the house of our dreams for a price we could actually afford. I wish so bad that I had known what I know now, from the very beginning and we would have saved even more. Let me teach you!
Whitney Parker says
The sign up is currently closed =(. The post above says that there is a checklist that I can download today though. How would I go about getting that checklist? Thanks for your help, I have found your emails very helpful so far. Hoping to start building in a couple of months, so exciting!
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Hey Whitney, sorry but it’s only available when the course is open. I need to write that on there. I plan to reopen in October or November
Shannon says
Can you tell us how much it costs?
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
$98
Lyndsey says
Just saw that this is closed and that you plan to reopen in October or November. We are currently deciding on a lot, and I am very nervous and excited for the possibility of building. I can’t wait for you to reopen this! You have already provided a ton of useful information!
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
I will keep you updated Lyndsey. I still plan to reopen in October or November. I am glad I could be of some help!
Moriah says
My husband and I are finally really close to paying off our truck AND we found a piece of land we love at almost the right price to boot. Our hope is to buy it first thing next year and start building in the summer. Is the plan still to open Elite Hire back up in October or Novermber? 🙂
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Hey Moriah, yep I will be opening up Elite Hire in a week or two. You will get the email about it soon!
Marie says
I cant wait for Elite Hire to start, ***excited**
Lynn Burgess says
Is the Elite Hire already closed for this month?
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Nope, enrollment opens on Tuesday, October 31 at 9 AM. See ya there!
Laci says
Is this full already? When I click the link it says it is closed for registration. We have the land and start the build this spring, so I don’t want to miss it. 🙂
Laci says
AND what time zone are you in? It is 11 AM here and my previous post says 4:14 PM ???
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Hey Laci, we are in the Pacific Time Zone. My internet went down so I was a little late getting the email sent out. It’s not full yet! Sign ups are open now.
Tonya Allen says
Hi! I’ve just found your amazing site, but I see that the last registration you had was in October. I was wondering if you were going to be opening another Elite Hire registration? I’d love the information. We are in the planning stages now. Thanks!
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Hey Tonya, yes Elite Hire will open up again in a few months. I will send out an email with all of the information. Best of luck!
Missi says
Can’t wait to take this course! Any ideas when registration will begin for 2018? Thanks so much!
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
Hey Missi, Elite Hire is set to open this fall. I will send out an email when it’s time!
Missi says
Thanks so much!! This is the one thing I really need help on (well one of one hundred ha!).
farmerswife@therealfarmhouse.com says
You are welcome Missi!