Buy Limbic · Closer Field Guide

The master framework. Everything else hangs off it.

Why: you can control price, payment and time. You can do almost nothing with “we’re getting other estimates” or “let me think it over.”

Convert, don’t overcome. Don’t beat the objection down — turn it into something easy. Strategize at step three how you’ll alter it so that by step seven it’s converted.

All objections reduce to one root cause

I need to think about it · we need to pray on it · we don’t make same-day decisions · we might be selling the house · we’re getting other estimates · I need to talk to my son

All of these mean the same thing: no sense of urgency. They’re not dodging you — they’re saying “give me an overview and we’ll see.”

“I need to think about it” is the number one objection, and what it needs is urgency.

Perception

• Salespeople have to prove they’re not biased. Customers assume bias on sight.
• People believe what they see, not what they’re told. Until you back it up and prove it, it means nothing coming out of a salesperson’s mouth.
• Perception is more important than reality. Our perception of ourselves is great; the customer’s is not. (Google “salesman” — top adjectives: creepy, slimy, smarmy.)
• Knowing that’s the starting point, everything you do is aimed at altering it.

The system is dynamic, not a script — but there are five word-for-word questions, and three of them carry objection getters, deliberately placed.

Those are the only three places in the system where objection getters are used.

The five objection-getter words

The first three are about time. If a customer answers with no objection, restate using those words — stack two or three in one sentence and you are guaranteed one.

The famous phrase: “I never said she stole my money.” Seven words, seven different meanings depending on which one you stress. Emphasis = importance, value, or prominence placed on a word. The research side comes from Edward Chang at UCSF, studying how vocal cords and the brain work together to decode meaning.

This is why the five word-for-word questions are word for word. Move the stress and you have asked a different question.

Instead of trying to listen to everything, key on specific words in the initial objection.

“That’s a lot of money, it’s probably just not something we could do right now” is a TIME objection, not a price objection.

There’s a full RWU class on indicator words (Dunn is the best person on it) breaking down the indicators for each objection type. Walk of Life applies to price objections only — this is why indicator words matter, and why they belong here rather than in the close: you have to hear it before you can pick the tool.

Establish a baseline before any trigger lands. Listen at the pre-close, where nothing has gone wrong yet, and note the rep’s normal tone. Normal is whatever is normal for that person — if a loud person goes quiet, something’s wrong.

The four main emotional triggers

1. Rejection
2. Disapproval or criticism
3. Challenge of beliefs
4. Helplessness

The fight of the century is internal: taking it personally vs. keeping it business.

The chill pill: T.T.S. — TRUST THE SYSTEM. You don’t have to get mad or react. They’re trying to keep their money; you’re trying to help their family.

The film study

• At the pre-close the customer says “I’ve got to talk to my insurance company.” The rep hears “I don’t believe you” and spikes above baseline, arguing he’s been to lots of houses and most people don’t do anything about it, then tries to walk it back. It was just a red light and should have been handled like one.
• Price was $35,199. The rep, stressed and feeling hopeless, drops way below baseline — “we’ll give you $300 off” — doesn’t sound like he believes he can sell it, asks for the order almost inaudibly. Payments: 24 months $1,689 · 36 months $1,175 · 48 months $936.
• Then the customer mentions his brother-in-law had somebody do it (challenged belief) and the rep spikes way above baseline.
• The customer stayed calm the entire time. Only the rep’s level swung. He did not sell the job.

Rule: VP levels stay consistent, and only move up or down deliberately, to make a point — never because a trigger took you off your game. VP levels absolutely do affect close rates.

What makes Buy-Limbic different from a script: it does not just teach you what to say, it teaches you how to find out why. The system has a true problem locator.

The Bible analogy: BC and AD. The system has two time periods — BP, Before Pre-close, and AP, After Pre-close. The indicator line is the pre-close question itself. Everything before it is BP; everything after is AP.

What it is for

• Locate the objection, and the reason you did or — more importantly — did not sell.
• Separate a price objection from an approval objection. Price and payment sit together, which is why both are named in the pre-close question.
• Most salespeople never improve because they do not know what they did wrong. The worst objections are the ones you cannot locate.

AP tools — after the line

BP tools — before the line

These keep pressure off while still getting you above the line. Most reps resort to tie-down questions and pressure here instead.

• Find out why. They say “we can’t do it today” — find the reason without applying pressure.
• Specific time. Pin a vague time objection down. “Not until our daughter’s braces are on” → “When do you think you’ll have the braces on?”
• Convert the cover. Takes “I want to think about it” and converts it to a cover: reassure, get them comfortable, uncover the real concern.
• Hail Mary. The last resort you hope never to use — go back to the products you showed and ask which one they would like to have on the home.

Naming check: this lesson calls the BP tool convert the cover. Earlier forcing-the-Walk-of-Life notes said convert to comfort. Possibly the same tool, garbled in transcription — see Gaps.

High-pressure tactics we do NOT use: “let me put a sign in your yard and I’ll give you a thousand off” · “let me call my boss and see if I can get you a discount” · guilt-tripping a customer who says no · “you must buy today or the price goes up.”

A day-of-demonstration discount is a discount that only stands if they buy today, offered purely to create pressure. It goes back to the old tin-man door-to-door days, and it still works. Guardian used it in the past. Times changed.

Four reasons it was dropped

1. It raises sales resistance. The pressure spikes resistance and damages the reputation.
2. Media scam alerts. Fox, local TV, scam-alert segments. Tactics like this trip the customer’s internal scam alert.
3. The internet changed the game more than anything else. A pressured customer used to tell a few people. Now they tell the whole world in one click, and there is nowhere to hide.
4. We do not need it — the system makes us the EXPERT. Be the expert, use your references, and customers do as you ask because they know you are there to help.

Reviews are mostly about the sales process. A Google and Yelp scan showed almost all home-improvement reviews were about how they were sold to, not the work. A real scam-alert review: $19,000 → no → $15,000 → “friends and family discount” → $13,000, in a couple of minutes, with no justification. If you would sell at thirteen, would you have sold at nineteen? And a buyer at thirteen still lies awake wondering what would have happened if they had said no once more.

The Nielsen study, 2016

Controlled lab study on purchase influence:

Be the expert plus use the references. No pressure needed, no negative reviews, no tricks — just the system. And note the gap: an expert beats a review by sixteen points. That is the whole argument for knowing your trade.

Source: Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To — Dr. Sian Beilock, University of Chicago.

Pressure lands on both sides

• You feel it — your income is tied to the outcome. Recognising that is how you minimise it.
• They feel it — a high-ticket item and a decision they are not accustomed to making. Most home-improvement reps do not sell well, do not ask for a same-day decision, and quit at “we’re getting three estimates.” We do better and offer more, so people feel pressure — because we are asking for their money.
• The fix on both sides is the same: lean on and trust the system.
• A four-foot putt is nothing on a Sunday — until millions are on it. Same free throw, final minute, tens of thousands hoping you miss. That is the closing question with money on the table.

The three effects of pressure

1. Paralysis by analysis — information overload, worst in the close with money on the table. Company, install, product, and possibly contradictory information between companies. It comes out as “it’s just a lot, I want to think about it.”
2. Stereotyping — preconceived notions. Salespeople are shady, we never make same-day decisions, we always get three estimates, I have to talk to my dad. Decades of parents, grandparents and media saying do not buy today.
3. Working memory loss — working memory is the prefrontal cortex’s scratch pad for task-relevant information, the thing you use comparing two jars of sauce in an aisle. Pressure drains it like a power bar. Turn over a big unexpected number and an hour of urgency, products and limbic engagement drains out of them. It drains for you too, because your money is on the line.

The two tactics from the book

1 · Preparation.

• Prep like a professional. The organised case — chargers, cords, clicker, GoPro — signals he takes care of his stuff, he’ll take care of us.
• Avoid time stress. Leave early, arrive early. Ten minutes early is on time; on time is late. Early means you can recon the neighbourhood for warm-up material and drop in on a nearby past customer — a reference picture, a referral, repeat business, and something positive for your own limbic brain before you walk in.
• Use step three. Step three is all about time. Review the warm-up and the transition questions, identify their objection, set your primary and secondary steps, gather what you need to personalise UAC. More prepared is more powerful.

2 · Practice, at a high level.

• Work up a sweat. NBA warm-ups run at game speed. Practise like you play, so a house feels like somewhere you have already been.
• Make practice harder than the field. Go past a standard price objection, all the way through the Walk of Life, and know what to do at the end of it. The harder the training room, the easier the appointment.
• Repetition, then speed, then muscle memory. “Do it again.” Repetition until you cannot get it wrong, then add speed. Curry warms up game-speed on the hard shots so they are there when one bucket decides it.

Mapping the fixes to the three effects, inside the appointment

Paralysis by analysis → keep them on what WE want to talk about. Under pressure people ask questions to shove the pressure back onto you. Answer the question first — actively listen, which is the single most important skill a salesperson has, and show you care. Then regain control: ask for the order, or ask a question of your own. Walk of Life for price; “when would you be able to do a project like this?” for time; the most-comfortable-payment question for payment uncertainty.

Stereotyping → eliminate excuses on BOTH sides. They carry stereotypes and so do we — prejudging a rundown neighbourhood as a reason not to bother is the same failure. Full effort, every step, for everyone. Then go straight at their reasons not to buy with UAC, run the Walk of Life in full, and ask the third question even when you think you should not.

Working memory loss → recognise it is drained on both sides. Everything you gathered at stages 1, 6, 7 and 8 may not be at your disposal if yours is drained too. Jog theirs: go back through one, six and seven to remind them what brought them to this decision — then REACT to create a new offer. And practise how you listen, practise retaining, practise growing your working memory.

Bottom line: minimise the pressure on both sides by reframing your own mindset. The system already contains every tool. The skill is knowing when and how to use them, practised until you cannot get it wrong.

Purpose 1: bring down the shield of ice

The customer assumes you’re there to get their money, so the shield is thick and cold. Most systems say “get them to trust you.” Disagree — you can’t earn trust in five minutes. What you can do is get them to stop seeing a salesperson and start seeing a person.

How: get them talking. People love talking about themselves — kids, family, where they work, ages, schools, activities.

Three subjects to stay off: religion, politics, business. Business especially — the moment you talk business you look like a salesman again.

Visualize the block of ice melting until you can see them clearly. That’s when you move on.

Purpose 2: bring out the objections — early

Opposite of most systems, which surface objections at the price. Get them out first so you have the entire presentation to alter them. This is the U in UAC and it happens here or it doesn’t happen at all.

The accountant analogy

Someone tells you they can get money back on your taxes by faking receipts and birth certificates for your dog and cat. You bring the box in. Before you say a word, your accountant vents about people going to jail for exactly that. What happens to your box? You kick it under the table and never mention it.

Handle objections up front and the customer does the same thing with theirs after the price.

The three transition questions — word for word

Body language and delivery

• Open posture. No crossed arms, both feet planted, hands visible. You’re still a stranger — hands in pockets or behind your back raise questions.
• Cut the “uh-huh” filler. It’s just buying yourself thinking time.
• These questions are word for word, unlike most of the system. Know them cold — a tangent mid-drill is a deliberate test of whether you actually have them.

Leaving this stage you should have: a person instead of a shield, and an objection said out loud. If you have neither, do not move on.

One more thing you are collecting here

Boats, Harleys, private school, the truck, the camper. Whatever this customer already spends real time, energy and money on is the analogy you will use in stage 8 to kill price shock. You cannot invent it at the price — you have to have heard it here.

That sourcing runs on the REAL framework, and the L is the rep taking responsibility for setting the price expectation. (Full expansion never captured — see Gaps.) It is one more reason the warm-up is not small talk.

1. Walk-around — splits into customer inspection and expert inspection
2. Sell the reference list
3. Digital analysis

Chad Pratt “Customer inspection is their story. Expert inspection is your strategy.”

SEOCS — the framework for what you actually do during the walk-around. Letters not yet captured — see Gaps.

Goals of the walk-around: build price and develop strategy. Framed with the doctor analogy.

This guide's other tabs are built for this stage. Discovery questions and the pre-departure checklist are in Process. If you cannot name what you are looking at, Drill → Conditions. On anything you find, Encyclopedia §4 Failure Signs and §7 Confirm It.

• The video is the most powerful thing in the presentation. Without it your believability breaks down.
• Its number one job is creating urgency.
• Structure every finding as: “This is the problem. This is what caused it. This is what can happen.”
• One to two minutes. Never announce it in advance. Show it on an iPad or larger.
• End on the second-worst problem, then the worst.
• Bad videos just inventory problems with no urgency — that’s “show and tell.”
• Don’t create a “hollow-chondriac” — a homeowner made to feel worse about their home, WebMD-style anxiety.

Three closing rules for the DA

1. Focus on helping instead of selling — say why you’re showing them this, tied to what they told you.
2. Create urgency but always pair it with a solution. You don’t pitch the solution here (that’s step six) — just let them know you can help.
3. Make it a Win-Win-Win. Customer: better product, safer home, less stress. Company: fewer service calls, better reviews, prouder employees. Rep: success, better opportunities for family. If any one loses, everybody loses.

Maxim: “Dominate the details so we can determine our own destiny.”

The side effect nobody warns you about

The customer came in wanting a price. After the video they’re thinking “I actually do need to do this.” Expect hesitation and resistance heading into the company story — not eagerness. The shield comes back up after the reference calls and after the video, not during the inspection. Two fixes for that are in stage 4.

Core premise: the more references a homeowner actually talks to, the higher the close rate. Every tactic exists to raise the call rate.

Why homeowners don’t call: the process is unfamiliar and uncomfortable; most companies don’t provide references at all so it feels odd; some see no benefit; six names on a page feels daunting.

The Three G’s

Each G is a thing you must do, and each one has a failure mode that kills the call rate. Miss any one and the calls do not happen.

And the number behind all of it, from the Nielsen study in stage 0: a reference from someone else moves 67% of buyers, against 18% with no assistance. That is why this is worth the awkwardness.

The four tactics

1. Mock Currency
2. BBB Surprise
3. Problem Job Reference
4. IRX — Identify a similar customer, Recall what made them similar, advise them to call that specific person with a specific question. For the “that’s a lot” objection — shrinks six calls down to one. Example: Barbara with the leaking valley.

By the numbers: 465-demo study, 5 cities, 30 days — conversion stats in the original notes.

Platinum Preferred is the top 1% of contractors. Owens Corning recommends the top 1%. So Owens Corning sends us their warranty work — which means we fix other companies’ mistakes. We have thirty technicians doing that. We have one covering our own.

Those five sentences are one argument, not five facts, and the order is what makes it work. Each one earns the next. By the end you have not claimed to be good — you have shown a manufacturer betting money on it, and then given the headcount that proves it.

Thirty against one is the whole story. Anyone in this trade can say “we do quality work” — it costs nothing and means nothing. Almost nobody can tell you how many people they employ to go back and fix their own mistakes, because for most companies the honest answer is embarrassing. It answers the question the homeowner is actually asking — what happens when it goes wrong? — with arithmetic instead of adjectives.

Thirteen slides in three movements. Know the shape and you will never lose your place.

The risk slides come after the proof, never before. That order is the difference between context and scaremongering. You are not saying “be afraid” — you are saying “here is why everything you just saw matters.”

1 · Title — the logo over Mount Rainier

What it does: places you. Rainier is not decoration — it says local, before a word is spoken. You are not a national outfit that flew in.

2 · Founded by Matt & Lori Swanson, over 21 years ago

Note the spelling: LORI. Get a founder’s name wrong in the credibility stage and you undo the slide you are standing on.

What it does: two things. It is a family business with names attached — not a brand, people. And twenty-one years is a claim about the future, not the past: it survived 2008. Hold this one — it is the setup for slide 10.

3 · 114,000+ homeowners served since October 2005

A map of Puget Sound solid with yellow pins.

The map is the point, not the number. 114,000 is abstract; a pin two streets over is not. Let them look. Silence works here — this is one of the slides to shut up on.

4–5 · A Team You Can Trust

The office and operations, then the whole-company photograph plus headshots.

That team photo IS the no-subcontractor argument. You cannot take a company photo of subcontractors. Every person on the roof is on that picture, trained by Guardian, insured by Guardian, answerable to Guardian. A sub is answerable to whoever pays them next week — and every warranty in this trade is only as good as who shows up to honour it.

6 · Community Focused

Guardian Halo Project · Rebuilding Together Seattle · The Auburn Food Bank · Roof Deployment Project (Owens Corning — roofs for veterans) · Paint The Barn Pink · Dog Pack Giveaway · NW Little League Baseball Champions 2023

What it does: a company that gives roofs away is not a company hunting your last dollar. It also quietly re-proves scale — you have to be healthy to do this.

Have one story ready. A logo wall is wallpaper; one specific Halo Project recipient is a moment. Pick one and learn it.

7 · Industry Trusted

Do not read the logos. Nine badges read out loud is noise. Point at the wall, then land on one: Platinum Preferred, and run the chain at the top of this stage. The rest of the wall is there to make that one look inevitable.

Worth knowing: Master Elite is GAF’s top tier and Platinum Preferred is Owens Corning’s. Being top-tier with two competing manufacturers at once is unusual, and it is a better answer than either badge alone.

8 · What do homeowners have to say

4,715 is the number that matters, not 4.8. Anyone can hold 5.0 across forty reviews. Holding 4.8 across nearly five thousand is a systems claim — it says the good experience is repeatable, not lucky. If you only say one thing here, say the volume.

And it sets up the reference list you sold back in stage 2: “you don’t have to take my word for any of this — that’s why I gave you the list.”

9 · The BBB slide — and the best number in the deck

A 50-year study: home improvement is the #1 industry for total complaints, with over 10.7 million complaints recorded to the BBB. Guardian is BBB A+ accredited since 11/7/2005.

Small thing: the BBB card reads “Years in Business: 20” while slide 2 says over 21 years. That is accreditation date (Nov 2005) versus founding (Oct 2005), on a card generated a while back. If anybody notices, that is the answer.

10 · The SBA slide

The Small Business Administration reports 96% of construction companies fail within the first 2 years.

This is where slide 2 pays off. Twenty-one years against a 96% two-year failure rate. And it lands directly on the thing they are buying: a warranty is only worth the company that outlives it. A 20-year warranty from a company with a 4% chance of seeing year three is a piece of paper.

Say it plainly and without gloating. You are not attacking anybody — you are explaining why longevity is a product feature in this trade and not a vanity stat.

11 · Fully insured to protect YOU

The actual ACORD certificate on screen, not a claim about one. Guardian Parent, LLC, Auburn WA. Broker: Parker Smith & Feek.

Workers comp is the line that protects THEM. An uninsured roofer who falls on their property is their problem. Say that out loud — most homeowners have never once thought about it, and it reframes insurance from your paperwork into their exposure.

Everything in the insurance sub-module below belongs on this slide: certificate versus policy, first-check Chuck, and getting them named as additional insured.

12–13 · Classroom training and field training

Real photographs of people being taught — a whiteboard, a room, then a crew around a tablet in the yard.

These two slides close the loop on slides 4 and 5. No subcontractors is only worth something if you then train the people you employ. This is where you connect them: we hire them, we keep them, and we teach them — in a classroom and on a roof.

It is also the honest place to say you are in that classroom right now. That is not a weakness in the story, it is the story: they are looking at the training system that produced the person in their kitchen.

Platinum Preferred stated as the top 1% on Devvon’s confirmation. If an Owens Corning document or the deck itself words it differently, that wins.

Every job is photographed and filmed. That is a before-and-after library across 114,000+ homes, in your pocket, at the table.

People believe what they see, not what they are told — the perception principle from stage 0. This is where you stop telling and start showing.

• Before you leave for the appointment, pull two or three jobs with the same conditions as this house. Same era, same problem, same material.
• Use them here, and again in the product demo when you explain a detail.
• It also proves the crew documents its work — the same argument as the warranty headcount, told a different way.

Labor · cost · warranty · insurance. Complete all four — don’t stop at insurance.

Tie them to the 80%. The four cuts are not a list of ways competitors differ from you — they are the four ways that 80% got hurt. Name the cut, then point at the chart.

From this guide: every differentiator here is checkable on a real roof, which is what makes it land. Warranties tab for what voids coverage. Roof Removal and Site Protection for removing ALL old flashings and the magnet sweep. Improper Fastening §16 for the six-nail pattern — industry standard is four. Step Flashing §16 for why competitors reuse flashing, and the No-Leak Guarantee.

• COI = certificate of insurance, typically dated for a year. It proves a policy was bought, not that it is still in force — the “first-check Chuck” trick is paying one premium, getting the certificate, then stopping payments.
• Show a copy of the actual policy: coverage effective date, the schedule of coverage types and limits (that column of millions hits the limbic brain), and the box at the bottom with their address as additional insured.
• Have your agent print a certificate naming them as additional insured with their address, so they hold physical proof while you are on their property.
• Annual impact to the contracting industry from increased insurance cost: $20 billion/year, shared between contractors and homeowners.
• Framing: their home is their largest investment, everything they have worked for their entire lives. Is that worth risking to save a couple of thousand dollars?
• Keep a copy of your COI in your company folder with the marketing materials and references.

Remember the shield came back up at the end of stage 2. Two fixes, both at the front of this stage:

• The screensaver. Switching from the DA to the company story, have a photo of something you genuinely love on screen: dog, kids, dream car, golf, family vacation, sports team. Never the generic background. Nothing controversial.
• Start with YOUR story. 25–30 seconds, no more than a minute, while the first screen is up. A short life timeline, ending with why you work for this company. Think it through but do not script it. Weave in warm-up intel.

Never fabricate personal details — kids you do not have, a dog you do not own. The whole point of this stage is that you stop being a salesperson for thirty seconds.

Your timeline, your “why Guardian” and your one intriguing thing are the Homework section at the bottom of this tab. They are the only three parts of this system nobody can write for you.

Slides to be silent on: the pin map, the team photo, and the 80% pie chart. Say the line, then stop talking and let them look. Coaching note from the lesson: use silence after big stats.

Other coaching notes: slow the pace, don’t re-introduce yourself (that happened in the warm-up), and keep the numbers consistent every time you tell it.

Stages four and six are the primary and secondary handlers for the other-estimates objection. Chad Pratt

This is the secondary handler for the other-estimates objection, and the last stage of A — Alter. Everything after this is conversion.

From this guide: Warranties tab for the six upgrade ladders, each in Guardian’s own wording. Underlayment entry for water resistant vs waterproof and the good/better/best inside each. Pipe entry §11 for neoprene / no-calk / non-corrosive. Anatomy tab for the cutaways, when you need to explain a mechanism rather than name a part.

The upgrade ladders state the downside of the cheaper option in Guardian’s own words. That is why they land — you are not overselling, you are explaining. Let the ladder do the work.

Bring CompanyCam back out here. A ladder explained is fine; a ladder explained next to a photo of what the cheap option looked like after eight years is a different conversation.

Remember what you say here. Stage 6 is one of the three points you recall from in the one-six-seven during the close. If you do not remember what they reacted to in the demo, you cannot bridge back to it later.

This is where C — Convert is measured. If steps 1–6 were done properly, the objection you drew out in stage 1 has become price, payment or time, and this question confirms it.

A green light means you go to the close. A red light — the negative pre-close — may be a false negative, and you will find out in stage 8. Either way you execute the convert to comfort and move on. Convert to comfort mechanics not yet captured — see Gaps.

This is also where you take your VP baseline. Nothing has gone wrong yet, so whatever you sound like here is your normal. See stage 0.

And this question is the indicator line. Everything before it is BP, everything after is AP — see Time Zones in stage 0. It is the single most useful diagnostic in the system, because it tells you which half of the visit a lost sale actually died in.

The price layout comes next — after this question and after the commitment statement, but before the close question. It is at the top of stage 8.

Rodney’s point with the whole system: make sure customers understand it’s about trying to help them. The more you try to help them, the more you help yourself.

• Does not have to be verbatim.
• Practice it the same way every time. That’s what makes it land naturally instead of sounding improvised.
• Not optional. It’s core to the system.
• Made after the pre-close question, with sincerity, as part of building trust before price — not tossed out casually afterwards.
• A commitment means dedicating yourself to something and obligates you to follow through — which is exactly why you think carefully before you say it.

When do you NOT make it? Only when you can’t actually follow through. An unkept commitment does more damage than never making one. You do not skip it because the customer feels pressure, and you do not skip it when they ask you to leave a card. Never.

This is what R — Recommit points back to in stage 8. No commitment, nothing to recommit to. One rep in role-play recommitted to something he had never said — you can only recommit to a promise you actually made, here, out loud.

Where it sits: after the pre-close question and the commitment statement, and before the close question. The prices themselves were worked out back in stage 3, during measurement and the digital analysis — you are presenting here, not calculating.

The tool

• A professional digital display tool with quickly navigable functions, on a large-format screen.
• Never on a contract, never on a line-item estimate, never on a cocktail napkin.

Three prices, always

• The first price prices in everything the customer deserves. You anchor high so the conversation becomes about price, not about whether to proceed at all.
• The tabs are not labelled “price one, two, three” or A, B, C. The example used was delta, Charlie, echo. It stops a savvy customer immediately clocking that there are cheaper options sitting there.
• Insurance jobs still get three prices — the first includes every upgrade they deserve, and the third is the deductible-only price. (The specific terminology changes for insurance work were never finished — see Gaps.)

What is on the sheet

Company logo · the customer’s first names · the date · total retail price · a reference call discount.

The navigable tools built into it

• A down payment box
• Adjustable payment terms — 24 months up to 120, or any term a bank offers
• A hidden interest rate modifier — starts high, adjustable all the way down to zero

Those three are DTIP made physical. The order you reach for them is below.

Big-small-big — the verbal technique

You control how a number feels by including or dropping the words “thousands, hundreds, and dollars.”

Payments follow the same big-small-big shape, which pulls attention to the middle payment. That is the one you want them looking at.

Use the price sheet every single time. The layout works across any product, service or industry.

Definition: the gap between what the customer expected to pay and the price you just presented. Taught with a high-end bourbon example.

Where it comes from — all three, not one: internet research · previous experience · input from family or friends.

The two ways to minimise it

1. Own that a lower price exists. Do not hide from it. Hiding is what makes it a shock.
2. Tell a story built on a customer analogy — drawn from what that customer already spends time, energy and money on. Boats, Harleys, private school, whatever they told you.

Those analogies are sourced in the warm-up and the R step, using the REAL framework — which is another reason stage 1 is not small talk. The L in REAL is specifically the rep taking responsibility for setting the price expectation. (Full letter expansion never confirmed — see Gaps.)

Before you pick a tool, hear which objection it is. Walk of Life is for price objections only. Indicator words are in stage 0 and this is where they earn their keep.

• Price objection → Walk of Life, below.
• Time objection → “When would you be in a position to do a project like this?” That puts you at Q3 already.
• They ask about payments up front → straight to “Which of those payments works for you?”

What it really is: a transition tool, not classic objection handling. It reactivates the customer’s working memory after sticker shock and narrows them toward the “when” answer, so you can move into the “how” — payments. Chad Pratt

The three answers — and the one Chad wants

“I don’t know” is the golden answer. Chad loves it — it gives you the most room to show new ways to buy and get them the best possible outcome. Outside of a specific time or a hard never, err toward pushing that customer to payments.

Two out of three keep you on price one.

The numbers are stages: 1 the warm up, where the objection came out · 6 the product demo · 7 the pre-close.

You recall what they said at each of those three points and bridge over the stall to get back into a conversation about price. It is the AP tool — it takes a positive pre-close and bridges to the Walk of Life. That recall is the whole thing. (Delivery wording never captured — see Gaps.)

When you have to force it

1. The negative pre-close (least inside your control — the focus of the lesson)
2. Recall fails under pressure — you cannot remember stages 1, 6 and 7, so you cannot run the bridge
3. You have not learned the one-six-seven yet

The last two are inside your control. And note the link to the Choke lesson in stage 0: working memory loss is exactly why number two happens.

Dispel the myth: forcing it is not just for untrained reps who cannot one-six-seven. It is useful regardless of experience.

Your response when the price lands and everything you built gets erased. Through stages 1–6 they were all in. Then you show a number higher than they wanted and it is an eraser.

R — Recommit

Reference the commitment statement you made in stage 7.

E — Explain

Two things: when you are going to do the job, and what job you are still doing.

A — Advantages

Extremely important, and a huge missed opportunity when reps skip it. It reconnects the problems from your digital analysis (stage 2) with the good stuff from your product demo (stage 6).

C — Customize

Whatever you are doing to show the new option: applying a down payment and showing new payments, extending the terms, or going to price two by removing scope.

Customize = what you are taking away, what you are still doing, and the new price or payments. All three, every time.

Switching products, if it comes to that, is raised here in the C step — see below.

T

A placeholder for asking for the order after showing the new option. In practice: “Which one of those payments works best for you?” The wording was chosen to spell the acronym.

REACT once. Then RCT. One full REACT per appointment. Every offer after that is an RCT — abbreviated Recommit, Customize, ask for the order. Running the full explain and advantages on every new option is redundant and sounds ridiculous.

Worked example — chimney and gutters

Advantages: coming into fall, no more climbing ladders, no more cleaning gutters, no more clogged gutters, no more water damage. And the chimney does not keep getting worse — if that crown gets any worse you go from a cap to a rebuild, $2,000 more.

Customize: set it up so they do not pay a nickel until August. Also floated: frame it as “option two” rather than “financing,” and a car-sales style 10–20% down.

• MIT study, Boston Celtics season tickets: payment buyers pay up to 100% more. Chad also found a fan on Reddit who had split season tickets into monthly payments per person — “didn’t know they had payment plans, very tempting.”
• Payment buying is a mesolimbic addiction — MRI research comparing the purchase response to a drug habit. (Researcher’s name unconfirmed — see Gaps.)
• Pain-reward buying: “payments are an aspirin for the pain of price.” Small increments mean you never watch the big lump sum leave your account — the same reason swiping a card hurts less than handing over cash.
• Instant gratification. Get-rich-quick, one-pill weight loss, speed dating. Payments make the unattainable feel realistic right now.

The win-win-win, in order: the customer wins — a better project they did not think they could afford, and that is the number one reason we are in business. You and your family win — every time you help a customer you help yourself. The company wins — last.

Understand why we do payments, understand that people need payments, and understand that offering them well helps more people get better jobs.

Two ways in: a Walk of Life Q3 that lands on “I don’t know”, or an initial payment response after you flip the price and ask the close question.

Older notes had the P as “Price”. Chad’s Order of Operations class states it as “a partial, or what we call price two” — same destination, and the partial is the correct name.

If you need to take a down payment, extend to 120 and cut the rate to get somebody the best job possible — that is what you do. Knowing the order and moving people to payments the right way means better jobs, more customers helped, and a more successful company.

Getting the down payment number

Role-play critique: rep asked the yes/no version, fumbled to “well, how much was it,” got “I don’t know.” He also asked “was it the price?” — obviously it was, or you would never have run the Walk of Life. Do not ask questions you already know the answer to.

Tools you can use — and one you cannot

Lower interest rate · partial · extended terms

Not a tool: lower price. Dropping the price just cheapens what you do.

When NOT to ask for a down payment

If they gave you a specific time on Q3, do not ask for a down payment. You are walking yourself back down the mountain. They said spring when their taxes come back — sell them 12 months, or whatever term gets them past it.

Why: people buying 6, 12 or 36 months have the money. They are just smart enough not to use it. The mattress contrast: a $7,000 mattress on 60 months — five years is forever. Twelve months is not forever. Completely different buyer.

Before price two is on the table you must groom through ALL your progressions at price one. Never skip that. Price two is not a shortcut — you go to the partial only when everything at price one is exhausted.

The progression that gets skipped when you move to price two: 90 days same as cash.

Part 1 — how to do it right

1. Keep the visuals from stage 6 on the table so they can see what they are getting.
2. Finish on what they are STILL getting. Add excitement. Never conclude on what they are not getting.
3. Relay out the price and payment — and skip the top price. Do not redisplay price one. Just lay out the new price and payment. The payment gap is small because price two is only a 20–30% change.

The three pitfalls

1. Negative “you won’t get” words. The mistake most people make. Nobody wants to feel negative while still spending a lot of money.
2. Losing your enthusiasm. Not selling price one does not mean you failed. The system is designed to sell 60% price one, 20% price two, 20% price three — two of every ten sales are supposed to be price two.
3. Skipping price two — the killer. Price two helps you sell price one, and it makes price three look better. Never skip it, even if you think you have price three sold.

The Diet Coke demo: the full two-litre is price one at $2.99; the single serving is price two at $1.99 — it will quench your thirst, it is easier to carry, it is not as heavy, it is what you wanted right now anyway. “I know that’ll work for you, won’t it?”

Part 2 — why price two helps you sell price one

Why reps wrongly avoid it:

• Thinking with your own pocket — “I wouldn’t buy that.” It is not your money, and you are spending the customer’s money for them. This is the main problem and the #1 reason price two does not get sold.
• Assuming you have price three sold.
• Thinking the customer needs a bigger drop than 20–30%.
• Fearing it will cost you the sale — they have sat with you for over an hour for exactly this moment.
• Not calculating price two back in stage 3 — the dirty little secret.

Why it works: the gap is only 20–30%, so the customer thinks if it is only a little more, why not just have the best? The selections are already made, so price two is a visual takeaway they do not want to redo. And for a payment buyer that gap barely moves the monthly — so they may as well take price one.

Never feel bad about a customer paying the higher price. It is their money and their choice of the best.

Part 3 — what happens when you transition wrong

The core mistake: focusing only on the price difference — price, price, price — and leaving out everything else. Not explaining the changes in the offer, and not refabbing the new one.

• Windows: went from a house full to just the front, and failed to re-explain what the front does — curb appeal, and where most of the sun comes from anyway.
• Shingles: not re-telling them how good the new shingle is.
• Leaving the old samples out in plain sight — the pulled warranty, the old shingle. Terrible.

Three effects on the customer:

1. They do not like option two — because you only told them what they are not getting.
2. You talk yourself into it — “see, I told you we didn’t need price two” — because they did not like it, because you did not make it sound good. Then you start eyeing price three.
3. The killer: they think they are getting option one at the option two price. It surfaces at collection — “wait, I thought I was getting that other shingle / that ridge vent / those extra windows.”

Why it happens: most of the industry just drops the price and gives the same stuff — some build the price up first so they can drop it, relying on pressure. Dropping the price must come with a real change in the scope of work, refabbed.

Diet Coke, wrong vs right. Wrong: “we were talking about the full one for $2.99, we’re gonna get rid of forty ounces and just give you the twenty — sound good?” Why would I do that? Right: fab what they are getting — one serving is all you wanted anyway, quenches your thirst, easier to carry.

Samples rule: keep the one you are selling on the table, and get rid of the one you are not. Leave both out and the customer is confused about what they bought.

The rule of rules: lowering the scope of work is better than switching the product. A product switch is the LAST resort, and it is a big deal, not taken lightly.

When it is the only move left — you cannot scale the scope back any further: flooring in only one area · down to five windows · a bathroom where you are replacing the shower and quartz walls and there is nothing else to remove.

More prevalent in flooring, kitchens and bathrooms — you cannot take an inch off a sink. That does not mean it works better there; it is just more often unavoidable.

The three rules of switching

1. Bring it up in the C step of REACT.
2. Do NOT fab the product. No features, no advantages, no benefits. No colour, no warranty. The only benefit right now is the lower cost, because they wanted the other thing.
3. Tell them what they are STILL getting — everything else they keep.

Fab the benefits of the rest of the job, not the product. Finish on something good. Do it this way and you can switch products at the close without triggering “I gotta think about it.”

Three things that cannot be made harder in role-play than they are in the house:

1. The second transition question (pushing for an objection)
2. The pre-close question
3. Q3 of the Walk of Life

Everything else can be made harder in the room — practise it like a sport. See the Choke lesson in stage 0 for how.

This is the cheapest cancellation insurance in the system and it takes four seconds. Skip it and you find out on Tuesday.

Maximize approval, minimize embarrassment.

• Use generic credit apps or chat forms.
• Run stages eight through ten before leaving the appointment.
• Post-appointment calling process follows.
• Denial protocol sequence: primary lender → secondary lender → lower-tier lenders.
• Win-win-win: higher rep morale, no customer embarrassment, higher approval rates.

1 · Marketing

• No lead aggregators. No Angie’s List, no bought third-party leads — “absolute garbage.” Every customer you meet chose to call Guardian. That is not a small thing, and it is worth remembering when you walk in.
• Branding: TV, radio, community outreach, Halo projects, mailers, awards, published articles.
• Digital: roughly a dozen channels — search, Facebook campaigns, YouTube. Hyper expensive, and it works.
• Targeting is deliberate — right homes, right demographics, single-family structures that actually need a roof. “If you’re not in the market for a Tundra, don’t market to those guys.”
• Matt runs the fleet — lights working, oil changed, everything maintained. The quiet beast of the business.

2 · The call centre and qualification

April, Lydia, Alicia and Jordan take the inbound calls and run the day-to-day logistics. They are your partner in this process, not a switchboard.

Roughly ten qualifying questions: age of roof · type and material · how long in the home · are you the owner (no rentals, no absent owners — you cannot sell to someone who does not own it) · is it a service we offer · is it in our zip codes.

Every lead you run is already qualified. In the worked example the booking was 5 PM with both homeowners present — which is exactly why the pre-close question and a same-day decision are reasonable asks rather than pressure. Somebody did that work before you arrived.

3 · Lead assignment

The qualified lead goes into the lead pool. Trevor (name unclear on the recording — possibly Brad) pulls it and assigns it to the best rep for that job by specialty — a repair goes to a repair tech, an install goes to an install specialist.

You get the lead the night before. You know where you are going and what you are doing — which is your preparation window. See the Choke lesson in stage 0: leave early, recon the neighbourhood, and use that time.

4 · Showing up

• Minimum ten minutes early, parked out front. The customer sees you arrive.
• Guardian vehicle. Uniform with the logo, tucked in, boots, haircut, clean-shaven or clean stubble. No off-brand jackets — dark blue, black or brown. You are a professional roofing estimating technician; look like one.
• They already know who is coming. Before you arrive the customer gets a photo and a text — “Edgar Costanza from Guardian Roofing will be visiting, click here for the bio.” Total transparency about who is walking up the drive. You will get your own photo shoot.

5 · In the home

This is where the eleven stages live. Warm up first, build rapport, then transition: “Thanks for chatting — I’m here to look at what you pointed out, I’ll take it from here.” Then the tools come off the truck and you shoot the digital analysis.

Worked example — Ashley’s house: moisture introduced into the decks under the shingles, and an unhealthy temperature differential between exterior and attic, more than 10°. (Actual readings heard as 120 vs 93 — unconfirmed.)

6 · The reset, or the flip

Edgar is a repair technician. When the DA showed the house needed a full replacement, he did not try to sell one — he reset the lead. The coordinators flip it from repair estimate to replacement, it goes back to the pool, and it is reassigned to a replacement specialist who books a time with both homeowners.

This will happen to you in your first year, and it is not a failure. The job goes to the right technician. Handing a lead back because it is beyond you is the professional move, not the embarrassing one.

7 · Financing — the back-office advantage

Collect the full application in the home — everything except the Social Security number — then: “Let me send this to our finance team in the office, they’ll call you with some options.”

The finance team (lead heard as “English” — name unconfirmed) runs about three strong bank relationships and finances millions of dollars of business a year. They get creative with terms and rates. Once approved, the application passes to production. This connects straight to DTIP in stage 8 — the levers you reach for are the ones this team can actually pull.

8 · Pre-production

• All documents complete — application, estimate, contract, overhead, sketches — then a cross-check and over to production (Jeff and Diana in the middle; Patrick and the superintendents).
• Production lays out every bit of material, checks whether it needs a permit, how fast material can arrive, and when it goes on the schedule.
• Permits — Joey. Every zip code in the Sound is different. Lakewood is not Everett is not the next city over. Joey references every job against its zip so a permit is never missed. It is a pass-through cost to the customer, and it matters: an unpermitted roof is a problem when they sell the house. Plenty of contractors skip it. We do not.
• Suppliers: Stoneway and SRS Building Products — they drive out in the morning and drop the shingles on the roof.
• Meanwhile the customer gets a “what to expect” video that reinforces exactly what you described in the home. Good service is expectations set well and no surprises.

The permit point is a four cuts item — see stage 4. It is checkable, it costs a competitor money to do properly, and the homeowner does not find out it was skipped until they are trying to sell.

9 · Crew assignment and the night before

Patrick and five superintendents assign the right crew — metal, shingle or TPO. Two crews have real TPO experience; every crew can run shingle. Delivery is coordinated around the customer’s schedule.

Night-before call from the PE: arrival window (crews between 7 and 9 AM, delivery onto the roof), clear the driveway for the trailer and vehicle, the dog stays inside or the crew gets a heads-up, and yes — it will be very noisy, so move that 11 AM call. They walk into the morning knowing exactly what happens.

10 · Install day

• A superintendent dispatches the crew, running the sketch, the overhead and any job-specific quality notes — black starter, metal on a black roof, the dog, anything outside standard.
• Standards: all rotten decking replaced, ice and water shield installed, warranty and quality standards upheld.
• Around 300 photographs per project. Total transparency — every photo of their house and exactly what was done is available to them.
• Multi-phase jobs get a separate crew and their own night-before call with its own window.

300 photos per job is company-story ammunition — it is the same argument as CompanyCam in stage 4, and it is the reason the before-and-after library exists at all.

11 · After the job

• Check-in call — how did it go, catch any gap in expectations, fix anything outstanding, and ask for the review. Real reviews are how you gain traction. 98–99% of the time it was great.
• Cookies ship a week and a half to two weeks later. “Probably the best thing we buy.”
• Warranty registration — incredibly important. The customer gets the registration email.
• Referral ask, for future work or a friend.

That review ask is the other end of the Nielsen numbers in stage 0. A review moves 69% of buyers. You are building the thing the next rep will lean on.

Every install includes a one-year Guardian Protection plan, and you should be trying to sell a GP on every single lead you run. Roughly $400–500.

• What it does: keeps the homeowner off the roof — cleaning, blow-off, and an inspection with a photo form and red / yellow / green readings. Yellow or red and we help fix it.
• Why it matters to Guardian: loyal customers stay in the system, GPs surface future work (a chimney rebuild, a leak caught early), and a bigger customer base means more referrals.
• The numbers: around 2,300 GP customers, about 2,000 maintenance contracts, and Guardian looks after roughly 10,000 people a year.
• Sell it the way HVAC and plumbing sell a maintenance plan: peace of mind, and we come out every year.

Note what a GP does to the guide’s own warranty material: the 3-year No Moss Guarantee needs an annual blow-off and the chimney crown needs sealing every three years. A GP is how those actually get honoured — see stage 11.

• About 75,000 calls a year into the building. The phone always gets answered.
• After hours: a remote answering centre in Texas, an on-call weekend rotation, and an escalation tree — it keeps calling managers until somebody picks up.
• Emergency — a roof blows off, an active leak — goes straight to dispatch.
• 365 days a year, 24 hours a day (heard as “355” on the recording — reading as 365, confirm it), there is always a way to reach us.

That is a company story line, and it is the honest answer to “what happens if something goes wrong?” — the same question the thirty-against-one warranty headcount answers from the other direction.

After the sale you hand off to your PE, and it is the same PE for every job you ever sell. They handle permits, scheduling, payments and customer communication so you stay in the field selling.

• A typical thread: contract confirmation, 30% deposit collection, card on file (secure — only the last four visible), scheduling, payment posting.
• The service centre handles the basic asks — collect a payment, give an arrival window — before it even reaches your PE.
• 90% of the time you never speak to the customer again after the sale. When they call you about production, refer them back to the PE — it keeps the message consistent.

Guardian pays for the leads, the truck and the gas, and carries the taxes and overhead. (Cost per lead heard as both ~$300 and “160 bucks” — unconfirmed.) You get handed qualified clients. So run it like it is yours.

The follow-up hour. Work one extra hour a day on follow-up and on getting better at the job. Do that for six months and you would be the best salesperson in the building. Most people will not.

• Ryan — first hire at the branch (opened August 2024, just past its two-year mark), construction background out of Louisiana and the Gulf — is now the top salesperson.
• Jackson Swain keeps a portfolio of finished projects to show customers the exact work. Worth copying.
• The Bucky’s story — an auto shop that fixed something for free and asked only for a review, with customers’ Christmas cards on the office wall. That is a business people come back to. Same principle: reviews, thank-yous, and referral drops of $100–150 for a roof referral.

The standard: Guardian is the luxury, full-service roofing experience — the hotel that parks your car and puts out colouring books for the kids. There are a million shoddy roofers. A $40,000 roof deserves a customer experience proportional to it. The founders built that; you get to continue it.

1. Sell a GP on every lead. $400–500, on every single one. If you are not asking, that is the fastest money on this page.
2. Hand financing to the back office — never let a decline happen at the table.
3. Use the night-before lead as your prep window, not as a diary entry.
4. Look after your PE. Coffee is cheap; the cover they give you is not.
5. Work the follow-up hour. It is the only advice here that nobody can do for you.
6. Take four lines into your company story: 300 photos a job · 75,000 calls a year answered 24/365 · permits checked against every zip code · no lead aggregators, they called us.

Set by the training, still outstanding. Nobody can write these for you — that is the point of them.

1. Your 45-second personal timeline, for the company story opening in stage 4. Where you were born, family moved, school, sports, college, the degree that did not help, finding this company. Think it through; do not script it.
2. A genuine “why Guardian Roofing” closing to your company story. This is the sentence the whole timeline exists to earn.
3. Identify what is intriguing about your background — the thing that re-humanises you with a customer. You spent 21 years being interesting before you sold roofs; find the part of that a stranger would want to hear.

All three land in stage 4, in the first 30 seconds, over the screensaver. That is the fix for the shield going back up after the digital analysis.