There are several ground rules when it comes to negotiations.
1. The first offer rule
The person who makes the first offer will never get an optimal price. If you start the bidding first with a high price, you might just get declined without being given a chance. If you ask too little, you will miss out on more pay. If you let the other person make the offer, you will end up with more on average.
2. Whining ruins your image
Notaries are notorious for whining. “You only pay $70….. OHHHHHHH, why can’t you pay more?” Who needs this behavior? If you are such a great notary, you would have plenty of people offering you $125 to $150, and you would just hang up on these low-balling fools. But, if you whine like a baby, nobody will want to work with you even if you accept their pathetic offer. Most notaries are so bad, they are probably not even worth what the low-ballers offer them. Most notaries refuse to study to become fastidious professionals.
3. Take it or leave it
Sure, nobody likes fax backs, but don’t complain. You either accept the job or you don’t. If the signing has 300 pages per set of documents, don’t complain. You either say yes or no. When I do my billing, people always ask me, “What did I pay last year?”. My comment is that it doesn’t matter because last year is over, and that doesn’t effect what this year’s price will be. They want to waste my time looking something up for their emotional gratification which affects nothing. What a time waster. Don’t behave like this. If someone makes you an offer, you take it, leave it, or negotiate. If someone wants to politely negotiate with me instead of whining, they will get a lot farther. First of all I will value them more as a long term client. Second, I will know that they will behave professionally with the people who use my site — and I value that much more than how they treat me. Third, it is not a headache to deal with them. If I ask for $200, and you want to offer a polite counter offer, then go ahead. $100 would be rude because it is out of the ballpark. But, what about $150? Try it. I will probably say no, since my prices were computer generated using six inter-connected formulas. But, it doesn’t hurt to ask.
4. Getting companies to up their fee by $35 is possible
But, I know some very fancy notaries who are at the top of their game who get $50 companies to pay $85. These smooth operators get close-by jobs for $85 that are only a few minutes away. They have fast printers that print 45 pages per minute, so the double set of documents takes less than 10 minutes. They buy their toner or ink wholesale. They don’t whine — they PLAN, and they negotiate! So, in a little more than one hour, these seasoned Ninja Notaries get the call, print the documents, go to the job, get it signed, and get back home, and send the invoice. After expenses they probably made almost $70 per hour. Not bad! So, how do they do it?
5. How to impress the client
A seasoned notary will explain calmly how they are famous for doing clean-up jobs after notaries who didn’t know what they were doing ruined a loan. Why not start with a pro and get it done right the first time? How much did you say you offered again? $60? I understand that you are on a tight budget, but my minimum is $100. I can help you out for $85 today though, since I have a little more extra time than I normally do. Wouldn’t it be worth it to you to hire someone who has signed 4000 loans, and who is meticulous? I have state of the art machinery such as an HP 250,000 printer with quadruple trays, and I can explain all of the documents. Would you like to drill me and ask me a sampling of your hardest loan signing questions to see if I am up to your highest standards?
6. Ask them to ask you their toughest question
Most signing companies don’t ask notaries questions. They should. If you ask notaries questions, 90% fall on their face because they don’t have a clue what they are doing. So, if you do know what you are doing, tell the signing company to shop around, but to ask each of the notaries they talk to how they would explain the APR to a non-borrowing spouse. If you don’t get a good answer after 45 minutes, then call me back! No notary with fewer than 5000 signings can do a graceful job of answering this question even though it is ridiculously simple. It requires study, and most notaries are opposed to that idea!
7. Don’t say anything that sounds phony
Please notice that all of the points I made sound real. None of this, “I’m professional and accurate and do error-free signings.” That sounds phony. Make real selling points because you are selling yourself to people who have been in this business for years and have dealt with thousands of notaries — most of them bad ones at that. Figure out what to say that proves that you are the logical choice to hire, even at an inflated rate. After all, the extra pay translates into less aggravation after the fact. How much aggravation and potential re-drawing fees is the $20 savings worth to you anyway, you tell me?
8. Having a pricing formula sounds impressive
If you don’t like to negotiate, but like to use pricing formulas, that will make you look good. People who understand distances, time involved and other expenses are true professionals who know their business inside out. You might not always get the highest possible fee with formulas, but you will get respect and repeat business.
9. Negotiation points summarized:
I do clean-ups for other notaries who make mistakes; 5000 loans signed; ask me your hardest loan signing question and then ask the other notaries who you are calling; I have an HP (name) printer that prints 45 pages per minute. I have a mobile office — beat that. I’m ready now — let’s do this! All work guaranteed or your money back!
A comprehensive guide to Notary pricing
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=16504
Can you negotiate prices with SnapDocs?
http://blog.123notary.com/?p=16236
Negotiating with aggressive callers
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Notary Marketing 102 – Negotiating Fees (a thorough guide)
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My interpretation of how the Notary industry went South
It is sad to see what has happened in the Notary industry. Notaries who were getting paid a comfortable living are now working for peanuts or have left the field altogether. Some people blame signing companies for lowering fees. Others attribute the problem to SnapDocs. A few claim that the lack of volume of jobs in the Notary industry combined with too many signers has caused a drastic lowering in fees.
Why are fees so low?
If you ask me, there are several things going on here. Yes, SnapDocs created an automated way to get Notaries for cheap which involves very little work for the signing or Title company. Additionally, in the old days, Title companies used to pay a lot more than signing companies. These days, many Title companies are paying low fees as well. Yes, there are too few jobs and too many Notaries. And yes, the interest rates haven’t changed much in seven years since the Mortgage crash. The bigger fact is that due to the Mortgage crash in 2008, banks cannot lend money unless you have good credit. Since our government is eating up so much money by borrowing it to fund its insatiable hunger for cash — that might be the reason there is very little left over to lend to homeowners.
Low interest rates caused by artificial market conditions
I feel that low interest rates are artificially maintained because the government will go out of business if interest rates rise even one percent. That means there won’t be any more America, no more USA flag, no more hamburgers — okay, there will still be hamburgers, but nobody will be able to afford them. By preventing people with average credit from borrowing, that leaves more money available for the banks to lend the government. The government refuses to lower its spending on wars, military, jails, interest payments, education, infrastructure, etc. If we would cut military spending and put the people in jail in a penal colony where they could work for a living, we could pay off our debt, and not go out of business as a nation.
Reasons for lowered fees:
(1) Banks aren’t lending much >> too few jobs
(2) Too many Notaries
(3) SnapDocs facilitates low-balling
(4) Low skill of most Notaries
Low skilled Notaries
I spent four months in 2015 testing Notaries over the phone. We got our total count of Notaries from 1600 to 2000 which was a huge victory for 123notary and for those who passed our test. However, I noticed that most Notaries had no clue what they are doing and didn’t understand Notary law, signing agent knowledge, and couldn’t even follow directions properly not to mention not having much common sense. For signing companies hiring Notaries, if you limit yourself to hiring good Notaries, your selection will be really small. So signing companies got smart and started planning for incompetence. This is why they prefer to hire unskilled Notaries, and then have them fax everything back to double check their work. Instead of hiring a pro like Carmen for $175 per signing, they can hire a complete novice for $40, double check the faxes themselves, and make a huge profit. I don’t like what the signing companies did, but this is the fault of Notaries not knowing what they are doing. Had Notaries educated themselves, this fax back system probably never would have evolved. It evolved through dealing with incompetent Notaries who in my opinion should not even be Notaries. The state Notary divisions are run by fools who don’t test or double check their Notaries’ work for the most part outside of CA, NY and LA. And the Notaries in the states with testing are not that proficient either. In my opinion a skilled Notary is worth $100+ per signing. But, an unskilled one (unskilled by my standards not yours or NNA’s) is worth $40 per signing and don’t even deserve to work. So, there you have it, that is my point of view which you might not like!
Unfortunately, many of the high skilled Notaries have had to lower their fees or leave the industry altogether (which was horrible for 123notary) because of the lowered fees and fax back system. Many are still around, but they have to charge $85 to $100 instead of $125 to $150 which is probably what they are worth.
The future of America
As I mentioned before, the government seems to have manipulated the banking industry to make huge amounts of cash available to borrow at low rates. This is actually not a bad thing, because it prolongs the amount of time that America can be a nation. The bad thing is the stupidity that led up to this huge 19 trillion dollar debt is the thing that should borrow you (or bother you.) In real life you cannot keep borrowing and borrowing and borrowing. It has to end sometime and when it ends, you could lose some, most or everything you have. As an individual you can recover, but how can a country recover? Are we going to click the reset button? It is not China and Japan that lent us most of the money — they lent only 15% of the money. The majority is from banks and some local investors. If America can’t pay its debt, the banks will be insolvent. That means not only no more America, but no more financial system like we know it today. Sure, we will still be here, and hopefully won’t starve, but it is not predictable what will happen.
My spiritual guru predicted that America would experience some devastating natural disasters, go broke, and fail to be a nation. We would be fifty states. These fifty states will not have much of an ability to borrow money to function after the big crash, so expect massive poverty. Whatever problems you have now are nothing compared to what is going to happen.
The future of Notary work
It looks like Notary work will continue on being slow for the next few years since there is not much money lying around to lend to house buyers. Sure, there might be blips and temporary fast times, but for the most part slow. This will continue until our country goes off the waterfall, or has a huge war or financial restructuring. After the crash, it is completely unpredictable how the world’s financial system will be. I’ll have to meditate on that one. In the mean time, just do your best, and try to be more of an expert at what you’re doing.
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