The Contractor Fight with Tom Reber

www.thecontractorfight.com/leak

Stop Trying to Build Rapport

Your prospects don’t need another contractor pretending to care about their dog, boat or favorite football team.

They need to trust that you can solve their problem.

In this episode, Tom challenges one of the oldest beliefs in sales: people buy from people they like.

Likability matters, but it doesn’t close the job by itself. Contractors lose sales every day after having friendly conversations with homeowners who genuinely liked them.

The missing ingredient is competence.

Manufactured small talk can actually work against you. It wastes time, signals that you’re running a sales technique and delays the conversation the homeowner actually wants to have.

Instead of trying to become their buddy, take command of the meeting. Explain the process, ask better questions, understand what they want and show them exactly how you’ll deliver it.

Competence is the rapport.

In this episode:

• Why being liked isn’t enough to close the job

• The difference between being friendly and manufacturing rapport

• How forced small talk can damage trust

• What homeowners are really thinking while you talk about their boat

• Why your sales process should begin before you arrive

• How explaining the meeting builds immediate credibility

• Why diagnosing the problem positions you as the expert

• The two things that actually build trust during the meeting

• Tom’s three-meeting challenge for eliminating fake rapport

Your challenge:

For your next three sales meetings, eliminate the manufactured small talk.

Explain your process within the first 60 seconds. Get directly into what the homeowner wants, why it matters and what has changed since the qualification call.

You don’t need to be liked.

You need to be trusted.

Find out where your sales process is leaking with the free Sales Leak Scorecard:

https://thecontractorfight.com/leak

Stop guessing. Find the leak. Fix the leak. Command your sales.

Have you built a business worth having: https://bit.ly/BuildABusinessWorthHaving_itf1

Most contractors believe the only way to build a successful business is to work 80 hours a week and sacrifice everything at home.

Roberto Diaz thought the exact same thing. He was working non-stop, hiding empty bank accounts from his family, and putting thousands of dollars on credit cards just to survive.

Then he hit a breaking point: "Strong Home, Strong Business."

In this episode of Into The Fight, Tim and Derek sit down with general contractor Roberto Diaz (owner of Building by Giving in Denver, CO) to talk about how he stopped overworking, started tracking his numbers with job costing, and built a business that lets him be home by 5 PM with his wife and kids.

They break down:

• Why overworking and sacrificing family time won't save your contracting business

• How to transition from doing everything yourself to implementing real business systems

• The exact breaking point that forces contractors to stop hiding from their numbers

• Why tracking job costing reveals the painful truth about your margins

• How to build standards around subs, culture, and hospitality in construction

• The power of reaching out to realtors, designers, and local partners to stay busy

• Why asking hard questions and practicing active listening saves marriages and businesses

Chapters

00:00 Welcome to Into The Fight: Roberto Diaz

00:58 Donating 3% to 5% of Every Project

03:36 The Breaking Point: Strong Home, Strong Business

04:55 Empty Bank Accounts & Taking the Risk

07:27 Deciding to Be a Present Father

12:33 Facing the Truth with Job Costing

15:15 Working with Family and Uncomfortable Conversations

18:34 Scaling with a Subcontractor Model & High Standards

26:28 Becoming a Better Husband & Communicator

32:45 The Question Every Contractor Needs to Ask

Running a contracting business should never force you to sacrifice your home life.

When you implement job costing and track your actual numbers, you build a company that runs smoothly. That clarity gives you the freedom to be fully present as a husband and father.

Tom Reber is the founder of The Contractor Fight. He is the host of Contractor Fight TV, an entrepreneur, a speaker, a podcaster, and a former HGTV host.

For over 20 years, Tom has helped hundreds of thousands of contractors build businesses worth having.

He does this by helping them become the kind of people capable of building them.

On this channel you will find straight-talk training for your business.

We cover sales, pricing, profit, leadership, and mindset.

Our goal is to build a Strong You, a Strong Home, and a Strong Business.

The first fight is always with yourself.

Join The Fight. 👊

How Contractors Leak $183,000 in Profit Every Year

Most contractors think they need more leads.

They don’t.

They need to stop wasting the opportunities already coming into the business.

In this episode, Tom breaks down how an $800,000 contractor could be leaking more than $183,000 in gross profit every year without seeing a single expense on the P&L.

The money disappears through four common sales leaks:

• The Gate: Failing to qualify leads before wasting time on an estimate

• The Meeting: Showing up, measuring and quoting without running a proven sales process

• The Money: Discounting because the price conversation gets uncomfortable

• The Follow-Up: Sending a proposal and hoping the customer eventually responds

Using a $12,000 average job, a 30% close rate and a 40% gross profit margin, Tom shows how small improvements could produce:

• 84 hours of owner or estimator time recovered through better qualification

• $52,800 in additional gross profit from improving the close rate by five points

• $20,400 kept by eliminating unnecessary discounts

• Approximately $110,000 in additional gross profit from a structured follow-up process

You don’t need more water poured into a leaking bucket.

Fix the bucket first.

In this episode:

• The five steps of the Shin-Fu qualification process

• Why 80% of the sale happens during the motive conversation

• The seven-part structure of a strong sales meeting

• How discounting comes directly off your bottom line

• The five-touch follow-up sequence every contractor should use

• Why profit is the scoreboard

• How to find the biggest leak in your sales process

Find your biggest sales leak with the free Sales Leak Scorecard:

https://thecontractorfight.com/leak

Stop guessing. Find the leak. Fix the leak. Command your sales.

Take the Sales Leak Scorecard Here

Episode Description

"What's the going rate for a project like this?" Wrong question. In this episode, Tom breaks down why pricing off the going rate is the fastest way to price yourself into the gutter and what to ask instead. It's not about what everyone else charges. It's about your production rate, your real costs, and your number. If you're still shaving your price to "stay competitive," this one's for you.

What You'll Learn

• Why "going rate" pricing means you're averaging other contractors' blind spots into your own bid
• The one question to ask instead of "what's the going rate"
• The three numbers you need to know cold before you price any job
• The blind-spot costs that never show up in a "going rate" conversation
• Why revenue hides stupidity — and how a broken pricing model gets worse the more you scale it

Episode Breakdown

• Open — The question that started this episode, and why it's the wrong one to ask
• The Going Rate Problem — Why market-average pricing means pricing off other people's guesswork
• The Better Question — Production rate vs. going rate, and why one is math and the other is a rumor
• The Cost of Guessing — How "going rate" pricing quietly scales a broken business
• How to Build Your Number — The three things to track: actual time, real costs, target margin
• The Blind Spots — Access issues, waste, permits, travel — the stuff the going rate never accounts for
• The Standard — What strong contractors do differently
• The Fight This Week — Pull your last five jobs and build your real number

Key Quote

"The going rate is the kiss of death for a contractor. It keeps you tied to the average. And average is not where you want to live."

This Week's Fight

Pull your last five jobs like the one you're about to bid. Look at actual hours, actual costs, actual outcome. Build your production rate... not the going rate.

oduction rate — not your going rate.

Links & Resources

• Sales Leak Scorecard
• The Contractor Fight Website: https://thecontractorfight.com

Get Your Sales Leak Score: https://thecontractorfight.com/leak

You just found out that "small" discount is costing you way more than 10%. In this episode, Tom breaks down the actual math behind discounting a job, and why giving away 10% off your price can wipe out 20% (or more) of your profit. If you've ever caved on price because a customer pushed back, this one's for you.

What you'll learn:

• Why your costs don't move when your price does
• The real math behind a "harmless" 10% discount
• How much additional work you have to sell just to break even on a discount
• Why the math gets uglier the thinner your margins already are
• The difference between a strategic discount and a fear-based one

Timestamps

• 00:00 – The problem: contractors negotiating against themselves the moment a customer pushes back
• 00:40 – The example: a $10K job at 50% gross margin
• 01:00 – What actually happens when you cave and knock off 10%
• 01:40 – Your costs don't drop just because your price did
• 02:00 – The real hit: a 10% price discount = a 20% gross profit hit
• 02:20 – Mid-show break: the Sales Leak Scorecard — find out where your sales process is actually breaking down
• 03:20 – Back to the numbers: what it costs to earn that profit back
• 03:40 – How much additional revenue you have to go sell just to replace what you gave away
• 04:20 – The math gets worse at lower margins (30% example)
• 05:20 – When discounting is okay — legit strategic reasons vs. reacting out of fear
• 06:00 – The close: know your numbers, hold your price, protect your profit

Get Your Sales Leak Score: https://thecontractorfight.com/leak

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