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9. Unmasking the Sales Game: How to Save Thousands on Big Purchases
74 Plays1 year ago
In this episode of Exposeco, Brian and Paul dive deep into the tactics contractors and salespeople use to overcharge unsuspecting consumers. From hidden fees to unnecessary add-ons, they reveal industry secrets and explain how Exposeco helps customers cut through the noise, make informed decisions, and save money. If you're planning a big purchase—whether it’s heating and air conditioning or another major investment—this episode is a must-listen!
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Transcript
Introduction to ExposeCo's Consumer Protection Services
00:00:15
Speaker
Hey, good evening. This is Brian from Xposedco. I'm here with my co-host, Paul. How's it going tonight, Paul? It's going great. Excited to be here. Nice. Okay. Well, we're back at it and we're back working with a new topic tonight. We're going to be talking about value and how does ExposeCo bring value to a customer, especially when they're going to make a big purchase. How does it make sense for a customer to spend more money in order to save money or to have any benefit from
ExposeCo's Unique No-Contractor-Fee Model
00:00:45
Speaker
it? That kind of seems so counterintuitive. So.
00:00:48
Speaker
let's dive into it tonight yeah i think it's in some ways people think of why do i need to have the help when i have representatives from these different organizations coming out to help me through this process and what happens is is we really exist because we don't necessarily trust the process we don't trust the contractors we don't trust the salesman because salesman or salesman there there to make a box so the reason why we developed expose co is to protect the consumer and and to have the consumers interest at heart.
00:01:23
Speaker
without having any type of financial or any type of ties to the contractor that's the difference between expose co and you know these other companies like Yelp or Angie's or any of these other services that say hey let us help you find a good contractor will find you five contractors for contractors all those companies they are getting paid from the contractor So their best interest is the contractors making sure that they get paid from them. And the difference is with us is we don't collect any money. We want we will never accept money from a
Shielding Consumers from Deceptive Sales Tactics
00:02:03
Speaker
contractor. We only get paid from you, the consumer.
00:02:06
Speaker
So in the end we want to make sure that your needs are met and we're not looking out for the contractor's best interest we're looking out for the consumer's best interest with re twenty plus years of experience in the industry we know exactly what people need what people don't need.
00:02:22
Speaker
So it's not just overpaying for what you're getting a lot of people are oversold so they're they're buying bells and whistles that they'll never use they'll never even know what they do and it's kind of like there's a when you're buying a brand new car they have this coding that you put on the car right and they say oh yeah it's a.
00:02:41
Speaker
ah Paint protect it's $1,900. It just comes with the car. It's an add-on feature really what that is all it is is a Spray that they go around and they spray the car and it's literally you just spray it on it's not like some Special type of gun that they use a heat gun or something like crazy process It's literally out of a spray bottle and they're charging $1,900 to the consumer and saying that it's protecting your paint actually Brian Did you ever have this experience? I think you lived across seas and you had a paint issue with your car and didn't you have a protectant, right? Well, I think that the salesman was in adamant Since we were in a saltwater climate because I lived in Guam as for part of my life and I bought a new car on the island
00:03:27
Speaker
They were adamant that I bought, it's actually an electronic vibrator, like device that goes in the engine compartment that protects it with electrodes so that, you know, there's no rust. Interesting. Yeah, so they they were super insistent and the young, ignorant man that I was, I went for it. I paid, I think $1,000 for this little device, only to bring it back to the United States and have you know people laugh at me. Yeah, because it's so obvious a fraud.
00:03:54
Speaker
But I wasn't aware, so I literally spent $1,000 on something that that did nothing for my car. more Less than nothing, actually, ah it took it drained my battery. So I think I had to replace my battery sooner than I normally would have because it was always this little device running. always but yeah Interesting. I had thought it was like a spray, but maybe I was wrong a little bit, but it just goes to show you that those examples are real. I mean, these dealerships or other type of industries, they have their own kind of corks that basically car salesman would know what what that is and they would opt to never buy that or a mechanic from the the car dealership or
00:04:34
Speaker
Whoever is the one that is facilitating this stuff in order for them to offer those those features to help sell the car now what we know is Heating and air conditioning and contracting since we've been in it for so long we understand the dirty little secrets that these guys have and they use to their advantage in order to charge you more than others and by building value in their proposition. So when they're coming into your house, their job is to make their company, their service, and their offering sound better than everybody else's. And it's an easy thing to do when you're a really skilled salesperson. And a lot of times when you're a skilled salesperson, you're not actually really providing much more.
Ensuring Best Value from Contractor Proposals
00:05:20
Speaker
You're just delivering the message more clearly and you're communicating better, and that's what makes people feel a little bit more warm and fuzzy. In the end, they're really not getting much more out of that salesperson. They're just understanding what they're getting a little bit more. Having exposed codes, what we do is we read between the lines. So you may have a really, really good contractor that just can't communicate very well, but is providing the same service as the guy that can communicate really, really well that's charging you to 20% to 30% more than the other guy. And what we do is we review all that and we will tell you who is giving you the most value for the money. So you may be overspending by 20%, 30%, 40%, 50% by not having our service and also
00:06:13
Speaker
Maybe buying something that you actually don't need. So what we do is we are here to analyze your guys's Proposals we're here to analyze what the contractors are offering and looking at it with a trained eye Something that we've been doing for years and years and years and we're making it so you can just sit back relax and take the hands off the wheel and allow us to to come back and be able to give you our scorecard and be able to give you our full analysis of exactly what you actually need and then also who's providing the best bang for the buck. In order for you to you know feel confident in your purchase, there's nothing worse than making a ah you know significant purchase like this and feeling uneasy about
Consumer Awareness: Car vs. HVAC Purchases
00:07:02
Speaker
it. I mean, these systems can cost you
00:07:04
Speaker
5, 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, $50,000 depending upon the situation and if you really don't understand the industry and you don't understand what you're getting yourself into, why not fraction of the cost of the project, have a trained eye, be looking over your shoulder knowing and having your back, knowing what's going on, knowing exactly what you should and should not buy. It's pretty much guaranteed you will save more by hiring us than you'll pay in and fees. That's so rich. I love that. When you think about it, and I can't stop thinking about this analogy, when you go to like a restaurant, let's say it's Applebee's, not a very good restaurant, in my opinion, let's choose Chili's a little better.
00:07:48
Speaker
Not even that good either, but you go there and you order a steak, like consumers understand what they're getting when they order, let's say a New York strip steak or T-bone. They know there's a different quality between those two meats. And so they're willing to pay, let's say a little bit more for a filet mignon or for prime rib or ribeye. There's variations in terms of the quality of what they're going to get. A lot of times people go to a restaurant and the plates are already like set in the menu. Let's say they're going to order a steak. It's coming with mashed potatoes. It's coming with. corn is coming with a salad, something like that. But people are aware of the fact that they can change some of those things and they could actually order something different if it doesn't suit them. I don't want corn, I'd rather have fries. They realize they have power and they're aware of that power and they're aware of how to use that power. They're aware of what they can expect when they order their steak medium rare and if they don't get that, they can hold that restaurant accountable
00:08:42
Speaker
for giving them what they've ordered and make sure that they get what they've asked. People aren't aware though, in terms of heating and air conditioning, let's just say that that industry, about the variation of heating and air conditioning units, filtration, just all the different areas, which you can actually customize that suits you. Imagine you go to a restaurant and you're like, all I want is a steak. I don't really want corn and all that mashed potatoes and stuff.
00:09:09
Speaker
And then the restaurant owner said, well, I'll just charge you for the steak. That's all, since that's all you want. Like I'm not going to charge you for the whole plate, which will cost twice as much. Like people don't realize that, well, you can do that in heating and air conditioning. You can say, I actually don't want all of these side things that you've tacked on, which you are just making it seem like are part of this purchasing process. I just want, I just want, I just need the heater or I see the air conditioner or I just need a new duct work.
Demystifying Contractor Jargon and Pricing
00:09:34
Speaker
Not all that comes with it. So tell me about that value too. How much of contracting will.
00:09:40
Speaker
wrap in things that are just completely superfluous because the customer's not aware. There's many different ways that they can play it. And sometimes, you know, there what they're doing is they're just listing out every little screw and and little accessory that has to go into installing the piece of equipment to bring the value to the purchase, right? And those things are necessary, right? But for example,
00:10:06
Speaker
a line item on proposals saying a pigtail. Well what that is is an industry term for a plug. So a furnace needs to have a plug in order to plug into the wall so it will actually or plug into the outlet so it actually will have power and You know, it's just a play on words, right? So yeah, no, our trained eyes here to be able to tell you if you want to not necessarily have the hospital grade filtration or the the surge protection or these other items that that can be commonly, you know, lumped into their proposal where it's adding money, but they're really using it as a sales tactic to scare tactic you into saying, Look, these other guys are not offering you this. I don't know why they're not giving you the system protections that you need. And they're using strong language to close you, to make it so that you're purchasing based on an emotion. And it's not out of, it's not out of facts. So what we do at Xposedco is we take the emotion out of the purchase.
00:11:09
Speaker
We make sure that you're not emotional about your purchase. Your purchase is grounded based on facts and knowledge. When your purchase is based on facts and knowledge, then you're not making an emotional purchase. You're not overspending and you could be confident in that purchase. It's a wise purchase at that point. You hire us. What we're doing is really taking the emotions out of anything that has to do with the purchase. So I think that's super valuable because people that make emotional purchases a lot of times don't make wise purchases. And same thing with you know car buying or any other type of industry. It's a lot of money to be making an emotional purchase and not having the knowledge. And it can be really daunting to try to do the research to gain the knowledge. I mean, you can spend hours and hours and hours
00:11:57
Speaker
doing the research and you're still going to be, you're not going to have the industry knowledge of somebody that's been in it for 20 years that was on the side of selling you systems and understanding the secrets of the other side of things. I was that guy. I was the guy that was in your house. I was the guy that had the perfect language that was able to work you into a system based on how to create the value and the proposal and everything. It's just you know it's common sales tactics, just industry specific. and Being the salesperson now on the consumer side, I can read through those lines. I can read through basically all the garbage and we can really get down to the facts of who is going to provide the best service for the cost.
00:12:42
Speaker
and even After that we can even negotiate it for you cuz we know what these things cost what these guys can do who's overcharging and it's funny cuz people make promises they'll go we're gonna give you a ten year labor warranty or we're gonna give you a no surprise guarantees something like you know like that and we have the knowledge to say well.
00:13:05
Speaker
You know what Jim over here who wants us to represent him He just told us he's not gonna be living in that house for more than two years so we don't care about the 10-year labor warranty let's move it to two years and how about you give us a discount for that and that's the type of knowledge that you're gonna get from us is we're gonna be looking over a and making sure that this what this person is selling you is actually fitting your needs and it's not overselling you. And when we tell them to take that stuff away, we're not gonna tell them to take
Understanding True Costs and Avoiding Markups
00:13:36
Speaker
it away for free. We're gonna expect a credit for that. So right there, I mean, going from a 10-year warranty to a two-year warranty, if you're moving in two years, that could be thousands of dollars.
00:13:46
Speaker
right there that is that's just one small example of a savings that we can bring to the table just based on having knowledge that. ah Consumer wouldn't have or consumer wouldn't think of and that you know that's a that's a pretty simple one there's a lot more complex ones that can be hidden in that proposal as well you're not talking about small amount of money here every line item that they're gonna add even from search protection.
00:14:09
Speaker
You know, you think I can get a search protector for 10 bucks. The, when the contractor puts that search protection on that line item, it's not going to appear at $10. And that's because they write that stuff in and they make it seem like it's special. And maybe it is a little bit special, but it's not that special. So that's why you do need a trained eye. It reminds me from a consumer's perspective, how few people really care about like whether or not they have a Goodman or a carrier unit or.
00:14:36
Speaker
ah train. It's not like cars, you know, people are really amped about the kind of cars that they drive, they want to drive like a Tesla, or they want to drive a Jeep, whatever they they're very brand loyal, people usually are like either Ford or the Chevy, right? But when it comes to air conditioning, and I think most people just your everyday people want it to work well, and want it to do the thing that they needed to do. And that's where Like the average everyday person, and even a salesperson, I would suggest, isn't going to even be able to discern that. What is that? And the salesperson can't be trusted to do that because they don't have the homeowner's best interest at heart. It's just the fact of the matter. We would like it to be different. If we lived in a utopia, it would be different, but we don't. And so people need, um, if they even want to have the thing that they, they desire, which is something that so simply works for them.
00:15:30
Speaker
then they really do need a person like us to back them up and represent them in this. For sure. Just like the example that you said, people buy brands of cars because it's a lot more of an emotional purchase because cars are sexy. The purchase is desirable. You're going to be driving it around a lot.
00:15:52
Speaker
People are a lot more in the know with cars. Even people that are into cars still are in the know about cars a little bit. With air conditioners, people don't even know the main brands. like People don't know what Carrier is or don't know what Train is. and Those are the most well-known brands that have existed for a really long time. and Contractors, they are able to extort that basically. They they take and they buy these these really inexpensive units, these Chinese inexpensive units, which actually, some of them actually do, they work pretty well, you get a lot of value out of it, but and they brand them with their name on it and they call it, they basically white label it. So what that is, is they take it from the factory, they take the stickers off of it, all the all the factory branding,
00:16:40
Speaker
and then they'll slap their own sticker on it and they'll label it and brand it as their company brand and what they're doing and then they sell it for the same price as what the national brands it's like basically having a bmw come out of come out of the factory and sit on the lot and then you go to a dealership and you are buying a car max branded car and what they did is they just took a forward ripped off the logos and made it a car max branded car and they said you know this car is faster than this bmw it's quieter gets better gas mileage and we're gonna we're gonna give you a 10-year warranty on it now you would know that as a consumer you'd be like yeah but this is kind of you know this is
00:17:26
Speaker
This is not the same. It's not the same as BMW. I know these BMWs are German made. They're fantastic. And people would be able to see through that. But with air conditioners, they would have no clue. They have no clue. A significant amount of consumers without doing any research definitely don't have a clue on what the main manufacturers are. And whether it's a good thing to buy from them or not, um I mean, that's why we're here is we're able to vet that. I mean, we're not saying that you have to buy from the big name manufacturers. but If somebody's not providing you a big name manufacturer, you shouldn't be paying a big name name manufacturer price. And that's what we're here for is to be able to say, Hey, look, that's cool that you have a white label unit. I know what unit that actually is. I know what factory that comes from. And I know the reputation that that factory has because I've been in this industry for a really long time. And I've seen all these different units operate. I know where you purchase them and personally have worked on it before. So.
00:18:24
Speaker
With that experience behind your purchase, we can say, hey, I know that this unit costs 50% less than these main manufacturers. Let's make sure that this price is in line with that. You're not white labeling it and overcharging to make a bunch of extra money on on our customer because that's not okay. that's not That's not the way we work. We're going to make sure that you're protected and you're not overpaying for
Unbiased Analysis of Contractor Proposals
00:18:49
Speaker
that stuff. so i mean Look, there's a lot of value that comes out of some of those units. You don't necessarily have to buy the big manufacturers too. That's a good reminder. yeah if someone
00:18:59
Speaker
Well, you noted like car, people care about the cars cause you know, they're sexy or people see them in them. Right. And so it's, it becomes part of their identity. How would consumers feel? I wonder if they paid for, let's say they paid for like a Corvette, like, you know, a high dollar performance vehicle from Chevrolet, like let's say they paid for that, but the, actually what they got was like a Corolla, like that effectively the value of a Corolla.
00:19:27
Speaker
Like they paid for something really high end, but because they were not aware of the differences between the two, they got the lesser. I think that that's the danger of what you're talking about is that.
00:19:39
Speaker
Since people don't know Carrier, Trane, Goodman, all of the different brands, and then someone else white labels it, let's say from a heating and air conditioning company that's well known, that's a national brand, they could be paying like hot that's the premium dollar for something that isn't actually premium equipment, and it's not high efficiency. They're paying for high efficiency, but they're not receiving high efficiency.
00:20:02
Speaker
There's just so many, there's so many ways in which the consumer ends up the loser in this scenario, unless they have somebody who is actually looking out for them. Yeah, no, for sure. A trained eye is, is everything with this stuff. I mean, there's so many different ways that they can really hide the, basically the hidden, the hidden problems with their proposal. That's it's funny when I was back in sales and I had a sales team that was underneath me and it was common that, you know, if you were one of the last people out.
00:20:31
Speaker
given a proposal and they've had three or four proposals, these people would be so confused that they would give the salesman the other people's proposals and say, can you just tell me like, are you, you know, is yours better than these two or what the difference is. And they were having the salesperson do the analysis for them.
00:20:51
Speaker
And this is where I was just like, man, these people really need an unbiased somebody with a trained eye that's not here trying to sell them air conditioning, analyzing their proposals. And what I was finding is is that these people were just so fed up with the process and they were so confused that they basically waved the white flag and said, here, you tell me are you are Is yours better than theirs and why? Because I'm frankly confused or or even they may act be acting like they're not confused and they want me to look at the other proposals. and Any trained salesperson can work their self work themselves through that and point out the value of your proposal that's different from their proposal in order to you know win over the the client at that point. So that what it is is people don't know what they don't know. And that's why we're here, is we're we're here to bring them into the know and help them to make sure that they're making a good decision and have somebody that is not doesn't have any interest in picking one or the other contractor other than what's better for them, what's better for our client.
00:22:02
Speaker
there is endless amounts of areas where people can basically hide, hide a bunch of stuff into their proposal that isn't necessarily as much value as as other guys and and having somebody to be able to look through that is so important and also cutting out the fat. You know, um definitely when you see many proposals like for the same project, it's shocking how different they can look and how many different things they can add and not have.
00:22:30
Speaker
So there's almost never apples to apples comparisons. Well, not only that, not only that you can see stark differences in price and have almost nothing change in the scope of work or what the person is providing. I mean, and basically the market that we were in, you had certain contractors that would charge $9,000 for this type of system. And then you'd have another contractor to charge $17,000 to $18,000 for that exact same system, exact same installation. It's just, hey, look, if you were one of those people that didn't want to get three quotes, and that $17,000 or $18,000 quote came in, and that guy definitely is a smooth talker. He gets probably paid the most out of all of them, convinced you to go with that system. You're paying $8,000 to $9,000 more for your
00:23:20
Speaker
your installation and you're getting the same thing that you would be getting with the guy that was going to charge you $9,000. That's what people are going to learn and that's what you know I think if you're listening to this, you go get three or four proposals and you tell me how different everybody is and and also listen to what they say. They're going to, you know, everyone's going to have their own opinion of how things should be done. And it's going to do nothing but cause confusion and make you feel uneasy about the the decision you're going to make. So bring us in. Let us clear that up because it's a bunch of salespeople just trying to make a sale. So let us clear that up and comb through the weeds to make sure that we can get some firm foundation.
Conclusion and Teaser for Next Episode
00:24:00
Speaker
Nice.
00:24:01
Speaker
All right, thank you so much, Paul, for this conversation about value and talking about how difficult it is for our customers to to actually do that work themselves and and how they can trust us with it and actually be assured or at least have a great confidence that they will save money. It's not gonna cost them more. They'll end up saving more in the end. It's been a helpful conversation, so thank you so much for joining us. Paul, thank you. Any last words? Bring us in. Let us show you what we can do.
00:24:30
Speaker
Awesome. All right. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, everyone. Tune in next week. We're going to have an extra special time. We're going to actually take some time to talk about some of the criticism we've received in social media. Look out for that. All right. Thank you for tuning in.