How to Negotiate on Angies List

you know I'm going to talk to you today about Angie's List there's two sides to this organization there's the side that the general public sees which is what she wants if you're a residential customer coming in it's a way for contractors for you to find out more about us contractors then there's a side that people don't know about and that's where she makes her living is off from contractors that's the point of this video so I'm going to teach you today how to negotiate with Angie's List if you're a contractor watching this video I'm going to ask you to do me a favor when you're done I'm going to ask you to share this because there's we need to spread the word if there was a stand's list out there that existed Angie's List would be the first company on it because I think they're one of the companies that deal us the hardest blows not only in the in the um terms of ratings and reviews but in how much they charge us for advertising I'm going to walk you through a story I'm going to teach you how to negotiate with Angie's List and and then you can apply this directly to your company hopefully this helps you guys out because I tell you Angie list is one of those companies one of those organizations that you really got to watch out for so let's talk about negotiating with Angie's List and what that means as a contractor you cannot which is the truth you cannot advertise or pay to be on and list which means you have to have two people send in reviews to you once you get those two reviews then expect your phone to start ringing off the hook their advertising agents will be calling you to optimize your listing and this is the point of this video is they will go for the jugular they've done it to me they've done it to other people that I know of and I want to make sure that you're protected so here's my story with Angie's List they were calling me off the hook i' gotten my two reviews and they weren't awesome reviews they were just average reviews but as soon as those two reviews came in would you like to optimize your Angie's List review and I didn't know anything about this how could you optimize the a review well what I found out is when you pay Angie's List that they do is they take the key words that make you sound like a super hero and they put them in big bold letters and you pay a premium price for that it was against my core beliefs but I talked to a company where advertising on Angie's List was their sole means of getting business and it is a great way for US contractors to get working because a lot of people use Angie's List but when they start calling you be careful here's what you got to do so my story with Angie's List starts like this I'm driving down the road and the representative calls me up and says if you'd like to optimize your listing on Angie's List we can do it for just $33,000 I laughed at the guy I was at this point I wasn't even going to be friendly to him I laughed and I said okay let's do this let's take that price let's cut it in half then let's take that price let's cut it in half then let's take that price and let's cut it in half and then maybe we could even start talking I figured it was the end of the conversation nobody that does sells anything is going to start out at $33,000 and be willing to drop down to below $3,000 but now Angie's List he was he said fine let's see what we can do for [Music] you right away that should be a big red flag how can you drop your price down that much but they have that capability now you're going to find that when they first Contact you for advertising they are going to give you the Cadillac with all the options you don't necessarily need this part of what you can do with Ang list is Define down the areas where you are optimized in so you don't have to be optimized across your whole metropolitan area if you only work in a certain Zone they're going to try to get you to optimize across wherever the largest possible region for the most possible money that they can don't fall for it find Define which area you want and then negotiate aggressively don't give in a friend of mine Meridian tree uh he didn't know about negotiating with Angie's List and he took I think one of their opening offers which was $112,000 uh for the year which actually wasn't too bad um unfortunate truth is they didn't really optimize his listing enough to get him attention so he was for $112,000 for the year he was getting about one maybe two phone calls a month off from it so you've got to be very clear on the area that you want to focus on and how much they're going to optimize your listing but they they'll throw in more bells and whistles and let's cover some of those as well so now I know it sounds like I'm trying to beat up on Angie's List I advertise with them and I actually get a large portion of my work from my advertising with them so don't feel like you should just write them off because you can get a lot of work from them once you're established in the Angie's List system they're going to continue to call you they're going to offer you specials they're going to offer you different service plans if you're getting enough um coverage just on your normal advertising that's up to you if you want any of those bells and whistles I have tried them out yeah there's nothing special about them there's so many different options you can do that sometimes it's worth it and sometimes it's better just to say I'm sticking with what I already have so just be careful because just because you sign on the dotted line doesn't mean the calls are going to stop there so in summer Yes Angie's List can bring you in a ton of work it can be a great Avenue for advertising for your company as well as establishing your your reputation but don't cave on their first rounds of negotiating be aggressive set your price set your standards let them come to you and then do me a favor spread share this video let other contractors know because it's too easy for us to get taken in the in the long run she's already made enough money off from us it's up to us to help other contractors spread the word so hit the share button on this please hit the subscribe to this video and let's keep the message going