Fri, 29 December 2017
One of the best definitions of sales I have ever heard on selling“Selling is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that is good for them, and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result.” Dan Sullivan (who is just a genius) The definition is not that I have something they need and, by golly, I going to make them buy it. Please, please, please buy my services…. So let’s go through the definition again. Selling is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that is good for them, and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result. So really, what does that look like? What are the steps to actually make that happen? Well I think number one, you really need to listen perceptively. In the old days a salesman pitch was… you get it down, go over it and continue to role-play and do all the things to make sure that you, the sales person, was comfortable with the sales process. I think one of the biggest challenges with something like that kind of pitch is rigidity. It’s great that you should know your sales process and that you should know what you want to say. BUT I think what probably more important than anything is that you need be yourself. You can’t go into a sales situation or presentation to your customer thinking that “I can beat the other guy’s price.” You really need to take ownership of who you are. You have to be comfortable with who you are and you have to have the self-confidence of knowing what you can do. Knowing that you can provide the services and the quality of services that you’re presenting to your potential client. I can’t really say that over all that it works on commercial clients, at least the ones that are only looking for the bid price. I do know that it works well with the residential customers and clients that I have. I don’t do a whole lot of commercial sales for the services that we have, but I follow the same process for that also. I am comfortable with who I am, I know who I am, I know the type of service that I am going to provide. Most importantly, I what that service is costing me to provide! I know the type of profit margin that I need to make to keep my company sustainable in the marketplace. That’s what I mean by knowing particularly who you are. Be confident of the person in your skin. I actually think that once you put yourself in the position of going through the sales process and second-guessing yourself and not knowing what you want to charge… thinking that “I know that Bob So-and-so my competitor was here, and I know what he charges, so I’m going to be real close to him, maybe a little below so that so I can get the business.” That is not knowing who you are. That’s being wishy-washy. That’s not having the confidence in who you are, what you can do and what you can provide to that customer. YOU KNOW that customer sees you weakness, he sees your inability to be genuine and he sees your neediness because they see that battle going on in your presentation. When you chase after what other people are charging, then you’re back to being a commodity and you are not going to make it in the marketplace and be an extremely profitable company. In order for you to have an abundance mindset, you need to be who you are. You need to find your identity so that you can run the course, be positive, be genuine, and be confident in your own skin. Here’s what really happens if you’ve done your marketing correctly and you have educated the consumer correctly through your marketing. Mostly your job is already done. They called you because they want to know if you could provide the value that you say you can from your marketing materials, so they just want to meet you. That’s why it’s so important for you to be genuine when you know who you are. Also, story building is a great part of the sales process. Actually the nurturing stories are the greatest relationship builders. It is like Mr. Rogers used to say, “it’s hard not like someone once you know their story.” As a sales person, we must first be able to relate to the customer to help solve the customer’s problems. I believe by delivering the facts, you build trust and by educating your client, you will give your clients new ways to think about their problems. As sales superstars we do many things… we attract, we teach, we advise, we serve, we measure. And most importantly, we guide our clients and prospects by developing individual brand (that’s us) that stands for trust and expertise. In order for all that to happen, for me to close and get the sale, I have to provide the client with the emotional response or let’s go back to our beginning definition… “Selling is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that is good for them, and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result.” This just takes a few simple steps. We will have to listen and be perceptive to what is actually going on in the sales meeting. We need to listen to what our customers’ real problems are and how they think that problem can be solved. So what is perceptive listening? Perceptive listening is when you hear, interpreting the words as they are said, AND that you also consider what the person isn’t saying, what she might really be thinking and how she is acting as they speak. This requires you to be totally focused on what their needs are and what you’re trying to sell. Perceptive listening will tell you what the prospect says he Tells You. Prospect says he’s not ready to buy, but what he’s really saying is that he doesn’t understand the benefits of what you’re offering. Perceptive listening is how you draw out what the potential customers are really passionate about allowing you to understand their goals and objectives. In today’s world there are so many teaching opportunities for our clients who are our future customers. Teaching them actually sells them, or at least presales them, by giving them useful expert information. That’s how you build an expert platform, by creating the information they need to make an informed decision, So by creating expert platform, you are now becoming the authority in that area (the industry and the geographic area you serve). Once you become that authority, you normally have very, very little competition. You see, what you’re doing is you are sending a message that by being the expert, you are no longer competing on price as a commodity business. You don’t want to show up at a customer’s house, write out a proposal and say, “this is the price.” You want to go through and educate them. You want to leave behind sales materials. You want to talk with them and walk around the house, or sit down with them and go through whatever you’re going to go through with them. You want to explain the process, what you do and why you do it and maybe the safety factors. Go through all the benefits of working with your company. By what you’re presenting, you are making them more informed, showing you have more expertise, you are better educated and more professional by the way you talk and explain things to them. Then you’re going to leave them with material that backs up everything you just presented. When they go over it, they will say, “I remember he said this, I remember he said that when he went through the information and our Proposal.” So, let me just get you a couple of examples of something that just happened to me recently. In this sales situation I got a call to come out and do an estimate on some work at this potential customer house and he told me that everything he wanted done. I met him at the house, we walked around, and he explained what he wanted done. As we went through, I told him about what our process was, how we did things, how we protected things and as I got towards the end of our walk around the house, I asked, by the way how did you find out about us… His answer was “on the Internet” and he said to me, I checked you out on the Internet. As a matter fact you were the first person we called, and something happened where you couldn’t get out. You were real busy, and we were impressed with all the information that you had on your website. It very informative for us and easy to make an informed decision. We have two other people that we got prices from and we called you again because we really wanted you to come out and give us a proposal on all the work we need to be done here because we felt that you were the most professional. So, I put together the proposal, I talked to them about it and I left him some more information. Basically, everything that we talked about in a report that I give each potential customer and I will let you know how that turns out. Next let me tell you another example of how I presented in a sales situation. I had a phone meeting with someone that I want to buy a particular service. We had a meeting on the phone. I know the man, I like the man, I trusted the man and we had talked before but not about what I wanted to purchase from him. We just knew each other so that was a big plus on his side as we did our telephone conversation. He went over the his products and services that I was interested in, going into great detail about what the whole program was, what the benefits were and how he would help me get through the whole process. We went over the dates of the seminar that I wanted to attend and he said, “listen, this is how I handle my sales process… I give you all the stuff we just went over and you know that the class is going to be very small, like just 4 to 5 people. The class will sell out and if you can’t make this one, that’s fine, and if you don’t want to do it all, that’s fine too. But if you do want to do it, this is the date. Let me know right away if you want to attend before it fills up. We have another class in January that you are also than welcome to attend” and that’s how he left it. He followed the definition to a tee, “Selling is getting someone intellectually engaged in a future result that is good for them, and getting them to emotionally commit to take action to achieve that result.” Go sell your services at a premium! Until next week… There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet. Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Thu, 28 December 2017
Run Your Contracting Business with Less Stress More Success He created the systems in his family business that allowed him to sell his shares of the family business at the young age of 50 to pursue a consulting career to other business owners create less stress and more success Out of that process, he wrote a book called Run your Contracting Business with Less Stress and More Success, the 7- Power Contractor. Al Levi he is a former heating air conditioning and electrical guy had his own business and at work for 25 years and his family business created systems and now actually had put his stuff in place to enable him to sell his share of his business to his brothers and retire before the age of 50. And of course, in return I thought is giving up some things that he doesn’t want to do to. So now Al has written a book and he does consulting and helps other companies become successful through the systems in the manuals that he created for his company that gave him so early retirement. This is Dave Negri with Contractor Secret Weapon and today is another fine day in Florida. Sorry Sinos. How many of you guys are up in the winter and snow? Today, I have Al Levi with me and I'm excited to talk to him because he is a former heating air conditioning and electrical guy had his own business and at work for 25 years and his family business created systems and now actually had put his stuff in place to enable him to sell his share of his business to his brothers and retire before the age of 50. And of course, in return I thought is giving up some things that she doesn’t want to do to do some things that she does want to do. So now Al has written a book and he does consulting and helps other companies become successful through the systems in the manuals that he created for his company that gave him so so early retirement. He's probably working harder now, aren't you? Let me do it all right. I'm not working. Right. Contract as well. Appreciate that you know the life that I lived then before I was lucky. I was third generation in our company started 1936 and we also did plumbing by the way. Okay. So, it was 24/7 365 and I don't need to we just ran ahead. We literally have our shift on to cover those hours. There were real people there wasn't somebody up and come out. You know it was non-stop and it really was you know. Good news is I was making a lot of money. The bad news it was killing me. So, I had to change the thing and that was what this is all about. You know I created with help from other reasons seven power concepts which is the second things to run a company. My dad did raise myself and my brother was the time we were young teenagers. To be in business meetings. So, we got a big education from him and the nature of it is that we also were surreal entrepreneurs. Beyond that we had a cable, liquor stores. We had an ice cream shop. We had to multi state real estate, the main golden goose was always the contracting business and that was really about the seven thing which was Planning, Operations, Staffing, Sales, Sales Coaching, Marketing, Finance. All those are the seven things because Dave, contractors it feels like there's a million things. We have to handle, a million of things we have to do. And I know what that chaos is about, but it really boils down to seven things I just rattled off and what I changed to be able to make those things systematic the fact that I had all these people that were now in power to help to me to themselves and most importantly to our customers and even better way than we have been That's really what was the secret. And so, I decided because I hope you appreciate the story as well as most contractors. We are able to do it in seven hours you know because they do seven hours in working hours trying to tell everybody this is how long would you say a good employer will give you notice that are leaving two weeks maybe a week. I said you know in my case sometimes my employees would just leave the keys on the desk and I'd have to go and find it you know. In all the places. It's how to get my brothers and my dad three years notice that I'd be leaving. Three years, that was, let it wash over you for a second. So, you would know what kind of fleener I am. Because that was not believable right. I really just wrote all the system that we put in place. Letting out all the ability to create people who are willing with no skills and the people that are willing with skills and that all positions, I don't mean tech position. But inside the office and all the other kinds of things right. The backbone of that is the operations manuals. That's a one of a kind thing that I spent one year of my life. I didn't take all three years while I was doing all my other jobs. I sat with everybody when he walked out without warning calls and stuff I would make notes to create an outline. Of all the things it took all the tests that our company had grown to give and to create that. That backbone I hired a writer. Initially, I gave Dan Callahan to help me run meetings. And we spent you know about a hundred thousand dollars in 1996 money. Now got hundreds of hours putting these manuals in. So, their policies and procedures were plain English. We got fired from the store from our staff from all these meetings and we were union shocked by the way, so, if everybody is listening you would say well that's fine it won't work either. My answer is I was a New York shop at a union shop and trust me. I've been all over this country for the last 15 years doing one on one consulting with people. Now I'm switching that up to where I'm going to be running these program workshop where people can pick a manual with me and show them how to do the same thing at their own company So that's really the essence of what it means that I, I've been doing. But there's a lot more to it. And I want to be careful about how much I live in here because I know you're in the lead but I've got some exciting things to share about how you can really transform your company to make it in a place that's attractive to come to work and that you surround yourself with people that you want to be with. It's a world of difference. It's what you were talking about creating your system before putting books together and working in a union shop of course you know the 90's and so on and I'm thinking about what about today. You know I hear so many stories of people trying to attract the new generation the millennials. And getting to go to work for their contracting company. And there are just some are just having a horrendous time and when you get to that I can assure I also have a franchise. I talked to my partners. He's actually a client I've been to back in 2005. You haven't been to tell us story. Absolutely. OK so in 2005. I'm going to my plumbing meeting and cooling. I got some frame worker or at least I thought I I’d had done framework, you know plunger, you know big kind of steak and the rest of it is like oh, and I have to tell you and finally this is not telling a story I can't get notice from. So, I get a call from these guys in Philly. Two young brothers. They're in their 30's and, all they do is just framework and they're telling me that and they do you know whatever specialized framework and I'm thinking 'yeah right'. So, it's all the job that there is you might be snap in picking up in plumbing, heating and air conditioning and electrical. And so, I get down there and walk around and dirty and you know what I mean disorganized. Pretty much what I expected. But then I sit down and give adjacent to create magics for. And I get an education. I had no idea your client's framework and the way they do it with water Dave, camera and stuff. Was just incredible to me. Wow. That's the joy of this whole thing. And so, the funny part of this is he was a missionary, say's to me because you know how this is this is only like two months into the process they get the picture. He says to me I would love to license the franchises and look at this in a snarky New York attitude and go "franchise this?" How about if we just get the guys dressed to go to meetings clean up the trucks. Obviously, here's the big story here. Two to three years we had got everything. We had got to the point where we let training centers and built new pipes, and meetings guys dressed in this profession and working in white shirts all day long and doing all these things and so I'm not a contractor. So, a lot of I said you know were all good and then I go off with my good friend. Ellen Moore is the model of Ben Franklin plumbing. And so, she finishes over there. She and I had worked together for many years. She says to me "Al, do you know any clients that might be interested with franchising?" And I said "Sure do Olives. I thought you worked with them. Zoomed trained. Not really. So, I called up Jim and I go "Jim, remember you said you have that desire to own the franchise, you still interested? And there's a pause and Jim say "I've been waiting by the phone all this time for you to call." The rest as they say is history. Get a franchise down in Orlando and up in New England and down the Long Island. Me old stomping grounds. That's really great, but you know what's so great about them. They are living breathing the manual staffing systems that are put in place. All of the other things the weekly meetings working on the top five everything that I've create is living breathing. That brings me back to this because that will have nothing but young guys like the breed young people who want to build a career or not have a job who's not kids and motivated young kids. They're not motivated because we as leaders have failed. We are not heeding a vision of where they can go in this company. And they want more. And it's not who everybody thinks this is new. So, I'll take you back if you will when I arrive at my job and like I told my dad well why don't you guys can do this, and why aren't they do this and my dad says sorry you weren't born 30 years your younger, 30 years earlier because maybe you could have done that. But nobody is doing anything around here unless they know what happens to them in a good way. What happens in a bad way. Yeah. That was an education I've got early on. So, here's the rest of that story. The guys from the Vietnam era were just ahead of me when I arrived. Phil Atami was one of them and he's talking to me because we're training new candidates back in the 90s. And he's telling me these kids have no work ethics. They just want to play around. They're not that interested in this. And I said, Tommy it's funny because the old guys used to say the same thing about you and the rest of us. As for the essence of this is Zoom is one example of all the companies that I work with today that take good young millennials and show them there's a career path. And if you don't have a great organization chart that shows where am I today and where can I go tomorrow? You're not going to sign the equal your shoes to your door. But your heart and soul are not there. Alright. What you must have is heart and soul. So that's another way. And from what I'm hearing you say is what you're doing is you're creating a team that's buying in to the whole company and the future of the company it's not a job. And for themselves, that this is where I want to be. Right. My dad had a great line. Employees boat with their feet. Every day they decide that you can be here or be elsewhere. That's a great way to see it. Wow, that is really awesome. So, this is just amazing. And a lot of it had to come with you creating the manuals from the business that you're in with your dad and creating that whole process and how wow this is just how long does it take like for you to walk into company NSA and a decent size company. I don't know 10 ,12 employees and I'm sure most of the time when you walk into something like that they're pretty much flying by the seat of their pants and its chaos. How long does it take to create for them to help them correct that system to get it up and viable in place? You're going to tweak it on a regular basis. Well there are two types of companies that I've worked with over the 15 years doing this job now, and they're one of two flavors. One is that they are fast growers and it's nothing but chaos. Every moment of the day. So, they got this great house built on a really bad foundation or no foundation at all. Right. And my job was to come in Dave, and put a foundation under that company so that control can come back in and stop chaos. Every moment you go there's a plan of we work plan. So, first thing I with planning power which is teaching them how to get a master project list the top 30 and work on the top five which make all the difference. One of the top five is always the operations manager which are my managers and they're pretty much 90-95 percent of the way that they need to have them. Because they make adjustments to better fit their company. And I work with blue frame and photographers and believe or not it's still pretty much the same. Yeah pretty much. Pretty much the same. Yeah getting reform just back to the rest of it and so I fix those areas right around the start. Then we move want to staffing it. That's what needs to be done which is, I teach them how to leverage the manuals and have one of a kind building blocks for training people all the way up apprentice, taxicab field supervisor and all. And so, it's also hands on training center. I built hands on training centers for ever and now I've been all over the place building training centers everywhere we go it's not the training center alone about what we're talking about hands on where you can create the problems that people will encounter in the field of your employees as far as setting faucet showers. If it's it's heating, it's warm their or colder, whatever. It's working breathing and you can simulate all the problems. So by the time they get in the field, attack can do the three most important things she's talked to customers, communicate and today that being said, was it the customer's best interest? in what I call ethical self. No one will ever hear that I want you to sell anybody anything that's not in your best interest. Right. But you are here to serve them. You are the one that's the expert and it's your job to take the blinders off and look around. Not just think fix the handle of the toilet have along the toilet that you know is 30 years old and we are back from our fix in a flap or not. You know you don't change air filter out when you know you really need to change the unit out. Those are the things that you know we train right from the beginning because ultimately that serves people best. You know the fact the matter most couples these they've told got to go to work and you have good high paying job. Nobody wants to take home more time to go hang out with your plumbing heating pool electric guy. So you've got to fix it right the first time. And a lot of times that means selling the right things and doing the right repairs. So sales operation technical are the skills that you must train. That's a where good sale system which is another thing that really helps to ratchet it off. But at the backbone of it all it's really the manuals. The operations man buying policy procedures and that's the way I'm doing it today is still your operating manual. First of all, that's where people will be doing, kind of what I used to do when I came to their shop. So the answer to your question is; the fastest anybody run with all of my programs today and not everybody goes all through the programs. Then what. I've had so many do it in 18 months and they've gone from 9 million to 33 million in sales that just because of me because they were great guys. They just need to get the foundation right. I've had guys typically like the Zoom guys I was talking about thought we had done everything in three years because it's not how fast you show progress out. It's how well you get them. So I don't just come there as and pull up and changed my residence and hang out with you. You got to be able to do these things and get each one of them because they build on each other the good way to see this. Imagine a pyramid the higher and bigger you want that pyramid the longer you want to last. That starts at the bottom not at the top. That's right, the better the base and the selling power concepts are, it blocks. Better those block form which is planning which means working on right thing at the right time, the right way. That's what planning power is. Operating power is having the manuals that handle 80 percent. Nothing's gonna cover 100 percent of what goes on. But handling the 80% of the policies and procedures of each of the boxes on your old chart, the things that go on. So, it's replica and people can be empowered from the day they show up. And then there's Staffing which is again building you know young willing people into skilled willing people and giving them a career path. And that its Sales, have your sales system for both techs and also or ticket sales people. And if you're in a commercial like that was what I called Commercial sales agents the person who goes to order to pick places open up accounts keep them happy and keep them buying from you. Which is critical so there's sales process for that. That's another block. Sales Coaching, which is coaching the right things and you get the right rewards and they win. But ultimately always the customer first wins. Right. Marketing which is what you're seeking is a contractor is right about a call from the right customer at the right time. The three rights of Mark and so we beyond that is Financial which is you know you can do all that off and if you don't charge and if you're not careful about your expenses it doesn't matter anything else, you won't be in business. Yeah it's called The Leaky Bucket Syndrome. Yeah exactly right. And sometimes, you're lucky it was just The Leaky Bucket is exploded. What are you. Yeah yeah I've never heard that one but yeah when I heard one no one guy "Some days you're the bug again. Some days your the windshield". It's a country song. Yes. I love that one. Yeah he was a plumbing contractor. But that was kind of funny. So how did you come up with the idea here. Have you booked. I actually when I changed for me you know it's hard to remember when you make a change. You're in the midst of craziness. Yeah. You know my kind of day was so I could wake up at 5 a.m. get back home in 2 am and get my three hours of sleep. I always have always really love sleeping because the phone next to my head was going to ring. Yeah from the guys who are on the call shift that were stuck yeah. I was mad as heck at them for calling and waking me up Sure. But, he it was needed. That's the awful truth of being an owner. I never gave them enough information. I never documented it. They were in a position where they had to call. Yeah. And it was really kind of crazy when my brother, Richie, and I rode up the manual with them we defied you know. Do these three thing before you call Richie. And, 50% of the calls went away. Yeah I was doing in class education class one day and the guy was a remodeling contractor and his guys were calm all the time. Lucky for him it was just normal business hours so it wasn't like 24/7 like yours was. But he'd finally get to the point he goes what would you do if I wasn't there. But no, I want you to think about. Give me the answer What would You do if I wasn't there. He said you know it's if you ask me that question enough times they come up with the answer. I agree. And it actually in seminars that I teach about how I train a stepping power agent is. If you ask a question and you answer it on your own. Why should I think right? You may ask the question shut up and let them. Even if they guessed wrong. Give me a call because they have the guts to speak up right. And you treat I like that. I think that's great. That's a really good first step. Yeah it was just so then. Next time you about these three or four times before you call me. he said he tends closedown. He said I got some but he said it was nowhere near what I got before then. And it's like you said it's just it's goes back to the training. Yes. And part of that thing now is that we're going to speak to a deeper level issue. So why didn't I share all this information. Why didn't I do all of this stuff. Was the question at all? Yeah. One day this fellow, I was talking about Dan Callahan, he was an industry giant and he didn't go as well as everything else. I was one of the lucky guys that he actually rode in my truck and he's in my truck. I know the same thing but I always read my pages go at all. My friend Dan looks over at me, while I'm driving and he goes "You think that's normal, don't you?". And I stopped for one second and I go "Yeah I do" and then i said "I hate it." And then one second later I said "But I'm really indispensable." And, I just popped out. And that was it. We as owners, first of all what made as great is what sabotages us. Right. Great text, so we were great at whatever that thing was, and so with the the rest of it. Nobody else can do the job as well as us. What you're not saying is untrue but you really can't have people I'm certain but you really can't have people you can't group because you automatically get a lid on the pot and you can't you can't have business run run without you. And you can have vacation. You can't get sick. You have to be on target. All of them. Yeah yeah. Unless you are willing to be in the base. So here are the three syndrome that I finally pointed the finger back at me. So are you ready. Yeah, I like being a rescuer. I like running to the rescue. OK. And I like coming in and be able to you know to pull out that thing. I like being the fire. What I didn't realize is I also was hoping to set the fires that I could put out that way. Here's the last one. You know coming from New York this one will make sense. I like being the guru. Seems right now we're renting. Dave, you don't know how to do that? Really? You know what? I know, would you like to know. Because I'll be happy to share it with you. I was I was operating and when I witness the contractors I worked with over the year they to their credit finally go yeah, I get it. And that is what you have to deal with first. Because even with quick manuals, even with the training centers and everything else that you can do on the marketing systems because every one of these things are a system. If you're not willing to give up those three identities you are automatically sabotaging everybody who's trying to help you. That's that's. Say that again because that's profound. If you are not willing to give up being a rescue or a fireman guru like I was you are automatically sabotaging those who are there to help you or anybody who will arrive. You know. Wow. That was a big Aha moment. It was a big aha moment and I thank my friend for sticking the truth mirror in my face. Yeah. Wow that's it's amazing that that's you know that's one thing in two set. We are in our own businesses or so in the weeds we can't see what's going on and it takes you know someone like you or you know someone to come along and say like your friend did he could see beyond the weeds because he wasn't in the depths of it. I like that analogy. It's really important for that. And you know even to this day Elle Agror who's the one I was mentioning before she has a consulting business in dozen, and we worked together. She also in the branch with me. We had a meeting where she an I know her sister Ellen Gayle in Ellewood she's H.D. and we meet and we look at each other's business even though we talk to each other all the time. That meeting is all about you know looking at things we haven't got every time we have that meeting every year all three of us. Our business grows and gets better. To this day after all these years. Wow that's pretty amazing. If she can have someone that would help you you know that you could go to a lot of times most of us are afraid to unravel the thing before us because so few will get ridiculed. It's dealing with people who are like minded and think alike and want the best interest for you. Put that to can do that. You know it's interesting when you mentioned that when they think about it when you go to the doctor for your health care check-up or you need. When you're not in your clothes off it out at the end of it. It's the same thing with your business which is you can't see it. And I'll give you guys. Listen to this quote I can see it. Here's another. How many times have you got to another company that you don't know. And by the time you walk through door and spend 30 minutes and you know what's broken. Yeah that's good. Why is that. Why is that. Because you're not emotionally invested in it and that's why it's so hard for any individual to do it all on your own. To think that you can see your own business the way you need to. And that's why there is outside people that you know they're the doctors. That's really what it is. Right. I know that you do a lot of consulting and if someone wanted to learn your 7 signatures or your power your signature or seven power contractor system, how do they get a hold of you? How do they reach you? Oh, the best thing they could do is to go to my website which is www.7powercontractor.com . And there's two things, there's a, and you'll see plenty of videos and testimonials from clients. Not because I needed for my ego but I know you need to hear from other people that it's been done right. I don't do one to one consulting like I did before. What I'm doing now is you have two things. When it comes to me is One you can go there to the shop and but this book that's 7 power Contractor System. There's an e-book $9.99. . Link on the website. I wrote it, and I made it short for a reason, for who are incredibly busy I'm asking you for more hours and if you're a quick reader two hour of your life. OK. Because it changed my life and it will change your life. Not because I wrote it and I had a good editor that helped me do it. We really worked hard to make it less. It's easy to make it fat. It's way hard to make it thin and effective. I know it's amazing isn't it. Yes. I created a 39 second video. And that's what I call that thirty-nine second video. It took me two hours to create it. Oh yeah. I know that. I know that. Exactly. And the other thing is I am feeling starting It's really the best thing that you can do to get the systems in place because without it you're going to be stuck in a. You know it's because of trying to write it on your own. If you could take your chances of getting it in the right way and getting buying. I've been up the mountain. What I see myself is a trivial guy. Yeah and you've done it. You know what it takes and I think that for the most part most people are. All right let me buy fill in the blanks and we'll go from there. Well you know to a certain point. You always have to put in you know what's apropos to what's your complete system is. But for the most part it's you know it's cutting time out is what it's doing. The military cannot possibly know what are the books that they're holding out and more that we spoke about way back when they told me you got to read this book, and it was in the 90's it was Michael Gerber's E-Myth. Yeah that book told me why things weren't working and what to do. He didn't tell me how, but it was the first time that I heard that you go if you're only working in the business and never working on it nothing is going to change. And that was what I set about in creating this system. Now that really the catalyst for the manuals that you describe this hotel that work like all automatically and he said that's where I want my business be. Right. So that's what I set off to do. So, it was one of those books that really changed me. That's really kind of the essence of it but it wasn't out there so I had to create it. And the good news is I hired somebody to help me and its way better than it was 15 years ago. What I left on was it not those it was on a thousand dollars all the hours we paid all of that back in two years. In my company. Oh, I'm sure just in two years. Yeah. That's amazing. So whole activity then will call backs, insurance claims. All of the things are now getting better. So, we started to build on top of it with the organizations and better meetings a lot with things that go into it. But that's really kind of back bone essential that you want. Cool. That's awesome. This has really been awesome. I think we're going to put all of your contact information on our Web page when you want to write off. Must have been great. It was really fun talking with you about everything and will look forward to getting you back. You can a copy of his book click here to go to his website https://www.appleseedbusiness.com/ You can contact Al https://www.appleseedbusiness.com/contact/
There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Wed, 27 December 2017
Want more profits? Want to build better relationships and build a better brand? With the year-end here, I decided to review all the podcasts for this past year to see which were the most popular. Based on number of downloads, this was Number 1. In fact, this podcast had double the listens and downloads of all the others. On this podcast, I’m speaking with Gregg Burkhalter. Gregg is a recognized authority on Personal Branding and LinkedIn. He has helped countless professionals in the U.S. and abroad define and grow their Personal Brand using LinkedIn. Gregg is known by many as “The LinkedIn Guy”. During our conversation, we discussed numerous topics including:
If you have any questions not covered in this interview, please reach out to Gregg. He provides Personal Branding Coaching and LinkedIn Training via one-on-one and group training sessions, corporate presentations and webinars. Connect with Gregg Burkhalter (770) 313-2385 https://www.linkedin.com/in/greggburkhalter/ There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Fri, 22 December 2017
The Art of Asking for Google Reviews with Jonah Canter. Owner of Canter construction in Charleston, South Carolina. They are premier company that does remodeling, it's a fun talk we had together we talked about how he grew his business basically with zero dollars. He's shares how he get’ s so many google reviews and what his results have been with us today going to share that with us today.” Hey welcome to contractors secret weapon. Today, we've got a great day, we got a great guest. And you know, I it's just fun when I have an opportunity to talk with other contractors about their successes and the things that make them grow. And today I have Jonah Canter. He owns Canter construction company in Charleston, South Carolina. They are premier company that does remodeling. So, it's a fun talk we had together with talked about how he grew his business basically with zero dollars. And so, he's going to share that with us today. And so, that you can help your business grow and maybe the same way that Jonah did his. And so, let's get into and Welcome Jonah Canter from Canter construction in Charleston South Carolina. Jonah, I am so glad that you're with us today. It's a really special treat for me because I don't get to talk to many contractors and it's really exciting. So, thanks for being with us today. Dave, I appreciate it as well and thanks for having me on the show. For those of people who don't know me out there my name is Jonah Canter. I'm the owner of Canter construction and also a co-owner of Oceanside construction and design located here in beautiful Charleston, South Carolina. And, I've been in the construction industry for probably over 20 years but actively with my companies for the past 10 years and deeper capacities from being the guy that you know the hammer on the nail all the way up to you know being the owner now and having to make a lot of the hard decisions and business decisions that come with it. So, all that fun work. Now, before is be mindlessly just go to work do this to this to this. And now it's like, I got to think about stuff. Yeah, it's a-- I am the organizer of chaos. That's what I tell my wife and whenever anybody ever questions, I have an employee, a long time ago, say to me "Well, you know what do you get paid to do". And I looked at him dead in the face and I didn't embed it I said "I get to do the hundred dollar an hour stuff. You get to do the 14 dollar an hour stuff". So, we'll just keep it at that. But, no. Seriously it's-- I've had kind of a very interesting background. As a kid I grew up in Columbia, South Carolina. Went on a soccer scholarship to all male private school and Sidney in Virginia went for a year. Hated it. Dropped out. Didn't know what I was going to do. I moved down to Florida. To Fort Lauderdale area and ended up working on boats. That was when you're young and you can kind of be stupid not know what you really wanted to do. And, I slowly made my way back up. And my family is from the Charleston area and ended up getting a job with my brother in law. Believe it or not as a shipping manager for a startup company. And, if you don't know me one thing that I'm very proud of is that if you hand me a shovel and tell me to dig you a trench, I'm going to dig you the best trench you've ever seen. I've just always had a really strong work ethic so, when they put me in that role as a shipping manager I was trying to find ways of making things better faster cheaper for the company and that kind of I guess guest caught the eye of some of the business owners and they kept promoting me within that startup company. To the point where I ended up moving overseas to the Netherlands. And what's their point man for opening up a print facility. So, that was a whole fun time of my life and by this time I was only about 22 years old. Had hair down to my shoulders. You know, still a dumb kid just trying to figure it all out. But when I moved overseas to the Netherlands, I gained that whole business since that operation since like hey they're counting on me and there's people under me who were counting on me. I have take the serious. So, that was a fun part of my life where it kind of, I tell people I grew up very fast at 22 or the rest of my friends were waiting tables drinking and doing whatever they wanted. I was negotiating print contracts with Dutchman and Belgian people at the time. So, anyways the whole point of that is that Amazon ended up buying that company and I ended up working for Amazon and for a while in the same capacity. Opening up these print facilities in various locations other fulfillment centers. I got my business background from working at Amazon. And Amazon's a place if you've never worked for them. It is a really tough environment. They expect the world, they expect, blood, sweat, tears and almost your first-born child will work. And I lasted about three years and my wife said I'll I'll divorce you if you don't quit because I wasn't sleeping and all that. But what it did teach me is it taught me a lot of things that I apply to my business now and in a couple of those things is the customer experience has to be the most amazing thing on earth right. It has to be something that they're not getting because if they can just get it anywhere, well, you're one of a million. But if you supply something they don't have or they are not seeing, that makes you you know, the one-eyed man is king of the land of the blind kind of situation. So I really when I when I came back from all that I started my company and at first it was a cabinet company and House of round 2007. I was old. Now it's feeling good to have not. And then this year of 2008 hit and all hell broke loose as everybody knows now that's going into 2007 was a millionaire and 2008 they lost it all. And in the words of Richard Branson they asked them they said "How do you become a millionaire?" And he said "Well, you start as a billionaire. And then you buy air and company of which is true". But, anyway bottom tanked that I had to shut that company down. Lucky for me the same guys who had started that other startup. I literally was walking down the street and saw them and they were like we are pros and they were like "What are you doing" and I was like struggling and they're like we're getting the band back together. And so, I just as soon as I stepped in my construction light I step right back out of it and I ended up working for those guys for a long time and another software startup until this past year they allowed me to own my construction company and be their point guy at the software company. Yeah, it was amazing situation for me that's why I took it on. Great guys. I have great respect for them and I slowly but surely left that business altogether and focused on my business. But, I guess I'm giving you a little breadcrumbs to show you. You know sometimes you don't know where your life is going to take you but you need to take pieces your life and apply them to the next part of your life. Well yeah. And a lot of the interesting things that I think that nobody really thinks about is that you are here today because of what you went through in the past. Yeah. And the person you're going to be because of what you've learned in the past. Yeah. So, it's important. It really is that when you when you take it into that perspective. Yeah and it's one of the things when I when I got serious about my construction company the one thing that I wanted to do was I wanted I look at things at work. Let me take you back. I was at a conference one time giving a speech and this kid stood up and he said "Hey Jonah you've been an entrepreneur. What--What are you. How do you look for the next new technology or next new thing to land a business in?". And I looked at him and I said you don't. I said you take something that exists now and you make immensely better. So, Uber did that to the taxi industry and Amazon is doing that to almost everything right and right now. So you don't have to be some super smart guy. And the next technology but you have to do is look at businesses that are not being run well as a whole or as a general philosophy and make them better. So, when I came into construction, that's the first thought and I started to look at it. I know you're laughing because you know and everybody is probably listening knows that the construction industry is rife with just idiots. Be honest with you. I mean Darrell is bad business people you name it. And one of my fond jokes that I tell my customers today, just get a laugh but it's true, as I said who knew the minimum bar to success was having all my teeth and showing up on time. I'm going to be rich. And anybody that doesn't have teeth I'm not making fun of you about that but there is a little bit of a stigma there was that I was I was in the paint store when Nana and I was tied to the representative and even talking about my stuff like this. And he goes you know because of that bench and more they have to have training seminars that are painters in different parts of the country. And he said the trainer come in and there's like 100 guys in a room and say Frank's in his book he says probably six eight 10 inches. And he holds it up and then he puts it down and he goes OK well we're going to make this simple today. How many people want to become wealthy in the contract painting contracting business like a bunch of guys raise their hands. It goes OK. He says it's not in this book he said. Answer your phone and return phone calls. So true. So even today I get calls and that's another thing of mine. I pick it up. I try to be responsive and people will pick up and go oh my gosh. I didn't expect you to pick up and I'm like well I'm not like everybody else. I'm going to talk to you because I mean I have the ability in my current role to make sure that every car-- it calls me is answered. And so, there's little things like that that people miss. But the idea I had was focusing on things like that that are I look back now are very small details and very simple and don't cost you money and are simple but mean the difference of the world it changes you completely different from the other guy. I don't care what kind of car you roll up in or truck. I don't care what you look like. I'm bearded with tattoos right. I care how you respond to me. I care about your personality how you react things and so you can be mentally better than everybody else. In that case you're going to be successful so that's what I did with this company. Canter construction and it's really helped me keep myself grounded, keep a good head on where I want my business. It's been very successful for my business as well. But one of the stories I think I came here today to kind of talk about is trying to help contractors who are typically good at being contractors. Their skill sets. They're good carpenters or whatever but they fall short when it comes to the business side. They didn't get the training they don't have the know how whatever. And in that sense a lot of what is left out I think is you know trying to figure out how to keep your phone ringing without paying money. Right. That's the biggest thing for your phone ringing. So, a while ago, I was getting my domain name which is www .Canterconstruction.com . I was trying to get that domain name because it's my last name. And low and behold this other company popped up and they they're like they happen to be related to me 14 cousins or something. Right. And I looked out No. No problem I'll do Canter construction SC for SouthCarolina.com and roll on. And as I started to become successful I started to get these comments from people saying hey I looked up your company and your Web site and there's some old man not a Wilkesboro North Carolina or wherever it was. And I said Really. And I started to look at this and I realized wow these people were looking for me in Charleston and this other companies popping up. Are they going to get my business now or that business.?-- No because they're not in the Charleston area. But it led me to go you know what they are. The Web site didn't look fresh. It looked like it was old PHP. And I said you know they may not care about this. I'm going to call them and we're related so I'm going to ask him to tell us that they'll let me buy the domain. So, I called in a nice lady answered and I just I went in and said hey I'd like to potentially talk to you guys about buying your domain. And she literally went nope and hung up the phone. Oh right. And I was like gosh you didn't even know I'm going to offer like 2 million dollars. I mean I wasn't but you just she cut me off and to this day I even tell people I do not hold anything against those guys. They did nothing wrong. I wouldn't I wouldn't sell my domain right now. Somebody asked me but what if it was it. All of a sudden lit this fire. And I always used the term you know hell hath no fury like me scorned when she scorned me on that. I decided enough is enough. I want to figure out how I would my people search for my name and trolls and how I can be the topless and Google them and so one of the things that I did and going through that is I learned all this on the fly and people listening that know a little bit about that are already thinking he's learning Seo or search engine optimization. That is the goal at the end of this and it's a bit of alchemy and smoke and mirrors. We'll talk more about that. But what I tried to do was how do I get myself in front of people when they do a search for my name? That's how I started. Now, I look at ways of when you look at contractor Charleston how am I the first one. So that's a little bit about what I'm going to talk about. First thing that they may not do well you are. I mean that's one of the things like you know I come up if you're looking for my name or my business but you know you like you're saying if they're looking for your name under your or your business find that to look for contact on an animal and you want to come up there you want to be trained from their face as best you do and that's the harder of the two things that nobody knows you as your or they get your name from somebody else. But people serendipitously finding you that's what you want. Right. Because I'm searching for this. And your result for that. So, one of the first things that I teach people to do is there's a lot of free web sites out there. that allow you to have free listings where you can put your company logo your Web site pictures it's free to do. You can go out there spend some sweat equity in a six pack of beer watching TV and put yourself out and on as many sites as possible. Now will these sites try to back sell you like oh by subscription of course. But the point being there is ignore them. Put them in junk whatever. But you just-- you're starting to build relevance in multiple listings because instead of your name being just on a Google business listing now it's on mana, now it's on porch, now it's on house. So, your kind of like throwing seven eight fishing lines out there. And what you'll probably find when you do that is not much is going to happen with your business and it shouldn't. Really, it's just getting you out in the world. Now the thing that I learned was that after I keep in mind I was doing this hoping for big expectations I didn't see. And I was like huh. So, I went to phase two. And what I initially did was porch was a company that I had listed on and they had to deal with Lowe's where they had a kiosk in a Lowe's and you could buy any of the windows installed or a fan installed. And here's preferred contractors. Gorgeous Web site. So, I went on porch and just had a bunch of people review me and I had maybe 21 reviews and all of a sudden, I went back to that search for Canter construction and lo and behold those people-- nice people-- that they are in North Carolina were third or fourth on google in my area. I was like OK I see what's going on here. And so, the third phase of this chapter having a little bit of success there was I started to look at my Web site and pictures a little more closely. Now keep in mind I have Google Analytics on the backside of my web site. I look at those all the time to see where people coming from when they get to my website what do they do. The thing that I realized from looking at those business analytics was on my first web I went Wow they're popping in and popping out right. I didn't have my number friends center. It wasn't a you know a beautiful like a spider web of capturing them and to them digging in deeper. So, I cannibalize my first web site came up with a brand new clean slick web site. Same one I had today and started to watch the business analytics again and I started to realize that people were then popping in and searching around. They're spending more time when they do get to my Web site. So little bit of just to backtrack as you get yourself out there and as many places as possible prime you then try to focus on reviews which initially I did poor reviews and we're going to get into the google reviews in a second and then you look at your Web site and you're listing even those listings that I mentioned. You always want to have fresh pictures fresh updates to it you may not cannibalize the whole Web site but Google does backtrack and look at things and it notices when things are updated and says oh well you've updated pictures so it gets back into relevance when somebody's searching for contractor and it can help you down the road saying oh we think you're looking for Canter construction. So, I did that for a little bit and then was still not seeing. I wanted to honestly have those people off the first and think page stuff. My wife always jokes she says Jonah if you had a boat I'm pretty sure you would name it. Never satisfied. And that's so true. And I wasn't. So, what I did next was I shamed myself today for not focusing on this but I had a Google business listing and I started to do what I call the art of asking and not asking for Google reviews is very simple and it had the most immediate and profound effect on my business and the business elite that I ended up getting. You have to keep in mind Google is something that not a hundred percent of people have but almost everybody on earth has a G.M. account right. So, the things that you're looking when you're asking for a favor which is what you're doing when you ask for a review you don't want it to be convoluted and step through hoops or to sign up for something that's junk. Nobody's going to do it. It's going to stop the process. But if you make it one click an easy you're going to get reviews. So, what I started doing was I would do work for clients make sure they were totally happy. Jonah you’re the best thing since sliced bread. Awesome it. And then I would send him a follow up e-mail and say hey for people like you who found me on line or found me through a review of through a referral. Google Reviews are a good way of saying I do top quality work. I'm a good guy I'm honest. All of these things. Do you mind providing me with a five-star review and then I would send them a hyper link for the Canter 5-star review right there in the e-mail. What that would do is boom they clicked that hyperlink they go right to the review and they're typing away 5star sin and done. And it's you have to as a contractor you have to understand that you are asking for a favor so keep it simple but Google who runs one of the biggest if not the biggest search sites. Why was I not kidding reviews from Google to begin with? I look back and I want to hit myself from heaven. But what that did was as a couple of things it kept me in check to make sure that my business was running correctly. I was offering good services good customer service good skilled services to clients because I was I wasn't just done when the job was done and the check was in my bank. I wanted something more. Right. So, it's a good check and balance for contractors to keep them. If you want to grow your business you've got to be good at it. You've got to be the best at it and you do that by being able to ask for as many reviews as possible. So, I asked for these reviews over time. And the next thing I realized was it was quiet. And then the phone started bringing. And then the phone kept ringing and I would pick it up and they'd go yes just Kaner construction. I'm like yes. And they're like "oh yeah, I found you online" and I was just ear to ear smiling because up to that point my life-- 75 percent of my business was referral from realtors, friends, whomever and made a good living on that. And, you know, the 25 percent was, somebody just randomly found you and I don't even know if I got the work from home at that point. Fast forward to the day, 90 percent of my work comes from online and 10 percent is referrals. So, that's an amazing flip. And what happens there is, I talked about the alchemy of it. Nobody truly understands as SEO and if they do tell you that they're a snake oil salesman in the fold because Google is always changing their spaghetti algorithm of search relevance and results in everything. So you're always chasing a ghost. But if you know where that ghost is going to appear you can try to target yourself to figure out how to be there at that time and so that's where I'd like to recap and say fundamentals here. Get yourself out in as many places as possible cannibalize. Update your Web site. Make sure that you're asking for reviews. Get it. I don't want to say that you ended up like kind of whoring yourself out there but you really have to promote yourself as much as possible on the Internet. And if you know if you have five google reviews don't even act like that's enough. Right. I have. I thought I heard you got fifty-five. Google reviews Yeah and I'm constantly asking every day for people when we close our jobs. Will you give me a review? Give me review because that's free marketing that I don't pay for I don't use Google Ad Words. I don't pay for any of that and never seen any results. Blood sweat equity which is what we all need in Kontra. I found out ways to keep promoting myself to the point where if you are in the geography of Charleston and you look up contractor Charleston now I'm one of the top guys in fact I come up there against commercial giants in the area. I'll be the 4th guy and the biggest thing is up to 5 to refuse you get your revelations irrelevant and you Cito up your pictures so there's constant upgrading of your gear. Your Web site which is really not a big deal. It's not really done take you all the time but these are the little things you know that Google looks for and there are little things that most your kids can do. It's correct. Now it's funny as people who may start say they're in Florida or somewhere else you might get different results because it does look at your area a likelihood that you want so it doesn't mean you'll look up contractor by me but I don't really care about people necessarily Charleson as much as I do about the greater Charleston area right. But the thing that it's a star that shines the brightest about the reviews and I've had plenty of people telling me this is we saw some other contractors and they had four reviews a new head 50 by 5 star reviews. We called you because we're like oh my gosh you can't have any brothers or cousins that are out there. And so that's a that's a testament to a person who does not know you right somebody who finds you organically doesn't know you from Adam right already knows that they don't trust contractors by very nature. You build that trust before they even pick up the phone and call because they look and go wow. People like this guy and seems to do good work. So, there's tons of benefits not only to getting your own leads and whatnot but also in securing deals and in adding a layer of comfort for particular clients that they're trusting you right off the bat because they like what you say you make it easy for them. Yes. And it's you know it's like you're selling yours. You're doing everything for him like I had and I just did that with one of mine because I said you know she was just rain and rain. She says your mom you don't understand how my mom usually throws contractors off the job the first day like she goes. She thinks again pay by the hour or taking too long. Yeah. Now it's true. So, I should never have a contract to you pay by the hour. That's terrible. I know that so I said so. So, she was you know at my house were thinking about selling and I go. So, we got through. You know as I said my mom loves you guys she goes You must love your job or your work. And I go Why did she say that. Because you're doing all the little stuff the meticulous stuff and she said I said you write a review on that which is good. Absolutely. So, you know I did and I provided was the link and a lot of times that will do. I don't have anywhere near 55. But I'll give him the link and I will get this is what I heard you say change it if you are you know just so they can cut and paste it. Yeah, I thought about doing that but I kind of like that kind of off the cuff because sometimes I get reviews that are comical to me but they're a testament to my crew. So, I have a guy named Pete who is a phenomenal phenomenal guy. I pay him a lot of money but he's an OCD neat freak. You'll never find another man like Pete. And somebody wrote this company is awesome and Pete is the cleanest person I've ever met on a job site. But you think about that. You were both laughing and it was funny. But to a client who that's important to that's going to be a selling point to them. Right. Yeah because that's what I hate is when I got to clean up after someone come into work and my house absolutely. So, there's you know when it gets back to the review part of it I think you know people just need to understand how reviews are actually hidden money in it and a great example is and I've done this several times as contractors will get into situations where there's a wall and you're doing some work and you don't know what's behind it. You can't rip it up before your a contract with them. You get into it and you're like hey I'm going to charge 2000 dollars for whatever it is. And you open up the wall and you go oh man this isn't as bad as we thought. Yeah, we can do that two. Whatever. It's only about 15. Hunter Well you know what I do. I'm not greedy. I go back to that client. I go Hey Guy Lady whatever we were going to charge you to I'm going to reduce this to 15 because it's less work. And I think I think you'll be happy with that. And it's a fair price at that one. I don't want to overcharge you. And the look on their face is like oh my god Jonah I would have honestly, I would have never known that. And you could have just taken my money. That's amazing. I appreciate it. What does that build absolute trust that this guy now forming. Oh yeah because the next thing I'd say is hey you know what. Since I saved you five hundred dollars. I'd rather be a five-star review that's worth tons of money to me. So, it's got to be you know in that sense you've got to be a guy that you know you're shifting and understanding that I may be taking 500 dollars out of my pocket but what am I gaining I'm gaining a five-star review or referral and somebody who 100 percent trust me. And if anybody goes Man I need a contract or I'm going to be the first person in their mind. So, there's important. You know having values in this industry and not being shady can get you positive results and not being shady of simply charging people for what they should be charged. And when you see something like that you know help them out. So, you know don't be afraid to charge them. But given the value that they're expecting. Absolutely So that's really awesome. You know all that free stuff that you can do it takes time and it doesn't happen overnight but it does take time but everything works that takes time anyways. It does I mean if you think you're going to get into a business and make a million dollars tomorrow you'll be sadly mistaken. The truth of this business is you need to be able to weather anything that comes out you. I'm building my business so that when the next bottom drops I keep on rolling through it with a smile on my face while everybody else is selling their 80000-dollar trucks and houses on the water and they're screwed. I'll be buying up those properties from them and that's what you're really trying to do is you're trying to futureproof your business and you do that by getting in the trenches and doing this kind of small nuanced work and doing it right so that when it does come time when everybody starts to fold you'll have plenty of guys trying to do work for pennies on the dollar because they're struggling. And I just have work coming in you know. So that's I think that's a you know important value to have. That's really been very very interesting especially with the reviews you've got 55. So that's just that's just being consistent all the time always asking because here's what I read an article not too long ago. And it just blew me away that when you ask somebody for review or testimony that was really astronomically low I'm going to say 50 percent of people actually do it but 90 percent of the people check it. Yes. Yes. And that's why you have to be diligent but not too pushy. I've sent I sin no more than two reviewer a review requests. I'll ask them. Do you mind right. Yeah, no problem. I'll send him an email with a link. Nothing happens I'll send them a follow up e-mail and say hey just want to make sure you got this. Do you mind giving us a review. If I don't hear anything I move on because I'm not going to be pushy about it because it feels forced at that point. But you are right. And for that very fact. Keep in mind what people typically write a review about negatives. They 100 percent write you a negative review but they very rarely will write you a positive review. So back to the 55 google reviews I take that as a testament when people see that some people know that and go wow. I mean it's like when you're on Amazon you buy a product you can see people who are complaining about the shipping of the product and you're like That's not a product review. You can't do that. I don't care. You screwed it up but Binda two and three stars. Those are the ones you're paying attention to because people were looking and they'll write about hey it broke down after two weeks or didn't work out to ship it back it was damaged. Those kinds of things are a valid product reviews. And so, when you have a product that's got a five star review I don't even read all of them like done. So, you are going to buy it whatever. I trust that through the social media aspect of this that that the group hive mentality works and it's a good thing. Any last thoughts on the google reviews and I know the end here just I just want to tell people you know just take what I've told you and put your own kind of spin on it. You may find results in your area depending on your geography north south east west wherever it is may vary. Just keep in mind if you're the best person at doing this and you're doing it without paying a company to do it for you you're going to win. You've got the tenacity. Ruiz is the hundred percent of keeping. And also, just expect that results may vary but they may take some time but they will start to see the fruits of your labor if you will. So, and I also Dave I also like to tell people feel free to reach out to me with questions or comments any kind of feedback I'm a very open book. I like people to respond. I like helping people and I have a couple of different ways you can do that. First you can email me directly. This is my direct e-mail is Jonah jJonahcanter@gmail.com That's my direct e-mail. Feel free to send me any comments there or if you want to have a more fun aspect of our company and you're on Instagram. I'm a huge Instagram or I love it. I think it's the best thing on earth. You can find me at Chuck town which is my personal account or Cantor construction which is the business account and you can see pictures of us goofing off on the job sites. In general, having some fun. Feel free to reach out and either way you can be a voyeur and just look at the pictures. Or you could feel free to ask me any questions. I am an open book and I want to be able to help people so please do reach out. Cool. That's awesome. Thanks so much for spilling your guts and sharing this. It's really been fun we're going to have you back again. Talk about something else. That sounds good you know always do it Dave. I appreciate it. Everybody listening.
To connect with Jonah Canter Gmail: jonahcanter@gmail.com Instagram: @canterconstruction @chucktown (personal account...me being goofy)
There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Thu, 21 December 2017
"Keep from crippling your business with these 20 marketing mistakes" and today is our last day. It's true, Marketing Mistake number 16: Using catchy tunes, jingle, slogans and mottos instead of real solid reasons to have people buy. Do you monitor your competition? How about just asking your What they want? But here's one. It's using-- number 16 is using catchy tunes jingle slogans and mottos instead of real solid reasons to have people buy. Say you've heard them, they're everywhere, they're on the radio or in a television. In fact, you probably catch yourself seeing your humming at least a couple of different jingles or tunes throughout the course of the day. You know, you can't get that crazy thing out of my head. You find yourself quoting some catchy slogan or motto you've heard or read the question you can ask is if they're so catchy. And I find myself singing them, humming them or quoting them. Aren't they working? Aren't they doing their job? And the answer is yes, of course. They're working and yes, they're doing their job. So, if jingle slogans and tunes are working and doing their job, then why not use them? It all depends on what you're trying to accomplish with your advertising. And, here's the key one, your marketing dollars. So, if you want new customers, you want more customers, people who can and will come to your place or business or pick up the phone and call you for services willing to give you their money then these tunes jingles and slogans may not be the best use of your money. Why is that? OK, listen. Here's a funny thing and I've read the article not too long ago-- it could have been a long time ago. But what's the difference? You know the Eveready battery? Bunny did it. He's been around going around and now they have a new furry guy. There's millions of dollars, and I mean millions and millions and millions of dollars, on that one stupid thing. Having let it go back and forth. Now if you asked people what's the battery associated with that bunny. More than 50 percent can't tell you. They just think it's a cute bunny. So, what has been the purpose of spending millions and millions and millions and millions of dollars? I don't know but I know you don't have millions and millions and millions of dollars to spend on marketing like that to get you were. You want people, you want instant credibility, you want instant access, you want instant results right now. And that's why we're talking about direct response marketing and all we do. So as a business owner, you have to decide whether you want your dog on your postcard, you want a pretty song to go along with your marketing or not. Really, that's the basic thing. So, you know your letters, your ads, your promotional campaigns, need to be treated like commissioned employees. Yeah, you wouldn't send employ out singing a jingle or tune or say "hey here's my dog. See how cute he is on my card."-- No! You want results. So, that's what you need to do. They need to be--there needs to be an accountability to the results that you want. So, you wouldn't allow your Sales people to go call on prospects and customers and like you said sing us the jingle, research a slogan, you want results. Silly? --sounds silly, doesn't it? It does. Yet day in and day out, you hear all this type of advertising. But remember here is the key: your ads and letters, your marketing should provide information about your products and your services, make an enticing offer, give compelling reasons why they should buy and why they should take action now. And remember, you know from our discussions about accountability and testing previously, each ad should be able to be measured as to its effectiveness. It's all about being effective and getting the results, you want. So, number 17: Not monitoring your competition. You know a lot of people say "Well, I don't have competition". Listen, everybody has competition. So, you learn a lot from your competition. Sometimes, they can be your best source of what to do and what not to do. And you should set up a system to periodically research your competition to see what they're up to. Some of the things that you should consider are:
You know this is kind of important. How many salespeople do they have? Who their sales people call on if they call anybody at all? Say I know I have my roofing contractor. He doesn't allow his sales people to go call on people. All the leads are generated through the company. And so, he gets to monitor them as they continue to grow. And he knows exactly where they're going and how they're doing. So, he controls everything and you know what? We're glad. Matter of fact, a lot of times you know they'll get some and they'll be you know doing a neighbor's house and they will come by and say "hey can you give me an estimate" and he goes I can bet you're going to have to call. "I can't do it today because I have this huge schedule of things that have to be done. But if you call my assistant then she will put you on a schedule.". See, it has to go back to the company before they can't do anything on their own, which is a great way to monitor things. Yes. Monitor your competition so that you can become better and you know, in your competition that mean you guys have to be enemies. In fact, your competition to be one of your greatest allies of sources for additional untapped income. You know, maybe things that you do that they don't do or things that you do that they don't do and you can cross-reference the sales say, you know, like I don't do commercial paper. So, I would refer that to a commercial painter. So, I mean just because I do painting it doesn't mean anything. So, here's this and here's one that I'm going to give you is a bonus. I don't think I've ever talked about this before and they may have. But I don't remember. Listen go through Google go through all the people in your Web pages. You know, they come up first, second, third, or fourth, whatever's on the first--first page and call them. See how they answer their phone. Now, there's going to be surprising things to see even if they call you back, would be one. And here's an intro you, want to actually see how many people that are on Google that are not no longer in business. Yes, really. No longer in business. And you're going to want to get their phone number and have a read directed to yours. That's a whole other marketing strategy altogether. But, if you pick that up man it's going to be worth mega mega bucks to you. Marketing mistake number 18: Failing to ask your customers what they want. So, number 18 are getting down to the wire here. Failing to ask your customers what they want. That's an interesting one. What do you mean by that? Well, listen, everyone in business from insurance companies to computers, cars, clothes, stores, service businesses, they all respond with something like: low price. Well, that's not true! Because if you take a look around and what people spend their money on, what they drive, what they wear, what they live, where they live, what were they doing now? Even quickly come to the argument that that goes right out the window. It's not all about price. So, yeah, nearly every business, if you exhibit hesitation in buying, the salesperson and that's you, too, the owner, will, you know, always try lowering the price as the first resort. That's because we are so conditioned to price-- cheap prices. But it doesn't have to be that way. So, let me give you an example of what happened to me one day. It was kind of funny. I had a lady and I went over. She wanted a painting and she wanted everything painted. The walls, the ceilings, the doors, the door jams, the baseboard. And so, I put together a price on everything. Because I always try to give them what they want. And then later on, give them what they need per say. So, we get all done and give the price she comes out and she goes "wow! that was a lot more than I anticipated or was expecting to spend." I said "OK. So, you know, you asked me for a price to pay everything. What-- let's go over from what I see that does not need to be paid and why? can we do that?" She goes "Well yeah sure." So, we took a look at everything and actually the ceilings you painted maybe one did in the whole place. So, I said well that's going to save you a tremendous amount of money. And then we would there's a couple of little things that didn't need to be done and we just had it from there. But did I lower the price. I did, but I didn't. I didn't give her a cheaper price. I gave her price based on what we were going to do. We just lowered the price in essence by what she really needed to have done or wanted to have done. And so, when someone comes to you and says "Wow! it was a lot more than I anticipated", then you know, then you need to work from there and not just go low as I can give you a discount. Because that's not necessarily what we're looking for. They're just not sold on what has to be done. So, I always ask, well, you know, what don't you want painted? or what don't you want cleaned? You know, the way this is everything written in stone this is exactly what you want. So, we can go back and take a look at what you really want and sometimes we don't listen. Sometimes we do and we give them. But, we just need to go back and really go back to and say "What do you really want me to do?" What are-- you know. So, and, you know, from the amount of time that you've been in business, you have a tremendous amount of experience and expertise on what you've seen will work with what, or what won't work with a lot. And so, just be-- forget about the price issue. Be more concerned about giving them the value of what you have and maybe not charging as much, not by lowering your price but by lowering the amount of services you're going to do. Does that make sense? And, you still get your--you still get your margins, which is what you really need, is your margin. Now, that's just a particular sales situation. So, there's other ways. There's lots of ways to find out that you can determine on the wants of your prospects or your customers and that's just surveys and questionnaires. Whether by phone or mail or some of the easier and most effective ways to do that. So, you can follow up after purchase. Find out how they liked the product or service they bought. See if there's any questions on how to use it and ask if there's any other products or services that they might be interested. See, you're opening up that door. Remember, we talked about it before. They're into buying mode. They just bought that they want to buy some more. And they said "Well, you know I had thought about this after you left". So, that's another thing. Here's a couple of reasons why people won't spend their money with you. You know what? We've already discussed that people buy what they want before they'll buy what they need. Think about that. They'll buy what they want before they'll buy what they need. There's no trust. You haven't established a level of credibility, trust or believability. They need to make a purchasing decision. And of course, there's no value. You haven't created enough value or perceived value in their minds equal to, or to exceed the value with money that they're willing to exchange for your services. What is perceived in the customer's mind is reality. So, perception is reality and there's a nobility. Some people, genuinely, don't have the ability to pay for the item. They have financial problems or loss. And, see those aren't your customers. So, once you've established the level of trust, people believe you and they can afford it, then you'll be able to make a bigger sale by selling them wants to the needs. Remember, it's what they want, it's not what they need. So, just take the word "need" out of the vocabulary and you'll actually be much better off for it. Marketing mistake number 19: It's not working with joint ventures. This one. Number 19 is one of my favorites. It's not working with joint ventures because I do work with joint ventures. That's why it's one of my favorites. So, what is a joint venture? It's a teaming up with another business can be one of the most profitable things you can do. And they, in turn, become a win ,win situation for the both of you. So, here's how it might begin. Let's say-- I'm going to tell you what I did and I've done it numerous times and it works great. And I have the ability to do marketing so this helped me out a lot, too. So, I have roof companies-- roofing contractors who sell Roof cleaning for me and for them. And we've created a joint venture. I do-- I put the marketing material, I put together their "Thank You's", I put together their warranties--the warranties I have and I send them out. So, the only thing they have to do is sell them. Sell the service and I'll get a call or I'll get e-mails and say "Dave, this has got to be done". And, I also just did that with a new one the other day I was out and about. And, as I was doing some painting at a house and they were having the screens removed during the hurricane here. It wiped out the guy's screen enclosure, and it was torn down and these guys were there. So, the owner was there and I noticed on the side of his truck, you know, we do pressure cleaning. So, my question was to him: "Do you guys do fresh cleaning or do you sub it out and use other people to you know to do that for you?" So, he says we-- because I don't do pressure cleaner 'cause we don't do that anymore as we've just been too busy replacing screens and doing repairs and stuff like that, he says. But I do have, you know, people that I refer out. And I go "Can I ask you a question?" he goes "Oh yes, sure". I say" Would you rather make money by referring them out? Or would you just rather refer them out? “He goes "Explain to me Lucy." I say here's what we do, is we pick it in marketing programs. We do route cleaning, we do pressure cleaning and we do, you know, know painting. So, what we've done in the past is we've worked with business owners-- who would be in our marketing materials for them. And, then they could just refer us to their customers, or you know, you guys do the proposals. Send me, you know, it needs to be done and I'll schedule it and I'll do it. And then you collect the money and you keep, you know, the markup. I'm going to tell you it's X amount of dollars for me to do this. And your upcharge it and you keep the profit and you send me a check. He goes "Oh, I liked that idea". He goes "Send me some more material". I said "Awesome. We'll do that". So that's-- it's just that simple-- joint venture. Now, do I have to go out and get his customers? --No, he's got his customers. He's going to either sell them or refer them and I said I even put down I said: Listen. if you guys are too busy, I'll go do the estimate and I'll do it on your paperwork. It doesn't matter to me. Because we both win. So, I have two customers now. I have him as a customer and I have his customer, who becomes my customer in the interim after we've done business. So, is that a unique-- that's a great way to get customers. If you've never thought about it before, it needs to be part of your arsenal for getting and keeping business because it's like gravy. You don't want to spend any money in marketing because you've created a relationship. And that relationship will grow and continue to grow forever. So, do you have to stop at one? -- No! You can do as many as you want! And it always becomes a win win for everyone because it's something like this guy, he doesn't want to do it anymore. And he would rather make money then referred out. So, always appeal to the pocketbook.
Marketing mistake number 20: Risk Reversal. So, this is one of a lot of guys are afraid of. I mean literally afraid of and that's risk reversal, not using risk reversal. So, suppose that customers are not happy with a purchase that they made from you. Do you have to give him a 100 percent money back guarantee? -- You don't have to. Could you offer it? -- You could. Do you think they'll take advantage of you? -- in your mind you're saying yes. Listen. I'm going to tell you from past experiences over the 26 years. Well, I'm going to just go for the last nine because this is what I actually put on all my proposal. We have a tear up your check guarantee. If we can't make you completely satisfied with our work, then we're going to tear up your check. Has anyone ever take an advantage of me on that? -- No. So, but why do I do it? Because it's a risk reversal. The people would say "Well, if he's willing to do that, then I can trust him hopefully to do the right thing at the right time, give me everything he said he's going to do". Now, even-- and I try to give to you with everything. We'll do with our painting. We'll give it a 10-year warranty guarantee on painting for certain things. Now, do other guys do that? -- No! That's why I do it. I've seen five years, I've you know, do a ten year to press the point that I'm going to stand behind everything I do. Have I ever had to go back and do a warranty call? -- No but it's there. I've done-- you know, it's a crazy thing even. I know there's a lot of guys who claim they won't give a guarantee I'll give you two thousand days. And I dropped it down because of the humidity and the heat and the rain in Florida. The 24 months. Do I ever get called back on a warrant for that? -- Yes. Do I go back? -- Absolutely. Because I am-- I honor my word, first of all. But, I charge enough in there to figure that into an hour. That's going to take me an hour to go back and catch up. So, why not do more than when everyone else is willing to do. And when you do that, you create that risk reversal. You want them to be able to feel good about doing business with you. So, if all the risk is on them, that hey I'm going to let all this money and there's nothing in it for me, then they are going to be a little hesitant. You want to take as much hesitancy away from them as possible. So, it could be a money back guarantee. I am not saying it has to be. I mean, I just saw something that was kind of interesting the other day it was on the TV. Certain plumber for every minute they're late from their scheduled time or their appointment. I believe that they'll knock five dollars off the bill. So, if they're 10 minutes it's 50 bucks. After 20 minutes that's a hundred bucks. So, it sort of makes them-- how do you say-- So, it makes them accountable is because of what it does. And, me calling as a person who wants the service done. If that's out there, then dude I'm going to call them before I would call someone else because people showing up on time in the service industry is rampantly bad. So, these guys have overcome that with, you know, with this particular guarantee that they're using. And there is another one of them a carpet cleaner I knew who didn't answer his phone all the time. You know, because you try to answer your phone when you can. And so, what they did was, to get the people to leave a message, he would say listen "I'm so sorry that we could not answer the phone at this particular time. But, if I don't call you back in ten minutes-- within ten minutes-- then I will give you a 25 percent discount or 25 dollar discount off of the service that we're going to give you. How's that?" So, you know, the sky's the limit. You just have to be creative on what you're going to do to do that risk reversal and remember it is risk reversal. So, I'm excited that we finally got to finish this up. If you did not get your free download on the-- this whole report that they put together for this series, then you can do it on this show notes page also. And we're making it available to you for free. I mean, normally, it's probably-- I'll not even tell you what I charge for it. So, it's a material. It's FREE. I want you to have it for free. I want you to grow your business. I want you to be the best you can be. And I want you to grow your business to-- it being a lifestyle business for you. And not that you run the business and the business doesn't run you. So, until the next podcast. Be profitable. If you didn’t get the down load yesterday get it now Keep from Crippling Your Business with These 20 Marketing Mistakes Here is your download There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Wed, 20 December 2017
"Keep from crippling your business with these 20 marketing mistakes" Mistake number 11: Not calculating the lifetime profit value of your customer. And there's really no question about it. Our customers are the most valuable assets that we have. Get your free repot today I don't want to rub in any mistakes into you because it's not your fault, honestly, of the things that you may or may not be doing because you didn't know better. And we're here to help you take these items--these 20 items. And of course, don't get bogged down with the 20, really. When you go through these and you get a workbook, which today is number five. And we're going to do one more day of the series, but I promise you on day five that I'm going to have the download for this report--this book that we put together for you on these mistakes and how to overcome them. The key is overcoming them. And don't think about having to do all 20 at the same time. Pick two or three of the ones that you think that would be the most effective to your business right now. And then once you get those done, pick the next three and go through those. And, you know, if you just do three, you're going to be so far ahead of your competition that it's just going to--you're going to get excited, honestly. About the different and the amounts of profit you're going to make and the things you'll be able to do with your business because you're finally tuning and you're making your business better. So, let's go into mistake number 11 and how are you going to overcome that. You know what. This has really been one of my pet peeves because you hear me talking all the time about transactional business and many of us are set up for transactional business. But, one of the biggest challenges that I see, many of us, and including myself from the very beginning, is not calculating the lifetime profit value of your customer. And there's really no question about it. Our customers are the most valuable assets that we have. And since we've already purchased them from, you know, as as leads and they've already purchased from you previously and then experience the benefits of doing business with you and presumably they're pleased with those experiences and they're likely to purchase from you again if given the opportunity. Oh, that's the key if given the opportunity. So, we need to do that. And they're likely to be free to others who may need or watch your services or what you sell. So, nearly every business allots more money, time and effort to the acquisition of new customers. They do to keeping their existing customers. And I love what Dan Kennedy says in years and years ago: "You need to build a corral around your customers so nobody gets access to them". And that's done by numerous things that we've talked about in these podcasts. So, it's been proven time and time again that it costs you five times more to bring out a new customer does to retain an existing customer. Think about that, five times more. What if you could spend half as much or spend as much? Take that budgeting dollars and cut them in for new customers, cut them in half. Get new customers and, you know, keep in touch with your old customers on a continuing basis. So, determining the lifetime profit value of a customer, it's simple and it's the most profitable thing that you can do for your business because what you're doing is you're setting your sights out. You're really laying down the groundwork and you're projecting out and it really is numbers man. They can get really exciting. So, I want to take a look at how most business owners take a look at transactions. Let's say that you have a customer that you just, your average ticket sales is two hundred dollars and you're thinking about them in the form of "Well, I'm just doing them today. It's a 200 dollar profit it costs me X amount of dollars to acquire them". You know, whether it be through a referral or whether it is a marketing piece, it costs money to buy customers however you want to put it in whatever frame you want to put it. So, we have a tendency to look at that customer as a 200-dollar transaction. Let's say for the fun of it: it's a hundred and seventy-five-dollar profit that we walked into that transaction today. I want you to take one step further and look at it this way. Now this chart is going to be in the Workbook. So, look at it this way: You got to the average sale and we're going to say it's 200 dollars. The number of sales per year for that particular customer or let's say it's three times a year. So, that's six hundred dollars a year that you're going to get from this customer. Now, how many years are you going to keep that customer? Let's say 10. Just for make it nice and easy to figure. So, now that customer is worth what? Six thousand dollars! So, with this going into the mindset, your mindset of walking that door of that 200 hours, is no longer a 200-dollar transaction but it's a six-thousand-dollar transaction. But let's take another step further, just a little bit further and this can really get exciting. Let's say that you get one customer that is referred to you each year by this customer and let's say that only 50 percent do business with you. So, now you have three customers that are doing six thousand dollars a year and that's a year, but over the course of a 10-year time. So, now you've got your six thousand dollars from your original customer, and then eighteen thousand dollars from your referrals, so that's twenty-four thousand dollars. And that's only in the first tier of referrals. It can grow exponentially. But, I'm just trying to keep this simple. So, if you get three customers from that person and you keep them for 10 years, plus that customer, you have twenty-four thousand dollars for the business. So, it's no longer a 200-dollar transaction, but it is a 24-thousand-dollar transaction. Now, that gets exciting. And it gets passed--you pass the whole home of everyday business because now you're looking towards the future of all your business. It's no longer a transactional mode of the one day: one-dollar profit, but it's the future profits for the future. So, listen. I've had customers for 25 years. I've had--and I've even taken some of them and one day I was running through and I had a lifetime value of-- from one customer was over fifty-five thousand dollars in business. Man, that's just plain exciting. So, you can get past the transactional thought. You just have to think way ahead and plan way ahead. Mistake number 12: Failure to calculate the costs of losing a customer. So, here we go, number 12 Failure to calculate the costs of losing a customer. And I don't want to take too much time on this. It is very important. And it's more important if you have been losing a lot of customers. So, I really want you to think about this. But, it's the numbers are just staggering. So, you know, we calculate the lifetime profit value of a customer. So, let's take a look at what it cost you, if you lost a customer instead of gained one. So, let's suppose for a minute that: One of your employees got a customer upset with you and they stop doing business with you. No big deal, right? I mean there's a lot. They're just one customer. It's not difficult to get another one to replace them. So, how much would you lose if they never returned? So, let's take a look at our previous example. We talked about that one customer, ten years is worth six thousand dollars and--but, I'm not going to--we're going to negative effects ripple, more than positive talk in effect especially today with the Internet. So, let's say you have an unhappy customer. Then they were to tell 12 people about that bad experience because they always tell more people about bad experiences and they do good experiences. And let's say those 12 were to tell six others. Total number of people that are affected by one bad experience-- just one would be like eighty-five people. Can you imagine that? Somebody posted something: A company this company ABC something sucks and they really did a bad job and bought all that other stuff. Now, it's only 25 percent of those people chose not to do business with you that comes to 21 people. So, 21 people times six thousand dollars is what? 120000 dollars with a business--just from one bad experience. Now, once you get too uptight about this this is just one thought on, you know. Yeah, getting rid of or losing a customer somehow. So, you say how to--"What do I do about that?", "How do I not lose a customer?", while you need to have really good trained employees, you need to be able to be diplomatic about things but, you know, there's tons of stuff you can do. And the best way to do that is to give your customers all the love, the care, the attention, the service you can. To kill them with service, you go overboard, you make it nearly impossible for them, even consider doing business with anyone else. Regardless of the price, location, convenience and any other reason become, not only the preferred place, preferred person to do business with, but the only one that your customers will consider doing business with. So, over perform. Wow them. Kill them with kindness. Because you're talking about thousands and thousands of dollars of future profits. We're not talking about today's profits, we're talking about future profits. And, if you don't have to work hard, because you've already got them. The hardest you have to work is to keep them happy and excited and let them know that you love them and care about them.
Marketing mistake Number 13: Not selling to your existing customers. Oh, didn't we just talk about cross-selling and up selling and all that stuff? Yeah, we did. But this is another item-- another sideline here. So, the best prospects are the people that we've already-- purchased from us before. So, they've already experienced the products and the services that we've offered, as well as, you know, all the great stuff that we have for them. So, they know us, they liked us, they trust us. At least they did when they first bought from you and they gave you money. Hopefully things haven't changed. And ideally, your relationship with them has improved. And how will it improve? By you continually keep in touch with them on a regular basis. So, if nothing else makes good financial sense, to attempt, to sell your customers before looking outside for new prospects. But, what do you mean by that? Have you ever come up with a new service? Or, here's one that really, that I think a lot of times we overlooked and we don't think about. A lot of times our customers call us for a particular item. So, I'm going to use myself as an example. I would do, before I would do a lot of drywall repair and I would get pigeonholed into, well, they've only done drywall repair. So, I would have to continually-- educate them on the other things we did. And I would do it in different ways other than just direct selling to them. I would tell them: "Hey, did you know that we did this or we did that?". And then of course, you all know that I had a monthly newsletter that goes out every month and each month I would put in a-- project of the month. And it would be something else we did. So that they would know that we did more than what we've been pigeonholed for. So, I mean that's just one way to sell them on a regular basis. Other things that you do. So, I just mentioned a newsletter, and I'm going to say that's the best way to sell them without selling them. You know, if you have a referral rewards program, for your customers for referring one to another, you can publish those results in a newsletter. This reminds your customers about your program and entice them to participate in another. And one thing that I would do is, I would always thank. I had a column, thank the people that referred me. People--man, I'm telling you, it's exciting when they say: "Hey! I saw my name in print!". But, honestly, people are not going to care about you unless they know that you care about them. So, always think of ways to sell your existing customers more of your services and products. And honestly, and any time you're thinking about adding on something? RUN IT BY YOUR CUSTOMERS FIRST. Because like I said: They know you. They Like you. They trust you. And, if you're looking for that service, then they're going to purchase it from you because: they know you, they like you, they trust you. number 14: Changing your marketing even though it's working. Wow, that's a big one! A lot of us get bored with our marketing. And even though it's working, we want to pizzazz it up a little and we're really not paying attention to it. So, that's one of the most common mistakes that we make with our marketing, is to try something out, find out it works. Then stop doing it and then try something else. So, really, a better approach would be: to find something that works, tweak it--a certain part of it, try it again, tweak it again keep on doing. Remember that we discussed with regard to testing previously. As long as something continues to work, man, don't give up just keep trying to prove it so it will work better. Guaranteed, it will not work for ever. That's why we always talk about testing and measuring. But there are several reasons why people change--or most of us business owners changed from marketing even though it's working for us. Number one: we don't test our ads promotions and we don't monitor the results. So, we don't know what's working, we don't know what's not working and how well it's working and how well it's doing or even if it is working. I know I just said a lot. We're not really sure whether it works or not. Was it because we don't test it? That's really the main thing. We get tired of doing the same old thing every time and change her ads just for the sake of change. Now listen, I have to tell you this: Sometimes boring is better and that's boring on my side. Remember that when you're attracting a customer that that customer is a new person with new eyes on that one marketing piece that is working. The only one that gets bored with it is you! But if it's working, DON'T STOP DOING IT! Continue to do it. So, they hear about something someone else is doing and they want to see if it were for them. Usually, very little thought because that decision. "It looks pretty, so I'm going to do it!". Don't do it, don't be tempted to do that. The only reason you would ever want to change at any ad, campaign or promotion is to see if you can make it perform better. Any other reason shouldn't even be considered. That's it.
Marketing mistake number 15: Taking advice from the wrong sources. OK number 15. This is a big one. Taking advice from the wrong sources. You know, it seems like everyone is an expert nowadays. An advice is so freely given and offered even if you have no intention of seeking or asking for it. We have friends, we have family, we have co-workers, we have associates, we have other people in the trades and neighbors. Nearly, every person you come in contact has something to say or some advice to offer. And for the most part-- it's well intentioned. Except for-- listen, I'm going to be really honest with you on this one. If you go to some of the Facebook groups and stuff like that, and you ask questions, there's a lot of people on there that it will automatically give you bad information on purpose. So, you know, be careful on where you go to get your information from. Hey, when you seek information, check it out. See if it's a credible source. Other information comes from self-- can't even say that right. Self-proclaimed gurus and experts. Some who've never even been in business. That's the amazing thing. It'll pay you big dividends to carefully consider the source of any and all information that you receive. You know, check it out on your own. Just don't blindly do it too often. Testimonials are used to relate the work done in a field or a project that beats absolutely no resemblance to what you're involved in. While, the principles are constant and specifics can and will always change. Here's what I mean: "A principle is timeless that never changes". For example: in advertising, a principle would be that you get more readership from an ad using a headline, a specific, on the other hand is the application of a principle to a unique situation. So, in our advertising example that we've used, how the headline is used, may vary from one type of business to another and some headlines. Like an autobotic shop for instance may run headline that relates to their business. A Printing Company will still-- while still using a headline, will want to tailor the headline to a need of the printing customer and prospects. The point is this: Make sure the advice you get, whether it is volunteer or sought out, comes from a credible and reliable source. And make sure that someone has specific knowledge of the business or at least they can relate to the specifics of your business. Test it and timeless principles that apply to all businesses. So, just be careful of who you listen to and the people they give you free advice is probably the most costly advice that you will ever get. So, next one, we're going to pay for it till tomorrow. Marketing mistake number 16. But, I just want to let you know that I have downloaded. It will be on the page-- show notes page. I promise you the workbook and the for this whole series. On day 5 but I've got 5 more quick ones that go through and that will be tomorrow and it will be the last part of the series. However, I get it. I have promised to I'm going to have the workbook on there so you can get a go to the shows page and get your workbook. I promised you on day 5 , I would give you access to the Report Keep form Crippling Your Business with These 20 Marketing Mistakes Down Load it right here There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
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Tue, 19 December 2017
Day four of our series on 20 marketing mistakes: "Keep from crippling your business with these marketing mistakes". today we are on mistake number eight: The failing to use testimonials. "How do you get testimonials?" Okay, so testimonials. And so many people say: "How do you get testimonials?", "How do I get testimonials", "Why do I get testimonials?" but more so-- "How do I get testimonials?" Well, I'm going to tell you the importance of them and we're going to show you how to get them in this series- In this episode today. And of course, remember that on week 5, which is next week, I'll have the whole report ready and upload it onto the show notes page so that you can get your copy of everything we talked about. And there's a ton of worksheets in there. Like here's a testimonial letter that we put together. So, testimonials is one of the most powerful tools that any business owner can use. But it's also one of the most underutilized. They're not limited to any one type of advertising or any promotional media. So, you can put them in your ads or in radio announcements, if you get newspaper layouts. Especially, if you're doing stuff on a large scale but you can put them in your postcards, on your Web site, in your-- in all of your marketing because they are your silent sales people and actually they're not really so silent because they're there. People really take notice that you have someone that gave you a, you know, a testimonial but it's an endorsement. Rather than a testimonial. But the principle is pretty much the same. It happens when another person makes a positive statement or recommendation about a certain product or service you did in marketing. Sometimes known as creating herd mentality. Robert Cialdini talks it about in principle of consciousness that is if other people who are like me say this product or service is good it improves the probability that it'll be good for me too. See, the psychology behind it. Celebrity endorsements are simply another form of testimonial and are very, very effective for certain well-known actors celebrities say something is good, then it must be good. Therefore, I should give it a try. So, most people know that in like commercials or endorsements of the actors reading prepared script. Written by, you know, professional cop writers saying you pay to do that but still in a certain amount of credibility when the actor says you know in sufficient numbers that you know this product is good. Well, your own clients become the best sources of your endorsements that you could possibly watch. Especially, if they're known to those you're marketing to or if something else is in common with them. People that live in the same town have similar businesses, belong to the same organization or association, same neighborhoods like in your postcard or your mailing say "hey we just did Bob Jones". I was very happy and he said to reach out to all of the people in this neighborhood to let them know that. So, you have to get his OK to do that. But you see where I'm going with that. And even in community, now in so many communities, they have Facebook groups and what you want to do is you want to get that customer to not only give you a review maybe, you know, google reviews page or local listings but it's more powerful if they can write you a testimonial and put it in your local you know Facebook community page because everyone in the community knows that you've been working there. That is an awesome. If you haven't thought about that, do it because that's where you're going to get a ton of work. Especially if you want to own a community. So, there's only three reasons people don't buy from you. They have no use for your product or service, they can't afford your product or service or you haven't developed a level of trust and believability with them in you to do business with you. So, there's so much you can do if a prospect can't use or pay for your service. There's nothing you can do about that. But there is a lot you can do to wipe away the underlying layers of skepticism and that's through personal testimonials. Because really, no one likes to be the first person to do something, no one likes to be the first person to try something, you know, because we feel like we're the guinea pig. So, you know and really testimonies are not hard to get. One of the most effective ways it is to send users of your products or service a questionnaire. And I've got an example in here in this in this workbook for you. And that's what I've always done as I've always sent you know a question here. You know, "Did we do the job that you thought we what you expected us to do?", "Did you. What were some of the things that you were afraid of beef when signing up?" Because that's really a big thing. "Did we do things to your satisfaction or beyond" And so, basically when you send them a customer survey --and I always do it by mail because it's more personal. And I know that they get it. So, what I would do is I would create the form I would send it to them in a self-stamped envelope that's going to increase your rate. And then a lot of times too is if you do an e-mail you want to e-mail them also it's up to you. Some people are lazy I would rather get the personal touch. But for some people, um, and I've done it this way too is I will write the review, based on what they said to me about how they liked their service, something special we did for them that they liked. And I will put it in an e-mail with a link to my google reviews page and say you know, "Thanks so much for doing business with us.", "We really appreciate you." And "Would you be so kind as to click this link and give us a Google Review?". And this is below being what I heard you say. Feel free to change it any way you want and makes it easy for them the easier that you can make it for them: by putting together the testimonial, by putting a self-addressed stamped envelope are going to increase your odds so much for getting that review. And so, the cool thing is, now when you get to testimony's back, and when you get to google reviews, you can just cut it and paste it onto a piece of paper and bring it with you when you're doing proposals. Say, "Here's what some people said about us"., "Here's some of what some other people said about us" and a lot of times now I'll take those and I'll stick three or four of them together in a section like if I'm doing painting I'll do, you know, like painting surveys that I've had, and we do some pressure cleaning --it will be some pressure clean surveys and how we did, and you know and so on. So, you see where I'm going with this, so and then I'll put three or four of them when I give them the proposal it's in there so that they know, "hey how are other people like me?" and they may know them specially if they're in that area. OK another cool way to get testimonials is you can call your customer and record it. Just let them know you're recording it and ask them, you know, about how you did, and stuff like that and then put that on your Web site or have a transcribed even. Which is kind of easy. And then you can put them wherever you want you put it in your your proposal package, you can put it on your Web site you, can do whatever you want with it. These are just different things that really you can do to exponentially grow your testimony base. OK,one more thing on testimonies. If you're in an interaction with them, don't, you know, you don't want a-- They did a great job. They were very good. Better than they expected. You want to play a little bit of detail in there like they saved me five 500 dollars. Not necessarily. But you see where I'm going with that. They did the extra things above and beyond whatever we expected them to do. Now that's an awesome testimony. You know I just had one. We just had this lady's house and I asked her for testimony because you just raped and not because you know we did a great job. Yes, but she was excited that it was her mom's house and her mom who had always throw people off the property because she thought they were there too long. She didn't realize that she thought they were being paid by the hour. We weren't getting paid by the hour. She totally gave her a contract price and we were going to stay there until we got it done and the lady was excited. And one day the daughter who is take care of the project said to me she's my mom really loves you She says you really love your job. And I go "Why did she say that?". "Because you're just taking so much time to be meticulous". And I said Isn't that kind of funny because she was throwing everybody else off the property because they were taking too long and we just loved that for some reason which I'll take it and she wrote an awesome review. Google reviews page. So, use testimonials. Get them and make them and make them part of your standard operating procedure. Because those reviews, those testimonials are like cash in the bank. Those are your sales people who are going out for you and bring giving you credibility to whatever you're doing whatever business you're in. OK, we're marking steak number nine: failing to establish and obtain referrals. Man, this is such a big one that most people just miss it. You know getting referrals from users of our services and our products is one of the quickest and most painless ways to get business. Now granted that it's not consistent but it's like I always call it gravy money. You know if you can get a bunch of them to come in on a regular basis you don't depend on it. But it is added growth to your revenue. So, but if you don't have a system and that's how everything grows and your business is through systems then you're just going to suck behind one. So, you know referrals are simply happy and satisfied customers telling others about that are a positive experience with you or giving permission to contact other people in their name which is kind of cool in a lot of times if I would have someone call and introduce me and then I'll contact them. So, it doesn't have to be hard. It's just a system. And if you don't have a system in place like I said before then you're really stuck in a Heinl. Because this is a revenue builder for your business and so many people are really missing it. So, there's a forceps system and it could be more --but we're going to cut down the forces-- earn, earn the right to referrals by providing exceptional service, not great service, not good service but exceptional service. You know, you, in order to have a raving fan you have to do things differently than everyone else. You have to go the extra mile and give the extra whatever it may be an extra tweak to what you're doing. I know one guy has a crew that does remodeling and handyman stuff. And what he does is he devotes the last half hour that day to doing things for the customer that just wasn't on the list. Man, we got an extra half hour again paid. Bob says that you know what is there that we can help you with to just get some a couple of little things out of the way. Now that is exceptional service and even. Here's another an exceptional thing that you can do is send him a gift thanking them for doing business with you. No one does that. Almost no one does that. Matter of fact the the percentages are so low we can basically say that no one does that. But I know your competition doesn't do that. So the next one is ask for the referral from your satisfied customer. Hey, let me just simply ask. You know, who might be candidates for your service. Now, I know that you might feel a little awkward about asking for a referral but you know what, you've done a great job. You should be happy with what you've done and you should be looking at it this way. I do a great job and anyone who use my service will be greatly benefited by what I do. So, why wouldn't I want others to lead me in the direction that they could help their friends? Also by the use of my service it's that simple. It's just really looking at it from a different point of view. You could send a campaign and a postcard campaign every couple of months of asking say hey do you know anybody that's looking for our you know for our services or type service whatever you're doing. So, reward is another one. Man, I'm telling you this is really, a kicker that no one had let me go. No one but the percentages are so small. That most people don't even think about this. Someone gives you a referral, you need say thank you it could be a real estate agent, could be a past customer or a client. It could be a friend. You just need to either call them and say thank you so much for for referring us to your friend because, listen, they're giving they're giving--they're telling their customer when they refer you that hey I trust Dave and he's going to do the best job he can for me. So that's a big step for them to even refer you but send them a gift too. Send them a thank you card. I know that one of the things that I do for fun when I get a referral from a non-customer, I'll just send them I thank you card. A handwritten thank you. "Thanks so much for trusting us with your client's best interest. I want you to thank you with this Starbucks card you get a cup of coffee on us and I'll even give them a lottery ticket and say: "Hey! We haven't got the job yet but hopefully you'll win some money out of this and maybe you can take us both out to dinner. Just have some fun with it. " Really. So there has to be rewards, can be discounts, or free merchandise. One of the things about your customers is, you know, for referrals sake you could give a discount to any new customers that they refer you. However, they will also get the same discount. See, I'm always thinking about the person who's referring me to. However, you want to do it. But just think about ways that you can be different than everyone else. That simple extra steps that makes you outstanding service that gives you outstanding service. So, really with everything reward is, it doesn't have to be grand or costly, it just needs to be sincere and timely. You know and show that you really do appreciate the confidence that they put in you to refer you and show to gift and name the person that you can contact. So, I always say "Thank you Bob for referring Joe. I really appreciate you trusting us with your friend and we promise to treat him as well as we did you." Something to that effect. So, number four part of this is next. You know, you've earned the right to ask for the referrals from your customers or clients then have asked them and follow up with a reward for their help. You're in the perfect position to ask them for more help. Ask them is help. But you know what, something we probably didn't even touch on and as far as the mindset goes it's that you've earned the right to do it ask them for a referral because you did give them, and they let you know how well she did. Remember you have to be X potentially great. You have to go above and beyond what everyone else is doing. And you know in this marketplace that's really not a whole lot. So, after all if you are in your client's shoes and you've gotten great service from someone you've done business with you'd like people to know and receive the same service once you of course you would especially if you've been thanked in some way and shown that you were helpful and appreciated. Listen competition is fierce in the marketplace today. You know that. And you have to get past the price. So, there's often a little difference between competing products services and prices but getting referrals from your clients can no longer be considered a luxury. A nice thing to do. It is a must to help you build your business. So, listen we did. I did get some more stuff on referrals go to episode 177. Stacy Brown Randol. She was awesome. First year business did a hundred and twelve referrals without even asking for them. And I actually just had a weapon or not too long with her and for another business I used. And so, she said we can put it up on the website so after the first of the year we'll get that up and ready. Okay now our marketing mistake number 10 not cross-selling or up swelling or having a back-end. So, this is so important. You know sometimes we get stuck and then we give them the proposal and we don't try to sell anything else or we don't notice anything else that needs to be done around the house and or we cross-sell or have other products or services that we can sell in conjunction with Tolar offering says. So, you know when we're marketing or doing promotion for our business it can be costly. For some businesses, the money it takes to get a prospect in the door to get you in the prospects door. and get them to respond to our ads sometimes is more than the total profit for the sale. Now, by design, lots of companies do that. I'm not going to recommend that. But you know if you have too much to think about the long-term benefit of them doing business with you which would cover lifetime value. And we're going to talk about that next. I think so. So, a lot of businesses look at spending money on marketing as a negative or a wash so they don't end Gresley engaging in marketing doesn't have to be a business costs blurrily an investment and anything that costs you for your business is really a bad way to look at it in a negative way to look at it as most other things that we do for our business. And I'm not going to say all but most are investments into the future of growth of our business. So, we have to look at what kind of return, are we really going to get on it. . So, there's four primary ways to build the business.
So, for now let's limit our discussion to item number two. How do you get customers to buy more? Well we've already established that the most cost-effective way to do business. And so, if you want your business to grow-- really grow -- and do and least painful way then with maximum results and minimum costs you need to establish a systematic way to get people to upgrade their purchase or to buy additional products. So, it's going in with one thing and upgrading to another not to switch bait and switch. But just progressive increase. So, people go through the variety of emotions prior to, during and after a purchase especially a large purchase. So, in a time leading up to the purchase they go through a phase of excitement. You've been through there the anticipation. What the service is going to are prof's going to do for them. And then sometimes they even go through periods of skepticism or doubt but that's if the person really wants are offering those feelings are pushed aside and excitement anticipation will take over. So, the only time most of time you're going --to get one were kind of a buyer's remorse here-- because when you force them into the sale but if you've done such a great job that they've sold them self then there's never going to be buyer's remorse. So, in feeling you know a lot of times that can be overcome when you talk about the benefits of using your products as a service. So, buy at the end of that sale, your customer is probably the happiest and the most pleased with you and your relationship than at any other time. See that's kind of weird because you would have thought it would have been after you did the services but they're excited. Now they've got you've. You're solving the problem and you're the man or the woman that's going to take care of that. So, they're so happy that they've said yes to their offer and they've even reached into the pockets of the person to open up their wallets check and give you some of their hard-earned money as a deposit. Or so depending on the size of the purchase. It could be a lot of their money. So, you've just south of a problem for him like I said. So, this is the ideal time when they are most pleased with you. And when you've come to the rescue for you to recommend other options or additional purchases. OK, so here's what it isn't and that's show someone to just purchase from you or they they made an agreement to pay for you buy your services or pay for your services order it however you want to say it. This is really the best time because to upgrade the service to sell them something else because they have already mentally in the buying mode. So, you can opt sell. So, if you're just painting walls you might suggest painting trim if you're doing pressure cleaning the driveway you might do pressure cleaning the house or the pool cage. You know simple add ons that because they've called you for one thing doesn't mean that they're not willing to do something else because they're in a buying mood. That's the cool thing. So, any upgrades or additional sales that you make now are just pure profit since there's no advertising costs there's no overhead expenses that were create use create sell. You're already there. There's no going back. You see where we're going with that. So, if it's really in their best interest to purchase from you then you have a moral obligation to see that they get the very best use of that product or service and that means you may have to make other products available for them to purchase. How cool is that? So next one is market number 11 and that is tomorrow too. Yes, tomorrow we're going to talk about mistake number 11 and a couple others but not calculating the lifetime profit value of your customer. Man, this is so, so missed by so many people because most people are transactional and which want to get you past that we want to get you into making a profit today tomorrow or the next day and forever with the same customers. So, come back tomorrow and will-- the next episode and we will start the day five of the series. There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Mon, 18 December 2017
"Keep from crippling your business with these 20 marketing mistakes "Mistake number four: Not taking massive action. An old Chinese proverb goes something like this--Confucius say: "Hungry man sitting with mouth open waiting for roast duck to fly in have a long wait". Hey this is Dave Negri with Contractor's Secret Weapon. We're still continue our series "Keep from crippling your business with these 20 marketing mistakes". Today we are on day three. So why am I doing these series on these marketing mistakes? I don't want you to make the same mistakes I did. These are painful mistakes that I've gone through in my past 26 27 years. And I want you to have a better start, a better life and a good finish -- a good ending to your business. Mistake number four: Not taking massive action. An old Chinese proverb goes something like this--Confucius say: "Hungry man sitting with mouth open waiting for roast duck to fly in have a long wait". So, it is with marketing. So many businesses have great ideas and plans, but they fail to take action. They're waiting for things to be just right before they do anything. To some extent, that's understandable. But you're not going to get the perfect marketing piece. You need to, like we said before, a test and measure but considering that most businesses-- especially small businesses-- are tied for money. They want to make sure that their advertising pieces are laid out just right. The message is clear and that they're getting the very best deal on the advertising rates. Or they're getting the biggest bang for their buck in the market conditions are favorable and make no mistakes. All of these things are important. They are very important but it's critical that we don't get paralyzed into not taking action because of them. So, let's take a look at Apple Computer for instance. Back when Apple was first getting off the ground, articles were written about them and how they were--they use the ready aim fire--well actually the ready fire aim approach--and that's is they get the product ready. It wasn't perfect. They fired they got it out into the marketplace. They aimed, listened to the customer feedback and made the modifications and got back out there again. This is no different from the way many small-- even mid-sized businesses run their marketing campaigns today. They get an ad a promotional letter or campaign ready. They sit back and analyze it for months and then they may or may not actually run it for whatever the reason it could be. No one's buying now it's the holidays. Well that's the misnomer. Some of my best contracts have been during the holidays. So, what holds people back? Why don't they take the chance? Why don't I take the chance when I was younger? Why don't you take the chance now? Why not get the ad out there and see what happens? That's what Apple Computer did. Who knows? Maybe the ad or the promotion will be successful, maybe it won't. But they will never know unless they tested to see it. If they continue to wait and wait and wait, Apple would not be in the position they are today. Because they acted upon everything that they did. So, I'm not advocating wisely spending money and blindly running ads promotions just to see if they'll work or not. You certainly must put a lot of thought into the market that you want to target. The message that you're going to send to them and the offer that you're going to make to them. This makes careful and calculated consideration. But any business--even your business, even my business--can learn exactly what Apple Computer found out--that the market will tell you if your product is right or wrong for them and whether or not your prices are too high. And they'll tell you exactly what you need to do to make it saleable to them. Not only that as a bonus so tell exactly how much to charge for. Isn't that amazing? So, how do they do that? You ask. It's simple. When you run an ad a promotion, if a lot of people respond to take you up on your offer, it's obviously work. If the response was too great, it means that your offer was way too good and your prices were probably too low. On the other hand, if you get no or very few responses, then something is wrong. Either your marketing went to the wrong target, the message you're sending it's not clear, and the offer that you have made isn't attractive enough for them to justify parting with their money. The price could be too high. But if you conceptualize the ad design it lay it out and spend months on and analyzing, you won't learn nothing. Except that your procrastination has cost you a lot of unnecessary time and a lot--a lot of missed income. Better to get the ad out in the marketplace and find out if it works or if it needs improvement. Don't second guess it. Let your market evaluate it for you and tell you what corrections that need to be made but do it carefully--testing as we discussed earlier. Once you find out what works and take massive action, roll your ad or a mailing can't pay out and let it bring you the profits you've worked so hard to earn. OK, number 5-- Marketing mistake number 5: Using institutional or image advertising. Okay, what is advertising? It's simply a process of letting others know about your product or service. Institutional or image advertising is a type of advertising that most companies--large and small--use most often. Not really good, not really bad. Well, this type of advertising can alert the market to the fact that a product exists. It does very little to create a desire in the minds of the buying public to own the product or at least inquire more information concerning the product or services. So, it's sort of like image advertising. Well, what is that? It's sort of like Coke--you know Coke is they show you the bottle. People want it you think they're going to drink it but they spend billions of dollars in marketing over the years. So, a better, more effective cost-efficient form of advertising is called "Direct response advertising" and we talk a lot about this a lot. The idea behind this type of marketing and promotion is to get the reader or the viewer looking at your ad to take some specific action. Either they make a call, they pay a visit to the website, or where the product or service can be seen or purchased. And perhaps, I'll in a reply. So, you want to get them to react to your marketing. But when you consider the fact that your client or prospect couldn't care less about your company, or the fact that you want to sell them something, that adds up to a big waste of time. Makes waste of your money, and money that can be utilized to other places. It's true that institutional or image advertising can be build brand awareness and that's okay for large corporations who have millions and millions of dollars to spend but you don't have that. Most small or medium sized businesses simply can't afford to spend advertising that way. You need instant results or as close to it as possible. So, most institutional advertising is not customer focused and instead, it promotes how great the company are paying for the ad is. And since there's no call to action, at best the results of that kind of advertising produces--are bad or deferred results. For the most part, people don't care how great your company is and we've said this over and over and over again. They really care more about what particular product or service that she can do for them. Remember the old WIIFM? What's in It For Me? Well, that's all about direct marketing--direct response marketing. You see, customers have their own wants and needs that want to be satisfied. They will only buy what you're offering if you can show them how your product or your service satisfies those wants and needs. That's where direct response advertising and marketing comes in. So--the type of advertising this type of advertising actually shows the viewer, the reader -- the advantages of your product, the advantage of your service. When it can provide for them let them know exactly what step they must take it to either get the product or service or to get more information about it. So, it's designed to present enough information, to give a compelling immediate reason for the viewer of the ad to take a specific action. So, to tend--that to send a coupon: pick up the phone and call an order for more information or to stop by your place of business. Well, for most of us are not going to stop by our place unless you've got a showroom. But most contractors don't, but some do. So, direct response marketing will bring in more response, more inquires, more dollars than any other type of advertising or marketing and is trackable--it is measurable. You know exactly where your money's going and if it works or not. That is you'll be able to quantify exactly how many dollars you pay for marketing efforts, how much does it cost for lead, how much is the cost for sale. You know, this is where your results come from. So, direct response advertising is simply the most effective type of marketing for most businesses and effectively use can bring in immediate profits to your bottom line. It isn't that what we're all looking for? So, moving right along. Marketing Mistake Number 6: Not identifying your ideal or your target market. And if you know me, I'm really--really hot about target market and I don't waste your time or your money by going elsewhere. Because those are the people who are spending money with you. So, the question is: "Who do you market to?" Should you be marketing to the same people? Are all the people the same types of people? If so, was it a plan to strategy? If they're not the same, then why aren't they the same? See, your target needs to be really well-defined and you can go back to some of the other podcasts we had. Actually, a whole series on just the target market can go back to that and you'll find out more about target market. So, you see you, can have the very best product or best service on the planet. You can have the most attractive offer to the lowest price, lots of bonus, personal attention and the best service available. But, if you offer the wrong package to the wrong market, guess what? That marketing is going to fail. On the other hand, what if your package or your total offer isn't that good? Let's say it's just average. Let's also assume that your prices are not the lowest but they're at least in the ballpark. You've really got nothing special that the rest of your competition can't offer. But if you have a great list to market to--a well-qualified, highly motivated prospects with the authority and the ability to buy, and many case home owners, and who's-- who's your target on the homeowners. Most of the time it's the women. Now with that kind of market you just about can't lose. Target your marketing efforts to the right people can make or break the entire advertising or the marketing campaign. And if you're a small businessman, you can't afford to have that happen too many times because it will drive you right out of business. One of the best ways to make sure that your marketing is to the right group is to go back over your records and listen. Create that list of your best customers, your best past clients. You know the people in that group and these are the ones or the right people to market to because they've purchased from you before. You want to know who their neighbors are, who their friends are, the types of circles they are in--even in the cool thing, even if they have in a community group-- let's have them in a subdivision-- there are some awesome strategies for that, too. If everyone who inquiries about your products or services or makes a purchase from, you should go on that list. You should capture at least--the very least--their name, their address or phone number, their date of purchase, what they bought, how much they spent. If they're using the Internet, you should also try to capture their email. And there's other ways to capture their email if they become your customer, you just tell them you're going to have to email him the proposal so you always have their email. So, the cool thing about all this information-- I'm sure you've heard it before from many other people in different industries-- there's money in the list. So, you can run promotions, so you can keep in touch with them on a regular basis like with a newsletter or something like that. Remember, all things being equal. People would rather do business with people or businesses they know, they like and they trust. So, another thing you can do is send out a customer questionnaire --when I think we're going to put that in this program for you later on and when we give you the free report when it becomes available. Because-- now, here's the cool thing. Send it to him by mail with a self-addressed stamped envelope. You'll get more that way and then there's other email techniques that you can use a few other emails and they have a Gmail then you can send them a link to your, you know, Google pages refuse and stuff like that. But, the question here is great to send in the mail because it just lets you know the service you did, what they expected. And now, it becomes a testimonial letter for you--that you can keep in your packet and send it out with your proposals. So, you know this is-- this is pretty cool and you can--and there's tons of things you can do with it. So, really the cool thing about having your list and marketing to your list on a regular basis is that you have no competition by advertising and promoting to your own customer list by direct mail. No one knows what you're doing but the recipients. Your competition doesn't know. It's sort of like stealth marketing at its best and that makes you more professional and it makes you go to guy because you are continually keeping in touch with them. Yes, it's more work but the rewards are well worth the work. Especially, if you if you put it into an automated-- automated process. Marketing mistake number 7. Not using headlines. Think about how you read the daily newspaper or how you do news feed on the internet. If you're like most people, you read it by using a headline search, you scan, you pursue and you go through what you're looking at and reading only the headlines. And if one happens to catch your interest, you may read the accompanying article. So, what is that doing? The sole purpose of a headline is to catch the reader's interests and create a desire for them to read for. That's why they call headlines and that's why they're printed in large bold type--So they grab your attention. So, the best place to see good headlines is in a newspaper or like to inquire. And one of those papers they have some headlines because they write those headlines so they'll grab your attention so you read the article. The worst place? -- a lot of marketing material: yellow pages. I mean look some of the full-page ads under the heading of insurance in the Yellow Pages. Tell you what not to do. See if any of these headlines compel you to read further or want to find out more. Here's a few headlines that I found in the insurers section and I'm just going to use the old pages for an example here because it's the easiest automobile insurance. Really, I'm in the automobile section of the book. I would hope you sold auto insurance. "Western Pacific Agency". So, who cares? What benefits that to me? Sorry but the name of your company doesn't excite me or make me want to read further. So, your headline it's not your company business. Better things to do than shop for insurance? Well, answer: Of course, I do. And that's why I've got better things to do than answer that dumb question or read your insulting ad any further. "Insurance shop”: What's the benefit to me? -- Insurance, Computer codes, so what? Any one of the number of companies can do the same thing. Why should I call or read any further? See, none of these are great headlines. They don't compel me to go any further, they don't compel me to check out the service any farther. And, you know, so this sort of sucks. So, the example isn't only limited to insurance companies either.
Look in your category of your business in all the marketing piece. Go to the head, go to the yellow pages and look under the headlines. See if they don't make the same mistakes. Go into, you know, pull up painting and Google and see what it says. Painting company: "We do painting", "We've been in business for 25 years". Who cares? But see, that's the problem. You want people to care. You want people to read further. So, you need to really, (be) compelling, headlines that are closed with catchy headlines like: "Teeth lead to man in money con", "Boy, 10, recovering from dog attack", "Zerok cuts 5000 local jobs". So, these are attention grabbing headlines that are going to make you get your attention day in rush to weigh. Interrupt to whether you're thinking and you want to actually figure out why. Matter of fact, there was a really good one the other day that I found on linked in post. Believe it or not. So, here's the news feed isn't linked to any other day I got an e-mail that says: "These jobs will go away by 2030". Heck yeah! I'm going to go see with it is. "Navy wants smaller warships that pack a bigger punch". So, here's another one that's pretty cool: "10 signs they're going to hire you and treat you like dirt". Are you going to read that article? Well, you're going to certainly think about it. So, here's how, so you see where I'm going to is you got to create an interest to grab their attention so their eyeballs are peeled. So, here's one for maybe just your business. You redo it the way you want. "Local home owners save thousands using contractors proprietary services". I mean you can go wherever you want with that one. So, here's another example. We're going to use a computer company: "East Valley computers" --or here's their ad: "How to sit at home and make twelve hundred hours a week with your computer even if you don't know how to use it."-- Would you read that article? Absolutely. So, I want to get your creative juices flowing. Don't think about being a plain Jane or a plain Bob. Whatever. And I think about what can I do, what can I use headlines for, and how am I going to get them so that they'd grab-- actually grab m potential client’s eyeballs? That's really Chuah and you know 500 dollars off it's not going to do it because everyone offers 500 dollars. So, let's continue-- just a hair more. Hey, we're getting to the end of our time. I just want to thank you for being here. But tomorrow is: Number eight: Failing to use testimonials. How do we get testimonials? So, tomorrow we'll let you know. Hey, have a great day and we will catch up on the backside tomorrow. Be profitable. Have fun. And enjoy your business and your profits. There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Fri, 15 December 2017
We're on day two of keeping from crippling your business with these 20 marketing mistakes. So, we're on day two. mistake number two is failure to monitor your results. Don't track. In other words, your tracking sucks. Results -- That's all that counts in business-- is results. You want to track results. We're going to have day three, four and five but today marketing mistake number two. Before I get to that, remember if you stick around 'til day 5, the end of day five we'll have the 60-page free report for you. It's not just report, it's a workbook to help you get through everything that we talked about this week in this series, to help you make your business better so that you can have the lifestyle that you have been working for to make it easier. You want to automate it and grow it. So, let's just make that happen. So today marketing mistake number two is failure to monitor your results. Don't track. In other words, your tracking sucks. Results -- That's all that counts in business-- is results. You want to track the results. Any promotion worth putting your time into -- your money, your effort behind -- is worth measuring how well it performs. That's tracking. Only by knowing what kinds of results a certain marketing effort produces can you determine whether or not to run it again. You don't want to throw good money after bad or what you may need to do to change or tweak in order to make it more creative. So, in order to make it more creative, you have to know how it works. Remember, I think it was a couple episodes back. The numbers will set you free. This is part of those numbers is tracking. So, it's absolutely amazing how many business owners don't understand this simple concept. "Well, it takes too much time. I don't know to do it." But you'll know how to go out of business when everything comes crashing down though what the Yellow Page advertising salesperson sell them an ad in their local phonebook or better yet they'll have some coarse Yellow Pages is really coming back. Some people are using great abundance. So, don't laugh when I said Yellow Pages but in other ways some social media expert will tell you that you need to spend thousands of dollars on Facebook ads. Why? You need to track them to find out why and how they work. They're in the business of selling advertising. You're in the business of selling your business. Your goods and your services. That's what we're trying to do is teach you some of the things about marketing so that you can effectively learn how to not necessarily do it yourself but know the background and the core differences and what it takes to do it. But we're going back into I'm getting away from things. Whether or not, you want to know whether or not, a prospect call or customers obtain is a result of a particular marketing had. The ad has no accountability and or measurability. So next year, at the same ad gets run, the same results are had and the business owners continued complaining about how poor business is. But you're not going back to find out why how the reasons why business is so bad. And it's saying the same thing happens when we do any magazine ad. Welcome the magazine ad or direct mail campaign. I know some guys are doing Val pack and successfully and other. There's all kinds of types of marketing. The key is that an astute business person, you should never ever, even consider, running an ad or executing a mailing campaign or promotion without having some type of response mechanism to measure the results. My philosophy is I can't track it. I don't do it. It's as simple as that. You wouldn't think of ordering and paying for product--any kind of product--and then not checking to see if it was received. Well, that's the same thing when you're marketing. You're ordering a product, you're sending it out but you're not seeing how well it was received. So that's what the tracking is all about. Many business owners in the whole run ads and their papers, magazines, money mailers, whatever the case may be, sent out a mailing and never bother to see what kind of results the ad produced. I know. I know it's crazy but it happens every day and millions of dollars are wasted because of it. And maybe you've done it. In the beginning I did it. I don't do it anymore. I said if I can't track and they can't get down, I refuse to do it. Some people even go as far to say "Well, my advertising isn't to bring in customers right away." Well that's kind of stupid. I'm sorry to say that. Its purpose to keep my name in front of our prospects, trade top of mind awareness, so that when they're ready, they'll remember me. You are not Coca-Cola. You are not Wal-Mart. You don't have billions of dollars to spend and throwing your name out into the marketplace. You want trackable results today. As soon as it goes out. Top of the mine awareness is important. But you know what, you're top of mind awareness--I'm going to be honest with you--Needs to be to your paying customers so they remember who you are on a consistent basis so that they don't go to your competition because they forgot who you are. There's no question that you need to have top of mind awareness but you can't afford to operate your business on deferred results. And that's what that is. So, you want top of mind awareness? Let's go back to your current customers or even people you've given a proposal to. Keep them top of mind. Keep them in your funnel. Maybe we'll do business with you in the future. Each one of your ads and mailings got to have to have a definite targeted purpose. And each ad must be measured to see that it is in fact does accomplish that purpose. And we'll talk more about that and later section. But for now, here's the simple forced system you can go and set up to measure the results of each and every advertising promotion campaign you run from now on. Put together an advertising promotion results analysis book. Simple three pages bind you can work well for this or just to make up a spreadsheet but put it into a binder. On one side of the binder, insert a few clear plastic page redactors. Print up some copies advertising and promotion result analysis forms found on the page of the report that we're going to give to you in episode number five. But make up your own right now and every time you run an ad or promotion, print a copy of the ad or the promotion and put it in and tape it to the page facing in the opposite direction analysis form--how many calls did you get? What kind of response? What the sales were for that particular ad?" Then in one Binder, place all your ads and sales letters. That is the as polls the best. And another binder place ads and letters that goes to marginal results or at least broke even. And then a third binder put all the losers. These are ads and letters that absolutely bombed. They sucked. They didn't get no responses. Then when you get ready to do another promotion or mailing you know which ads or letters that you can depend on or at least which ones you can model the next promotion after. Now, regarding the third binder. Well stay away from the ads and then Binder. Those ads have already proven to you that they you won't want to run them again. So, stay away from. But in the second binder--the one that has a marginal break even adds or letters--That's the one that you may want to experiment with. Look over the ads and see what may have gone wrong. It could be spelling just the way words are worded in a particular order. Just one little tweak could make a big monumental difference just because they as a nose didn't make a big profit or get the big response that you would have liked. Of course, and hardly ever is there anything to get the response that you would like. You have to continue to tweak and make better because it's a continual process. Once you get it to where it's pulling then you'll leave it then you may want to test another section or another targeted area. But the sometimes a little tweaking like that and adjusting can turn a mediocre ad into the real result producer. So, by doing this, I hope you see the advantage of doing this by having a copy of the ad or the promotion or the results they produce in a central place. It makes developing your next promotion so much easier. No more guessing, no wondering, what has to be done but keep track. Tracking is everything. Not only will you save time but it will be a proven winner. And make life so much easier. There's a 2 percent response 3 percent response. The difference will make all the difference in profits to you running the ad and promotion costs the same while it pulls 2 percent or 3 percent. But the actual one percent is a 50 percent increase response rate. Let me say that again the difference between a two percent response rate and a 3 percent response rate is a 50 percent increase in response rate. Don't think of it's just a 1 percent is a 50 percent increase and that 50 percent increase can mean tons of profit. A marketing mistake number three, not testing your marketing strategies. One of the worst things that we as business owners can do is a form of our products or our services or even our marketing strategy. Oftentimes we spend so much time developing the ideal program are the ideal strategy that we get so close to it that our objectivity goes right out the window. It's important not to get blinded by how well we think our marketing efforts will pay off. Even with all the necessary research in place nothing is certain. The real key is how the market responds to our efforts and our offers. So, before you invest at any significant amount of time, money or effort in any marketing or promotional effort. It's smart and wise to test the effectiveness of your campaign that way if it doesn't work the way you thought it would or should have said necessarily or unnecessarily resources. Here's a couple of examples to illustrate that point. Let's say that you want to do a direct mail campaign to 20000 homes in a certain radius around your business so you read a list of home owners. You print up all the pieces, have someone stuffed the envelopes, fix the postage, haul them down to the post office. Then you sit back and wait for the calls and orders come in. Same thing with eddm. You're going to go through the same process. It's just not going to be as labor intensive but after a couple of weeks you look at the results and you find that you have only received 19 responses and you quickly take out the calculator you figure out how figures that you just pulled whopping point 0 0 0 9 5 percent. At that point I would be angry and frustrated. But it doesn't sound like a good return on your investment does it. Well it's not but sadly that's the way that most businesses operate. But now let's suppose instead of all those 20000 pieces being identical you melt at the same time you decide only to mail 5000 the first time and let's say you came up with five different approaches or five different ideas and you can even bring it down to hundreds. You know you want to do deal 500. But I've found that when you are measuring and testing the it's nice around a thousand. So if you do you know 200 200 200 and 200 you will get your results. But that's just what I found. You might be able to do better with less. I don't know. So now you go to the printer you have let's say you're going to do the 5000. Let's see. You go the printer and you have 1000 of each idea printed and then you mail them and after a couple of weeks by monitoring the results you noticed that idea number three had the best response. You had 12 orders. So, it's not--so not a great response--but far better, then the other's letters combined and you have not, only not spent a ton of money on your marketing campaign but you haven't tipped your hand to the other people that wanted to send out with an ad it doesn't work. So, now let's go back to the drawing board and find tune the letter that pulled the best response and make the headline more attention grabbing the benefit, the reader and gain more appealing and the offer more attractive then sent it to another thousand names. Ah, this time you get the letter. The post 47 responses or the postcard that's four-point seven percent response. Not bad in anybody's book. But you've only used six thousand of your original 20000 names you have 14000 left. Now the interesting thing--and we're probably going to is at a later time. But if you send out a three-step letter, it'll increase your odds. It'll increase your percentage of your response rate. But let's go back to staying on task here you still have 14000 left. Now you have a control letter by tweaking the letter again and you may find that it pulls even better. If it does, then this letter or postcard or marketing piece becomes what we call the control. Just because you got 20000 names doesn't mean you have to mail the same piece to all of them at the same time. That's what most businesses do. And that's why so many of them have given up on direct mail because they haven't dissected it. They haven't taken a look at it. They haven't played with it to get the responses they want. So, once you get a letter that's pulling well, keep mailing it. In short run, always trying to be the control letter. So, don't slam bang it. But do it in control runs. Do you see what has just happened? -- By monitoring the results, by testing your mailing, you were able to come to a complete flop of promotion into a huge, huge success. You're testing is never complete. Just because you run a couple of different tests doesn't mean you stop testing. Should always be testing something different to see if you can be the control. So, I know right now a lot of you are saying "Man! That's a lot of stick in work that I have to do." Well, you know it's work is going to bring business. And if you don't, it'll put you out of business. I know it's pain, but we've got to keep on things too. We've got to create a system so the business the system systems run our business. That's really what it's all about. You want the lifestyle that you were dreamed about when you created your business and you haven't gotten there yet. These systems will help you get there faster, more productively and more in a straight line than it will if you just throw mud up against the wall and that's what most people do with their marketing is throw mud up against the wall. That's without testing and measuring. So, like you said your testing is never complete. For instance, suppose you're doing a direct mail piece of residents and you want to know whether you should use an envelope with teaser or a plain white envelope. The answer can be found by testing. And here's one way you might do it splits your audience into two--group A and group B that can be arranged by zip codes. Group A will be consisting of an address and services group who will have addresses in different steps group A will have teased or copy on the envelope and group B will have in a plain white plain white envelope. So just for the fun of it to let you know I've used paper bags. I just want to get it open so it works. You just have to keep testing and see what works. It's important if the content in the envelopes be exactly the same because if the test is going to be accurately measured you can only have one verbal at a time. And in this case, it's the different envelopes. Now when your responses or orders come in you simply keep track of the zip codes that they came from so you'll know very quickly which envelope pose the best. This is assuming of course the various zip codes are consistent with similar demographics--similar demographics the same type of people. Once you've determined which delivery system is best you can go on and test other components of your mouth. Some things that are worthy of testing-- just a couple of things-- Headlines, sub headline, super heads or press headlines bold body capping bullet points or statements the offer of the price guarantee a return policy whether or not you use graphics which graphics pull best drawings. The list goes on. Pictures of people I knew one guy that used pretty people in all this marketing and he was a window cleaner and got excellent results. If your marketing can't be segregated by zip codes you can use specially coded coupons or response card. Use different codes for different variables for testing. You might even use different phone numbers and we've talked about that in other podcast some businesses have responded. Ask for a specific person or department. So, for instance you asked for Susan, you'll know that they're responding to one particular offer. If they ask for Heather, they are inquiring about the same offer but with a different variable being tested. So, just keep testing when the phone is answered in the car d says ask for Susan. Please say "I'm sorry, Susan it's not available right now. But, can I help you?" So, you told the truth she isn't available and if you are able to keep them, what what's more you've identified which offer is calling and I don't what piece of marketing that you're responding to. Testing is everything. These are just simple strategies here. What you do ever-- Or whatever you do -- don't fall in love with your project. You need to be objective. Don't spend too much time trying to analyze and figure out why a particular thing works or why another doesn't, simply doesn't matter why. What matters is what works. A small test can run into the marketplace and let your customers tell you what works and what doesn't. So again, don't make the mistakes. Don't fall in love with it. Just test it and measure it. And then you want to follow. Tomorrow we're going to go into number four. Not taking massive action. So, and 5 and 6 if we've got time. Remember, on day 5 stick around we're going to have the hole. Actually, the whole workbook and free report for you guys keep keeping from crippling your business with these marketing mistakes as a download on day 5. So, you'll get this whole thing. You can walk through it. You can take notes you can scribble on it. So, it will help you grow your business much farther. There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Thu, 14 December 2017
Keep for crippling your business with these marketing mistakes, There's about 20 marketing mistakes that many of us have gone through in the past maybe some of you are doing them right now Dave Negri here with Contract Secret Weapon. Thanks so much for being with us today. I'm excited to start a new series that we're going to be going through over the next five days. And I'm in the process right now of writing the report and it's looking like it's almost finished at about 60 or so pages of this report are going to be doing this podcast on over the next five days or so. Oh, the title keep from crippling your business with these marketing mistakes. That's right. There's about 20 marketing mistakes that many of us have gone through in the past maybe some of you are doing them right now and we want to give them to you as a gift, but they won't be available to episode number five. So, stick around episode number five series and we'll have this 60-page report ready for you in the show notes page so that you can take advantage that goes for the workbook and revisit the podcasts if you want or just go through the show notes. An old sales trainer Reed Motley said nothing happens until something is sold. And of course, he was right selling or the process of getting goods and services into the hands of consumers and having them exchanged money for those goods and services. Our whole economy is really built on and the mere selling of a product or service someone does what is suggests that a job has been created in order to make manufacture or produce that thing that was sold and in order for that item to be purchased. Another job. Produced and sold product are offered a service of some type had to be in existence in order for the buyer to have the money to exchange for that item. Well it's that process that process what we call marketing is the bringing together of potential customers or we can call them prospects and certain products or services. So that a person seeking agreement can be reached. Now that purchasing agreement is a sale so just not just regular marketing, but effective marketing is critical to the success of a business. Of course, any business and in fact your business and mine with ineffective marketing our prospects may never find out about the product or service that you have to offer and that they may need. They may want or that they could even benefit from and consequentially a sale has never been made. That really sucks when you don't make a sale because no one knows who you are. So, the statistics tell us and you've heard it over and over again 80 percent of small malt businesses will go out of business in the first year that are in business and those that remain 80 percent of those will not be in business five years from today so make no mistake These are alarming statistics. Yet even with those incredible numbers people still. Take their dreams into the marketplace with little or no planning. That really is where we get hurt and with little or no regard to the harsh harshness and cruelty of what the market place can bring without proper planning. So, it's all about planning. Common sense coupled with resistance for others have done in the past should tell us that if a business is going to expect to succeed in today's competitive market then that business is going to have to do a number of things right or at least better or perhaps differently than most other businesses that have gone on before. You need to have your head above the crowd waving your hands. However, that may be so it takes more than low prices. We've said this over and over again for business to remain competitive in today's market because even the person with the lowest price gets beat by someone who is even lower. I don't know how they do it but that really sucks, and it makes no sense at all. So no longer is a possible for a business to maintain their competitive advantage for an extended amount of time because of the products or services they offer or the prices they charge. The availability and affordability for many businesses to take advantage of cutting and take cutting edge technology. Low Price skilled labor and more efficient delivery and distribution systems makes it possible for increasing number of businesses to enter and compete in the market place. This just wasn't that way just a few years ago. So even if a business can offer a unique product or a unique service or perhaps even lower prices on similar products or services that are currently being offered it won't be long until competition finds a way to duplicate that or at least pretty closely match that business's performance. And that puts an end to the competitive advantage of the original business help. So if a business can't depend on its products its services or prices for their competitive advantage if they expect to survive and thrive that business is going to have to perform acts potentially in a number of critical areas. Marketing is a major key to success in business. Unfortunately, most people take their dreams harder and life savings into the marketplace in the form of a small business are not even aware of some of the most important factors that contribute to and can even sure their success. If you're like me when you first went into business, you just got an idea. I can do it. I've done it before. I'm going to go do it for myself I'm going to make more money and boom go do it. But luckily, I learned along the way before I went out of business. So contrary to public belief and much misconception designing creating and building and growing successful and proper enterprise that commands a dominating position in the marketplace doesn't automatically require hard work. Frustration and enormous costs there's no question and you probably won't get much debate that there more competition is stiffer competition than ever before in nearly every industry and profession. I see more and more people in the line of work that I'm in new trucks better looking trucks new driving around on a road that I'm sure you see the same thing. But there's also been even though there's more competition and it's more demanding. There are more opportunities especially for business businesses whose owners and interests understand a few basic fundamental concepts. You can get the edge. It really doesn't matter if you head up the largest corporation in the country or if you run a weren't one person home based business. Or contracting company or window cleaning company is immaterial. There are just a handful of things you need to know to gain a competitive advantage in your marketplace. And mastering just three of the most important of these things will enable you to write your own ticket to success. So, you and I both know that this year in this country is Grace and most prosperous time the world world's ever known a huge number of businesses and even large and well-established businesses are closed their stores never do business or provide the products or services to their customers. Again, there are so many businesses billion-dollar businesses that have gone out of business overnight. Others say it's because of poor business management practices. Another there's another school that teaches that some businesses are started by the wrong people that certain people lack entrepreneurial skills and it would be better off working in their respective businesses as technicians or employees rather than trying to run a business. That's funny but when you get right down to it for a business to even be a business in the first place that business has to have customers some want to exchange for dollars for the products and services that the business sells. You can have all the funding in the world you can have great management skills you can have a tremendous entrepreneurial mindset but unless and until you have someone new purchase what you have to sell in the form of products and services in sufficient numbers you'll never have much of a successful business enterprise and you only generate an average income at best. So here's a fact worth considering. So most businesses fail because they don't have enough customers buying from them on a regular basis. Most businesses don't attract a sufficient number of new customers or they let their existing or current customers slip away. That's a no,no. In most cases it isn't always because of the owners, managers or operators of those businesses didn't try. Quite often it's a result of not understanding and implementing effective customer getting and customer keeping strategies. Let me repeat that quite often it's a result of not understanding and implementing effective customer getting and customer keeping strategy. The bottom line is if you really want your business to be successful you have to make getting and keeping customers your number one priority. Let me put it another way. When was the last time you heard a company going out of business because they had too many happy satisfied customers buying from them? My guess is never. On the other hand, you can probably name quite a few businesses that are no longer around because they didn't have enough people buying from them coming back for more. And referring others to them. And that's where marketing comes in. But others know about what you have in such a way that they are compelled nearly force to find out more and then ultimately to buy the products and services you offer from you not your competitors. Most businesses know, not most every business makes mistakes with their marketing efforts some mistakes are worse than others. Some can even be deadly and if done often enough or severely enough can put the very business out of business. But so much for other businesses. What about you. What about your business what about your enterprise. How are you doing. What mistakes are you making that could be holding you back from making the income and enjoying the lifestyle you've always dreamed about. Matter of fact that's probably the reason you went into business. So, we're going to take a look at these 20 critical mistakes most businesses make. And as you go through them think about your business and see how you're going see how you're doing and each one of these areas remember marketing or the ability to get your message to others about the goods and services you offer in such a manner that it can Pelz them neutrally forces them to do business with you in one of the most fundamental yet misunderstood areas in business today. Properly you'd utilize effective marketing can skyrocket the business to new and dreamed of heights not understood or utilized. The business can sink like a lead weight if you can get control of your business and avoid mistakes these costly mistakes you can expect. Outstanding results if you can get a handle on just a couple of them. You will still get much better results from your business than you're getting now but if you fall short on any of the items that we're going to talk about and your competition masters them watch out the lead you into dust and you can afford to have them do that. You need to be number one in your marketplace. OK. Let's go. Mistake number one marketing mistake number one failure to let your prospects and customers know the unique benefits they get from doing business with you and not your competitor. This question that goes through each of your prospects mind before they choose you to do business with you and through each of your customers mind before they return to buy from you again. And it's a question you must take time to form an answer to. Without such an answer you become like every other business who sells the same product or service that commodity it doesn't matter what product or service is being offered your customers can go nearly anywhere and find the exact same or very similar products or services offered for the same price perhaps even less money than what you charge. Okay think about yourself for a minute. Why do you shop at the same stores or eat at same restaurants over and over again? Most likely just because they offer you something you can't get from their competitors. Maybe they're closer to where you live or work or maybe you like the way a particular restaurant prepares a certain meal. Perhaps it's the environment or the people who work there or maybe you just feel comfortable almost like you're at home while you're in their place of business. It may not be one single thing that influences you but rather a combination of several factors. Nevertheless, the businesses you continue to frequent give you something special something unique something you just can't get anywhere else. It's that uniqueness that keeps you coming back. Over and over again and most likely has nothing to do with the price if you expect people to do business with you rather than your competition. It's imperative that you have something to offer your competition doesn't have preferably something your competitors can't offer something that sets you and the products or services you offer. From everyone else in your type of business that's what's known as your unique competitive advantage. Or you ca you have heard the concept refer to the USP unique selling proposition U.S.A. Unique Selling advantage to PTF personal differentiating factor unique personal appeal that keeps going on and on for just descript. In any case the name or what you call it is not important no matter what you choose to define your unique factor is the most critical, yet most often overlooked marketing tools in business today without a clearly defined factor that difference you and sets you apart from a warehouse who offers the same or similar products or products prospects will encounter. There will be no reason for others to do business with you. Rather than your competition why on the other hand a well thought out carefully identified U.S.A. which we said was unique competitive advantage doesn't have to be difficult. It's simply a matter of identifying what you have to offer to your clients your customers and your prospects beyond what the products or services you can provide. Let's say you're involved with a product or service that is so similar to others in the marketplace that there's no significant difference between them. You're a window washer painting contractor pressure washer in that case here U.S.A. must be something you or your firm or business can offer. Exclusive of the features or benefits of the products or services you sell even if even if the advantage you offer has to do with quality service dependability convenience professionalism cetera just to say those facts are not enough. You must find ways to quantify or identify specifically how those items benefit are provided Fannings is to the end user. When you use phrases like top quality the best most reliable service is dependability delivery. We offer top of the line products the best service and the lowest prices. They ring hollow in the ears of your prospects and clients. They've heard them over and over and over again and they are vauge. If they're vague they are meaningless. Not only can most of your competitors say the same things they do say them instead you want to be very ,very clear about how the advantages you offer will benefit your customer. Tell them exactly what they can expect from you. It may be that you only offer your customers clients and prospects the highest quality. The top headline products. If so great but tell them in a very specific definable quantifying terms so that they understand exactly what the highest quality the top of the line means for them and how they will benefit. Maybe you have the lowest price in the industry or your market area if so that's good but how much lower are you. How much can your prospects of customers save by buying from you. Perhaps the support you offer them in terms of education or service or marketing assistance is superior to that offered by your competitors. Maybe you go a step further than your competitors in your services. Let them know. Here's a really cool example. That was used for years and years and years go by. Schlitz brewery,they wanted to become they were number four in the marketplace and they wanted to become number one. They really didn't know how to do it. And so, what happened was they brought in. I can't remember who the copywriter was they brought him in and they wanted him to go through their plan put a marketing campaign and when he went through the operation they went through where they were they were I think a fresh body of water all the water was filtered five or six times it came in all the bottles were made and then they were steam clean and pasteurize whatever the case may be and it went through a long list of what they actually did to get that beer out and McCaskill and this is pretty awesome. This is really amazing. And the owner goes everyone does this. He says Yes everyone does this but no one knows that you do this. You have to tell your potential customers exactly the step by step process and what they did that and it was a short matter of time that Schlitz became number one in the marketplace and held them for like four or five years. Unbelievable because they took the simple things and they let their customers know what they did. Yes every painter basically does the same thing every window cleaner does the same thing. But if use pacifically line it out item by item every carpet cleaner does specifically. Probably the same thing. But if you let them know Step 1 remove all your furniture. A lot of whatever the case maybe you give it to them so that it looks like that you are very meticulous and tedious and it's a benefit that they're not taking from somebody else. You need to be the number one person in your marketplace. So you know it could even be course better trained people. You could have certified people Sales people or sales advisors you know great things to offer but in themselves they don't say much to use these features. Like I said to their fullest advantage you must quantify them burning them out lay them out so that it yes, it's a pain in the neck for you. But to the customer they think they're getting something more than they're getting from someone else it becomes a benefit. We try to shortcut to many things spelled exactly clearly and specifically what advantage and benefits your customers will gain. Whatever you choose to make your U.S.A. remember it must be perceived as desirable to your prospects and customers in other words they have to consider it to be of value to them. So you can make your proposition that's something exclusive to you and your business operations the most. A more exclusive or proprietary you can make it less competitive competition you'll have even by changing the name of a process that you do to make it your own process instead of industry standards. You can do that. There's something then. Oh whatever it is becomes your unique competitive advantage. U.S.A.. That's the thing. The reason the advantage that will make not only worthwhile but beneficial and advantageous and advantageous even desirable for others to do business with you. Now here's what you can do. Make a list take out a sheet of paper write it down every fantasy you can think of on why someone should do business with you. Get a big list don't worry about whether or not your competitors can offer the same advantages or not. At this time just get some points on the paper thinking in terms of how your business might fit in the following categories. The name of your business has a say what you do. The proposition in such a way that there can be no mistake can't be any doubt about the type of business like remember the hair club for men. What is this was the hair club for men. So what does your business does your name tell what you do and as another example if you didn't know it was meant men's clothing. What would you think of the Men's Wearhouse sold men. What about your business. Can you use the name to your advantage in exclusive niche? Are you trying to be all things to all people or do you occupy and dominate or at least have the potential to dominate a certain market? A tighter group that you can cater to more control you'll have and the more opportunity you can have to dominate and control it. Expertise do you have some type of specialized understanding of the particular market segment, so you can become recognized a recognized expert. If you do when people look for you for help and expertise they can't get anywhere else. You'll have a tremendous advantage. Okay guarantee if you have an unusual guarantee you can use that as a competitive advantage. We'll discuss later on the concept of risk reversal and guarantees later your marketing position. How are you viewed in your marketplace? How do you stack up against your competition? What is your market perception of you versus other competing businesses? Domino's didn't go ahead to head with other pizza shops trying to make a better pizza instead they went after the quick in-home delivery or delivery and nearly completely dominated the market in a very short time. Because they changed how other people saw them and last price. How are your prices compared to those charged by your competitors? Do you have the lowest price for your product and operate as a discount operation or do you take the higher price point position and operate at a more exclusive level either position can be an advantage depending on how you position your business and the products and services that you sell around them. These are just a few of the areas that you may want to consider as competitive advantages. Of course there are more but at least this will get you thinking. So, step 2 segregate your list into three groups those exclusive to you and your firm something your competition cannot offer be those that can be offered by both you and your competition and see those currently offered by both you and your competition but which they are not capitalizing on presently. So, if you know they do but they don't advertise it could be a plus for you. The best advantage you can gain will be from choosing to group a exclusivity. Those areas in which your competitors cannot perform these are the things that you can do for whatever reason and you will want to capitalize to your foolish advantage. Group B. There's things that are offered by both of you. The last group can be used to real advantage, but you have to be careful on how you do it formulates your UPC develop that effective UPC and tomorrow will go into mistake number two on your marketing. Remember stick around till day five. We're going to go through the rest of these pretty quickly and on day 5 we're going to give you free download this whole 60-page report that will help you be grater you see and grow your business more effectively. There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet. Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Wed, 13 December 2017
Google pay per click instant gratification with your marketing. One Click Lindsey is a Web strategy expert with small businesses and helps owners to utilize the web to produce more traffic and traffic leads. Today we talk about
Check out the show notes below I'm really excited for you to be here today. I have a truly and energetic guests with me today. Her name is Lindsay Anderson. Actually, we also know her as one click. Lindsay as you you'll see a little bit in a few minutes. She is a Web strategy expert with small businesses and helps owners to utilize the web to produce more traffic and traffic leads . That's one of them for Web sites or Web company name is Web impact. And I hadn't met Lindsay for real in person and back in September at a seminar we were both at. And I just wanted to have her on the show because we had brought her on our team and she built our new website. Her and her team and I am thrilled. And you'll hear that our conversation. But I just want you to welcome one click Lindsay today and we're just going to have a blast. So hey today I have got the one click Lindsay in the house or we got Lindsay Anderson and they're both synonymous they're the same person and I'm just Lindsay I'm just excited to have you here with us. speaker: I'm excited to be here. Thank you so much for letting me be. speaker: I know I'm excited. Well let’s just so you know when we talk in September it was kind of cool to just get to meet you because you had become a part of our team and developing our new Web site. And that was exciting. So that's a shameless plug for Lindsay that she created our Web site so you guys have a tour of, so you need to go there. You can see what kind of work she does. speaker: Its really awesome but you mostly want to go there for the awesome content that Dave is dishing out over there on his daily podcast. speaker: Great. I love it. So, give everyone a little bit of background story about you and how you got to be called one click Lindsey. speaker: Yeah. So, my specialty Dave is to get people to make that one click on your Web site which typically means you get some contact information from them because quite often people are not ready to call you and they're just kind of looking around at a contract like if they're looking for a plumber or a painter they're kind of looking around see what their options are and quite frequently they're not ready to call you and sign up. So, the best thing you can do is try to get that come that contact information at a minimum get their email address at a maximum you can get. Trying to get their phone number their name and their email would be super awesome. Obviously the more you ask for the harder it is to get. But back to my story I have a specialty in driving people to these pages. speaker: Getting them to hit that button and getting their contact information. Why am I called one click Lindsey because I had a chiropractor client that we were working with and he actually shared an office building with me and we both ended up showing up for work on the. At the same time every single day. But he wanted me to run a traffic in Leeds campaign for him and I gave him the Build-A-Bear approach, I was like you know online marketing it's kind of a long-term game you have to do some AB testing. speaker: I just can't go out there and make ads and bring in the leads like it just it's a process. And throughout the whole time we would walk in every single day and I'd be like duck because you kind of gave me a hard time as I got my money where's my leads you know. speaker: Awkward. speaker: And I was like Doc, Doc you just gotta give me time once if I can get them to make that clear because you are operating on some Facebook ads and some paper click ads and the landing page. I just got to get them to make that click. And once I do then you'll have like this never-ending funnel of traffic and leads for our practice business. And finally, one day I made some changes to the landing page one evening and I came in the next day and we had about 20 e-mails for him on the list. Things started working. Yes. And I must say he was mocking me so because I must have said the word one click ,one click to him a hundred times and he said well if it isn't one click Lindsay finally made magic happen. And there you are. And I was like Oh I like that and so being the marketer that I am Dave I picked it up and I was like my name now is one quick one because it's so much easier to remember than Lindsay Anderson or your business name right. speaker: Yeah although www.trafficandleads.com is a pretty sweet business name. It speaker: is. It is. But if you notice today it was kind of. Now here's an interesting thing. speaker: And it's kind of funny because I went to google images and I put in Lindsay and Lindsay Anderson. Yeah. OK. And I think it was like two pictures of you there. OK. Well when I put it in one click Lindsay. speaker: You DOMINATED. Yeah. speaker: Maybe I should name a couple of my images Lindsay Anderson, so I can do a little better on google image search but honestly a lot more people call me one Click Lindsey to be quite frank with you. speaker: I know that's pretty cool. And it's really easy just one click your name comes up your address comes up and bingo you're there and you've got the whole story. speaker: I do. There you go. speaker: So that's an awesome name. So not though. This is kind of interesting. And I didn't plan on going there with this but I'm not going to throw you under the bus or anything but. speaker: No, I wouldn't do that. speaker: But you know how just you found out what were for you it's like the one frequency. How important is it for contractors and every other business owner to find that one thing that would work for them? Give them the name recognition that they need. speaker: And I think this actually I think this actually wraps perfectly into the topic we were going to cover today so I'm glad you brought it up because in the world of contractors a lot of you can be really in that situation that you know they're all the same. And people are just comparing by price. I as a web developer and an online marketer I run into that all the time. And so, it's so important to figure out that one thing that will get people to remember you or recognize you so you can be different from the rest of your competitors and I don't care if it's cheesy because you know what One Click Lindsey is cheesy. Definitely my husband totally thinks it's cheesy but whatever it is like you can't just be Joe Bob's painting and like you know without any anything distinct. Like maybe you specialize in X Y Z that's something distinct or your name is distinct. It's so important. Otherwise you're just grouped in with the rest of them and you'll just get those people who are price shopping, and nobody wants to run a business based on lowest bids. speaker: But yeah. So, I know one of the things that we talked about in September and now is that I've never really been a huge fan of Google Pay per click. But I'm becoming more interested and more interested and I think that's why I want to talk about today because with Google pay per click mobile it really changes the game for contractors. speaker: Yes, it does. Pay per click. I mean it is especially for contractors. I feel like it's so important and I know this is not an interview about you Dave but why do you not like paper click. speaker: Why were you turned off on it originally because we had done other a lot of it has to do with and experience in knowing you know yeah. speaker: And another challenge I had with pay per click they didn't do it right. And not to say so of a small fortune to navigate. But there again that wasn't my fault. Pay per Click is more as direct result marketing. It's just a different form. If you do it correctly right. speaker: Yeah I mean and if I may explain why pay per click might be even a better option than Facebook ads and I would also like to talk about how you can use those in conjunction for a superstar type of campaign. So, when you think about it when people are looking for contractors they're like quite typically literally in the market in ads. And so they're going on Google and they're typing in roofing contractors Idaho or Portland or wherever you're at in this whole list comes up. speaker: Now the very best place to be Dave is in the google maps or the organic listings like those are clicked on. Eighty percent of the time. And that's where you want to be. So I always recommend to contractors to always be running and SBO campaign in the background because if you can get up there to the top seven of the Google Maps and also inorganic you're going to get all of the leads. And so, it's so worth it to run a campaign. But if you are not up there and even if you are I still recommend running a P.P.C. campaign because people are actively searching for these on Google versus when we're running a Facebook ad campaign you like what are the chances you're going to be able to get in front of somebody who's literally looking for a roofing contractor that's going to be a little bit more difficult versus someone actively searching and you coming up on a page and that's why you'd want to run a PPC campaign. speaker: And I also want to mention to folks when we talk about Google ad words it's an amazing platform and you should totally do it. But don't forget about being you can get less expensive clicks and you can run campaigns over there to see which one does better. I've literally had people that have killed it on being and we've spent as Dave said a small fortune on our words and we shut all the outwards off and we're just running everything on being. speaker: Wow. That's pretty amazing. speaker: Yeah. Just because it's a little less competitive over there. Yeah but that's kind of interesting and you have to remember Internet Explorer is installed on everyone's PC laptop that's the default. That's the default browser and everything so people who aren't even that technically like interested in downloading Chrome or who even care about what browser you use they're going to use Internet Explorer and that will default to being. speaker: So, here's the other thing about Google Ad Words. Let me yet. So, here's the thing. This is kind of what else we're doing. So, the other thing we're doing on Google outwards is we're going to we're going to run a really awesome Google AdWords campaign. We're going to be driving people to a website. And maybe it's an opt in or maybe it's just a landing page whatever it is that you're driving people to. There's a hundred different ways to do this but you drive people through clicks through longtail keywords on Google PPC and then you got to make sure your Facebook Pixel is there or on your landing page. OK. speaker: And your Facebook Pixel everybody who came from a PPC campaign and then you turn around and you start running ads to them on Facebook. speaker: And so you're basically getting, like you're getting a really active audience because obviously they were on google searching for roofing contractors and then you can retarget them there on Facebook. So that is a really great way to get even more value out of your PPC campaign. speaker: Wow. Not yet. Double Exposure. speaker: Exactly, exactly where as I mentioned before sometimes on Facebook it can be a little bit difficult to find that audience of people who are actively searching for a contractor since it is a very like immediate need you know. speaker: Yeah, I mean I've found some groups where guys are just you know some guys are doing are doing Facebook advertising further their services and stuff like that and then are complaining that they're not getting any business. A lot of money and I'm going well you know you can't go out and upsetting the flow of things for the most part when you're on Facebook and you're advertising because people are there to just interact socially and you know they're not it's not a go to place to find yeah I mean and like you just put yourself put yourself in just a regular Facebook type of person situation you're looking at you're looking at these ads and like an ad for some you know roofing contractor flows through like you're just going to skip right over that because you're not in the business for a roof if you were you've already gone to Google and kind of tried to figure out who you were going to go with at that point. speaker: Like it's gonna be really hard to target that audience and part of Facebook like the wonderful part of Facebook that you can create these wonderful lookalike audiences and stuff like that. And that may or may not work for you but it's still going to be really difficult. speaker: Yeah ,yeah. Because they're not they're not actively buying. I mean I would think that if you were going for as a contractor let's say if you're going to try to run an active campaign on Facebook then you'd have to make it look like a social thing. speaker: Yes like homeowners saves thousands by blah, blah , yes like an info ad. speaker: Yes. Or of course on Facebook. You can always play the long game which is have your Facebook page you keep you know you update your Facebook page three or four times a week with whatever it may be. And so you are always you know kind of top of mind for folks when it comes time for them to select a contractor. speaker: The long game it's a long shot of real long, long game and it's kind of funny because it's in the society now people go everywhere to look to see if you're even a viable company. speaker: Yes, so you see what you do after you do that too. speaker: I know it's one of those necessities, before you know years and years ago when doing Web sites came out it was and there was no real necessity for stuff like that per se. People would do it as a trying to think as we were just certification in the sense that yeah you're you're a viable business. Yeah. And now it's like I've actually I've been to places for my pain because have gone and done painting estimates and it's kind of funny because some of them that they already picked me to do it. speaker: Yes. So I go there and I go through the whole thing and they go OK give us a color chart. Now I know you know from all the years that people don't ask for a color chart until they're ready to buy and I didn't even give them a price yeah but yeah, they checked me out and checked everything out. speaker: So that’s when you know its’seally important to have your presence on the web. speaker: It is. And this is a whole other episode Dave, but having those reviews on your Facebook page getting clients to review you on Facebook and Google really important and I know it's super annoying for small businesses but you gotta do it. You got to do it. speaker: Just one of those things that you know it's one thing I've got to do. Well no it's not. You need to take that vocabulary. Not one more thing I've got to do is one more thing that has to be done. speaker: Yes. You have to you have to ask those customers to review you. Yeah. speaker: Yeah. Not only that but you don't have to do. You're going to have somebody else do it. speaker: Yeah that's true. You know there's a system for almost everything. Yup. speaker: I want to add one more thing My good buddy Dave and I are recording this December 1st of 2017. So, Facebook is getting so like this may not even applicable in a year right because Facebook is getting super smart. I don't know if you've heard these rumors or tested it yourself Dave but pretty much your phone is listening to you. So let me give you an example my brother in law and I were talking we were my phone was sitting on the kitchen counter and we were talking about this new insta pot and it's basically like a pressure cooking crockpot. OK. I've never heard of it never talked about it. He was literally the first person that was telling me about it. I kid you not. speaker: I go to Facebook and there is literally an ad there for it. I'm not kidding. And so Facebook is listening to us. They're getting smarter. And like in theory they'll be able to serve ads because you're going to be sitting there talking about pink color and painting your walls and then then an ad like that would be applicable to you. And Facebook is listening to you like this is happening right now. speaker: Kind of freeky isnt it? speaker: Yeah but I'm like you know what. On one hand it's like that's creepy but then on the other hand it's like yeah. Because my brother also that the spots I totally clicked on the and went and bought it. So, it was extremely effective. speaker: Oh, wow that was pretty cool. speaker: There you go. Yeah because it was actually ended up being like an Amazon deal of the day thing. So, I had to pick it up. speaker: Wow. Awesome true story. speaker: That is cool. speaker: So, know I heard about a little bit about pay per click mobile as opposed to just you know basically it's simply different animal or does it get use from you and with your paperclip it get it gets used in conjunction. speaker: And I mean it is really important because like 85 percent of the people now 85 I'm sorry 70 percent of the people that are doing searches on Google are definitely coming in from a mobile device. And so you definitely want to make sure that you have all of that set up and add words correctly. And when you send people to a landing page that you're not just sending them to your home page but you're sending them to a mobile friendly landing page like that's one part that people really mess up with on Google Ad Words is they kind of just send people to their home page for you. Yeah like that you're just going to waste and spend at that point. Now here's a helpful little hint for those just getting started either on mobile AdWords or regular AdWords. You can go in. speaker: This is what I recommend you go in and you set up an account for ad words you put your credit card and you do all that you give afterwards your very best shot at creating an ad and your keywords your locations and everything like that. And you basically pause that campaign at that point and then either see a phone number on Google they change every day you'll either support phone number or shortly after you do that Google actually sends you a coupon for 50 dollars free AdWords credit and they will ask you to meet up with a representative to talk about your campaign. So I highly highly recommend that you take them up on this because what will happen is that lovely person in Google on the other side of the phone will offer to basically set up your campaign for you which you want to do because AdWords is so complex with negative keywords and match types and budgets and links and all of these things like it's a monster. speaker: So, let her set up the ad for you. Put in your 50-dollar ad words credit and run it and see what happens. So that's a free way that you guys can try and see if you can get any phone calls or clicks for free on ad words. I highly recommend it. Speaker 21: Cool that’s great way to get started. speaker: Yeah. And why does Google do that because Google wants you to be successful on outwards because then you'll continue to put money into the system. If they can help, you'll be successful and it works for you. You'll continue putting hundreds of dollars into the system. speaker: Yeah. So, do it. All right. speaker: I'm going to for the fun of it. Yes. Yes. Have something else someone want to form. speaker: Yeah there you go. There you go. Do you talk a little bit more about issues with outward campaigns? speaker: I would like OK I'm going to get everything I came out of you know within an amount of time. speaker: OK. So we can do another one someday. Yeah, we came to. Yeah totally. Because there's so many things to talk about but now I mention one of the biggest things that happens with speaker: They send people to a non-Facebook pics old website. That's not a good idea because you could be retargeting them on Facebook. The third is you just go out and you write a super generic ad and hope for the best outcome. speaker: What's that again is that I call home flyers. Yeah. speaker: And like that like you got to be. We talked about at the top of the show. You've got to like to give them a reason to click on that ad make it unique. Put something in there and see if it's going to work. So, don't just do a super duper generic ad. speaker: And finally, as I mentioned before Google is Google AdWords is a really complex monster and there's things like negative keywords which mean like for example, like let's say you're running ads for your painting business you can go in and say OK Google this is what's called a broad type keyword. Anyone who types in house painting you don't like. speaker: Have me show up unless they type in the words house painting jobs because then all of a sudden, you're just going to have all of these people who are looking who are painters looking for a job. And so you have what's called a negative keyword list where you can basically exclude like a whole lot of key words to make sure you can get rid of certain searches like that. Now there are lists out there you can go to Google and you can type in Google Ad Words negative keyword list and they'll give you a lot of ideas like people who are doing research or taking a class or want it for free or all of these negative keywords so before you do any keyword Google AdWords make sure you have your negative keywords set up there. Speaker 21: Because. Yeah. Because and you know you put into your painting and yet to be a host of different things like painting colors. speaker: Yes. You don't want painting color. speaker: You don't want paintings or how to do well maybe they're just looking for how to video. speaker: You don't want to how to. speaker: Then daily you can go into the AdWords you can look at this report and it will actually tell you the keywords that your ad came up for that was clicked on. So, you're going to go want to interview those reports and if like some like maybe you didn't include a specific negative key word and someone with entering painting jobs showed up and you forgot to put jobs in there. You can go and continually add to your negative keyword list. Speaker 21: So it's like any other campaign or any other Marketing campaigns going you tweak it so you get it,So, everything you want to do in that space. speaker: Yes. And I all I'll tell you what. Like I'm literally six weeks in on a outwards campaign for a client of mine and we are finally getting it down to the cost per lead that we need. Like this is and we've gone through hundreds of revisions. We've had hundreds of keywords you know yeah like it's just it's a process and I cannot stress enough that words he can't just go in like put a thousand dollars in there and hope for the best because it won't work out. It just works. It's too competitive. speaker: Yeah that's kind of funny. I had somebody once who are kind of what do Facebook ads. And I know it's a little different but it's just funny. We said you know you need to do a couple ads. They said OK, so they win they go. We put 100 dollars into the ad and I go OK. speaker: And it was on like that and I go yeah, I know this is what I mean I don't know a whole lot of off Facebook ads but where did you did you tell them to just spend it all at once or five dollars a day. Oh, we didn't know you could do that. Did you tell them to go somewhere what do you mean tell them to go somewhere? I said them you could give me 100 bucks I would always take me out to dinner. speaker: Right. That's right. speaker: Oh, hey this is cool. Really awesome. All of us need information is all these little tidbits these gold nuggets that they will help people with their Google ad words. But let's say that they don't want to they want you to do it for them. How do they get in touch with you? speaker: Yes. Thank you for allowing me to say such a thing so you can check me out at all my blogging is at One Click Lindsey.com. You can spell that however you want. With or without a wand or spell it out I don't care. It's www.oneclicklindsey.com or my name of my company is www.TrafficandLeads.com So you can reach out either way and we can set up a time for a consult and then we can get you over a price quote because we can set up funnels where we set up your landing page and your email sequence and we nurture that email list or we are or we also can do all ala cart where we just run add words campaign or we have a monthly program where over 6 months we just improve all of your online marketing system. So, by the end of the six months you have a well-oiled machine of dependable traffic and leads for your small business. speaker: Wow that's pretty awesome. Now yeah. Yeah. That is really cool. speaker: The whole program I like because most people don't. They're thinking I'm going to spend a fortune but if you put them on a program and say we're going to do this this this and this and this which you expect then that makes it more fun. speaker: Yes, well and I think a lot of people I guess the reason why I came up with that last program Dave is because people get really overwhelmed. I mean we've talked about 100 options here just about SEO and PPC and Facebook ads. I mean just online marketing there's just so many options so that monthly program we pretty much planned it out and because I know what I'm doing I'm able to say this is where you're going to get the most bang for your buck. We're running Seo campaign in the background. We're running you know Facebook ads in month one or maybe Facebook lead ads or whatever it is and kind of just plan it out. speaker: That's really cool. Thank you. Yes. So, do it again tell us how do we get to you again. speaker: Yeah. ww.oneclicklindsey.com Yeah. or www.traffic and leads.com or of course you can reach out to Dave because him and I are pretty good friends anyway. speaker: And really got to go to my Web site and take a look. But it got all her stuff. I mean she's got a ton of stuff and it's good day. Thank you. speaker: It's so neat to you know to be able to get to share you with our audience and see you at our Web site. And I'm really excited. speaker: Thank you. It has been so much fun to be on your show today. Cool speaker: . I'm excited. Thank you so much for being with us. speaker: It is my pleasure.
Connect with One Click Lindsey https://www.facebook.com/moretrafficandleads https://www.linkedin.com/in/oneclicklindsey/
There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet. Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Tue, 12 December 2017
Ever think about selling your business or buying a business, I get to talk to day with David Barnett helping business owners prepare to sell or buy a business this is his expertise. Preparing today for tomorrow. David Barnett has been working with small and medium sized businesses for over 20 years. He's been a business loan broker and a business broker. He's sold over three dozen businesses for others and has worked as a consultant on over 200 more sale transactions. David works with people trying to buy and sell businesses all around the world and has authored 7 books. 3 of them have been Amazon Best-Sellers. David maintains a YouTube channel with over 250 videos all about buying, selling, managing and financing small businesses. Some of the things we talk about are real eye openers when it comes to
This is what David talks about when he does his seminars. Great so in your business do you write yourself a paycheck that is equal or greater than what you would earn doing the same work for somebody else. to because to me if you have a business you have your salary or your wages which should be equal to what you would earn someplace else and then you have a profit right and if you have a profit above your wages that your time and effort is worth that's a business if you're working for yourself and you're just taking the same amount of money out as you would if you work for somebody else then you do according to me. I don't actually own a business you own a job right. There's a lot of people out there who like the flexibility of calling their own shots and they want to own a job even if they have to work in harder to earn that profit they'd rather go fishing when they want to and that's fine if that’s what they want to do and then there are the people who work all week and they take home less than what they would if they work for somebody else and those are the challenging situations that I call hobbies because a hobby is when you put time in and don’t make any real money. The main reasons business owners put their business up for sale is
I'm always telling people that they need to be running their business as though it was going to be put up for sale tomorrow all the time because quite frankly something could happen tomorrow that might make you want to put the business up for sale and you won't have time to get it ready or you'll end up for example selling it for far less than you could if it were properly prepared and you know what's funny is when you when you actually prepare your business for sale implementing systems policies procedures getting everything down on paper having the tools to manage it except for a miraculous thing happens. In almost every case the business has become easier run. And more profitable. And running your business actually becomes a greater pleasure and more lucrative in the present even though you're not selling it because you've gone through the steps of getting ready to go. Always being prepared.
Connect with David Reach him at www.DavidCBarnett.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidbarnettmoncton/ There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet. Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Mon, 11 December 2017
Scott Hansen Shares with us today about reigniting your passion. Some great tactics and strategies. To move us from the ho hum of our lives back to the passion of why we started our journey. Scott really wants to help the entrepreneur the business owner move to what he calls turn the lights back on in their business to help them get to the next level of success because we only get this thing called life once there are no redo’s in life. Why not become the best version of yourself in order to do that and have the kind of business or have the kind of life that you truly, truly want. Being passionate with your passion, lot of guys you know they get into the normal everyday stuff and they forget I think you'd probably say they forgot about that why they just do the things they do. They forget about the why. How do you get re inspired, how do you get re motivated if you're going through life and it feels like Groundhog Day sometimes. I would suggest to anybody that feels like their challenged they're stuck or they have plateaued. Getting reinvigorated this is going to be an interesting answer but let’s go with just two answers.
Why, a lot of times Groundhog Day does kick in you get up the same time you have the same breakfast you see the same people you do the same type of business you leave work at the same time you take the same way home you eat the same dares the same three to five dinners and then you watch the same T.V programs. And then you do it all over again kind of sort of all the time. Change it up, go join something, go do something else outside of your norm I don't care what it is if it's going to join a book club if it's going to you know go to a different gym if it's going to take a different path during your running whatever it is do something anything that's different that's outside of your comfort zone.
Now that sounds obvious Well OK if I want to have a million dollars revenue let's go for ten million dollars. If you really want to get reinvigorated again is not only set a goal but goal set a maybe even a materialistic goal So for example let's say you're driving a Camry, maybe a stretch for you is a Lexus. Set some huge massive goal that at the end of that carrot stick is something that you can actually tangibly touch maybe it's a trip with your family maybe it's a new car for yourself. The reason why we're not inspired by our goals is because we set goal three and a half percent more than what we did last year, and we hope and pray we hit it. That it's not even fun and it doesn't get you out of bed jumping right. You say how many people can I inspire and help today, that can open you up to a lot of different things in your business. The short answer is well if you're obviously a contractor and you do you typically deal with a set of clients every day if you ask yourself Who can I serve today, how many people can I help today, that's automatically going to have your brain think wait a second I'm currently doing business with five or ten clients but if the question is how many people can I help today that opens the parameters to more than ten clients. That means I have got to go out and talk to more people that's going to excite me more about my business and that means I'm going to help them. Potentially with our products or services. In the short of it reigniting your passion is going to move you to new heights in your life and your business. Scott Hansen has a special gift for our listeners A sixty-minute break through session Free to our listeners A 12-month growth plan he is waving the $2000. Fee for our listeners.
www.sixtyminutebreakthrough.com
connect with Scott http://scotthansenconsulting.com/ https://www.facebook.com/creatingyourreality1210 https://www.linkedin.com/in/thescotthansen/
There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet. Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Fri, 8 December 2017
Stop pre-judging your customer in the sales process Listen we've all done it and some of us more than others. We do not know what our clients can afford or not afford, want or don’t want or how they will react because someone else didn’t do that before, so don't put that roadblock on your path to success so stop prejudging, Do you think you can predict the client's reaction with hundred percent accuracy let me tell you a story I love this story Zig Ziglar one of my heroes Stories that were just awesome, but you know he started out selling expensive pots and pans and one day he had to go up to this house where he had an appointment When he entered the house, it was a real tiny house had five or six kids and they didn't look like they could afford anything. Zig prejudged the whole situation He starts going through his presentation and he talks himself out of the sale. He is telling himself that these people are poor, living all cramped up In this little house he's going these people will never, never be able to afford this pots and pans set. So, just in the middle of the presentation he packs up and he walks out the door then say we're just packs up and walks out the door and the guy goes chasing Zig out the door and says to Zig where are you going with my cook ware set. Talk about pre-judging. So, from that day on he never pre-judged anyone Lear form the master NEVER prejudge any one on what their ability to purchase their ability to figure out what they wanted he would just present the facts give it to them and let them make their own decisions So today when you go out to do a presentation be you best, do the best presentation of the facts and let them make the decision. Because if you make the decision in your head for them you have automatically lost the sale. STOP IT. There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money
How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb
Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Wed, 6 December 2017
Let’s talks about getting past front-end profits we think about going out and getting new clients all the time and more and more on how can we get them into our funnel or get them as clients, the front end is making money today but what about tomorrow the future? When we think about the most it's making that first sale with the prospect that's called the front end that's the first sales subsequent sales are, back end sales. So, we'll talk a little bit about that but why are we so engrossed in the front end of the process? Well mainly because most of us are transactional we want it to happen today and today only many contractors are not thinking about tomorrow per se mostly or the future and so let's talk about how we all think. We need more clients and so that's what we concentrate on. But do we need more clients, yes, we do obviously need to think about getting new clients is very important but there's another very important profit center. It's called the backend profit center.so the front end has to carry all of our advertising costs for example let's say you run an ad let's say you wanted to add vail pack or you do some EDDM postcards and it cost you three thousand dollars. And you only get three clients out of it, first that sucks because you probably have a bad marketing piece but it costs you one thousand dollars to get each one of those clients Now if your average job for those three clients is let’s say twenty-two hundred, twenty-three hundred dollars then you made out OK, but if your average job was under one hundred fifty bucks you lost money big time. Some big companies intentionally lose money and on the first sale that may sound ridiculous but it's not to a point. They know that they can afford to buy a customer basically this is what they are doing with this strategy by offering the first sale as a lost leader, they know that what they're doing it's figured in the whole crux of things that means they're willing to lose money on the first sale just to get that person as a client, so they can buy over and over and over again. There is a lot of profit in future sales. Weather it be new products, or repurchasing the same product. It could also be up sells and cross sales to a different product category. I think you get the point. Get past front-end profits. Include a plan to create future profits, back end profits in your sales cycle. There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Tue, 5 December 2017
Why you want to respond to complaints fast, turn the negative into a positive. We all get phone calls and the phone calls we get for getting new customers are the ones we love, but you know the ones that complain are the ones that we hate I mean literally hate. When we see the number on the phone we just cringe so today I want to talk about how to respond to complaints fast, why you want to respond to complaints fast, so you know it's kind of funny as we sit down and we look and we get all these calls of people who complain and hopefully it's not too many, but if it is a lot then that's a whole other area that we need to work on. And that's service and probably the need to raise your prices because you're cutting your service short. We're just going to go into responding to complaints fast. Keeping an even enhancing client relations is to respond to complaints quickly and efficiently never ever leave a client unhappy even if they are a bad apple, and you want to get rid of them. The best way to get rid of them is to make them happy even if you have to give them part or all of their money back. You say are you crazy I've done all that work why would I want to give him the money back? Yes sometimes you need to give them a portion of money back just to get them off your back and you know they can say bad things about you today with the Internet. It’s called webtribution, retribution on the web it's more likely that they will then they won't so if you don't they'll go to and tell everyone they know what a terrible company you are thinking of as money well spent from bad publicity and write it off as advertising because it is a marketing expense when you. Get to the point where you've got a customer’s complaining and whining and just, make them happy however you can whatever you can do to make them happy do it, because you know what really happens they’re going to complain to all their friends and tell them how bad you are and if your name comes up to your company's name comes up they're going to say you know I had a problem with them. If you take care of it quickly and honorably this is what will happen with your customer. I had some problems in the beginning, but they took care of everything. And therefore, made me a happy customer and I'm glad to endorse them and refer to them. Think of it as an advertising expense to create a happy customer , a loyal customer, a raving fan. If they are a bad customer them take care of them and don’t so business with m again. It’s like this never, loose a customer. They are 5 times expansive to replace than keeping s good customer. There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Mon, 4 December 2017
It’s all about Helping you become the better leader we need leaders and we need great leaders. First class leadership is and starts with three pillars of unique qualities. Who are those first-class great leaders the greatest leaders on earth? for example, Martin Luther King, John F. Kennedy, Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela much more Gandhi.
And then they day loved what date did they were you know they had passion you know what why is it important to have passion to love what you do every day.
Having courage to push the red button knowing you are making the right decision which gets you closer to your final goal. The guts to make to do the painful unpopular costly decisions which you have to make to get you closer to your goal, your dream, your vision. “Never Give Up“ A quote from another great leader Winston Churchill.
Great leaders analyze where am I in my journey. Like playing chess. You have to know where what position you have and what position the other person has you know that that determines your next move.
Hamid Safaei is best known for mentoring on leadership, personal development, and conflict resolution, Hamid Safaei is a certified executive coach who helps leaders, senior managers, and budding entrepreneurs discover and cultivate their potential. Hamid is passionate about helping both individuals and teams to always be at their best. He has led successful business transformations for a number of Fortune Global 500 companies. He has developed ImOcean Academy, a unique institute where he applies first-class coaching tools and techniques combined with best practices. He regularly publishes learnings on www.imoceanacademy.com and www.first-class-leadership.com on subjects such as leadership, realizing goals and dreams, the Wheel of Life, stress management, target setting, and bringing potential to fruition. His passion is to create a better world by and with better leaders. His biggest dream is for peace in the Middle East, which he sees as a fundamental step for the peace in the world. Hamid aims to achieve breakthrough results in the peace process in the Middle East by 2025. There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. Connect with Hamid www.first-class-leadership.com http://www.firstclassleadershipbook.com/ get his book on leadership 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your under ware at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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Fri, 1 December 2017
We're going to talk about one of the things that everyone really wants to run away from conflict. Dr. Clete Bulach boils that down to a commonsense approach to Four Techniques to Keep You from The Conflict. And each one of them has a win or lose. When there's a conflict you can win, lose and you can lose, lose and you can win, win, The secret of being a good leader is knowing when to take on the conflict, when wait till another time to take it on. The competitive style. When we win you lose tends to be disruptive? The win,win in a win, win you try to find out what the other party wants. And you try to give it to them, so they can win also, in a win, win you try to find out what the other party wants. and you try to give it to them, so they can win also. When you can't find a win when you go to lose, lose and that's compromise When you compromise you have to give up something, you give something up and the other party has to give something up also in order to get the deal done. In Lose, lose you get something right so lose, lose compromise is a valuable tool in dealing with conflicts, if you can't get to a win, win you go to a lose,lose right and it's not it's not that everyone you lose and actually you lose and to win. Yes, you're losing something to get something you wanted. The other one the most intriguing one is avoidance, when do you avoid a conflict? Listen to the podcast in its entirety and you will really from Dr. Clete Bulach wisdom in this area of conflict. Dr. Clete Bulach has been on over 100 radio talk shows on topics ranging from leadership, school improvement, bullying behavior, character education, use of power, school culture and climate, If you listen to this podcast and find areas, you might need to change that is great! There is nothing wrong with being the best you can be. Connect with Dr. Clete on his web site and look at his books! http://www.westga.edu/~cbulach/index.htm E-mail: cbulach@comcast.net There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the web site and pick up the free download. 4 Hot Marketing Strategies That Can Flood Your Business with Customers If you have a story to tell and would like to be a guest on this podcast email my assistant Shell at Shell@contractorssecretweapon.com and she will send you our guest sheet.
Our sponsors Would you like your phone to ring more with qualified buyers people looking to buy now? Then let’s make that happen. Best Home Services Leads is dedicated to making your phone ring with qualified buyers wanting to buy now. Go to and fill out the form to get more information. http://contractorssecretweapon.com/money How about 100 free postcards sent out to your best prospective customers. Radius Bomb sends out hyper targeted, laser focused postcards using a map while sitting in your underwear at your kitchen table then go to http://contractorssecretweapon.com/radiusbomb Painting Contractors, get up to a 24% better response rate just for having the right memorable telephone number 1-800-PRO-PAINTER.Check out your area before someone beats you to it and it’s not available. https://www.1800propainter.com/
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