When you own an RV Park there are seven words that can save you a ton of money: “is that the best you can do?”. In this RV Park Mastery podcast we’re going to explore how you can shave significant money off any vendor interaction – and teach good business skills to your manager – with this one simple question.
Episode 128: "Is That The Best You Can Do?" Transcript
We all look at shortcuts for a number of things, dietary shortcuts, things to cut out of our regular eating schedule like carbs and sugar. But what if I could tell you about a tip, a special thing, just a few words you can say that can save you thousands of dollars with your RV park? This is Frank Rolfe with the RV Park Mastery Podcast. We're going to talk about the concept of simply adding to the vocabulary of not only yourself, but all of your management staff. The motto, is that the best you can do? Now, why is, is that the best you can do so important in the average RV park? Well, the concept is that to every vendor, whether you're getting a bid or bringing you the final bill, if you simply say, is that the best you can do? You will get a deduction. It is very rare that someone, when presented with the question, will say, yeah, that's the best I can do. I can't cut another penny off. Because we all, down deep, want to get business. We want to retain accounts, want to get new accounts. So you don't want to offend your customer.
So when presented with the question, is that the best you can do? You're going to take a little off. Now, let's say you're working on fixing some potholes at your RV park, and the bid came in at $5,000, and you or your manager said, is that the best you can do? Well, they're going to take off what? If it's $5,000, you know they're going to take off probably $100 or $200. You might do better, and you might get $400 or $500 off. Because they're thinking, I don't want to lose this account. I already counted on getting this. I really need to bring in the revenue. So gosh darn it, I will accommodate them and go ahead and reduce it down a bit. I would say the average you're going to get on reduction, if you simply say, is that the best you can do, is probably around 5%. But think about over the span of a year, how many different times you have to get a vendor in to do something, whether it's road repair, electrical, water, sewer, pumping the dump station, whatever the case may be. That's a very important question. And it has some other far-ranging effects, bigger than just those little reductions.
Now the first thing that happens is, when you say to people all the time, is that the best you can do, it sends a message that you're a business. That you're in the business of making money. Because sometimes your managers forget that. It's not their business, so they think it's more of a non-profit. That's what you see in the media anymore, is everyone has all these woke initiatives on everything, that American business should not be about capitalism, but instead more towards socialism.
And that's simply not the case. So when you're constantly asking people, is that the best you can do, it sounds like, yeah, you're trying to minimize expenses and maximize profits. And that can filter down to your managers in very good ways. Because when they get that clear message from you, that hey, let's try and cut costs, they'll tend to run with that. And sometimes with a good manager, you'll see that they then take that to the next level. Not just vendors looking at fixing things or adding things, but even things like highlighters and coffee paper.
They will revel in getting a break on one ream of copy paper of $2 off. Because they realize now that's important to you as the owner. And they want to impress you and they want to hear from you that they're doing a good job. And of course, you're always going to say great job anytime they can get things cut. It also tells the manager that you're very, very attuned to what's going out the door. That you are, in fact, watching the numbers. And that's, again, a very important thing to them to know. Because otherwise, they may let their foot off the gas and not be as good business people as they innately might be. It also sends a message to all of those vendors that you are watching what they're doing, that you are getting multiple bids. And even if you're not getting multiple bids, when you ask things like, is that the best you can do? It looks like you are. A lot of times what happens, there's a cycle with vendors.
They get their foot in the door, they do a great job, and then over time, it goes sour. They don't do as much effort, and their pricing becomes much worse. Because they know that most good-natured people are not going to bid them again after they've got the job.
So, they just let the prices drift up. Kind of like inflation, although maybe sometimes inflation on steroids. Inflation may run nationally 5%, but a vendor who feels like he is unfettered and can do whatever he wants.
he may start raising his prices up 10 or 20 or 30%. We've all seen a whole lot of that since COVID with people who just let it run wild. And when you say to them, is that the best you can do, it reinforces to them, uh-oh, I better watch out what I'm doing here. This person's starting to really look at the dollars and cents, and I may in fact lose the account.
But now how can we get inside of an RV park that motto started? How can we get people to embrace the concept of, is that the best you can do? Well, the first thing you can do is tell your manager the times are tough, because clearly looking at the news today, everyone sees the word recession or issues going on in the American economy. Tell the manager you want to try and hold costs down. In fact, you want to cut costs if you can, because you need to maintain the cash flow to do what's most important to you, which is making sure that everyone gets paid as usual. And what that does is it flips it to the manager that it's in their best interest to get prices reduced. So you need to set the atmosphere among the managers. You need to embrace the fact, hey, we're going to try and cut our expenses, cut the money going out the door, and here's the good news.
If we can do this, then you'll never have a problem getting paid. It also helps set the priority that they're your number one priority out there, wanting to make sure the business is running smoothly for them. Also, you need to show them how to do this, what would appear to be simple task, because most Americans are not good about negotiating at all. They don't get it. They totally freeze up. There are some parts of America where negotiating is allowed. Garage sale, estate sale, antique store, farmer's market, car dealership, and then there are other places where it's not. You can't go into Avis rental car as you're signing the online form to pick up your car and try and renegotiate the price. It's not very normal. You can't typically renegotiate your Southwest airline tickets. I've never seen that done. I don't think you can go to AMC theaters and try and negotiate the price of the movie ticket to Mission Impossible from $14 down to $12. But there are some things that you can negotiate, places where negotiation is common, and one of those, of course, is with your vendors and all the others that you work with that you buy things from.
That's purely negotiable, and it's almost painful watching RV park owners not take advantage of this opportunity because they simply don't think in terms of always trying to press to get the best price. The vendor's thinking to himself, my gosh, I can't believe the guy is not even trying to negotiate that price down at all. So they're as shocked as you are when you don't even give it the old college try. So you should, if possible, always, when you have that possibility, take the shot. There's the old saying that you miss 100% of the shots you don't take, and this is the case in that. So train your staff to take the shot, that it's okay to ask for price reductions, and then also work with them so they understand how to do it. You can role play. You can say, okay, I'm the vendor. I'm the contractor. How does it work? You play that you're the manager of the RV park and you negotiate my price down go. Playing little skits like that may sound childish to you, but for many managers, it's all important because they don't have that skill and they're more than happy to attempt it if you'll simply show them the correct way to do it.
And it also wouldn't hurt for you to work on it yourself. Read negotiation books. Watch negotiating items on YouTube because it's hard to be the teacher unless you know what you're doing and you're the expert. Finally, make it fun. We have found that at RV Park Management, we can get a lot more things done with happiness and fun than we can with sour scolding. So play games with the managers and the staff. Tell them, hey, here's the deal. If we can knock our prices down this month internally on our expenses by 5%, then everyone gets some kind of prize or reward. Having those kinds of games have always for us been very successful. They motivate people because Americans like to compete. We like to excel. We like to win. We like to get little trophies. And if you can expand programs like that to your staff, you'll more than likely get the job done.
The bottom line is don't ever, going forward, pay something or negotiate something without simply remembering the phrase, Is that the best you can do? This is Frank Rolfe with the RV Park Mastery Podcast. Hope you enjoyed this. Talk to you again soon.