Wed, 31 January 2018
Culture what is it, does your business have one? Gerald J. Leonard understands the challenges that business owners face as they struggle with culture confusion, too many number one priorities, lacking consensus among key leaders and misalignment of their mission, vision, and values. He is an international expert on the topics of Developing a Culture That Works, Strategy Implementation, and Project Portfolio Management and is also a professional bassist. He is the author of Culture Is The Bass: 7 Principles for Developing A Culture That Works and has an upcoming book, Symphonic Culture: Unify, Strategize, and Execute Collectively for Optimum Results Culture is the intangible and almost emotional connection that people have with a company or family or organization. Gerald thinks culture is the foundation of the place where you get great music baselines. It creates a framework of the bass and it’s like the physical bond that all other women who have similar cultures. It has different cultures that propelled people away from each other. Each influences our perspective and it also causes the characters of the organization. VISSION: Every business, every organization, every family and every individual has created. Has some form a culture of how they are living. It really boils down to their overall vision for their life. VALUES: This is how they live now and they are made here which creates this culture. A culture that is pleasant, exciting, fun, and serving helpful art that can be one that’s very toxic but everyone has. And sometimes, people are not sure how they develop them. MISSION: If people have a business, they should want to have an organization that they want to grow. Having people that will be loyal to them consistently. Meaning having a positive attitude of employees which relates to the culture of the company. The key learning here is discipline. People need to have a clear vision or a clear track of where they want to go. They need to look those three things. People have to step back and visualize “What do we want our culture to be?”. One way to do that has the business owners ask their customers since they know their clients and what they want. These questions will be your core values which are going to help business owners implement into their system, whether it’s integrity whether it’s customer service first, whether it’s excellence in each branch certifications, these are the things that customers admire and what business owners will have to live for. At times it does call for some challenging times where business owners have people on their team that doesn’t realize they don’t live according to these, sadly they would need part ways with these set of people in order to maintain the vision, values, and mission that they have for their company. Critical decisions are made because everything needs to be aligned to really make a difference. A good company culture takes work to build an anchor for a long-term sustainable business. In terms of hiring, a company needs to be able to hire people that fit into their culture. Meaning they could already see that the person is able to transform after developing the skills they have and understanding the story behind the company. They understand the vision, the values that the owner has for the company. It doesn’t have to be complicated, each of them should be able to share their best practices. The proper mindset to be able to do the job. Because companies want to be set by people who can tough it out but at the same time will always have the same mentality in understanding the main vision and values of the company. And that is their accountability. It’s very important for each person to be able to hold the core values and criteria of the company because then they truly understand the culture of whom they are working for and what the company can do for them in return. And that’s what a good business is. You may visit this website for more details about Gerald J. Leonard: AMAZON: https://www.amazon.com/Gerald-J.-Leonard/e/B01IQW616A
There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the website 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, 30 January 2018
How to Present Value Over Price In Your Contracting Business and what is really the perceived value as opposed to your pricing structure and how that affects your profitability. I’m going through a checklist that will help you raise the perceived value of your business so that you can charge more. Making more profit at the time of sales and how to do that effectively, because if your customers don’t know the additional things that you have for sale, you’re both missing the boat. What are your other services how do you present them to your customers? Selling value is a way of positioning your company in all of your marketing. Make sure you provide a value proposition on the services you provide and why you’re different than any other contractor in your trade or niche. Using a funnel of great marketing to attract clients like this is the way to go. Basically, you are preparing them with information in the form of a recorded message or report. It really doesn’t matter what your competition is charging because if you set yourself apart from them as a value base business as opposed to price, your way ahead of the game and you’re going to leave your competition in the dust. With the value building system from this checklist, I’m going to give you a few secrets then you will attract clients that are used to paying a premium for real value. So in reality, raising the bar on perceived value teaches you that value is everything. Here are a few ways that you can go after your customer by raising the perceived value your customer has of your company. Some of these are pretty simple and you may be doing some these right now. If you are great! But some of these you may have never even considered doing so pay attention, I will go to this list fairly quickly.
2.Make sure that you, your technicians and your helpers are well groomed and well dressed.
These are just some things that will help you increase profits during your busy season. If you can get all this in place now, you just might now might just have your most profitable slow season ever.
There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the website 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
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Mon, 29 January 2018
Its all about Dominating your market Today’s Contractors Secret Weapon’s podcast is all about Gary Geiman of Salvo and we are going to be talking about Dominating Your Market. Gary has been involved in generating sales and developing marketing systems for almost 25 years, B2B B2C along with his brother. He started a pressure washing business into the fourth quarter of 2012 and how they are riding vertical fall in 2014 as a way to generate revenue around. Utilizing, planning, and understanding how to dominate local search and implementing e-mail marketing automation has allowed them to reach a million-dollar annual gross sales revenue in 2017. They've begun to turn this knowledge into a passion helping other business owners and entrepreneurs grow their businesses. Their Facebook group which where I found Gary the Marketing Mafia has over 20-100 members learning to dominate ways to dominate their market and explode their revenue and gear. When 2018 came, Gary and his brother tried Chat Bot conversation for their customers so they can get through the process of getting them into an automated communication funnel so that when their customers are ready for their service, the information is there. He resigned and learned e-mail marketing, utilize it to be able to attract all types of customer and this lead to learning about Google AdWords which helped them get to a million dollars in gross revenues in 2017. In term so dealing with their customers, Gary and his brother has a cleaning scenario or contracting scenario which is very transactional. Greg started the Marketing Mafia in the Facebook group in February of 2017 because they see that there's a lot of different things out there available for new contractors as well as even seasoned who are trying to get to that next level. They have experienced and had a lot of bad decision so now they had decided to put together a couple of different things for contractors to be able to look at and say “I don't have to make those bad choices and here's a roadmap for us to become successful”
Dominating the Market means Gary wanted to help his business and other contractors to be able to dominate their markets and achieving the goal that they want for their business as all started out with a DREAM. But at first, it wasn’t easy as there were roadblocks but at the end of 2015 Gary had to make a decision and he reenergized himself. Reenergizing came from deciding this is going to be a legacy and we’re going to build something that everybody in his family can be proud of and leave something for future generations. Thinking with a purpose. We all continue in life learning something. Learn things to the best of your ability, to get proficient and you will be able to earn more. Because it goes back to what was said, singleness of purpose. They know a lot of times contractors get lost in that and always looking for the next best thing when they might have the next best thing right in front of them. They just have to figure out how to make it the best thing. As what Gary had said, to bring home the fact of figuring out what it is that you want for your business and then going after it. And that's really why they are determined for 2018. They want to dominate the market together with other contractors. Making sure that they provide excellent service back to those customers. You may visit these websites to know more details about Gary Geiman: https://www.facebook.com/themarketingmafia/ There are so many ways to do almost free marketing you just have to think about it or you could just go to the website 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, 26 January 2018
It’s all about getting into the conversation early, direct response marketing. Contractors have been using run of the mill flyers for years and they are fine, but Direct Response marketing requires that any marketing materials do more than provide a list of services, they HAVE to have some kind of call to action. The call to action means that someone is prompted to do something after they see the website, magazine ad or postcard. Today’s contractor marketing podcast is with Tara Jacobsen of Marketing Artfully. Tara has been in marketing since 1999, starting at a web hosting company, which at the time she barely knew what the internet was, let alone the technical backend of how websites work. Over the last 15 years she has spent way more than the 10,000 hours required to get really good at marketing, currently providing speaking and consulting services for small businesses, real estate and manufacturing industries. What Is Direct Response Marketing Contractors have been using run of the mill flyers for years and they are fine, but Direct Response marketing requires that any marketing materials do more than provide a list of services, they HAVE to have some kind of call to action. The call to action means that someone is prompted to do something after they see the website, magazine ad or postcard. Direct response is not a kind of marketing but a style of marketing where your focus is to have something happen after the advertising piece is seen. It can be as “normal” as a coupon in a magazine ad, although this is not optimal as discount ads bring in customers who are shopping, looking for a bargain. These types of customers are “right now” buyers. As long as there is a rock-solid plan to turn these price shoppers into repeat or ongoing customers, everything is great. Tara mentioned that she has had numerous contractors and trade people come into her home and has only ever had one send anything after the visit. Some suggestions she had for example were a chimney cleaner could send a follow up with:
Getting repeat business from current customers who are used to paying you truly is picking the low-hanging fruit! Even though Tara came in on a discount coupon, they could have easily turned her into a repeat shopper for an annual fireplace checkup (but they
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, 25 January 2018
The Customer Experience, is it Great, is it Good, is it Bad, Indifferent, How Does Your Customer See You? This one of my pet peeves, how do you treat your customer better yet how does your customer perceive your interaction, Do they believe they are being treated well? That is really the defining factor. They won’t tell you they just won’t do business with you again
The customer experience has been so on my mind for the past few days, week, or so that I really want to take a look into the customer experience. It’s just been one of those things over the past couple of weeks, sort of like a creeping thing at the back of your neck and I will tell you why. So, here’s part of what’s going on.
I’m looking to remodel bathrooms, or my wife is looking to remodel our bathrooms. So, I go to the granite store that’s suggested to me by my contractor. Yes, I hire a contractor; I don’t work on my own house because I love my wife and want to stay happily married. Because the only things she’ll get out of me is a start date.
So, we get to the granite store, we pick up the granite, and I forget to take a picture of the granite. So, my wife calls the store, but nobody answers. We just left there maybe fifteen minutes ago, and nobody answers, it goes to voice mail. We leave a message explaining our dilemma and ask if they could please send a text or picture of the granite that we just picked out so that we go pick out the tile for the rest of the bathroom because my wife is on a mission. She wants to get everything picked out and she wants you to get it done today.
So, now it’s been a week, a whole seven days waiting for someone to call back from the granite store. You know how you get busy to make the phone call, well, they never got called. I never got the chance to call them back. So, it’s seven days later, I’m driving my dad to the airport so that he can fly back to Connecticut and my wife calls me. She goes, “I really want to pick up the rest of that stuff. Can you run by the granite place since they’ve never called us and take a picture? I’m pressed for time but I say, “Okay,” because happy wife, happy life.
So, I run out of my way to the granite store thinking less and less of why I really want to do business with them. Because I have to go all the way back to the granite store since no one bothered to call me back or text me a picture or anything like that of the granite that we picked out. But just a little bit, the granite that we picked up was sold; they told us they could order another one when we are ready to order. So, that’s fine.
So, I get there and the granite’s gone. So, the girl says, “It went to production I can send you a copy of the picture we have to you by email.” I say, “Okay, do it right now here’s my email address because I know I’ll probably never get it if I leave.” And she says, “I will call the production guy and see if there is a piece hanging around that I can get to you so that you can go pick out your tile.” I said, “That would be awesome.” It is five days later and no one has called me. So, neither here nor there I guess they don’t want to do business with me. So, I went back to the yard to take pictures of the first piece of granite that we liked, and then I saw another one that I liked even better than the one that we picked.
So, I took pictures of that, I took pictures of the UPC code of the name of the granite. I sent the picture to my contractor with the UPC code and I said, “Find another granite company.” I bet you can tell by now that I’m so fed up with them because their customer service is really bad.
So, the person who takes care of all that stuff lost a granite customer, and I wonder how many this year. Anyone who knows how much granite costs, it’s a nice little chunk of change. So, that one customer experience really sucks to anyone.
So, this is Saturday and I get to my mastermind I’m running a little late because I had to go out of my way to keep my wife happy and take pictures of the granite. When I get to my mastermind they say, “Hey, we are talking about the customer experience.” And I’m going, “The good one, or the bad one,” because you can tell right where my head was going. ‘I belong to a mastermind
So, I arrive at the mastermind a little late, they are talking about customer experience and I’m saying, of course, “Good or bad?” because you know what’s going on in my mind right now from what we’ve talked about.
So, I’m in a mastermind with Pete Mitchel, he’s been on the podcast before and he says, “No, no, we are talking about “Good customer experiences,” he says, “I have a new client and when I call her office I’m impressed by the way that I’m treated as a person calling in. It’s just a very neat and refreshing experience,” and the person, his new customer is a real estate agent who has up to this year sold over 200 properties, but she also has another business that trains real estate assistants, so she has it down pat.
She knows, “How do you answer the phone? How do you talk to the people? How do you make them feel,” so you’re going from bad customer experience to a great customer experience and how to really make that happen?
So, here’s the real question, that defining moment, “What is your company known for?” Good customer experience, great customer experience, or bad customer experience? If it’s the latter, it’s bad customer experience. I’m going to tell you what you’re not getting. You’re not getting a whole lot of business, you’re not getting any referrals, and you’re not getting good reviews on Google or anything like that. You’re not getting lifetime value out of good people that spend good money. But if your company has great customer experience, you know you’ve had to work on it and worked on it to make it better all the time. Something you might want to make on a script for your people to follow, when and how the phone is answered, the person answering the phone to know how to answer it, answer with a smile, with questions to ask, it makes all the difference in the world.
My wife, one of her pet peeves is customer service and overall customer experience. My wife is one of the most sweet, congenial people that I know; however, one of her pet peeves is customer service and overall customer experience. If it’s not happening, if she’s out doing business and she’s not treated right sometimes I just have to turn around and walk away because I feel so bad for the person or waiter that is waiting on us.
My wife owns a service business with my daughter and their whole business is customer experience and customer service. And their tag line is, “World class service can be yours,” so they live up to that. That’s why their business is growing at a rate of 61% over last year. Won’t it be great to have growth like that? She demands that the people who she’s going to spend money with treat her like they really want to do business with her. Sure, you know and like to be treated as customer, you go back to the business that treats you like they want to do business with you, you continue to do business with them all the time.
What about the ones that really don’t care? Don’t be like the ones that really don’t care. If it’s not that way in your organization, there are only two reasons to that, poor customer experience. One is the trickle-down effect, it’s your fault, or both ways it’s your fault. And two, no one has been trained and held to a standard that needs to experience your services and only can do that if they are trained.
So, I don’t know if I can beat that one up anymore today. But it’s all about the customer experience, and the customer experience starts off with the way the phone is answered all the way to how the proposal is presented and written, all the way to the end, how the job is done, how then people are treated and during that process the way their questions are answered. Yes, you have to answer their questions and all the way to the end when you say thank you, when you collect the money. Then you send them a thank you card and you learn how to wow them by building relationships.
So, until next week think on these things and go make a profit.
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, 24 January 2018
3 simple steps to double your website conversions today I have Joe Burnich with us and you're going to love him. He is a contractor or was a contractor and grew his business. Became a web designer and now he does web designing and SEO and pay for click for contractors only. So, this is one of the cool things and this is the reason that I brought Joe on today is that he knows how you think, he knows what you're going through and he's been through pretty much everything that you've been through the different stages of growing your business. And I thought he would be fun to talk with. And today we're going to talk about three-key maybe four-key elements that will help you get more conversions right now today or tomorrow or the next day. But I just want it. Let's welcome Joe. Hey, Joe I just want thank you for being with us today and giving us great tips on web design and how to get better conversions. So, I'm going to let this go with you. I'm just I love to hear about the cool stuff that you're doing. And so, thanks for being with us today. Well, thank you, Dave. So that's my first time on your show. I just want to say thank you for contacting me and asking me to come on that I feel very honored. And yes, today I mean I don't know where we want to start. I've got three simple tips that people can implement today that can easily double the conversions on a Web site. So, if you're getting traffic to your Web site and you're getting let's say three calls a day implementing these simple tips that are going explain right now could get you double that. That's kind of what I want to talk to you about. You say and most time they can probably do a lot of that themselves. Some of you getting yourself some of it you'll probably have to have your web designer do it depends on what you know what your abilities are. Some people do their own Web site so they have full access it can do stuff like that. So yeah. And I'm going to say, guys, if you don't have a Web site, then we’re going to give you Joe’s contact information at the end. Nice. So, what's number one what's the number one first simple step? Real quick before we get into that could I share a quick story. Absolutely. OK. So, I just want to let everybody know where I come from and went into this whole Internet Marketing Google game because I know that guys like me get a bad rap kind of that used car salesman type vibe. Cause there's a lot of just scamming stuff out there. But my story is I moved from Kansas City to my original hometown of Missoula Montana where I live right now in 2009 and I didn't have a job but I had a 10-month-old baby and a new wife and I had to feed them out of desperation. I a family friend talked me into starting a cleaning business because easy startup you know don't need a lot of training don't need a lot of capital to start up. And so, I never thought I'd be in that. But I just ran with it. Took a couple thousand dollars that I had left and run with it. And basically, what I did was I taught myself how to get a website ranked up on Google not knowing if it would be you know profitable or whatever. But I mean I spent hours a day for months on end. I’ll bet. And yeah, I mean up at 4:00 in the morning if I wasn't working I was on the computer trying to figure this out because I had a friend that was doing it and he was selling like cell phones or something on the on the Internet and everything was done by Google rankings. By SEO. Oh wow. And so, he showed me some tips and then I studied. And it was tough because I was you know I had a Web site. And the calls were not coming in I didn't know really anything about marketing. I was out there handing out flyers and business cards and doing all that just struggling not knowing if I was going to ever make it. And so, but the cool part was that once it took about four months but once I did pop up into like the top three on google, my phone started ringing. And that's when I kind of decided OK this is something I can do. And this is something is really going to feed my family. It was all about taking care of my family and a lot of guys can probably relate to that especially the guys that are getting just getting started or if they're going through a slow season or whatever. There's just that fear of this business going to make it. And for me it was Google. And I know other people have other things that they use to get business and get calls coming in. Maybe it's Facebook maybe it's just having an awesome network that they've built up over the years whatever it is. And so, I'm not here to say that Google is the only way an Internet marketing is the only way to do this. I'm just saying to me it saved my family so I got a soft spot for Google. It makes sense to me. But it's just another tool. Really. It really is. And so, and that was in 2009. And so, I got into just helping a few other people doing it here and there. And now you know in 2018 in three days at least we know I've got four employees. We've got we've done over 850 Websites in the service contractor niche and industry. And so in over the years talking to people and just testing over and over I've figured out some simple things that most people are not doing with their websites. That really can blow the phone up that can really get the phone calls coming in which is what we really all want. It's nice to have a pretty web site that makes impresses people. But if it's not bringing in the phone calls then who cares right? Absolutely. So, I believe in having beautiful professional websites but to me, that has to go hand in hand with the conversion. So that's what I want to talk about is conversion. How to get people to pick up the phone and call you once they do hit your Web site. Tip number one that I like to give people is something that is very simple but I still see more than half of the people out there in the especially in the service industry construction industry. They're still not doing this. And what that is having a big bold phone number at the top of every single page of your website. I still go out there and look at websites that have the phone number like down in the text, down in the middle somewhere or it's down in the footer or even you have to click on the Contact Us page to even find the phone number. Right.
And so, it's so huge so, so important and so easy such an easy tweak to just put it nice and big at the top of every page and then in addition to that put a simple called action something like Call now for a free estimate or you know 24-hour service if it's an emergency type service you can do 24-hour service call. Now something very simple. There have been multiple studies that say if you have the words Call now next to your phone number it'll actually double the double the people that actually pick up the phone call.
Well, people like to be told Do they really. Yeah, I've talked to people they're like No I got my phone number on their people know what to do. And if they don't it's a subconscious thing it's not it's not like they're you know it's not like they're thinking this through. But having that and then another little another little tidbit to go along with this tip is if you can if you stand 10 feet back from your computer if that phone number isn't something that jumps out then it's not big enough it's not bold enough.
So, you can do things like kind of change the color to contrast with the rest of the Websites if you've got a lot of blues and greens and your Web site. Make the phone number Orange. Stuff like that. It really, really works. I mean after working with 850 plus clients I can tell you that people that have those big phone numbers like that are the ones that are getting more calls.
It's just it's amazing you got down to a science now. Yeah. Yes. Exactly, exactly. And a lot of web designers out there that are amazing award-winning web designers will make that mistake over and over and over because they're looking to impress people with the visuals and not the conversions. So that's two different aspects you're looking at it from the contractor point of view because you were one and they're looking at a designer’s. That this has got to be pretty.
Yes. Yes. And if you can nail pretty and convert then yeah, I mean you're going to be way ahead of the competition because nine out of ten guys out there don't have both of those nailed. So that's tip number one.
So, anybody who's listening to this if you can get a hold of your web designer or if you built your Web site on Wix or whatever you did, however, you got your Web site set up do everything you can to get a big bold phone number at the top of every page with a call to action that would be my number one tip that I can give today.
And then number two. OK. And this is something you and I were talking about before the podcast started here Dave is so, we all know that smartphones are here to stay you know they're not going anywhere. Everybody uses them all the time especially in this type of business.
So, it and what we're all accustomed to is you know hitting little buttons on our phone. So, my suggestion is that when you're somebody looking at your website on a smartphone, is you don't just have the phone number but you have the phone number on a button. So that and then you can even add a call to action to that as well like on all the websites that we do. We have a phone number in a button that says tap to call. OK. And they have that at the very top. Don't make people look for the phone number don't make them scroll down to find the phone number. Don't put the phone number in tiny little text somewhere make it into a button because they're already addicted to hitting buttons all day long or on their phone. That's all they do.
And your two icons are really good. Exactly. They need to tap this and the video and how it goes straight to a phone call. OK. Because like we said the beginning, we want to get phone calls. We don't want to just impress people we want to get that phone ringing. So, we can close the deal. So, the number two now Dave you brought up an amazing point. That you know most of the clients out there most of it most of the decision maker, comes to server benefactor's whatever it may be in this type of industry. It's the woman that makes the decision.
She is the decision maker in these types of transactions. She's going to give the go ahead. She's going to pick who they who they are going to work with. Who's going to do the work for them? And so that's going to go right into my next step. But you brought up a really interesting point is why not have in addition to a call now button, have a like a tap to text button.
So, you got my wheels turn and now I'm going to go out there and grab my web developer here. Leah and I are going to get we're going to figure this out. We're going to we're going to make a text button and start implementing it and web designs and start doing some major testing. Because as you brought up Dave. Females tend to text more than more than call. They would rather text a potential vendor or potential company than pick up the phone and have a drawn-out conversation. Right. I mean wouldn't you agree.
I would yeah, I would agree. And as we talked earlier and you know my daughter and your wife they've got kids. The phone rings. They're not coming they're not going to pick it up. If its text and they see it then they'll take the time or you know to text back. But it's just it's not part of the world.
And you know there's a lot of times where women are at work and they're on their phone and they can't call because of what they may be in an area where they can't call but they can text. You know there are so many variables that you know you're getting too loud. Let's say you're looking at an ad on an on your phone in a waiting room or something like that.
You're not going you're not going to wait forever to travel. You're just going Oh if I can text the phone let me do this. I can. Can I get an appointment or like what we were talking about somebody with this other night? Well like 7 o'clock at night you know nobody's going to answer the phone. But what if they got a text. You know that they would answer first thing in the morning.
Yeah. And I always I always tell people it's good to have like a little forum that people can fill out for that exact reason because they don't want to call it you know 8:00 o'clock at night or whatever. But you got me thinking why not add a text button that could place the form pretty easily so we're going to be doing some major testing here in 2018. Based on your that little that little seed that you planted in my mind so I appreciate that.
I want you to track in about six months after you run your test. Give us the stats on that. I'd love to do that. That’d be great.
So that kind of that kind of goes right but it is a good segue right into the third tip that I want to talk about which it goes right along with we are marketing to females primarily. OK. And so, what I see a lot of people do on their Web sites is they'll have a lot of pictures of you know their equipment, their trucks a lot of a lot of the wording on the Websites is very technical. And that doesn't speak to the average the average female out there that's going to make the decision the one that's going to basically fork over the money. Right.
She wants to know what her house is going to look like when it's finished. She wants to see smiling kids. She wants to see you know whatever the service is she wants to see the end result so that the even other women on your web page. Exactly. And testimonials other women that are in that are like them are ages and some more family situations whatever it may be.
So, I would highly recommend that if you've got you or if your website is dominated by stuff that appeals to you or to other competitors or men that you know friends whatever then you really need to rethink that and start adding some more. Make it a little bit softer. It's kind of what you need to do to make it happier and the end result as opposed to technical logical. You know just the man the male mind and the female mind respond differently to different things.
We all know that. Here is an interesting thing for you guys that are thinking well that's really not going to make a difference. I'm going to tell you that if you're in a cell situation and you're there with the woman and the guy and you sell to the guy, that guy likes you and a woman don't you've lost. You are not going to get the job no matter how it goes. Yes, yes, yes. She's going to say no, no, no. And you know me I've been married for 40, 41 years. My father has been a happy wife happy life.
That goes for your marriage and it goes for the clients as well. So, it does. I'm just laughing because I just I'm thinking back to when I had my business. And there are several times when I just thought I nailed it. I nailed that job. The guy loved me this and that. And I guarantee I lost it because the wife was like no for whatever reason.
You talk to them because you know the guy you didn't need to get the attention. I had this one year ago it was hilarious. I had a client. We were we did a lot of painting and he won. He called me, he called me over and look at the house to do stuff and the old school. I mean really old school. This was like this was a guy with his wife. It was one-word answers with me. That whole conversation. He was very Lithuanian very old school. OK, I go. So, Tony so his wife goes Tony I want to get next time we paint the house. Can we paint the outside just a little tinge of green?
No. So I go, Tony. Don't you understand how long have you been married it, Tony? How long. Many, many, many years. That's OK. Do you not know this? Does he go know what Dave? OK. Happy wife a happy life. Her eyes got as big as saucers I mean it got huge. I mean and Tony goes wow ok. So, we go inside and we're just talking. You know and she goes Tony I would like this house has painted in 15 years. I want to paint this house the inside for your birthday his response.
No. I said, Tony, I need to learn anything outside of that we talked about. And he goes, OK. She got the house painted the house with the exact tinge of green that she wanted to add one. Yeah. Everything you wanted.
But you know it's so important to come to that realization. Who are we selling to? And you know it's kind of funny. It really is. Yeah. And what's crazy is I'm not noticed too. Like if you take that Web site and show your wife a lot of times she won't be thinking in terms of a client she'll be thinking in terms of you know I'm one of the business owners. So, it's kind of dangerous actually to ask the wife I've found in many cases of them in many cases. The wife having somebody close to you give you feedback on the website is not always the best way. You need to have a third party that doesn't really have much connection to you or you what they think of the website. That's another thing.
Yeah because I mean just the other day we have a roofer who was like well I don't want to put the phone number at the top of the website when I only have it in like tiny little text down in the footer of the website because my wife thinks it looks tacky at the top.
And she wasn't thinking from the point of view of like what if I was actually you know a female out here looking to hire a roofer. I want to get a hold of this guy. You know if they don't find the phone number on your Web site. The seconds are gone. Yeah exactly. So, it's a big deal. OK.
And so that's it. That's my top three tips. I mean I've got other things too as far as like you know getting online reviews how important that is and how that can boost your conversions. And there are lots of lots of little things beyond that but that's at the top three. It's definitely three things that you or you a web designer can implement like now. Especially for the New Year wrap. Get going for 2018. That new Web site gets the Web site revamped, freshened up and to convert not just be pretty and rank but also to convert.
And so, and so that's what I got. And I don't know if we going to talk about this right now but I wanted to make sure that you're just audience gets a special prize. If they ever wanted to do anything with us let's do that now do it again later on.
You know I always like promote or guess what they have to offer and how they can help our community. You know this is all about helping other guys become more profitable. Be better or what they do so that they can spend more time with their families.
Yeah. And so, I want to make sure. So, for the next couple of weeks, I would love to give all of your only listeners only the listeners, $300 off any web design packages that we have. And but they just need a dimension that they need to mention that this podcast and then we'll make sure that that $300 is taken off. So, this is not an issue for a couple of weeks I want to make this isn't forever.
And so, we can either we can get a link set up or people just want to go to generalcontractorwebsites.net they can find us there or just give me a call at 4 0 6 4 9 3 1 8 8 1. Okay great, and we'll put on a show notice when we get on we get everything up and at that point and what we'll do is we'll put off end of show notes will put off cut-off date let's say two weeks or three weeks however you want to do it. It will just put on the cutoff date. And from that point, so everyone knows that.
I'd like to talk about Google reviews a lot because I think that's important. I mean I know you do too. From a standpoint that's probably would be number for one or one of the numbers high numbers. Absolutely. And it may even bump in their effort in some cases anyway bump into the top three.
Just because of the fact and the way that I look at Google reviews and other reviews you know Angie's List and everything but Google still the big one unless you're on the west coast and I know you can overtake Google a lot of times when it comes to the review game. But the way that I look at online reviews is they literally are the new world of the mouth of mouth advertising. Yeah
I mean the whole the whole idea of you know tell all your friends and then haven't called me all that stuff that still exists. But there's a whole another online version of that and that's basically, it's just reviewed. I mean how many people bought into this have read an Amazon review before actually clicking the buy now button. Right.
You know what I mean. Oh yeah and a lot of times you don't think that it applies to your business the same way but I'm going to tell you right now I've got a guy up in Portland. He's got a five-truck operation does a lot of like water damage restoration stuff like that. And he so he used to have like eight or nine reviews on his competitors all had they all were right around there like five to 10 reviews something like that.
Well, he got busy. Did you know I'm going to make reviews big in 2017 and so now he's got like 89 reviews and you're still acting like 9 or 10? And he says he literally doesn't have to do any more staying over the phone. It's not about right. You know my prices deserve prices any more. It's about you had the most reviews online. And these are all genuine reviews. Doesn't do any. These guys above board he doesn't know. No fake reviews of again. It's really easy to get reviews.
It's kind of funny. I just did a podcast not too long ago about a contractor in South Carolina and he grew his business basically by google reviews. It's kind of an interesting way for business. It was mostly referrals. He'd get like 75% referrals and 25% would be you know from reviews and stuff like that. He went out of his way to do the different ways and he started with the google reviews and now he's got. Last, I checked he had 55 reviews and he said that the numbers have turned. He said 75% of my business comes from the google reviews and 25% comes from referrals it's amazing.
You got to do. You got to really do is ask. Now I have an I have another tip based on that because a lot of times people say well I don't feel like one out of 10 people will actually you know say they're going to actually follow through and do it. But you got to do more than ask. Yeah. And so, I like that call but you know to push the call. Yes yeah.
Make it easy to make it Brain-Dead easy for them and so the best way that I've found to do that is to once again we go back to text thing is to basically give them a heads up say Hey you mind if I send you a text to get some feedback on how we did it and most times I say yes like 95% of you say oh yeah, no problem.
So, what you can do is get on your phone. This won't work on your computer. You got to get on your phone and search your business and find your Google page. OK. once you're on the Google page you click on reviews and then it'll take and then and then they'll let you choose the number of stars. Right. OK. So, you click on Star number five and that's it. You don't. All you do on your own business. on your smartphone has to be on a smartphone. And so all five stars are gold at that point. All right.
Now you do is you tap up into we're like the Web site addresses and you do and you click copy highlighted and then you click copy. All right. Now you go and send a text and you paste in that exact address. It's a big long obnoxious website address but that will take them directly when they click on that when they get the text and they click on that. It'll take them directly to the Google page with the five stars filled out. Now they can change it and put fewer stars if they want but it's one less step that they have to take.
And so, then they're just at the point where they're just typing in you know the actual experience they had. But that little chip right there texting over the actual google link that takes them already just right to the place where they can start typing is going to increase the amount of you know reviews you get so if you get one out of ten by asking right now. Now you to get like nine out of 10 because you're doing it for them in a sense. Yes exactly
And that's the that's the key thing is you know. We all want more business but we think that it's going to be easy. Sometimes it's easy but we have to work at it. Yes. Yes. I was reading some stats not too long ago. And the funny part was that 90% of the people who go to the internet to check reviews but only like 40-50% will actually write a review. Yeah. So, you know so you've got to work a lot harder to get what you want. That's all that's really what it boils down to. Which is nice. And yet the reviews are just awesome and I just you know it's kind of cool on how easy it is to just you know send it and they will do it. And if they don't do it right away then you do it one more time.
Yeah. Yeah but maybe you just do. You know I know you've been busy and we've talked about this. I just wanted to send this to you again. If you have time please do it. If you don't that's ok.
Yeah and the key time to do it is right when you have that conversation with them at the very end of the job. And they've got that those good warm feelings about you. Those are feeling quick like a week later. You know they're still happy with us that they dislike you but you don't have that. I want to help this person. Because people do want to help especially if you do an amazing job form they want. They want to but they don't want to have to go find your Web site or go find your Google pager your pager. They don't want to have to do all that. Most people anyway. So, the easier you can make it for them, then the better chance you're going to get. And it's all about just getting into a routine getting it in and out. Oh, the guy in Portland said what he does is it makes sure that all of his technicians are the ones that actually initiate that text. And then he gives them like a $25 bonus for every five-star review that comes in the day the day that they requested.
So yeah that makes it a lot nicer for him. Yes, I mean yeah, I mean one review is 20 it was worth you know is gold. One five-star is gold so $25 dollars. He looks at it. I'm paying $25 to get a review and that review is easily going to make me ten times that over the next year. Oh, easy. So, this is the place to place some golds in the pot is what he's doing. Yeah. Yeah. That is so cool.
Yeah, I know of a carpet cleaner that was doing Facebook reviews. He would actually give them if they would do while they were still there and he would give them a Starbucks coffee. Yeah, be careful with bribes like Yelp will shut down your account if they find out about that. But yeah Google and Facebook they, you know Google says not to do it but I've never heard of them cracking down on it yet. Well, how Facebook's pretty open now. Yeah, I mean people on Yelp people are suffering. I've heard of people getting shut down in Yelp. So, they Yelp figures it out somehow.
I mean they get so many and stuff like that depending on the trade. Yeah. And they've even gotten to the point Yelp's even gotten to the point where they've said you're not even allowed to ask for a review. So, Yelp is a different animal. It's not cool. Yeah, there's a lot a lot of angry people out there on YELP right now. So yeah, I think yes, I was listening to somebody tell me that you know it's tied pretty much to being three views from me you know. Is that true? Oh, I've never heard that I heard though. Yeah, that's why they post your reviews and stuff like that.
Now, something I did hear this morning that was kind of interesting. I don’t know if you knew this was home adviser bought Angie’s List. I did not know that. Wow. That just went through like two weeks ago. I wonder how that's going to play out. Interesting. It’s alright if they don’t change their name. An interesting change the name but nobody like Angie’s List and nobody likes Home Advisers so I don't think they've got some enemies that's for sure. You know. Yeah, they do because they just don't do things right. Neither here or there and we're not going to go there. All right. Hey you know this is really been awesome. Is there anything that you've been burning there in the back of your mind that you say you need to get this out. You want anything you want, additionally, you want to share before we close out this thing?
You know the only other thing is I do have a book that has 150 pages of all of this kind of stuff. It's basically where I just did a mine dump and put everything I know into book format. So, if people want to get that they can get it on Amazon it's like 17 something. If you want to get it for free and just pay the shipping and handling giving it away right now. Just go to a servicebusinessmoneymachine.com that's the name of the book service business money machine. How to turn your Web site into a virtual money machine. Cool.
Yeah, I've got, the matter of fact I've got my book on the way. So, guys, I ordered his books so we're in good shape. Nice. And so, we will put them on and show notes like he said. And then one more time let's run your special again since we're at the end. So, we'll have that at the very end again.
Yeah so, we've been talking about Website stuff today. So, what I want to do is if you're looking to get a new Web site or revamp your current website, we're going to take $300 off for the next couple of weeks we'll set the exact date on the show. Now it's like you were saying yeah but this is only for people that are listening to this.
You have to mention that you listened to the podcast and that's the only way you're going to get that $300 special. So, if you're looking to get a new Web site for the new year then we'd love to talk to you about it. And if we if we decide that we're not a good fit for each other then that's fine. I'll still give you a free consultation with you know lots of tips and little things you can do to improve your website anyway. So, that would be awesome. So, give us your contact information again. OK so you can go to a generalcontractorwebsites.net OK or you can just call 4 0 6 4 9 3 1 8 8 1.
Awesome. Joe thanks so much. This has really been great having you on the show. Little tips and tricks on how to get everyone more business. And I thank you for making that offer to our listeners. And guys listen, I really, take advantage of it if you if you need to know or call Joe and see what you need to do. But you know one of the things that I was impressed with overall is that Joe was a contractor and he thinks like contractors, he knows you know how you guys think, he knows what you're going through and he's been in your shoes.
And he only deals with contractors. He's not trying to make one everything fit. So, we're in good shape. Joe again thanks so much for being with us today. I love it Dave, and I hope to come back in six months and we'll talk about that text button. Yeah, that'll be a blast. Yeah. Yeah. OK. All right. Dave, you have a good one. Happy New Year. Happy New Year. Thanks.
You may go to this website to know more details about Joe Burnich: www.generalcontractorwebsites.net Contact: 406-493-1881 To get your $300.00 discount from Joe you can go to his website offer is good only until midnight February 7th 2018 Website Special: https://generalcontractorwebsites.net/secret-weapon/ www.generalcontractorwebsites.net let Joe know you herd about him at Contractor’s Secret Weapon podcast
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/
Comments[0]
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Tue, 23 January 2018
Do you have the customer you deserve, or do you have the customer you want? I ask this question to many contractors and the response that I usually get is, “yes, I want all the customers I can get! customers are the lifeblood of my business, the more customers the more money.” REALLY? That’s what we are going to discuss today.
The next thing I say is that was not the question I asked! The question I asked was, “do you have the customer you deserve, or do you have a customer you want.” Then I get this weird look and I have to continue on.
You see most contractors going into business think about getting business and not about that business as a whole. As they enter the marketplace, they sit down and figure out what everyone else is charging and start competing on price. They figure they have a good product and they are great at what they do so they should succeed. I ask why do they take their excellent work and just start competing on price just to get into the market place.
How do I know about this? I’m guilty, I started there too!
But I learned really fast that I would need to change directions fast or go out of business! That’s why I found a mentor and hired a coach. More on that some other day… So how do I have the customer that I deserve? As painful as it may sound, if you are competing on price alone then the customer you are attracting is the price shopper.
The price shopper will eat up your time, they will eat up your profits, and they will eat up your sanity. They will complain the most about everything and when they refer you it will be to likeminded people. Unfortunately, when you only sell by price you get these types of customers.
I say this is a customer you deserve because you are either lazy or don’t know any better. I’m going to go on the premise that you don’t know and today we are going to try to change that. Right now, you are on hamster wheel going around and round feeding the hamster (your business) with bad food (prices shoppers) and there is no nutrition (profit) to keep him going so he is running as fast as he can to keep the pace and he is dying from malnutrition and over-work.
Get off the hamster wheel.
Here is what you need to do. Take the time to go after your ideal customer; stop going after the easy money, your ideal customer has the money to pay for good work.
Think about business as business owner not as a trade’s person, sales person or installer. How do I run my business and strategically get the customer I want?
First of all, you have to define who the customer that you want is. Everyone’s definition of an ideal customer is different, so you have to figure out who your ideal customer is and how do you start going after that type of customer.
Here is an example of defining your ideal customer.
Get the point? The better you can define your ideal customer, the healthier your business will be. So, if you haven’t figured it out by now, selling by price only as a commodity is easy mentally but hard on the pocketbook.
Going after a specific customer type as a target is harder in the beginning because you have to learn about your ideal customer, but so much more rewarding monetarily for years after you make the choice.
Survive maybe or thrive. Now you know how to move in the right direction. 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/
Comments[0]
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Mon, 22 January 2018
We can’t find any skilled labor, does this problem resonate with your trade? Shawn Van Dyke has come up with a solution to this ongoing problem. As we talk about the solutions and the change of mindset you will come to the conclusion that for this will actually work. . I have a real and fun and exciting guest with Sean Van Dyke and Sean is a construction industry consultant business coach and mentor. He's the author of the paperwork punch list 28 days to streamline your construction business and find the home building brand administrator. Shawn is the keynote speaker and travels the US working with and training construction business owners on how to streamline their businesses. That's a fun thing. No one likes to work hard.
Yeah. Before becoming a business coach Shawn owned a Construction Management Consulting Firm and General Contracting Company. He also served as an Executive at the Specialty Contracting Company and enjoys living life in East Tennessee where it's nice and warm this time of year and happily married with five kids.
So, Shawn, I'm just excited that you are with us today. And, you want to share some valuable information farm with Dave. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for inviting me on. I'm looking forward to chatting with you. Yes. Tell us a little bit about your journey and how you got from here to there to where you are today.
Yeah, it's got an issue with it. When I hear my own bio read off I kind of hear my wife you know in the back of my head just saying you know to some people all that stuff sounds impressive to her and be married to an entrepreneur. It sounds like, man, you can't keep you can't keep down a job dude, you know.
Well, I as I say as I started out my career I guess by getting a couple of degrees in engineering and I got a bachelor's degree in civil engineering and a master's degree in structural engineering. Spent a few years doing that and then realized I don't think I want to be an engineer. And so, I transition to commercial construction doing some project management for some commercial contractors and then kind of bounced around as we do in construction sometimes from company to company and ended up doing some real estate development working and as a construction manager for a real estate developer. Traveling all around the Midwest and the Southeast building large commercial developments.
And by then we had number two on the way and I was on I was on the road three days a week and my wife were kind of like yeah this isn't going to work out so well for being a dad. So, I started my own construction management company and real estate company that transitioned during the downturn into the general contracting company.
And let's see what happened after that. Yeah, I went to work as a Chief Operating Officer for a trim and millwork company and spent several years there. And I guess that was the last job that real job that I had and left there about a little over a year and a half ago and went into what I'm doing now doing construction consulting and coaching and mentoring.
So, I travel all over the place and teach construction business owners you know how to streamline their business how to run a better business. And I'm just I'm really enjoying you know what I'm doing now before I was working for one company doing these things and now I get to work with literally dozens of companies all over the U.S. and Canada. Even have one client in Sweden.
So yeah if you're listening to this and you've got issues and problems it doesn't matter where you are in the world. Contractors we all have the same you know the same issues when it comes to the business side and the paperwork and the people. So, don't feel like you're alone out there. You're not you're not alone.
Everybody's struggling with the same thing and it's kind of funny everyone and you know you thought some might say well my business is different. Yeah right. Yeah. So saying we've got people you've got the paperwork you know the regular business and I'm dealing with people and it's all people. And so, I'll bet your wife’s a lot happier too now.
Well yeah, it depends on where you are. You know when I started this I didn't think I was going to be traveling so much and now I'm doing different training. I travel to my client’s locations and do executive training or employee training. But then also doing keynote speaking at trade events and that kind of stuff so I sold my wife on the whole deal.
Hey, you know as you know as I travel around then you know we find somebody to watch the kids and then you come out we can have a long weekend and some of these nice places. But you know when you when you have a speaking gig in I don't know. In Detroit in February or something like that. It's not exactly. You know what I sold her on Detroit in February is not exactly you know the long weekend. You know that I kind of promised her or whatever so are booking some.
Some stuff like Hawaii and Miami and LA in the summer when it's when it's nice and yeah what I've got I've got an I've got one client in Hawaii I have another one in Key West Florida. So those aren't the those are the worst places in the world that have to travel any time of the year so we'll see if that happens. Now you said you had five kids out with your oldest and you're young. You can't ask me those questions that they keep changing ages. I can’t remember them. I got grandkids. I've got them from 15 to 1 Yeah. So that's all I know. Yeah.
So, at one time at one time we have four boys and then the baby is a girl. So, four boys and then we had a girl. I think my oldest is he's in sixth grade so I think he's about to turn 11. I think he's going on 12 or maybe he's 10 going on 11. See this is very embarrassing. And you know I don't care about that sound to sound the same way. I know that the oldest is 15 and I said the baby just turned 1 a couple months ago. And there's a, let’s see, that's there four others in between.
Yeah. So, I think I've got an almost 12-year-old a 10-year-old probably and 9-year-old a 6-year-old that gets the four boys and then the baby girl is easy because she was born on my birthday. So as if she wasn't spoiled enough already She'll be sorry she'll be 3 on March 5th.
So, my oldest and one of my older ones were born both on November 6th. So, Abby goes when her brother was born. Oh, that is awesome and she had a birthday party with him. Yeah. Yeah well, my wife told me I don't have any more birthdays. They're all hers which is fine with me because I'm just you know I'm just getting older so they can all be hers anyway so yeah. So.
So, as you travel with here you're your clients. What are some of the biggest challenges that they're having to overcome in the marketplace right now? Yeah, right now it really you know it really comes down to and I hear this with every client especially with me. Construction is back. Things are booming. If 2018 doesn't isn't your best year in construction than you, you're doing something wrong because there's just so much work out there and from the downturn and this is kind of gets into the issue we're going to talk about you know we lost two million plus jobs 10 years ago.
And, it's not like those people were waiting around till it picked back up because like they left they're gone. They left the industry they left the country. They're just not there. So, demand is huge for construction and there are not enough people to fill those the available spots for Labor, skilled labor and then so I hear that all the time from my clients
Shawn, I just can't find the skilled labor that I need for you know for my business. If we had more people than we could do more work or are we just you know we're delaying projects because we just can't get to you know everything.
And so, I hear that a lot we can't find the skilled lay. You know we can't find it. And I say you're exactly right. You can't find it because it doesn't exist. Right. So that kind of hits I'm like will get hired you to help me solve the problem. Right. And the thing is the problem is they're just not making plumbers, electricians, carpenters, welders you know like they used two generations ago where that was a viable option now. And there's nothing. Well, give me all my soapbox here.
No there's nothing wrong with a college education. But I might get in trouble by saying this but the value of that college education with technology and all that is just not as high as it used to be. And so, there is this you know there's this there's this labor gap and it's huge right now. And so, to solve it the problem the problem is that you know that these people don't exist.
I say what you're doing is you're hunting for unicorns you're looking for this mythical creature that's supposed to you know mythology the unicorn I guess if you capture it you know the horn of the Unicorn had special healing properties and all of these other things. Right. That's what you're looking for you're looking for this-this guy or gal with five or 10 years’ experience that can just jump in on the crew lead the crew to you know a successful project. You're just looking for a unicorn. It's a mythical creature that doesn't exist.
Not too long ago I was in an education class and the teacher was going through said Okay so I went there was like 50 people in a classroom and I watch it and it was all for construction because I want everyone to look around the room and he goes How many people. And he goes how far under 40. Nobody resigned. He said how many people are under 50.
And there was a couple but most of them are 50. But they said here's the problem. He said there are no new contractors taking getting their licenses to fill the gap of what you guys are moving out of and he says that's creating a big problem in the marketplace. And I go Yeah and I said Here's a stupid thing guys if you don't realize that or not you are competing on price when you have you are no longer a commodity. But I need you and you're fighting against each other on price. Stop it yeah.
Yeah and that and that the solution to the problem is to say OK you know if we if we can't find it because it doesn't exist then what are we supposed to do. Well, you have to create it. And they're both hard problems to solve. I think that finding something that doesn't exist is a lot harder than creating something that you that doesn't exist. Meaning we stop hiring for skill, we stop hiring for technical expertise. Those are things you can teach somebody.
But what you need to hire like most other successful businesses and we need to take a note from you know the big Fortune 500 companies. And the other things like that. They hire a lot of cases. They will be hiring for competency and culture and fit. And you say you know things like culture to a construction other like What are you talking about. We just get the work done. And you know you know we're just the nose of the grindstone knock it outright. But every company has a culture and the culture of your company is what your employees think about working there. Right.
So, you know you may not have spent any time developing your culture but I guarantee you if I go in and start asking your employees you know what. What are some struggles they have working here or what you do have a culture you may just not be aware of exactly what it is? So, if you can if you can improve or you can enhance or you can just talk about what your culture is or what you want it to be then that's going to attract people that are competent and that have the right chemistry for your culture and are a good fit and you just have to say listen you know we can't find these people because they don't exist.
We're going to have to create them. So, what does that mean? Well, we better have a training program that we can take somebody that does. We're going to hire for a good work ethic and passion. Maybe it's not passion towards carpentry or painting or electrical work or you know whatever the trade is but you can probably help somebody to develop a passion because everybody in the trades that are working right now at some point you know no one was born with it. I don't even care if you've been wearing the tools since you were you know since you were a little kid on your grandfather's side and helping to build stuff in the shop.
You developed a passion for the time because you saw what that passion you know what it lived out what it what it created. Well just because somebody is 22 years old and they got a college degree in history, no offense to the history majors out there. But that doesn't mean that that that guy or gal can't develop a passion very quickly in six months and eight months and heck four months with the right company that shows this is what we do we create and build this stuff with our hands at the end of a day.
At the end of the day at the end of a week at the end of a project. We can walk away and point at something and say we built that. It wasn't here before and now it is. And the right people for your company they can develop a passion for whatever the craft is whatever the trade is but you got to train them to do it.
And I think that you could you can easily spend 18 months looking for this unicorn right and you'll probably go through a couple of people. The other thing that I say is if you hire somebody or somebody has the skills that you're looking for on paper anyway or they say they do. You got to ask why are they available. It's probably because no one wants to work with them right so oh this guy got 10 years of experience. He’s been a lead carpenter now you know he's looking for a job. Right. You need to make sure that you're interviewing process kind of weeds out the psychopaths right. Because you know you bring somebody in like that. Yeah, they're technically very competent.
They can do a lot of work but nobody wants to work around them. They won't listen. They won't get on board with the way your company does stuff so that can be dangerous too as when you do find somebody with the technical skills you've got to make sure that you're you know back to the culture thing. You've got to hire for that first and you get the right training program in place in six months, 12 months 18 months.
You can probably get somebody to where they need to be where they're very productive and very profitable for your business. And there are people out there that are the look they are realizing that they were lied to about college. Now if we go 100 grand in debt and get an education then somebody is just going to pay me 50 or 60 thousand dollars just because I went to college and they're working at Starbucks or at the movie theater or in and I've met them I've talked to them they're driven Uber right.
Trying to figure out what the next best thing is. And you find these people that are looking to put their passion towards something maybe it does haven't been carpentry or something like that in the past and you just say hey, come work for us. We've got a training program and we have a path in two years you could move up from this level to that level. You could you can do whatever you want within our company. But you got to have that structure you've got to have something you know you've got to have something in place and it's a lot easier if you focus and do that.
Put those systems and that training in place. You'll be able to take somebody that's pretty green and get them being very productive in a small amount of time because you'll go through the next 12, 18 months trying to hire the skilled guy and having to fire them every time you hire somebody and they come in and work for a little while and you got to let them go then. You know I think there are statistics that say you know when you fire somebody you have to let them go. It costs you 30-40% of whatever their yearly salary would have been.
So, I mean I work for a company like years ago it was co you can't train and fire, and I was like you don’t understand. No, we do understand. I said, “No, you don’t understand the cost involved in training them. Would it take a toll on me? Would it take a toll on you in dollars and cents?” “Well, we don’t care about that. We just want somebody to do the job. Well, we got to train them. No, if they can't do the job just fire them.” “Well, that doesn't make sense”. You know and again you know it's like going back to like you said it goes back to leadership and culture.
And the nice part about what you're talking about from what I'm saying is that now you're a construction company. You should strategically grow your company along with a path because you're bringing people on board. That you can train. I think that's awesome because, now you're, instead of planning for tomorrow because I need help tomorrow you're planning for the future which if any anybody in the construction industry would hope that their business would last for the future instead of short-term.
So yeah everyone has to look differently at it but I think it's you know what you're talking about is so awesome because it is. It’s long-term. And it's scheduled for long-term growth, but not only that but you've got long-term profits. And then if you've got you know the culture that you've got a good culture or you don't have a good culture but you know that you need to be the leader you need to change then that makes all the difference in the world and you can become you know a force to reckon with in your marketplace.
Yeah. There are companies out there that when they get this. So, here's what I see. I think that the trend is shifting. I think that there are more people getting into the trades. They're dabbling in it a little bit, but society still looks down on construction. Meaning they say oh you couldn't you know you're doing construction because you couldn't have done anything else. And I think that's starting to change a little bit. You know just because of just exposure to it you know things like Instagram and Facebook and YouTube.
They're saying you know that this is this is a viable career to work in the trades. So, it is starting to shift. But I think that the companies that are going to when demand is when the supply does change. And I think it will change. I think eventually the gap will get so big that the government will step in and start throwing a lot of money at trade back at trade schools and putting vote tech back into education
When that happens, the supply is going to jump up. It's the companies that have spent the last ten years previous to that time whenever that is building a training program building a recruiting process. They're going to be able to pick the cream of the crop and then those business owners are finally going to be able to ride off into retirement because now the supply they're going to get the best people and their companies are going to be are going to be set right.
Everybody else is going to be scrambling for the supply and now they're going to say yeah, they've got some technical training. Right. So, there are some more welders, there are some more plumbers there. Great. Now you got a people problem. You know they still don't you know your company isn't set up to work in a team atmosphere and how do we communicate and how do we you know how do we grow because sometimes growing, just for the sake of growing, can put you out of business quicker than anything else.
So, it's those companies that right now when this gap is huge and the work is really hard and they change their mindset from hiring as their first step to recruiting as their first step. They're going to win when the supply does change. When you when there are more skilled technically skilled people. But again, the technical skills part that just gets your foot in the door.
What gets you the job, what makes you the money, and what gives you-you know a huge opportunity with construction companies is your character and in the end, combine that with the culture of the company so that's why I think that's the long game is put do the hard work. Now get your culture and get your training procedures in place so that you can get people good people and train them and then that's a system that you know for success right there.
And if you have a company that's doing this progressively and growing and training and recruiting, then people are going to come to you for. You're going to be able to. I mean you're going to be running the profit margins you should be running to run a very successful business anyways. So, you can you'll be able to afford people who have the right mindset, who have the right culture into your culture and grow within the company. You'll be able to pay them more than the average contracting company.
Yeah, and that's part of the recruiting mindset. Like, listen supply is down demand is high. Guess what you're going to pay more. From the very beginning. But just get over it. That's part of recruit. Like when you know when the Yankees go out and recruit somebody like they just pay the bill whatever the guy needs for his contract right because he's an all-star player and we need him to win the World Series or whatever. Like the money just you know like let's get that out. Let's get that out of the way so yeah you know you are going to pay a little bit more but you know we're playing a long game. What's the payoff in the end right? That that that A player is really going to produce you know produce for me and I hear that a lot to say you know maybe list and they said ok Shawn, I get it.
Dave, I get it you know but I don't know. This is another issue I hear a lot from my clients. I don't know if I can afford to hire somebody. Right. Or when is the right time to hire somebody? And it's this mindset of like oh you know OK let's just look at the numbers and say OK if this is, what I hear a lot is OK we're going to pay somebody 25 bucks an hour. That's $50,000 a year. I don't you know I don't have that kind of cash out, or I don't have that much money or what I don't like.
Whoa. Listen if you're if you're hiring right and you're hired the right person may be there and you've got and what I call an onboarding process right. Maybe it takes somebody a couple of weeks to get into your system, to get in your company. Kind of learn the ropes or whatever. After that, they should be making you money right. It's not a cost any more. Right.
They should be making you mine. So yeah maybe you got to. You should have a cash reserve for a couple of weeks a payroll for that person. But after that, they should be making you money if they're not you hired the wrong person or you're not you're not training them right so it's not really. Shawn, I don't think I can afford to hire somebody. Most of the time it's you can't afford to hire somebody.
You as the business owner have got to concentrate on business development and sales and marketing and now training. You can't worry about wearing the tools every day. You got to hire somebody to do that. And in fact, that's why you're not making the profits you need to make right now is because of your high-value work. The sales, the marketing, the business development stuff that generates hundreds if not thousands of dollars an hour when you can put the time in there. You're trapped doing 30 40 50 dollars an hour of work. Right. I know I run into this with so many people. It's mind-boggling that they can't get past the 12 hours an hour 20 hour an hour even 30 hours an hour mindset. And it's because they are so used to doing it. Stop it.
You know and this is not I don't say it's not easy it's not easy but you've got you've got to start. You know you got to start somewhere. Yeah. And it's and it's I've had conversations with guys while I can't do this because I've got something to do and I'm going you know it's very. It's very challenging in the beginning to do stuff that you just need to make an appointment with yourself.
I mean it takes two hours to this day to do this. And it could be you know like going out and I need to go market. I need to go you know to call at this time. He was looking at a property manager say you need the schedule for two hours. Two hours on Wednesday, and that two hours I said you make your phone calls, make your appointments a week before. And I said if somebody calls in sick, you don't jump out and drop because if you put that off, you call the customer and say listen we're running a little behind.
We aren’t going to make it this afternoon. We're going to reschedule you tomorrow. Because you're talking about making a thousand dollars on a job to maybe get a contract for five ten fifteen twenty thousand dollars. You have to really get to the point of what's the most important. It's not dollars today it's for the owner. It's dollars tomorrow.
Yeah. Yeah absolutely. It's like it's you know. Stephen Covey writes about in his book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People it's urgent versus the important right. Right we got to and it's hard. The urgent stuff is urgent. Right. But the important stuff doesn't take as much time as the urgent stuff but the urgent always bleeds into the important time so if we can get that focus time, focus on the important stuff you know and what we were talking about before that you know.
OK, what's the first step in our recruiting process like let's just spend some time this 15 minutes 30 minutes this week thinking about recruiting instead of hiring. Right. That that will generate some ideas. Now go do that. Now to deal with the urgent stuff fight the fires and all that kind of stuff.
But then like you said to meet with yourself again that next week. Another 30 minutes what's the next step. And then if you do that for any period of time that creates a habit and gets into discipline then you're at least you know you've got this focused time where you're working on important stuff and then that's what creates momentum and movement towards you know towards having a better year than you did you know then when you had the year before
And I've even had a conversation with people so, well you don’t understand. I said, “Dude, I do understand. I understand everything you're going and I've been through it and I still go through at certain times. But here's the thing if you're going to make an appointment to do something. If you're going to schedule time with yourself to do this or that task you know to create something new.
I said to schedule it and I want you to write it down over there. What’s the worst-case scenario? What would it cost you? A time worth is it worth a thousand dollars? Is it worth ten thousand dollars? or is it worth $12? You have to value yet put the value of your time in there otherwise you're not going to you're not going to force yourself to go through the steps you need.
Like you said this to start to recruit process or even write down what you're even thinking about hiring and I knew I was listening until one guy and he was saying you know he says all of my all the people that worked for me are assets. I think of them as assets. We work altogether. So, once they are no longer an asset then we part company.
But that was a beautiful way to look at it because what's an asset? An asset is something that works for you in conjunction with your goals and everything. It brings you in money. So as an asset can be an expenditure. Right. Yeah, it adds value it adds value to the company. Yeah
So, it's you know it's like you know that rental property is an asset as long as it's paying you. And you ain't going to get rid of it until it stops. You know. That's right. You need to think about your employees like that.
So, you say you've got the recruitment process and I your client they are finding it, course, I know it's hard to work through but I know a lot of them seen a long-term plan. A long-term thing yeah I mean they're starting they're starting to you know they're starting to see that recruitment mentality you know. The other thing too is just like look everywhere for your next employee.
Talk to the guys at the. You know there's a there's a kid that's working at the loading docks of the building supply company. Right now. He's not necessarily “in construction or has school” but he's there. He's close to it. Right. He's you know he's doing work. He's yeah, he's working with people but he's around it a little bit. Right. So that's a great place to start in a company that I used to use to work with.
The owner was excellent recruiter and he would go in and if he found somebody at Lowe's or Home Depot working the cash register and they were smiling and he was treated with respect, he gave that guy a business card and said if you're thinking about being a trim carpenter you ought to give us a call even if you've never thought about it for come by our office see what we're doing.
You're already working at Lowe's your home depot. You're on the outskirts of this thing. We want to show you what we, what somebody like you can do at a company like ours. And we've got, we've hired guys and gals from that you know. So, it starts with just you've got to look everywhere. Everybody's a potential employee.
My roofer friend, his last three salesmen that he picked up they know nothing about sales, nothing about the roofing industry, nothing about nothing. They were all his waiters at his favorite restaurant. Yeah. Waiters are really good. Yeah because they knew how to interact with people, you know they know how to think on their feet. They've got to solve a lot of problems very quickly for very impatient and its people that with five kids waiting on the chicken fingers. Yeah, you know. You know.
Yes. I like you. And so that's so cool for you know a lot of guys that are to listen and you know you've got to think outside the box you've got to be constantly looking for friendly people that you know that are friendly, that is interactive. And the funny thing is that you know we were talking about earlier, you know you look so long for the technical side of it. And I learned a long time ago you know you hire for attitude. You can always teach technical. Because you have 98% of the time you're going to fire for attitude.
That's right to start with the good stuff first man. Yeah. I mean we're all gonna make mistakes technically right. But that's usually not a fireable offense that you know if you if you keep making the same technical mistakes it's probably because you have an attitude problem that you're not learning or you're not listening or whatever but it's really not because of the technical mistakes like you said it's an attitude mistake.
I was a guy I know he was. He put a Facebook post on he goes you know it's I get tired of all you guys in a particular industry complaining that you can't keep good health. He goes I want you to understand what the problem is. It is not your help, it is you. Yeah. Yeah.
And part of that you know part of that recruiting mentality means that the hiring process is longer. It means you need to have three or four interviews. You need probably have other people within your organization interview them. So, what does that mean? Well, we need to train some of our lead technicians or some of our project managers to how to interview. Right. They need to know that skill. That's another business skill that they need to learn because that's going to help you run the business.
You as the owner doing all of the interviews is not going to be as helpful as if you get these other guys. I've seen that before too, where we pulled lead carpenters and said hey we've got this potential guy he's going to be working with you on your team. I want you to have a chance to vote on this because he's not going to be working. Yes, working for me but he's going to be working with you and the insights that the guys on that you know boots on the ground kind of guys that are in the trenches they'll pick up on stuff and not necessarily bad stuff. They'll pick up on other things where they'll say yeah, this person is really good. I can tell their character because we had a conversation totally unrelated to something else but they're a good fit for us. Their attitude and because everybody looks good on a resume and everybody's going to say try and say the right things in front of the owner or the manager or whatever but get them get them with some of their peers and let them just have a conversation. And so, but that takes more time.
That costs a little bit more money. You mean Sean I'm going to pay my lead carpenter to come into the office for 45 minutes in the middle of the day and interview somebody. Yeah, it's going to cost you a couple of hundred bucks but if you make the wrong hire it's going to cost you tens of thousands of dollars. So yes, spend a couple hundred bucks and train your leaders. Carpenter how to do some job interviews.
So, it boils down to you're not hiring for today because you need employees today; you're hiring for tomorrow because you want to grow your company and you want your people to grow with you. It basically what it is. Yes, it is. Because it's going to cost you a fortune or the wrong. Like you said hiring the wrong people in a few. You're hiring because I'm busy and I need to hire people. Then it would be you. I know you guys are going to hate me for saying this but it would be smarter to turn the work away and lose the money.
Yeah, you can. You can always tell this to my clients when they say oh you know we're really busy. OK. You're making the money. No. All right. Well, you can just sit at home and go out of business. You don't need to go and work your butt off for it. Right.
Right. I know. So, the other thing the other thing about what we're talking about you know in recruiting and playing the long game here too as I hear this a lot is. Well, I want to give this person an opportunity. And again, it's just a slight little mind shift change or language change saying don't give anybody an opportunity. What you want, what your what your people actually want is they want a path. Give them a path. Show them where they can go. But they earn the opportunity.
We don't give opportunities to this company. What we give is a path. What we give is training. What we give is you know a path to go from here to here to eventually to a project manager to estimator to a general manager heck you can become the CEO of some companies the owners are they can't wait to not have to run the company of somebody you know.
So, don't give them an opportunity. Let them earn the opportunity but you got to show them a path because people see the path that they're on then they'll earn their way along that path and that path may take a couple of different rabbit trails that you otherwise were trying to force them in. But given someone's strengths and their abilities then your company will be better off.
But what does that look like? Well, that means you have an employee handbook that has job description and job titles and responsibilities and there's an organizational chart and have a communication system and you have a meeting schedule. All of that takes time and planning and thinking just like we were talking about before. That's important stuff the stuff that we got to stop doing the urgent stuff to get those things in place.
Yeah, I talked to so many so many business owners and when I go in to train their employees one thing that we work on I say What's your job title? Well, I'm a lead Carpenter would mean well yeah okay. Are you sure because it sounds like you said I'm a lead Carpenter? Well, sometimes I'm a Lead Carpenter. I think you know it's just like I talked to enough employees and I asked them what their job title is and what that means what are their responsibilities. They don't know.
So, no wonder you're having people problems. No wonder you know the business is kind of even though you're super, super busy and people are really frustrated you don't understand because your people don't know what they're supposed to be doing. They don't know what you want them to be doing because a lot of times people will, business owners will hire to fill a gap you know and they'll hire for a person instead of hiring for a job.
Because when Joe leaves this position we're going to hire for that position. We can't possibly hire another Joe because Joe is Joe. Yeah. Timing me crazy just I know it's good for you. I know it's true. Wow, this is really awesome. Well, we’re getting close to end this time. Is there anything in the back of your mind that you just wanted to have a thought about that you wanted to bring up to the front. Before we close out in the next few minutes or so.
Oh yeah. I always try to end on this just because somebody once asked me if you could only teach one thing to construction business owners or contractors. What would it be? And it's very simplistic but you got to understand the difference between margin and markup.
Like I'd be happy to teach it because when contractors get that and they understand and we don't have enough time to go into all that but when they realize how the math works on that and what the difference between those two terms are and what it means for their business then it totally changes the way they operate.
At least you know as far as knowing what you know when your costs are, what your markup needs to be to produce a certain margin so I'll leave it with that. Just saying if you don't know the difference between margin or markup or you think you do, you probably don't and that's okay. Again, like we said the beginning you're not alone. No one no one gets this until they really you know studied or whatever. Learn the difference between margin and markup.
Yeah maybe with in the future will do a full podcast about that will drive anybody nuts. Yeah. Doing Numbers doing numbers and math on a podcast is really uncommon. Yeah. You got to picture this that would do well do it. Yeah, ducks and birds you know. Yeah, that's right.
Shawn, it's really been awesome. How do our listeners get in touch with you if they want to find out more about you? What you do and your whole organization.
Yep. The easiest way is just Google me and I should pop up all over the place it's ShawnVanDyke.com is the Web site and that's S-H-A-W-N. But if your if your listeners want to you know get some you know to start making some taking some actions and getting some results. I've got a book called the Paperwork Punch List: 28 Days to Streamline your Construction Business.
FREE e-book on my Web site just goes to ShawnVanDyke.com /the paperwork punch list. Give me your email address and you'll get the book download for FREE. It's about 70 some pages and it just kind of walks us through step by step. Some stuff that you can do over the next 28 days over the next four weeks to start getting some of the paperwork stuff out of the way some of the systems in place.
Well, make sure all that goes on our show. Yeah. When we do that so everyone will be able to do that. Awesome. This is really cool and I really appreciate you talking about this. Really. Something an industry that's driving everybody nuts. Well, man, thanks for Dave thanks for having me on this has been this has been a blast. I think we could probably talk for two hours on different stuff. So, anytime and anytime. Thanks.
You can visit this websites for more details about Shawn Van Dyke: www.ShawnVanDyke.com/thepaperworkpunchlist
EMAIL: connect@shawnvandyke.com
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.
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Fri, 19 January 2018
We wanted to talk about how you could get NO cost Construction leads and we will go into that kind of heavily, today. The best way to go about getting them and how to have others help you get those leads. At absolutely no cost. So listen up and take notes. Jonah Canter from Canter construction and Charelston, South Carolina. Really fun time. Last time we had him on the show and if you don't know who he is, he's a contractor in Charelston, South Carolina. He's been in the construction business and he's actually started at an early age and running other companies and moved up and actually ended up starting his own construction business and took all the stuff he learned in running other companies at such a young age and put him into his construction company. But, mostly, honestly, it's in the service area of it. I mean, he does a great job in what he does but he gets called back and back and back because of his relationships that he built with his clients and his customers. So, I want to bring him back because we wanted to talk about how you could get new cost Construction leads and we will go into that kind of heavily, today. And, you know, we just had such a great response that I want to bring Jonah. So here's Jonah.
Jonah, I'm glad that you could come back today. Because the last time, we get such a great response to what you talk about and I know you've got some really awesome stuff about marketing that you want to talk to today.
Yeah, Dave I appreciate you having me back. It was, it was fun doing the last one. I got a lot of responses from some of the viewers which was really helpful and made me feel good that people are actually taking some of what we're talking about and actually putting it to good use. And that was great.
So, yeah, I appreciate you have me back. One of the things I thought that would be helpful for the listeners today is if we can talk a little bit about how contractors can get leads or without spending money. I consider them "The no cost construction lead process".
And I'll dive right in. So, when I was first getting my business going, I didn't have a clue. Like, how I was going to get literally the first phone call. And, I had got friends and family to have us do some small stuff but that's not sustainable. So, I was sitting on my couch one night and I ended up e-mailing a real estate friend of mine and I said "Hey do you have a contractor you use for, you know, fence's decks or whatever?" and he responded back hey actually I need somebody to take care of a bunch of like loose end kind of stuff.
But yeah, we will. And I thought about it I was like wow. If he needs that kind of stuff, I bet you there's other realtors. So, I went on this journey and the Charleston area and finding how many realtor groups and you know people there were out there and I found out, which I know now and everybody knows, that there's a lot of realtors and whatever geography that you are and thousands of them. They're like fan staying on the beach kind of thing. So, what I realized there is I sad "man, this is kind of a potentially untapped market of people" who, on a regular basis, are dealing in real estate transactions--buying and selling-- that may mean some type of construction service. So, I went and I bought a six pack of beer and I got on my laptop and I started to go feverishly buy each reality and started copying pasting into a spreadsheet by the realty the person's name, their email. And this is a bunch, again sweat equity and viscid Alge it's mindless stuff. I've probably paid somebody to do it.
Sure. But to me it's like I don't want to spend money for stuff like that. So, I ended up doing it myself. And, at the end of it I ended up getting about 300 e-mails. And each company is a little different. For the most part, most really companies have their e-mails publicly available. You can click on the person space there because they want to have their e-mail. In other cases, if you're smart and you want to get crafty, sometimes the realty company will hide or have like, almost like a contact wall and front before you can get to the reeler. It's a dumb idea. In my opinion, it's a terrible way of aggravating people but they do it sometimes. Well, me being the never satisfied Jonah, I didn't like that. I thought there was a whole reality of people that I couldn't get their e-mail address for. So, what I ended up doing was I tried to find out like how exactly do you get a particular, you know, email and what I found was I ended up finding a press release that ended up coming from somebody within the company. And I realized that it said jane dot go at such and such realty. And I went "Oh, well that's the naming convention for their e-mails”.
I already have all the names of the people, I bet you are pretty close to figuring out John Maybank is John Bébé at name realty. So, for those that were a little tricky and I didn't get the e-mails, just using common sense I kind of put that together and I harvested those as well. Now I've got you know some middle names that, you know, that I didn't put in writing or whatever they got kickback but in general I was able to harvest a lot of those e-mails that that you know for the average person would be hidden behind that and were valid e-mails. But to get to the core numbers, I ended up about I think it was around 300 e-mails. And what I ended up doing was I did not do this kind of mail chimp or whatever process. There's a thousand different reasons but one of the biggest and most important ones is that a lot of these Web sites are red flags from e-mail accounts already.
They know where they're coming from and they say that's junk so we'll put it there. And those companies are always paying a lot of money to try to get that red flag lifted. So, I said I don't want that to happen. So, what I did was I focused on the individual realtors’ realty companies and what I did was I literally opened 15 different Gmail email windows and I would copy and paste.
And so, what I would do is I would have the same subject line and then the message would be the same I would say hey buddy with Jonah Canter. I'm currently working with Ryan X over here at Carolina One. Doing some projects. I'd love to be the person that can help you with your inspection reports. Your seal 100 sign offs or any kind of general construction that you need. Feel free to contact us whatever. And I would copy and paste that message into every single one of those messages. Go back to my spreadsheet. Pop in all the e-mails for a lot of listeners. They're like "Holy cow! that's a lot of work for it". Well, the whole reason I was spending a lot of that work is: I wanted that to get to that person. I've wanted to go around the junk mail thing.
So, that's the best way at the time that I knew how to do it. So, after a lot of time and sending those e-mails, I mean a lot of time as in like, I think it took me about three solid hours to do it properly and methodically and make sure it was nice. And I curtailed it to each reality, right? So, I made sure it's like "I work with your friend. So, and so at Carolina one" or "I've done business dealings with your colleagues in your office". It's such a familiar tone. E-mail? --more likely to open. So, out of the 300, I had about 32 people actually reply.
It was. Just having people reply, at 32 people was amazing and then when you get into the fact that out of those 32 people I ended up picking up 15 realtors who wanted me to start looking at jobs for. And right away.
So, for four years.
Jeez! That's Sweet!
So, yes the are people out there. If you don't know marketing and everything it seems like an immensely small number. But as far as industry standards go for marketing and marketing campaigns that's a seriously successful situation to find yourself and with your leads, right?
And so, break it down. I mean think about that. I know you probably will but when you break it down per hour the time you spent generating that lead and the dollar. It's a high percentage rate. Not only is it just a high percentage rate, but man, that's a high dollar amount rate for the amount of work you got.
Absolutely.
You know one of the things is that the immediate impact of this was really apparent to me to me until I realized how my network had expanded. So, agents who were on the buying side and had no knowledge of my company. We're now hearing that my company was doing the repairs right. So, I not only gained the selling agent but also the work from the buying agent. Right. And in the middle of all that were the customers both buying or selling who potentially would provide me with more work.
And it was a wonderful situation to find myself in because in a lot of cases, the clients buying the house, had ideas for what they wanted to add or update after the closing. And, I was the first person they came to their mind because I did the repairs on the-- on the real estate repair side.
So, yeah. Okay, let me stop because I just don't think that everyone is comprehending and if you are, I just want to make this another aha! moment by sending out those e-mails that actually put you in front of four potential customers. It does. Well, it's actually six potential customers. Well, it is a bigger deal with real estate teams. You're correct.
Two-- two bookends of your agents and (then the buyer and seller) buyer and the seller. And then, if you have couples, I mean the numbers, you get the point-- it's a lot of people-- it's a lot! Yeah. It's-- it's not one. (It's multiples.)
Yeah. And so, with the example of the the 15 realtors. Let's just say give me one job each. That's forty-five new jobs, right? I can tell you that if you impress a realtor, they will always use you for their own clients. And, they will absolutely refer you to future clients. Or, thirdly, they'll refer you internally to the network of agents because they're always having this problem.
So, the benefits of Hardisty real estate leads are honestly exponential. Now, I will say to people this process does lend itself specifically to general contractors. And, the reason behind this is because general contractors are capable of doing a wide range of trade work for customers-- especially contractors. They may find results that vary from what I've mentioned, so mostly because they are limited in the amount of work they can do. So, a contractor can pull permits and this and that. So, just know that when you're going into this, if you're a specialty guy who just does dry wall, well I'm sure you can get drywall work. But a general contractor, who comes to that same realtor and says I can do it all, is going to trump you every time because realtors do not like having 15 different subs on an inspection report. They want one time, get it done, get it out.
Well, at least that they have to have that license-- that license contractor just to show for the receipts and stuff.
That's correct. In fact, it says on inspection reports at least it's here in South Carolina and other places. I'm sure there's reciprocity in the thought process. But idea as it says-- MUST BE INSPECTED. Or not say it's a must. It says "have a license contractor review the work" or whatever And that's another kind of side business if you will-- with potential with real estate agents is. In South Carolina-- in Charleston specifically, we have a report. It's called SEAL 100. And this report is independent of a regular inspection report. So a regular inspection report tells you about door latches, sinkers are not working in light bulb, and all that kind of stuff.
The seal 100 is specific to structural and relates to termite damage, water damage, mold build, do that kind of stuff. Well, everybody, in fact that the mortgage companies require SEAL 100 to close on houses and Charleston. So, this report, and we're in the low country, right? It's called the Low Country for a reason, it's like that. So, a lot of times, we see stuff like surface mold or we'll find serious issues like the seals under the house or Roded or there's other things.
Well, you cannot close on a house without that seal 100 being cleared by a licensed contractor. That means that Joe Schmooze out there, who doesn't have a contractor's license, cannot clear that. It will not go through. You have to have your license. There's a separate one sheet you have. But, what's beautiful about it, is outside of the inspection reports, you have another potential avenue of doing work and-- a lot of cases, I'm extremely fair to my customers.
I never want to screw somebody over because I think karma will come back and bite you. So, a lot of contractors will be like "ha ha they got popped for mold mildew". They're already scared. I'm going to tell them it's a thousand dollars and try to squeeze--NO! Because a lot of times you can remediate it very simply, quickly. Or the things that are noted on the SEAL 100 they'll say things like past bore holes in the silt. Well, we look at it, it's structurally sound. Well, guess what? We're not going to charge you five thousand dollars to do that. But we will-- we charge every time for a SEAL 100 sign off letter, we charge 150 dollars to the customer.
So whether we do the work or we just go out there look at it and sign off, we have another potential money out of there.
That's just another way to get some money to pay for investment.
Yeah. It really is. It is a sweet way of getting us to-- with our time, effort to go out there and then put our contractor license on it.
It's worth the time. We don't really make money. But again, back to the point, and I think the other podcast that I mentioned is, you know, you're going to wow people if they get doom and gloom from a report and you go look it's not as bad. We're not-- you don't have to do all this. It's just a simple sign if you can see the stress come off that was sold again. Building trust this got to be straight. Yeah, you charge three hundred and fifty dollars, but I get it. Source less time effort and all that. So you know, it is a nice way of getting that.
So, one thing I want to caution people, the contractors and people that are listening right now, is to you know do not be duped by real estate agents and are real estate agents nefarious?-- No they're not. Are there a lot of bad ones? -- Absolutely. And there's a lot of lazy ones and there's a lot of young ones. There's a lot of part time ones there's a lot of people that aren't good.
So, when you're going through this, you've got to separate the wheat from the chaff and you've got to find the real estate agents that have, you have their best interest in mind and their client's best interests in mind. But they reciprocate that back to you.
If a real estate agent is always throwing you under the bus or last minute or whatever, I don't want to work with you-- you're a problem. And that's what a successful company gets to pick and choose who they work for. So, maybe not initially but that was a growing pain with some of these I jokingly told people: you're fired. Like the Trump I'm like "no I'm done". I can't deal with you. You're too hard to work with and I don't like the way you do business so I don't have to work with you. So I now have, to this current day, I have about out of that number of 15.
Like an accordion way out. And then I brought it until about 10 that I work with on a regular basis. And four that I do work with every month. You know that you're just weird.
I mean, well I know I know that it can be and its but it's like any, you know, you've got-- you've got a niche and you got to find the ones that are-- that are worth it to you. That you can build a relationship with, that you trust them, they trust you and it's you. Because good real estate agents are looking for team members. To help make their life easier, to make their business successful. And then you've got other real estate agents are just looking for people to get for thirty-five dollars an hour to get in and get it down. It doesn't matter what it looks like or to just say that it's fixed and knows enough people you want to do business with.
Yeah, it's absolutely true. And one thing that another-- I don't call it a cautionary tale, but something that you should know and this specific-- specific vein of leads that you get is, I do not charge when somebody comes to me and they're a homeowner they call and say "Hey Jonah I want you to give me a price on redoing my kitchen when I come out". I do not charge them any fee for estimates. I think it's a joke for a homeowner to get a fee for an estimate.
That's what we're here to do it's a cost of doing business right. However, there is a very deep caveat when it comes to buying and selling property. And I learned this the hard way and I'm a pretty quick learner and I cut it off really fast. But I was going out for a couple of these bad realtors and they said "Oh can you tell us how this is the inspection report. We'd like to have X Y and Z X can you give us a price?" And I'd have to go out, look at it, take my time, give it to them, crickets, crickets, and then I'd say "Hey just tell him what happened", "Oh we just we negotiated that off of the sales price". "Oh, OK I'm sorry I spent my day took my time out of my job to come help you negotiate". So, in real estate transactions, for those listening, do not be afraid to charge a estimating fee.
I say: hey look if you want me to come out here you don't own the house. You're looking to buy it. I'm going to charge you and I can-- this price at where I sit now, I can charge. You may want to charge less and I'm totally fine but I charge people 200 dollars. Because I know if you're serious or not. Right? Right. So, I say: hey I charge 200 dollars. I will come out. I will give you a static binding estimate on whatever you want. I'll shake hands with you know, whatever. But you'll get it for me a binding estimate. But you're going to give me 200 dollars when you meet with me and I'm going to turn that estimate over to you. Now, at the end of the day you can use that however you want. You can choose to negotiate the price, you can say oh I spent 200 dollars to learn something I don't care. Or, if you say Jonah we want you to fix this work.
I'll knock the 200 dollars off of the price and I'll do the work for you. Right. And that's a way of keeping honest people honest. And say: hey look this is my time effort. I'm in Charleston right now. As I stand here now, we are slammed, right? So, I don't have time for this. This kind of stuff in my business and I've grown up to the point where I don't need to go to things that aren't going to have results from them and it sounds kind of pompous but I don't know where I'm at now.
You move from one-- one spectrum to another spectrum and along the way you've learned the lessons. Like many of us have. That you would do what you can do, what you want to and what you should do and you don't mind doing stuff like that as long as you're going to get paid for your time. And you know what, it does. You always have to learn like what you say has reactions, right? You've got to look at-- empathy is the thing that's lost in today's youth because you can sit on a phone and call somebody fat and then you're like them I feel good about myself . I'm going to go make a sandwich and you don't know what the other person is like--you know, feeling. But when you have to look at somebody or interact with them and see when you say something like I'm going to charge you two hundred dollars. And the reason I'm doing this is because I wanted to be fair to you and to me.
But I'm going to I'm going to pay it back to you. If you react in a good way you know you'd say yes to the estimate or what I noticed in watching people is they said: OK not a problem or some people would go $200-- That's a joke. There's other people doing it for free and I'd go. You're right. And you should use them and I'd walk because I don't want to-- if that's how you're going to be about this, and not be thinking clearly-- you're not the client for me. You're going to be a pain in my butt from all from start to finish (because there's no value in your time). Exactly, exactly. You already treat me a certain way.
So, it's a great way to just, you know, kill a conversation quickly or to gauge if a person is interested. And I will tell you, I'm not kidding. Eight out of ten times that I charge 200 dollars for an estimate. They got some skin in the game, right? So, they want to they end up coming back. So, it's kind of like you know, it's a little bit of a sticky wicket but it keeps them coming back and saying "well you know we can use our 200 dollars off ". When you're doing this guys and ladies contractors out there who are listening, just keep in mind to build an extra 200 dollars somewhere in your in your estimate. If you really want to be honest. You can do that. There's nothing wrong with that. Which can be-- because you did spend your time. Let's be honest.
You spent your time, your effort to do it. So, I would never tell anybody not to do that. Or you can say, "you know what Jonah, the way I look at this, I'm just going to take it off because my best estimate. I don't think anybody would think bad of you on either side of that because this is the business that we're in. That's something that's totally acceptable in my opinion.
Well, yeah and I think that like the other day I’ve, you know, the other day I got a call and everyone said I'll get a call. And you know, can you come give me an estimate? Sure. Do I have to be there? Yes. Why?
You know I would really like to know what you need done. "Well, I want my house painted" And I can go "Is there any repairs?" Well I don't know. So, they just really-- they want a price they don't want you, your value or what you can bring to the table. So, I said you know most people, I'm going to I'm going to start saying, you know, mine was going to be 150. We're going to do, you know, it's going to cost you 150 dollars for us to come out and do an estimate. We'll give you a 10 or 15-page report line item everything. But if you're going to be there, we would be happy to do it for nothing. Yeah, you're exactly right. People who do not want to be at a job, now, if they're in Boston and they're buying a house down here in Charles, I get it.
Yeah that's a different time, I do that a lot of times, too.
Yeah, but if they're like: No no no just go. Just go figure it out. It's like no no no that's not how this works. I want to-- I want to look at you, I want to talk to you or Schumann’s. I want to hear what you want. Because guess what? I can give you that estimate and you weren't here. And then all of a sudden, you'll come back and go "Oh that's not what I wanted". Well, that's funny because you weren't here. Yeah.
So. So and you know, one thing I've come across when it comes to estimates, and this is getting outside of the no cost construction process, but I think when you do give these estimates, contractors please be aware of this. The devil is in the details. You cannot be over descriptive in your estimate and a lot of times, it's going to cover your butt big time. Some contractors think, well some contractors think if they're vague, they can hide numbers. No no no. You should never do that. You shouldn't be line item by line item. Like an inspection report. I've written up an estimate that is a 102-line item estimate before. And it killed me to do it. But guess what? The client was able to chew every bit of that off and it said replace fan, customer supplies the fan. There was never a question if they said oh I didn't know I had to supply the fan that estimate you accepted and said it it's on paper. It's cost. Sorry. So yeah. And then and that's in reality. I know we're you know off the subject, but it goes to the value, is that you're creating your value by making those line items. Because, you know, just like last time I was in a post the other day so I'm going to do a thing and you know how come. How do you charge-- I can't charge fifty dollars an hour to paint? And I'm like why are you charging by the hour? First of all. I said it's not in the painting-- it's in the details.
Tell them what you're going to do? What are you going to print? What are you going to do? Are you going to move? What are you going to clean? What are you going to cover? You know what are you going to-- How many coats of paint? What are you going to put back? Are you going to vacuum up after? See, because it's not about to paint, anybody can paint.
Yeah. It's about getting through the process from the beginning-- of moving the furniture and you make it as labor intensive as possible in your wording. So, they are going to say "Damn! I don't want to do that. I had a guy come in and do it. "
Yeah it's funny, it's like you never. One of the best examples of my own business that I had happened one time, and it never happened again was back to the painting thing. You know, I always tell clients look if you're going to say money anywhere sure you can pay. Are you going to be good at it? Probably not, but if you're if you painted it you're going to be satisfied with your paint job, right? Because you pay somebody.
But the thing that I did, I remember one time the customer came to me and said we were building a affricate. It was like doing some moldings or something and they said "we'll paint we'll paint the molding will do the walls everything."
I said No problem. Took that paint line item off, got done. Get done with the job I'm coming to get a final payment. And they're like "Uhh, yes so it says--or not it says-- they said there's nail holes and it needs to get caught in all this other stuff and I got out. That's the painter’s problem. That was my line item said paint included. Call me a hole feel everything. You're on that. They're like "No, my dad told me Bubba". And I don't care what your dad said. You're being lazy and trying to save money. I'm not coming back to do that if I'm not going to be painting, right? So that was an example of when, and I still to this day have clients who want to paint them alone, And I'm very specific. I have a thing that says client understands they will call Phil Nail hole bla bla.
So, well I ended up-- usually nobody likes to do that. So, I ended up usually I paint. You know, quote was just for simplicity you know six hundred dollars. I'm like "oh yeah". Three hundred of profit. You get that work back and its good money maker. You don't lose all of them just doing all that. But that's we're getting back to the estimates. That saves me a lot of the times. It saves me in being able to go back and reference and say I don't remember that. Well, that's fair or you might not have remembered that, but do you remember reading the estimate into my contract? Because that's gospel. And that's what we're going by. And it says. You're filling the nail holes. And so, you may get somebody wants to debate to the Kalkbrenner tone about that, but they can't debate what's on paper what they sign. So, it's like whatever at the end of the day. So that's where estimate. It can be helpful in that and in the sense of having it line item down like that. Cooley. So, let's go back to let's go back to the Realtors for a moment.
Now, when you picked out your realtor, because you were just starting out in business you just went and you just picked out the realtors in your area. And the ones that you-- that got the just the ones in your area that you felt that it would be out. Because you're just looking for business. But now, how would you do it?
Yeah I think when I was first doing it, I didn't really care. To be honest. I think I looked up realtors and Charleston and I didn't-- I wasn't looking like reviews, right? Because reviews on a realty agency doesn't tell about the individuals that you just said somebody to a good experience. So, you can't use that.
But, for one thing-- I mean different realty companies are predominant in certain areas. Carolina, one is big here. As an example--excuse me-- but you may have Century 21 or provincial or somewhere in your area. So just be cognizant when you're driving around. Who do you see a lot of the signs for? That means they probably have a lot of agents that's a good place. But, even more simple than that. I just zoned in through a Google search and started plugging away. I just went to the Web sites and started going into it. If I was doing it nowadays, I would still probably take the same approach because you will find the gems inside of the gems being the real estate agents inside of different agencies.
So, I've had bad experiences with agents at one Realty and also great ones at the same ones. Your kind of, you know, weave your path and there's a lot of good agents at bad Realty. So, don't forget also to don't overlook the more boutique firms that aren't with these national brands. They may be more centralized to local-- the local area. Those sometimes are good because they are Neish or a specialty boutique agency that deals sometimes in a lot more high-quality contracts for you. So, you know you may be going from five hundred thousand-dollar houses to the one point five million dollar range or what not.
So, they're all valid.
Yeah, I'm looking up for upscale realtors. So, you know, five hundred-- I don't know, what's your average house is sold for up there. I know you are premises historic places it is kind of pricey. Well, it's funny because it does. That's such a loaded question. Like everybody else. In what area of town, you live in?
Well, it is. But I mean, Charleston is an expensive town as a whole. We have Kiawah Island but Oprah and a bunch of people live 30 minutes from here. So, there's 22 million-dollar houses there, right? That's kind of skewed that a little bit. But, we also have downtown where the houses are in anywhere between 11 to 15-million-dollar range. But to answer your question, on average, you're probably looking at 450 to five hundred thousand dollars. About the average sale price for a home here and then as you get to barrier islands or isn't on the water. And that could skew greatly. But yeah in general that's about the price.
So really, so let's talk to you guys out there you can niche it to any anywhere you want. You want five hundred thousand, you come from working with five hundred thousand homeowners, come from working with million-dollar homeowners. And those are realtors you want to target. Yeah. And keep in mind that if you're looking for inspection reports and little knickknacky stuff to do to start with. But you-- that is a different-- when you deal with a client who owns the one point five-million-dollar house, there is a whole different kind of line of thinking and business that you just can't, you can't do it half butt. How about that?
Yeah, if you're sorted out, don't go there.
Yeah, don't go there built into that. And then you know, and then you'll be successful.
Right. So that's been cool. It's really been awesome. Yeah, I know some of the things that we used to do, because there's a painting company we would do a lot. We would do a little bit of repairs that didn't need permits stuff like that. And what we would do is, when we went back, you know, when the homeowner comes back to do other things like other painting jobs after they bought the house, what we would do is we would just write a note to the realtor. Say "Hey just so you can put it in your file. You know, Bob and Susie just had their house painted and such and such a date so they can put in their files". So there.
So, because I'm becoming a team member for that realtor. Let them know what's going on so that when they-- if they're playing their cards right, realtor, and keeping in touch with their clients. They're going to sell their house again but they'll have a portfolio. We know you get this done in this town and this done. So, we're in good shape. We know you don't have to do that.
Exactly. Exactly.
This has been awesome!
Yeah appreciate it. Thanks for letting me do round.
No, it's really cool because it's nice to talk to somebody who's in the trenches, has done the things, made the mistakes and bounced back from to actually turn those mistakes into successes. So that's really what makes us successful. It's just bouncing back from our mistakes or things-- tweaking things as we go along because there's-- I mean it's come on, to say that you can become successful by doing the one thing is a phenomenon. Let's put it that way. Yeah it's the one thing that I'm most proud about is that when I got into this, I didn't act like I knew everything. And you know, just like the listeners, you can you can read, you can listen, get advice from other people, ask questions, learn along the way, learn from your mistakes, but continue to evolve. And I promise you, if you keep your head down and your nose clean and you do it the right way, you will find success in the end. So, to everybody listening, keep your heads up and keep a positive attitude about it you'll be successful.
Absolutely. So, Jonah how does--give us your e-mail so if anyone want to e-mail, ask some questions or connect with you. So, we can do that. Yeah fee free for anybody listening. If you want to reach out to me with questions or comments about the show today or anything you can always reach me directly at jonahcanter@gmail.com. That's J O N A H CANTER at gmail.com. Or for more fun side of me, I'm a big instagrammer. So, you can check me out on my personal account which is @chucktown or you can find me on the Canter construction Instagram. Give me a follow. Give me a like some of the pictures. Feel free to reach out to me any way you want to. Awesome thanks so much for being with us. It has been a blast. Thanks Dave. Until next time.
For inquiries about the CANTER CONSTRUCTION, you can reach them at: To connect with Jonah Canter Gmail: jonahcanter@gmail.com http://www.canterconstructionsc.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, 18 January 2018
You must Stop Your Competition for Stealing you Customers .If my customers don’t remember who I am then it’s MY fault because I’m not keeping in touch with them. So, if your customer got stolen from you because you didn’t use the proper tools to actually keep in touch with them and build that relationship, it is YOUR fault. Having a newsletter actually builds a relationship with your customer and, if designed properly, they will read the whole thing, and may even pass it on to a friend or a family member. I’ve actually booked business this way. I’ve gone to an appointment and I my newsletter is on the refrigerator . Out of all the forms of marketing, the monthly newsletter to me is the most valuable marketing tool that is available. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not giving up on any of my marketing strategies, but if someone came up to me and put a gun to my head and said, “You have to give up all of your marketing, but you can only keep one”, the answer would be my newsletter. It would win hands down. I ran the numbers from tracking the newsletter and 32% of my business in 2014 I attribute to my customers actually receiving my newsletter. Here is the wild factor..for every dollar spent on sending out my newsletter, I receive $21.37 in return. That’s an excellent return on investment. Will everyone receive that kind of return? Probably not, maybe yes, maybe no, maybe more. If you’re not building a relationship with your customers, then you are not going to be able to be that “go to person”. You’re not going to be an “expert” because you’re just another guy. I think if you’ve listened to our podcast, we talk a lot about not being a commodity, of being a value to your customers. When you keep in touch with them on a regular basis you’re being a value to them because you’re doing something that no one else does. Why is that? Every month you don’t communicate with your customers the relationship that you’ve having built decreases. Here is a very interesting thing as far as building that relationship is concerned. It needs to be done on a monthly basis. Proven fact that if it’s done every 90 days, then you might as well not even send one out, because they are going to forget about you. The consistency of doing it monthly is key. Five ways newsletters will grow and profit your business.
E-mail versus regular mail Newsletters Almost about everyone has an email address, but you can be guaranteed everyone has a physical mailing address. With today’s email and the way everyone is using it, you are lucky if your open rate is close to 15%. Sure, I know people who have 50 plus percent open rates, but they are proficient at writing catchy subject lines. When a hard copy newsletter is delivered to a house it has a 100% open rate, because it’s designed like a flyer with news articles on it. So it’s in your face. How do I know this? Because like you I bring the mall in the house and separate it into two piles…one pile gets opened and one gets thrown away. Every month they are getting something from me that’s keeping me in front of them and I am reminding them of who I am and what I do. What makes a bad newsletter? Mistakes most people make when they publish their newsletter. I see a lot of newsletters that are just down right ‘boring’ it’s just the biggest waste of money. I’ve seen one from a dentist who tells you all about teeth and gums and everything about the mouth. I don’t really want to know about that. You must keep your newsletter from being BORING. What you’re trying to achieve is again to build that relationship. It’s the relationship that builds long lasting businesses. If there’s no relationship, then there’s no business. Another mistake is allowing people to advertise in your newsletter and then you are advertising monthly specials for your business. I think this is a big mistake. I think that it can be done occasionally, but for the most part, it’s not a good thing because the newsletter is being thought in your customers mind as a non-threatening instrument to read. It’s a publication, it’s not an advertising tool so be careful. If you are going to run a special or want to advertise a business or businesses or even specials, I recommend that they be on an insert. It’s strange but the insert breaks the barrier of the advertisement. It keeps the newsletter personal. Newsletters are a great way to reactivate old customers If you haven’t been consistent or do not at this point do a newsletter, and then it’s a great way to reactivate former customers. Most people stop doing business with you because they feel like you didn’t care about them (this is statistics from the Rockefeller Corporation). Sixty-eight percent of consumers’ leave because they think that a business doesn’t care about them. That’s crazy, right? No, it’s not crazy because that’s what happens – people don’t feel like you care about them. Let’s get started today, let’s start the process. Hopefully, we’ve given you the basics of everything you need to do to start your own newsletter. I’m sure that we gave you enough information on the importance of doing a newsletter, or why you want to do it. It’s because you want more profit, you want your customers to stay with you for as long as humanely possible, and because you’ve you want to build a long lasting relationship with them.
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, 17 January 2018
State of the Entrepreneur 6 critical success factors John Bowen. Six things that can help you grow your business to exponential growth. One, you want to nail. Now you want world-class customer experience. You want to scale. You want to scale your business, so it will grow. You want to systematize it so that you don't become the key driver. The systems become the slave to the business you want to monetize it. You want to increase your profitability. You want to bring people in that will help you build equity and create more profit within your business. You want to keep it. Some of that money for personal finance your personal future and then
Hey, this is Dave Negri with Contractors Secret Weapon. Today, I have a really neat guest with us today John Bowen and John has written a book coauthored with Dan Sullivan Joe powers the state of the occupation. It's a study that did have about 3500 business owners on six key topics that made them successful. The six key things. That six top things that did. And so, as we go through the interview today that the talk I just want to take notes because these are some really cool and poignant things that are the gold nuggets that will help you grow your business. But let me tell you a little bit about John. He’s a successful entrepreneur and founder of four multimillion dollar companies including AESNation.com, A financial advisers like CEG Worldwide during his experience the financial advisor or managing assets upwards of $25 billion. He found that most institutions and advisers lack the strategy necessary to build a practice that would make them indispensable to the ideal affluent quietly building a great quality of life. This led to founding CEG Worldwide organization in 2000 and continues to grow. John is a prolific author of more than 15 books to his name and a regular columnist for The Huffington Post and financial planning. He’s also the host of Accelerating Entrepreneurial Success Podcast. So, you're going to get a treat today. John has got some awesome things. Let's welcome him. John, I just want to thank you today for being with us and sharing your book with us the stuff that you got from the State of the entrepreneur. Dave, it's a real pleasure. I have a tremendous respect for my fellow entrepreneurs. And I was blessed with Dan Sullivan a strategic coach and Joe Polish of Genius Network and the three of us said you know nobody's really doing research on successful entrepreneurs and what separates the most successful among us and we have the privilege of going to both, all three of our audiences and said “Hey would you fill out almost a half an hour survey with us?” and we had 3500 entrepreneurs do it. So, we've gotten great insights that we've got tonight. You know I love making that available and we'll be making that available to all your listeners. That would be awesome. So, as you, as you put together your data and stuff and you come up with these six, I'm sure you can with more factors but I'm sure there are six keys ones like you said earlier that are the most prevalent to me. So, what are they? Well you know it's really what happens so often Dave and businesses when we get in we're all a little bit ignorant. We think business is simple and then all of a sudden it gets so complex we get overwhelmed. And one of the things I know you want to do and I want to do is we want to help our fellow entrepreneurs you know get on the right side of complexity and make it simple again and when we did that we saw six things. If you did these six things well it didn't matter what business you were in. This is what you need to do to be very, very successful. And so, when we kind of go I would go high level. I'll go right on my off-court date and then let's dive in a little bit on each. OK, excellent. So, first one is you've got to nail it no matter what business you're in. You're got to deliver a world-class customer or client experience you have to you know. Anybody with money has choices in today's world. Second, is you have to be able to scale it. So, once you got that client experience you've got to be able to scale it and really attract a steady stream of customers clients and then once we have that. I mean that's really those are the foundation of any business.
But what happens is that at certain levels it's different in every business model. We kind of peter out we can't do any more until we organize it. We have to really make our business systematic. And then why we're doing all this. What we've got to do is monetize it we've got to increase profitability the margins and increase the value the equity value in our business. And then boy you know we're building this great business and that's all really good. But we have to keep some of the money to get to build our personal well. We've got to take care of the people we love and the causes we care about. So, we've got to create the personal financial freedom so that we can make the decisions irrespective of our business.
And then really, we're in business not for more business. We're in business to support a great quality of life. We've got the 6 one is we've got to live it. And that's enjoying a great quality of life for all those around of us.
Every stakeholder is our clients and customers. Our teammates, your partners, we have shareholders and obviously our families and ourselves, Dave. Yeah, that's awesome. It's just amazing. And you know like you said we make it complex so making it simple. I like that part.
Well you know it's really the more and the simple a lot of times is nothing more than getting focused. So often in business you know we're all. Once we started having the success we started thinking we're really talented and we forget that if we can just focus in on that one thing, I always go back and think of city slickers where Curly says all you got to do is one thing and that's it. And in business, it is that when we start doing too many things, that's when we run into problems.
Wow. And that one thing could be multiple. I mean really it could be the wow factor or it could be delivery service or is it could be multiple of things but like you said the one thing that you're really good at that's the one thing and nobody's going to steal from it.
What I like. There's a fellow I work to a Joey Coleman and I did a podcast with him as well and I'm praying name of his company Dave. But Joey has his concept of the first hundred days and I would encourage all our fellow entrepreneurs to think about what is that you know if somebody decides to engage you to work with you. What're the hundred days? And you know as a contractor sometimes you may know, you may only come in for one piece of business but the reality is the hardest piece of business to get in any business is that first step. And if we can get them so that they're having an experience with us that they're going to use us ongoing. And it's as you said, Dave, wow so they want to share us with their friends.
And boy the ability to social media anymore. You know so often that we're finding a lot of the people we want to work with. And we're hearing from others how well they're doing. That's really made so many avenues have opened today to get business rolling for us. Well, let's go to number two.
Which is what we're what we're looking at here is scaling that and so we now have a great experience and we're really doing something well and to the extent that we can create a steady stream and this is the one thing we all want. I don't know that I've ever met anybody who said I don't want any more customers, any more clients you know and actually I can say a few people but they usually just don't want to grow their business.
They're kind of in the process of getting out of the business right. If you want to build you know the substantial business, be an entrepreneur you've got to have that steady stream of clients coming in and you know what. We live in a great time Dave because what's going on with today with the internet. The ability to market and lower cost. I mean you know the big thing is to be able to buy a page in the Yellow Pages was very hard to differentiate ourselves. Now we have so many different ways to reach out but we can never forget that the most important source is referrals and it's not only client referrals but it's also those strategic partners that we have.
And we do a lot of research in this and we find that the most successful business owners and how many successes, it's hard to measure. Success means different things to different people but add a million or more-net income. We count as very successful in every business.
And what they're doing is usually over half is through strategic partners. They're looking, they see the gatekeepers. You know I do a lot of work with financial advisers, and it’s the accountants and attorneys are there. There were contractors. Depending on your service. Who is somebody that already has all your clients that would be perfect for you? Building strategic relationships with them are so powerful.
Yeah, because I mean really, I'm just thinking about it now that static. That cut your marketing cost is almost zero. Well, I'm just thinking of you know at a fella a good friend that just moved out of the area about a year ago. But he was unbelievably talented kind of new in remodeling and he was a terrible marketer but you know just a great technician but not a business person. And we sat down over a drink and I said he got to do something Mark with us and he goes. Well you know you know can you refer.
And I go, Mark, I'm only one client I'm you know I might be able to introduce you when it comes up but why don't you go to where it is. And I introduced him to a couple of good friends that were the top architects in our area for remodels. And then he never you know he got all the business that he ever needed.
Yeah and that's rather than you know all you know the yellow pages that are the social media on Facebook. You know, let's think bigger where to do those people, where are they already that they have a trusted relationship with someone that you can earn. Think beyond the one g’s and the two-g’s individual client. Think about the people that already have your client.
And it's a lot more fun and then-then organized systematically you know we want to have our business systematic and the reason for that is you know if we were always doing one-off stuff, it becomes very, very difficult. We want to be successful on purpose. We want to take deliberate actions to whatever the goals that we're looking to do and we want to do it very efficiently. The more streamlined, the more effective it's going to be.
And this is where you know I love flow charting out exactly what we're going to do. Putting it in writing so it becomes real. And that is you know we're just seeing that over and over again that's transformational for most businesses. Because they get an “I” on it yeah. Well, what it does is they start looking that when we start mapping it out in the beginning. I know I had this experience I've got multiple businesses. I've been very successful over the years. I’ve been very fortunate blessed.
And I've had the chance to work with. You know we do research on every level of wealth all the way up to what we call the super-rich people with 500 million or more and I think we've done as much research on billionaires as anyone. And what we see is they really are focused and they're very queer oftentimes they're not the person doing the operational side, but they have somebody that just maps it out and anything that's not important is killed. You know they're going to make it as simple and elegant as possible. And this improves not only the quality of life of the entrepreneur, the contractor but also the team around it they love it and they'll work with you to simplify it. And that's where it really becomes great.
Yeah. And I would have imagined so. Well let's talk about you know as we do so we're going to nail it, we’re going to deliver a great experience, we're going to scale up. We're going to start having that steady stream of clients coming in. Then we're going to organize it so we have the processes are in place we have written procedures to do that then we're going to monetize it because now we've got it working so we can make it more profitable.
So, we're looking at you were working with someone who can get a virtual CFO but having somebody that really is outside the business is looking at the financials and looking at kind of what the exceptions are what can we do to actually make this more profitable. And what we find over and over again, there are so many ways to increase profitability and when we're so busy in our business doing it doing it doing it we don't see that.
And then as we do that the value of our business increases because now we've got the systems we become less important to the You've and the value if-if you choose to sell your business you know just goes up significantly.
And then what I like most about this is you know kind of the concept of keeping it. Creating personal financial freedom is so important because as we increase the profitability we to take some of the money out of our businesses so tempting to keep on investing and invest in invest in it. You know growing the business. But as we take it out and we build our personal wealth, we now have some freedom because we all know stuff happens and we're not going to be able to take really be successful in our business.
If we don't have the capital resources and this is something Dave I really feel passionate about because of my dad, I grew up in upstate New York. Had a great life a small town of 4000 but my father and uncle were one of the major employers. Number two employer with 400 employees and the cast iron foundry business.
And he gave me every dirty job in the pluckiness and I was kind of being groomed to run it down the road. I was the oldest son and lo and behold in my junior year in college, I'm waiting for the call to hear that I'm going to get the air-conditioned job. Finally, this year and he calls me and he tells me you know Don I've got some bad news is your uncle and I are going to put the foundry in the bankruptcy. I'm going to go out. He's going to wind it up I'm going to go get a job because I need the income.
Oh, and your mom and I are going to get a divorce. And it's like it was at that moment I mean I reflected and I just like standing there in shock and I go, daddy, you’re going to be OK? and the toughest thing was when he said I don't know. And this is where I at that moment I really didn't want that ever happening again. And you know I changed my major. Focused on financial and one of the top financial advisers in the country and me sold my businesses in ‘98. I started small mutual fund company manages a couple of billion dollars of money for top executives here in Silicon Valley.
And then I did sports and entertainment about CEO of a sports and entertainment financial group that had six hundred clients. The vast majority are you know there they were. We had the most NFL quarterbacks as well as a lot of people in front of the camera and I saw they were screwing up too and this was you know I just see this as universal Dave in a business owner. We have so many opportunities to really plan and I got to tell you even more about this new tax law to be so important to get advice.
I was just talking with a bunch of twelve hundred dollars in our tax attorney before we got together here and you know they show many things that we're all going to be able to do. We're going to need to make sure we're working with the right people because we have a not too silent partner working with us. The government taking what we want it to be fair and equitable. There's a lot of planning that we can do and then you know the last part is as we're doing all this we've got to live we've got to enjoy a great life.
And I find too many business people. We get caught up with as we're all about business. And then people tell us we have a balance and I don't believe in balance. I believe in harmony. You know I've got a wife of 37 years that hasn't always been balanced. I've got I don't have children but I've got up an awful lot of interest a whole bunch of things gone out of my life multiple businesses.
And what you do if you want to design your life to be successful on purpose and have those fun things you've got to schedule. I got to tell you a behaviorist tell us Dave six weeks out of the year we should be taking off to recharge ourselves. Most entrepreneurs we can't unless we schedule that early on. But that forces us to do all the other steps to get our business in such great shape that it's going to run without us which creates so much excuse me so much value.
Yeah, I like that thought six weeks out of the year. I mean here we need it recharge and you know so many of us are just going to feel like I've ever read that money right yeah.
And you know, in particular, I mean the demands on you know the profession that you were just you know where it's nonstop and there are shortages of contractors at least in my area and the demand. You know if we don't carve out time for yourself you beat yourself up and you know nobody's going to appreciate that. Right. You're not going to be of service to anyone you know at the end of the day.
This has really been awesome. I got two pages of notes here. I was just looking and I've got to see how many pages I've got a hundred. Now it's only about 81 pages kind of an almost an e-book type and it's really a great overview. You know one of the things we were talking before we turned on the mike. I do podcasts as well. I have a site called AES Nation. It's accelerating entrepreneurial success AESNation.com Where you'll be able to get this book as well as you know really follow some of the research and interviews that I’m dealing with you know very successful entrepreneurs and you know one of the things we want to do is let's not try to figure it all out ourselves. Let's go with them. You know work with really talented people that help us make it all happen. Yeah because everyone needs a team to grow.
What we do and we don't need them all of them, boys, we can outsource this and this is why I always like to work with people who have already walked the road ahead of me and they know they know how to do it. Dave as yourself. And that's where it really comes together
That’s really awesome. So this really been really intriguing and it just going through those six steps because that's another part of a blueprint that we can do to actually get where we need to be. So, your contact information is basically you want to go to it. How do you listeners the best place to go to find this is www.AESNation.com .
So, I’ll make sure that goes into the show notes and they go to AESNation.com and they can look for a book based on the home page cool and everything we just. A lot of stuff we went over but it'll be a little bit more detail. That would be AWESOME. AWESOME. This is really being awesome. I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to share with us today and your knowledge in this.
You know the six things that are really will help everyone if they implement it too. and then you get to go play golf and you're going to work on the last one. Number Six a good quality of life and I wish everyone else. You know let's go out make a difference. We've got all our current clients and future clients and customers counting on us. We can't let them down so we've got to do well on all six. Wish you the best. All right. Thanks so much.
Hey, I hope you really enjoyed that. John just delivered some killer content. And I just want to just give you a little brief overview and you need to come back and do this again. Take notes because it is six things that can help you grow your business to exponential growth. One, you want to nail. Now you want world-class customer experience. You want to scale. You want to scale your business so it will grow. You want to systematize it so that you don't become the key driver. The systems become the slave to the business you want to monetize it. You want to increase your profitability. You want to bring people in that will help you build equity and create more profit within your business. You want to keep it. Some of that money for personal finance your personal future and then six.
You want to live it your business support. That's why you went into business was to live it. So, let's do that again. Go back. Listen to this again. It is well worth your time to implement a bunch of this stuff into your strategies. Have a great week. Great day. Be profitable and grow your business with your lifestyle.
Connect with John Bowen get the book here http://aesnation.com/assessment/
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, 16 January 2018
Simple Micro Hack to Grow Your Contracting Business Exponentially Dave Negri; what if you could to grow your business by 40% without adding any more marketing campaigns with no more postcards, mailers, just by tweaking it just a tad and go through this thing called asset recovery.
Well if I sat down to think that I was going to grow my business by 40%. I would rack my brains and say Man I got to do a ton of work but I'm going to show you today. Now, what if I told you, you could grow your business by 40% without adding any more marketing campaigns. That's no more postcards no more mailers no more just by doing exactly what you're doing now but tweaking it just a tad. And I mean just a tad it just blew me away when I sat down and went through asset recovery. I'm still speechless as I go through it. You know there's a lot of times that we all know things like I knew this and I practiced it a little. But to take it one more step. I actually added 40%. I can actually add 40% to my gross sales. So, before you say I'm crazy to listen to me and you can actually implement this into your business very, very soon like tomorrow. So, let's just take a look at today we're talking about leads when I'm talking about referrals. We'll get back to that maintenance smartening next. And, but today I want to talk about this because I implemented it. It made it tweaked a little bit more than what I was already doing and the results were just fantastic. So here we go. Everyone spending the money for leads. Now the national average for closing leads, the leads that you get is 30% and the contractor around some someone will hire some less. I know in painting roofing plumbing you're doing about 30% on highly paid leads. If you're a builder you're probably doing about 10% to 15% because you're talking about huge high-end stuff. But let's just stay in a room about 3%. Now let's say that you have 100 transactions in your average transactions that you've closed on those hundred is $1,000 so say you've done a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of business. Now that's 30% of the leads that you got. So, you paid for 300 and 30 leads you closed one hundred. Well, what happened to the other 70%? When I sat down and gone through. Well, that's not a bad closing ratio but let's take a look at what the averages are for most people. Of that 70% that, didn't say yes didn't say no. If you moved on to the next sale how many of those people actually will buy within the next year was an amazing. It's him raising a high number 65% of the 70% that didn't close or you didn't close is going to buy from somebody within the next year. So, you've already spent the money on the Lists and you were dropping them out the back end and going after more new leads. So, the whole idea behind asset recovery is to take in work those leads. Well, they didn't say yes but they didn't say no. So, I only sent one to follow up. But now that I know that 70, 65 percent are going to actually buy within the next year, I put in more follow up the process into my, into my sales process. So, am I spending more money on a small tab? Am I implementing any new marketing strategies? No, because I'm actually taking something I hand. I am expanding it out farther so that I can benefit from the results of the money that I've already spent on leads. So, let's just run the numbers for the fun of it. But you've closed a hundred transactions, thousand dollars is your average sale. So, you've done $100,000 hours with business. You've closed 30%. So that means you've purchased 330 leads that you've heard that you pay for. You close to a hundred. So that means there are 230 leads that have dropped off your radar. My radar too. I mean I was just one follow up and I was getting results. But when I come to the realization that 65% of those 230 people are going to buy within the next year they called me and they called you. Why am I not continuing to follow up and follow up, and follow up might as well? So, out of that 230 people that fell off 161 of them. Can you believe that 161 of them are going to buy within the next 12 months from someone the services that they contacted you about? So, what if you only captured 25% of that 161 people that fell off. Think about that. You just captured 25%. Not a going after all of them. Just 25%. That's 40 people. That's 40 sales that you could have if you follow up and followed up and followed up. That's another forty thousand dollars just buy this in an area that's 40% added to your revenue. It's that simple. Now if you had said to me, Dave I want you to increase your business by 40%. I'd be on not looking at this, looking at that. That I had you more marketing strategies. No, it's this simple follow up on leads that you've already paid for. Put together a program that will continually get these people integrated into your system so that you can keep in touch with them at least through the year. Things happen. I've had people say well I'm not going to do it right now something happened. Call me back in a few months. Well, that happens and there's a lot of people that just fall off it or not. They contacted you in the beginning because they wanted to do something. So, might as well just keep following up with them until they say “Hey I had bought or Don't bother me anymore”. So, here's what I do. As soon as I do an ask them a proposal I'll send them a postcard thanking them for the opportunity to do this and to give them an estimate. I thank them for them giving me an opportunity to come out and do an estimate of the needs that whatever they need to be done. You know that goes a long way. Just on that alone, I've gotten business again people that are just like any and when I get a survey they say you know the reason I did business with you is that you sent me that crazy postcard just thanking me for giving you an opportunity. Come on give me an estimate. I felt like you wanted to do business with me. Well, I do you want to do business with them. Now. I added a step further. So, I programmed the card to go out as soon as I come home then I program to other cars for follow up. One goes out in seven days after I've mailed the first postcard thanking them and it's just as “Hey how you doing. Just want to keep in touch with you.” And there's some other stuff I do. But then there's the other postcard that I've been out ten days after that one. And then I schedule one for a phone call in about three weeks. Now in that interim they'll go on my monthly newsletter so that the least know who I am and what I'll do is after two months I'll send them another card in the mail. So yes, some continue to spend money but it's not a whole lot of money. You know, I was talking on an average of let's say your average ticket is a thousand dollars. I know everybody says it. But that was an easy one to work with. What would you be willing to spend to get another 40 customers that you've already got in your file? Would you spend a hundred bucks in marketing over the next year? So, for each one. So that's 4000 to get 40000. Yeah, I think I would and I don't think I would I know I would. I do it all the time. So, it's just not about the money it's about the return. You know you know to send out of 27% postcard to get a thousand-dollar job. I mean it takes a little bit of money but it's not a new program. I mean it is a new program because it's something that you're implementing into your already year process. Your system. It's not like “Oh I had to do more marketing. I got to get more leads.” Well you know you don't have to get any more leads because you can you just never really knew what to do before your closing ratio can now go up and if you're saying well my closing ratio is already better than 30%. Well you know it may be but if you're not tracking it and you're lying to yourself. So, here's just a brief overview. You've paid for 330 leads. You've sold 100 at a thousand dollars a pop. I mean a hundred dollars a pop now. Now that's just right. Thousand dollars a pop. So, you've done a hundred thousand dollars for the business. This could be a month it could be a year really doesn't matter because the numbers are the same. You've got 230 people that you have an additional 230 people that you paid for. Hundred and sixty-one are going to buy within the next year. You want to continue to follow up with those people and follow up with those people until they either buy or they say “Get off my back!” So, remember what Zig Ziglar said. I hope most you know Zig Ziglar was. If you're young and you have to look it up. He said Terry says people have skinny kids just go sell and continue to sell. So, what you need to do is put together your system. Card goes out because when you go do an estimate and they don't say yes right away. Thanking them for the opportunity you just give them a proposal to send out or put in your Hopper automated two or three post postcards or regular cards to go out in increments of seven days and then ten days after that and maybe ten days after that and if you're a phone person then by all means call. I'm not a phone person so I'm not going to call the. Put them on your newsletter list if you don't have a newsletter list. Then listen. In the next couple of weeks, we'll show you how to put together a newsletter and how to create an automated system to do all this stuff for you. Really, it's that simple. And like I said before if you had time me down as David got to grow your business by 40% I would have kicked in screens. There's no way. I just got so much work to do. But really this is a really simple process. You're just adding I'm tacking onto or creating a system that you never had before. But on the back end of your proposals of your leads, it's really simple. So also get minds book, “How to double your profits in six months or less”. You get some tremendous information and error. If you just take one or two things and run with it. Your business will grow. Simple stuff really simple stuff. So today have a great day. Next week we're going to talk about basically how to keep your competition from stealing your customers. So that would be pretty interesting. I know it is one of my favorite subjects. So, have a great week. Thanks for listening to us.
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Mon, 15 January 2018
Ken Tucker Important Local Online Strategies, Specializing in comprehensive integrated marketing strategies and campaigns for small and mid-sized businesses across the US. Specialties include search engine optimization, website design, reputation management, social media marketing, and lead generation marketing automation Hey, this is Dave Negri with Contractors Secret Weapon. Today, I have a fun guess. There's going to be a lot of fun. His name is Ken Tucker. He's the founder of Changescape Web a Small Business Marketing and Website Design Agency specializing in comprehensive integrated marketing strategies and campaigns for small and mid-sized businesses across the US. Specialties include search engine optimization, website design, reputation management, social media marketing, and lead generation marketing automation. And Ken is a Master Duct Tape Marketing Certified Consultant, an Inbound Marketing Certified Professional (since 2010), and an SEO for Growth Certified Consultant. Ken is the author of Social Media Marketing for Restaurants. Coauthored Reputation Management (Marketing Guides for Small Businesses) and this compact guide explains how to create and protect your online reputation. Awesome. This is really awesome. Ken, I just you know thanks so much for being with us and being willing to share your expertise. Thanks, so much Dave, I look forward to it. Cool. Just how did you get started in this crazy business because it's ever changing, ever moving and is no slow pace to it at all, is there? No, not at all. So, I actually started my company in 2005. Prior to that, I had been in the software development business and I had worked on some very large projects for the Department of Defense. I started my company largely focused on the Information Technology Business, Dave, that I had done a lot of web application development and not necessarily marketing websites that business you know business web applications I should say. But I, because I ran an entire division of the company. I had to be responsible for my own marketing and so we took on that role we actually built a team of marketing consultants in India to help us supplement what we were doing here in the U.S. And so, when I started my company in 2008. When the economy took the downturn we just decided hey what do we like to do the most and when we have the most fun with. And we found that that was doing the website design work and then turning that into you know all of the other cool things that you get to do as some digital marketing agents. That's cool cause then you get to see and get to help people and you get the result. Like me and most people they just say oh I want to see the results. I have no crazy idea. Yeah exactly. And you know that's the thing I love about anything that you do from a digital perspective you get. Yes, you can measure and track just about everything. And sometimes there's too much data. Sometimes there's a lot of noise. And you know in terms of data and information that you get that really doesn't mean that much for your business. But at the end of the day if you do it right you can have a lot of accountability. As a matter of fact, I think it's the most accountable way that I know you know to do marketing. Right. Like you said you get that track and see, you get to see what works, what’s not working or and then you can tweak it a little to see and get it to work better or scrap it depends on how many overall applications. Yeah absolutely. And you know one of one of the things that I know, IBM, kind of became famous for after they became kind of the monolith and they had to reinvent themselves when they moved into the digital space. They, you know, they basically developed a strategy of failing quickly. Yeah. Because you're never going to be able to build a perfect solution. So, the goal is having these, have these little experiments you know. Continue to make progress. Be prepared to constantly adapt and change and you're constantly improving and so I kind of liked that model. I mean I don't know that I like necessarily failing, nobody does. But the reality is you're never going to you're never going to know if you're accomplishing anything if you don't have some failures along the way. And we all, we all have those. Right. And the important thing is what do you learn from it. How do you incorporate it and make it better and how do you seize those opportunities? And I think that's one of the biggest challenges that I think most business owners have is that of course, no one likes failing and like you said. But the key thing is to try multiple things at once and instead of one thing to see if it works and then finding out it doesn't work. And then slowly you move on to the next thing and that will drive you crazy in itself. That's right. You don't know obviously you want to set up you know environments that you know and experiments that you can track and monitor you know. I mean when I talk about failure I'm not talking about the catastrophic system. I'm talking about you know like if you were running a Facebook ad for example or Google AdWords Campaign. You know the first month of that is you're going to gather a lot of information that you better be taking and reinvesting the knowledge that you're learning to tweak and optimize that the performance of that ad campaign. And if you do that you're going to be rewarded because your ad is going to perform so much better. The reality is it's hard to make a decision and it's hard to get something set up perfectly from the start. And so, you know you definitely need to think about the structure of when you're when you're moving forward in any event whether it's a Web site design, whether it's copy that you have on your homepage, or call the action button on your homepage. Measure or track it. See what behavior is happening and be prepared to change it. And you know the great thing is there are so many inexpensive tools and solutions that a lot of people can do it themselves. A lot of people may not ever want to mess with that, but you know there's plenty of technology out there for all levels of users. Right. Yeah, I agree. And it's just it's just creating habits, is really all that is. Whether it be five or 10 minutes I mean going into your you know Google Analytics just check see what's going on and little stuff like that. But I agree with you. And it's even I mean it's all forms of marketing because nothing works perfectly out of the case. Yeah. That would be nice because there would be oh I can do it the first time and I think that’s what gets people frustrated that they can't get to a point where they want it to work so bad the first time that they say well it doesn't work and a lot of that I think has to do with the mindset of I need to work. Now. They're not planning for the future. You know what I'm saying. Yeah. Yeah absolutely. And so much of digital you know I mean there are some things that are very immediate and direct but a lot you know we're like the example from search engine optimization perspective, that you know that can take quite a bit of time to really optimize and you get to the point where you work at what you have it working the way you want it to. You know so. So, I think it's important also to strike that balance and you know one of the things that's interesting you know is I often think you know think coming from a software development background I come from my mindset is I think about software development like I think about building a house. OK. You know where you have blue clear blueprints and you have you know different diagrams for you know your different contractors you know the electrical contractors and plumbers and all kind of stuff. Well, you do software very much the same way when you do it on a large scale and especially you know for Department of Defense where you're building software and if that fails people you know people's lives are at stake. Right. Well, I don't see marketing any different than that. And so you know I think it's really important to have some kind of a system that you use to create all of these different blueprints and have these understandings in place, in these different systems in place to be able to build an effective overall marketing system that does kind of start to break down a little bit in that analogy and that application on the marketing side is you know if I'm if I'm hiring somebody that's building a window for me I want them to get that pretty accurately measure that building. And so that's really where I think best practices and experience come into play. You know in the world of marketing we can't be as precise as a lot of you know a lot of contractors and home builders but you know with best practices and with marketing automation and things like that where we can build repeatable systems and components, it helps us to you know to get much closer to that. Right. And one of the cool things about the digital marketing and like you said earlier is that it's almost instant gratification in a sense. If you can get it you know you may not get the exact results you want but you can spend a little bit of money to find out if that concept is even going to work. Then you can add onto it because now if you took it into the old school way which would be EDDMM or Letters, and stuff like that then you've got to wait months sometimes to find out if just because you got one word that's wrong, you've got to wait months. But with digital, bingo it's like almost instantaneous, isn't it? Yeah, it is. That's a great point. I think it gives you the ability to create a lot of really inexpensive experiments to find success. And you know it's a fraction of the price of a lot of the old traditional types of things that we used to do in marketing. Right And then a lot of times you know I'll suggest to guys, to your social media when you Google AdWords or your Facebook ads and put them together see how they work and if they pull well. Now design a postcard off of that information and that. Yeah. And instead of reversing it. So now you've already done a little bit. And you run it by hundreds and even thousands of people. And now you can ___ and do your mailing if you want to then send them back to the website or whatever the case may be. Yeah absolutely. As a matter of fact, I'm a big fan of Integrated Marketing Solutions. It's not all about digital. You make a great point. I mean you can use. You can do use digital messaging to find out what resonates most effectively. But you know take it take another step, and incorporate some other different type of touch point. For example, every door direct mail I mean you could do a targeting of a Facebook ad for based around the zip code or when you go overlay and every door direct mail campaign with those mail routes that line up pretty well with that zip code area. And now you're touching people from a marketing perspective in a couple of different ways. You know not everybody learns and not everybody responds in the same way. So, you'd be very receptive to a digital message. Other people want to have that tactical or that tactile physical touch you know and being able to read a postcard or a direct mail piece of what is sent to them. So, I think there's a lot of opportunities and honestly, I think that's a huge missed opportunity for most people. They picked one thing they do it and they don't they don't compliment it and they certainly don't create enough touch points to really have the effectiveness. You know it takes seven touch touches typically from a marketing perspective to be effective. Right. And when you when you balance digital and you know and some of the more traditional styles, you can really cut your costs substantially. Oh, that's an interesting topic. Yeah well here's the here's the thing that I was thinking about and I just wanted to see what you think. I think that a lot of guys don't. There's a couple of reasons why they don't do both. One is that they don't think about it. And second is I think maybe most people think of marketing as an expense instead of as an investment. Saying they don't track it. So, if they tracked it then they would know what type of return they are getting, or any at all. Yeah, that’s exactly right. You know I also, I mean I look at advertising it's easy to kind of fall into the trap of thinking that that is an expense and that is it. There's no doubt it is an expense I mean you are laying out cash in return. Right. But you know, and the other thing about you know paying paid advertising is that it only works for as long as you keep continuing to do it. As opposed to now there are two really true investment strategies with digital too I think where you make an investment in building your online reputation where you're getting quality reviews about your business. You're putting content on your Web site and optimizing that content. When you do those things. You know even though you're paying for that maybe one time to create a piece of content and put it on your Web site. Every piece of content that you do that for, it turns into a long-term investment in your business. So, not everything in digital is measured in the same way either. Right. But they also have different returns and different timeframes that they return. Right. Yeah because your blog post on your content is never going to go away. That's right. And it will always be there and you know. Yeah. Just like when we do our podcast, all the interviews go back go up on anchor so it keeps rotating in and out all of the time. So, it's always replicating and it's always there. Yeah. So, I want to ask you this question because most of our listeners are contractors okay. Local Search Engine Optimization. I know that's really it should be a big focal point for most contractors. What do you think about that? Yeah absolutely. You know I think that from a strategy perspective I think it's really important for a business to be honest with themselves. And if they're not prepared to spend money on a monthly recurring basis there is no end there. Their goal is to be found online from their Web site. Through to search engine optimization. I'm not talking about a paid advertising strategy. I'm talking about building a website and having your Web site start to rank consistently Businesses need to be really honest about that. Some businesses honestly can't afford search engine optimization. And so, they're better off developing a referral marketing program or you know doing advertising campaigns here or there. But I think you know them from every contractor I think would benefit from a local SEO’s strategy. As a matter of fact, it gives the independent guys an opportunity to outperform some of the larger companies. Then you look at search engine optimization there's a very localized set of tactics that you would want to do what we refer to as local SEO. And that would be where somebody is typing into a search for a plumber in a particular location. And so, number one. the number one ranking factor right now appears to be the quality and consistency and currency of online reviews. And so, developing a review funnel where you're constantly getting a stream of high-quality reviews where you're responding to those reviews whether they're positive or negative ads. Google's paying attention. The other review sites are paying attention if people are writing reviews and you don't acknowledge those. You're losing opportunity there. So, it's really important to respond to people who are writing reviews. And if it's a negative or a record review I recommend everybody still reply but try to take that offline and say we're sorry to never get experience. Contact us at this number. This email we want to make it right. Right. But after that, you know the other thing that a lot of businesses could take advantage of is you know it's not obvious at all but there are all these different Web sites that are directory listings that point back to your business. And there are literally hundreds or thousands of these directories. They all carry. Not all of them but a lot of them carry tremendous domain authority which is you know a trust factor when Google sees your business as listed on a site like CitySearch for example. You know that that carries a lot more weight. And if a small business association of 10 businesses all got together and created a website for themselves, they decided to link to your Web site. They're probably not going to have the same main authority as CitySearch so having your business what we refer to as the name address phone number record, consistently, exactly the same as in as many of these directory listings as you can be a really big deal because it just provides a tremendous amount of trust to the search engines and it's a very powerful thing. So, I typically talk about reputation management program where it's a combination of reviews and directories. One of the biggest problems with businesses online is there's so much bad data out there. There were bad phone numbers or bad physical addresses. You may have changed your name. You may have brought on a new partner and as a result, you changed your name. Maybe you used to work out of your house. Now you have an office you work out of. You know look those are all captured at one point or another whether you whether you do anything or not that information is being put on websites. And so, it's important to take control and ownership of that. So that's fine I would go back to something you said a little bit earlier about the contingency of about name address telephone number because I know that there are guys that have in the past because they think well let’s say carpet cleaner and I do carpet cleaning and let’s say Joe’s Carpet Cleaner. OK. But on one directory put Joe’s name as Carpet Cleaning and another directory says I'm going to buy Joe's famous Carpet and Upholstery Cleaning. That's a no, no? It is because it introduces potential confusion to the search engines, one. But it also introduces confusion. You know with potential searchers. Consumers who are looking for a company and maybe they get referred from a friend by one name and so they go you'll look them up online and they find that their information and they are like I'm not sure it's the same company. So, you know it's one is you know more about a user experience related issue. But the other is a search engine related issue. Now, humans, we can probably make a judgment call and say you know those names are close enough to where yeah that's probably the same company I'm going to go ahead and give them a call. The search engines don't operate that way. They don't necessarily have the sophistication to say these are the same company. And so, you've just eroded the confidence that a search engine has in delivering the search results. And when you think about it if Google consistently delivers search results that are not what somebody is expecting when they do those searches. They're going to stop using Google and they're going to go start trying being or you know a variety of other search engines that are out there. That's Google's number one job is to deliver the highest most quality and most relevant and accurate search results that it can for you know based on what people are typing into those searches. So, don’t go changing things around. Whatever you start off with. Stick with that. Everything is the same, your name, your address, telephone number, and if you have to change and you've got to go back and throw those directories and change everything, don’t you? You do. It's really important to do. And the other thing is, keep in mind that you know these are going to be created whether you do anything or not. So, it's important for you to go and do an audit. You know they are going to pull from you know where you were. Every state you know wherever you put your business license information. When you register as a business with that city or state, where they're going to have a record of that, that somebody, some Web site is going to pull that data from. And so even if you're like for me you know when I started my company it was Changelandscape, now it's Changescape Web. Part of my challenge was I found that a lot of people thought we were in the landscaping business because of the name. So, I wanted to be really obvious that you know where in the web space. And so, I have a Doing Business ads but my company is still technically you know and certain Web sites it's still listed as changscape. So, I actually have some management tools that I used to go out there and run some business scans to see how my business is listed in it. And you know you can either sign up for subscription services where that you can control that data or can do a regular push to that data or at least make it give you a central console so that you know you can go in and periodically just do a quick check yourself to make sure that that information is still accurate and up to date. But it is very important to do. The access it's got to be something fluency in there's got to be consistency so that you get to get the maximum exposure from Google that you can possibly get. That's right. And you know the good news is if you if you decide to take that on I guarantee it the majority of your competitors are not. If you do that that you know just by doing that could be the thing that puts you know over the top and helps you show up on those search results especially on the Google map results. Yeah because I know that you know just getting there on the first page of Google. I know it's important and but I know with the map and the local and the views I think everyone needs to if nothing else really spend their time in getting reviews from their customers Yeah absolutely. And you know not all review sites are equal. So, a lot of a lot of you know the folks that listened to this podcast. You know they like Home Advisor or thrummed or Angie's list or is probably pretty important. And yes, they are important. But keep in mind that there are a lot of solutions that are out there and a lot of tool vendors that give you a view capability that will build a review profile for you and you spend a tremendous amount of time getting reviews that are listed there but they're not the same as being a having a review on you know some of the industry-specific sites and especially not the same as Google. Right. You know Google is such a fundamentally important review site for every local business that that is the first place I would ask people to go write reviews and just you know it's kind of a shame because I see a lot of people who have done a lot of really hard work and they've done the right thing to go get a lot of customer reviews. They're just putting them on websites to really make an impact for them. And so, I really strongly encourage everybody to go do that was with Google. You have to be careful in the way that you get reviews on Yelp. That really needs to happen much more organically but Yelp reviews are important for almost every business. And when you look at the reviews that are pulled in on being search results it's pulling from Yelp. So, because Bing doesn't have a native Review feature. Oh ok, I never knew that. Yeah. And the interesting thing, as a matter of fact, I was with somebody not long ago and they were talking about a kind of Google paperclip. And they go you know this is kind of interesting for everyone out there that Bing pays per click is cheaper and all your it's all Microsoft. So, it's going to Bing first unless you change it over to default in Google. Yeah, that’s the point I mean Bing still gets about 25% of all search traffic. Yeah. So, it's less competitive from an advertising perspective. And you know, there maybe I mean depending on the demographics of you know your typical customer you know if they're the type of customer that they buy a computer and they never change any settings the default search engine may very well be Bing because they may not ever know when they buy a brand-new computer it's from launch edge Microsoft's browser and that's going to return Bing search results unless they go in and make that change. So, it's important to understand who your customer is and you know I we certainly encourage and also search engine optimization techniques are a little bit different on Bing and a lot of people forget all about that if they're going to do. So, we think it's important to absolutely consider Bing. Wow. This has just been a ton of information. It’s really been awesome. Is there any last minute thing like in the back of your mind that you want to share with our audience that did not get a chance yet. Yeah absolutely. So, Google has just as matter of fact it's in 17 cities right now. It's called Google Local services ads. It used to be called Google Home Services Ads. Now, this is going to impact plumbers, electricians, track contractors, garage door service companies, and locksmiths. And what's happening is this is a new brand-new advertising program that Google, as a matter of fact, it's coming to St. Louis by the end of the year. So, they're rolling it out to an additional 13 cities. It's in most of the major metropolitan areas right now as of the end of the year. It's been you know 30 total cities. It's a paper lead strategy. They're going to dominate the very top of the page. They're going to have a listing of three rectangular listings at the very top followed by the Google ad words followed by the Google map results and then you're going to have your organic search results. And so, anybody who is in any of those affected industries, I really strongly encourage you to learn about those. It's I think it's you know it's going to be a really interesting thing. I was talking to you know a person from Google the other day about setting this up for one of our customers. And in the St. Louis market it's going to be a ten dollar per lead price which is not bad. That's really reasonable. Yeah. Yeah and you know it's you're only going to be charged if somebody takes a very specific action from that ad so they can click on the ad to go read more about your business. But you're only going to be charged as one of these businesses if somebody places a phone call and Google's going to give a call tracking number so they're going to know that somebody called that number sends a text message or fills out a form on the on the page that they'll be taken to when they click on the ad. So, if your them if you are it you have the ability as a plumber or any of these you know to pick your geographies that you want to show up for. And also, to pick the set of services for your locksmith and you don't want to get calls at 3 o'clock in the morning because somebody locked themselves out of the car. You don't have to turn on that that that specific category of this Ad. So, I think the important thing is that it's a paper calling out not a paper clip. That's right. Yeah And it's going to dominate the top of the page for the five industries I mentioned which again are Garage Door service companies, Locksmiths, HVAC, Electrical, and Plumber Yeah, That’s pretty awesome. So how can how can our guest get in touch with you? So our Web site is www.changescapeweb.com and we actually have a blog post that we just add to the Google Local services ads that people might want to check out should be on our homepage right now. And we're on social media with the handle changescape for Facebook.Com/changescape or on Twitter Instagram @changescape. Very cool cause we'll put all that stuff in the show notes when it when we get this whole thing up and running and ready to go. OK. awesome I appreciate that.
You may visit the website of Ken Tucker for more details below:
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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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Fri, 12 January 2018
Chris Cooper and I talk about retaining customers long term. That seems to be one of our biggest challenges overall with every business. But it's so, so, so much in the fitness industry. And so, we can pull some nice golden nuggets from Chris and the way he lays out his business and what he does to help you grow your business. Our guest today, Chris Cooper. He is founder of the largest mentoring practice in the fitness world with clients and every time he started his entrepreneur life as a gym owner and in 2005, Chris Cooper had a new home, wife, baby. His job as a personal trainer wouldn't cover the bills so he opened a business or, so he thought he did three years. Cooper realized that he didn't have a business but he just bought himself a high-risk job with no upside when he missed paper and hit bottom and realized he needed help he found a mentor. He paid for the service and checked that should have bounced. Over the next two years. Chris Cooper was taught how to build a real business. He began mentoring gym owners 2013 and founded his own practice, Two-Brain Businesses and in 2016 it rapidly grew to become the largest fitness mentorship practice in the world with over 350 gyms participating worldwide. Now the cool thing about Chris and I just told you all about him is that today we talk about retention of customers. You know that seems to be one of our biggest challenges overall with every business. But it's so, so, so much in the fitness industry. And so, we can pull some nice golden nuggets from Chris and the way he lays out his business and what he does to help you grow your business. Chris, I'm just so glad you could be with us today. Share your expertise and your knowledge on how you built your business and some of the things you did that will help our business owners. So again. Chris thanks so much for being with us today. My pleasure Dave thanks for having me on.
This is going to be cool. I know that you have your own business. It's called two brain businesses which is kind of interesting in that. So how did you get started in this particular business? And you also have your podcast too but how did you start in this business. And what were some of the things that got you to where you are today? Well I own several small businesses mostly in the fitness industry in northern Ontario Canada and so around 2009 my GM which was my only business back then was very close to bankrupt and I kind of had this epiphany that I was a great fitness trainer but a very poor business owner. I lucked into some mentorship and that turned my gym around and as that was happening, I started blogging about the experience because I thought maybe there were some other gym owners out there who could use the same advice. And after about 300 blog posts, it's kind of a funny story but I was invited to speak at a seminar and I knew one of the other speakers would have this handbook that he would share with the audience and I said well I've got to have a book. So, I took the top 12 blog posts from this blog which was called Dontbuyads.com and the cheapest way that I could get these things printed so that I could give that out to the audience was to self-publish them into a book. So, I self-published and shipped them shipped them to Florida. We were in Fort Lauderdale
Well, that's pretty awesome. Just get to the key with just getting started. Yeah exactly. To not worry about perfection just to worry about executing every day taking very small imperfect steps. And then I notice that your success came overnight. 300 blog posts later. Well, actually you're up around 1300 now. Wow. You know the original book. I mean it was it was really published for real in 2012. But two weeks ago, I was asked how often do you actually publish blog post now. And so, I asked our editor to go into the twobrainbusiness.com archives and pull out just the blog posts from the last year. And that turned into a book. There was 308 pages long. Wow. Just without even meaning to. So yeah, we do publish a lot. That’s awesome. But that's the key is to get people that were actually you know get people to use to find out more information which absolutely physical recording business. So, one of the things that I know that you hear in the mentorship business but you're also in a fitness industry and that has and it's like most businesses. I think that one of the biggest challenges is retaining clients long term. So how. What are some of the success stories are some of the things that you've used to just build a like a platform or a system into making that work? The most effective way. Well, so for some context for us I mean the fitness industry is one where it is very hard to retain clients. It's not really hard to get people to sign up. I mean you and I both know what will happen two weeks from now or you know a week and a half everyone is going to have this new year's resolution. They're all going to want my service right. Right. So, by March 31 statistically about 43 percent of those people will be left. Most people survive in a gym environment for less than three months. Well, we have to do is make sure that we are basically selling a service business instead of a fitness membership. We start off differently than other people do. We start with a consultation process which I'm sure many contractors will do and I'm going to start with a blank slate. What do you want? And then from there, I'm going to narrow the options and tell the client and I decide that you know here's our best course of action or here is our fitness prescription. So what aids in that number one is having like almost a third-party dataset. So, for example, let's say that I put a client on the scale we don't do this anymore, but we put them on a scale and we say, Dave, you and I need to beat that scale. Okay. I placed the client and myself on the same side of the desk and were facing off against this third object with this data. How can we work together you know to beat the scale? So, the first thing that happens is the mindset of the client that I am their guide. But they remain the hero of the story here. Okay. And I am yeah. So, I'm helping them. Then during the first period that we work with a client whether in a mentorship practice or in the gym you have to look at the first maybe three months is kind of an incubation period. Okay so in the fitness industry people are not comfortable with being uncomfortable and you're right you can't just talk them into that and you can't say no pain no gain or suck it up or anything like that. It's not going to work. Well, we have to do is have more frequent touch points in those initial stages after they've made that initial purchase. So I need to talk to you, every two to three days at the outside. I need to email you sometimes in between those discussions and just basically reassure you that you've made a good investment. After that, I need to make sure that I have a clear path to follow up and then you know the most important question I think that we teach is what do you want now. So, in the gym every three months I want to meet with the client and ask three questions. The first is what are you most proud of achieving in the last three months? So, I'm framing the conversation by focusing on bright spots. The second is Dave since we started. Have your overall goals changed and what are they now. And the third is do you feel as if you're accomplishing your goals quickly enough? So sometimes if they say yes, I do feel good. I think I'm making good progress. We say that's fantastic. I love to brag about you. Can I take your picture and put it on my website? If they say no I think, I'd like to go a little bit faster than I can say. You know Dave if it were me here's what I would do and basically change the prescription. OK. So, there's no upselling ever involved. It's just a common feedback loop of what do you want now. And here's how I can help. The other the last big retention piece that I think we’re kind of famous for is a strategy called bright spots and I'm sure some of your listeners have heard of Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath in their new book The Power of Momentous Phenomenal. If they haven't though Chip and Dan Heath and our researchers from Harvard University and they basically study the science of retention. So, in a gym setting what I'm going to do every time you do something for the first time. Let's say that you deadlift 200 pounds and you've never done it before. I'm going to write that on a whiteboard for everyone in the gym to see. And then on Friday, I'm going to call you and say, Dave, we're so proud of you what are you going to do next? And what we're basically doing here is giving them these peak moments in their life. You and I both know that people don't really remember what you say to them but they always remember how you made them feel right. Absolutely yes. And so, the key is setting yourself up to have all these positive feelings as often as you can. And so, you know we build up an entire plan and strategy around calling the client saying We're proud of you etc. Yeah. And then they quit because you're setting up a whole new paradigm shift for them as opposed to what they were used to in that industry were just come work out and will help you lose weight. You just take them with baby steps and reassuring them and helping them in and walking along with them may be behind them so that they're the hero. Like you said they become the hero of their progress but you’ve basically egging them in little different ways. But the cool thing is that its constant communication. And so, what did I write down here a constant communication and always following up no matter which way. And I love the way you put it. It's not the upsell but where do you want to go now. What do you want to do now? So, it basically takes you out of the selling cycle and creates them into the buying cycle with their own thought process. Or the continuation. Yeah. You know I never put it that way but that makes total sense. Absolutely. Yes, so they’re comfortable with the whole process because basically what you're doing is you're helping them own it. Right. Exactly. Yeah, they feel like it's their choice right. Yeah, yeah, No pressure at all. I like what’s going on and I’d like to be just a little better and how are we going to do that? Yes, so there are a few things there. Number one I think is the realization that 10 years ago we could sell information and information was the salesman's tool. Now it's the buyer's tool. You know a lot of the times people who come into my door they know how to lose weight. They know that they have to cut back on carbs and go for a walk every day. The problem is that they're not going to do that you know. I mean anybody now can go to Home Depot and take a lesson on how to paint their bathroom. So, the question is our real value now is not the ability to paint a bathroom. Our real value now is you know we're going to save you a lot of time. We're going to eliminate the stress involved in doing all this stuff. We're going to help you make a better color choice. You're going to love you know. And that's what we're really selling now our service has changed but our services become more valuable because of that change. Now you know we have to be authorities. It's not enough just to sell anything anymore. So, going into that conversation. That's basically what you're looking at. And so, what I'll start most people with is six months from now if everything is going perfectly. What changes should we expect to see? And so, in their brain, the client is painting this picture for themselves of. They've been successful. They're the hero. Then I'm going to say six months from now if you take no action. What do you think will happen? And another painting a separate picture telling a different story in their brain. And then I’ll say I would like to help you become more successful as your guide. Would you be more comfortable having me as a guide one on one or guiding you in a small group setting? And what I'm basically doing now is filtering them toward the two service options that we sell you know. So, at this point, they've already purchased in their brain. Now we're just saying you know we're filtering basically thank you notes. Awesome stuff. I go through the entire process in my book ‘Help First’. But also, I'll have it in the next book, Affinity Marketing, which will be a more updated version of. So, you're just leading them along the path of actually, no resistance because they see themselves working a plan. It’s just now it’s ‘Do I want to do one on one or do I want to do in a group setting?’ Yeah and as soon as I learn that I learned a lot more about you know how I should set up this meeting with the client. I mean one of my favorite stories about meeting with a client as she came into the gym and she was carrying her little 1-year-old and you know 1-year olds are very squirmy they don't want to sit still. But outside the gym was a kid selling lemonade. And so, we went outside, and I carried two chairs and we sat outside and had a lemonade and you know her baby had a lemonade and, we talked about you know where she wanted to be in a year and that just kind of helped her paint that picture in her mind of what her perfect day was and Perfect Day as a concept that we teach everyone. I mean you should ask your staff what their perfect day is you should ask your wife what her perfect day is so that you're all working toward the same goal. But if you get your client to paint that picture in their mind early and then you suggest that they can achieve that. You know they can ride off into that sunset and you're going to be their guide and that that follows the same basic story flow of every epic adventure. You know the Walt Disney produces right. Yeah. So, I'm sure you've heard of the hero's journey before. In case your listeners haven't. It's basically every Disney movie, every heroic epic you know almost every religious story follows the exact same plot line. And so, you know we are we're taught from an early age that here is how you achieve greatness. Here's how you become a hero. And so, it's just an aid that if we say you can be that hero we can be your guide. You know people really latch onto that idea. Yeah, I love that. Cause it’s taking, I don’t know, it’s just the whole another concept that most people don’t think about, it’s like your saying it’s not your fault. We’re going to help you become the hero. Yeah, exactly. Exactly yeah. So, I think that's what has really helped us and in the mentoring practice to every day. Basically, I send people a story that's about 800 words long. I tell them about something that I've screwed up and that's why I'm in a good position to be there guide as they go through the same thing right. I learn from my mistakes, not yours. Yeah exactly. Yeah exactly. Yeah, just like what I’ve said, I want to learn from another people’s mistake because I don't want to make them all. Too expensive right. But you know that's part of the growth process of making mistakes and not being afraid to make them just you know I've always wanted of my pet things. You know let's just do it and if we make a mistake, great let’s learn from it and move on to the next thing as fast as we can because failure is part of success Exactly. It’s a critical part of success. It is the keynote though I think though Dave is what you just said is that it doesn't have to be your own failure. Right if somebody else can learn from our failures that's incredibly valuable. Sure it makes it a lot easier and BOOM. I can. OK. He did this so I'm not going to do that exact same thing. So. Exactly. I'm going to treat people this way. I want to talk to people this way especially if you're going through a process like your retention program where you start off at A and you end up with Z. And you know that's a big long process that you've gone through and it's you documented and systematized and you know that if you say this, this is going to happen and when you say this or do this that this is going to happen and so you're increasing your success exponentially. But there again people come into your business who can hold fast and true to the stuff that you're doing because you're creating great results for your clients. On all facets. So, one of the questions that I wanted to ask you I know that you since said that you don’t particularly like sales funnel. Well, I think that it starts from the wrong end. You know a sales funnel is like when you're trying to you're trying to meet a woman that you're going to marry. OK. Are you going to first sit down and think What do I do? Who do I like? You know what trades do I want. Who shares the same values. What do I consider attractive or do you say I'm going to date 500 women and then pick the best 300 and date them again. And then I'm going to pick the best 100 of those and date them. I mean it just doesn't make sense. It makes good TV, but it does make sense.
So, what we do is we invert the funnel and we say let's start with the people who are most likely to actually want to buy from you and are also able to afford your service.
So, we start with what we call Identical Seed Clients like Mike McCalla wrote this amazing book called The Pumpkin Plan. And we've taken his method of identifying who your best clients actually are and we apply that to other businesses too. So first we say my best client is Dave because Dave makes me happy every time he comes into this gym and he always pays on time and he buys my most expensive service. So, the first question I'm going to ask myself is how can I serve Dave better. Right. So, if I'm a contractor and I'm redoing your kitchen and I say, Dave, this kitchen is really starting to look fantastic. You're going to be able to host more dinner parties here. Is that, is that your goal. And you say yeah, we love having guests over. I could say, ‘that's great’. You know the most popular place in your house or the most important place when you're having guests over is your kitchen. The second most important place when you're having guests over is your bathroom. Nobody talks about the bathroom unless it's bad. What are your plans to renovate your bathroom? Right. So, we will start there and I think the philosophy of help first is really important because most entrepreneurs are not good salespeople. So, if they think about this as an upsell they're not going to do it are they going to stammer and they're going to blow it. You have to think about like how can I help Dave best. So, if I know your goal is to have more and better dinner parties than I'm helping you by suggesting that you think about doing your bathroom next. Then I'm going to say Who are the people that Dave influences so you can picture a bull's eye where you, the ideal client are in the center. And I'm going to radiate out ring by ring again and we call these affinity loops. So, the first ring is the people you influence most of the people you live with or your family. I'm going to say Dave who visits your house the most. My kids do when they come home. Fantastic. And when they come home for Christmas you know do they bring their kids. Yes. They live nearby. Yes. How can I help them have a better house?
I would say you know is there is there anyone in your office who is trying to lose weight by Easter. Or I would say I know this is a tough month in your tax office because everybody's rushing to get their tax filings done. How would you feel about bringing all the bookkeepers and accountants in on Friday night and we'll have a fun little party in the gym? You know you can bring some wine if you want to and I'll just give you some fun little team building challenges. You know it's actually easy because most gyms are just big playgrounds right. And then the fourth loop is people with whom you recreate so you know who do you golf with. Who do you play midnight basketball with? It could also be who do you go to church with. I mean you have such a strong bond there and it's it's a very trusting bond. And then from there, we would say OK those are your personal connections. Who is almost a personal connection? So, the fourth affinity loop are people who are paying attention but not paying you money yet and that's usually people who have given either e-mail address or they've given you permission to talk more to them. And then the next infinity loop would be people who are slowly paying attention they're already aware of you, so they've clicked like on your Facebook page or they follow you on Instagram or something like that. And then the last loop would be Cold Leads. People who know nothing about you. They don't even know they need your service. They're not looking for you. They're not comparing you to anybody else yet. So, if I'm a chiropractor this would be someone who has back pain, but they don't know that there's any way to get relief or they just think while I'm 50 and everybody gets back pain when they're 50 you know that. They're completely oblivious.
They're not looking for a solution to their problem. But this is where most funnel marketing starts is that person and they try to dump you know a thousand of those people into a funnel and then filter out oh yeah that guy. He's too old. That guy doesn't make enough money. That guy lives too far away. And so finally you get down to these like kinds of ideal clients who by the way still really don't know anything about you. You don't have a personal connection with them. I mean you might as well just drop fliers from a helicopter onto the roof of their car and hope one of them calls you. So, there is a time and a place for online marketing. We do teach Facebook marketing. We have a huge course for that. But it's really maybe step eight. I think there's a lot much lower hanging fruit.
Within the process, you went through so much smarter and simpler because you're going through the whole thing of who do I know who do I like and who's around me that could benefit that way. And it makes it easier for you as a business owner whoever the business owner because it's a referral in a sense. And it makes so much more sense that it's easier to get referral business. And I think one of the biggest challenges about that is that referral is awesome, but no one has figured out how to do it on a systematic basis. We're basically everyone for all businesses as gravy. And so that's why they go after the other stuff to fill in. But somebody should come out with a plan to really work that referral business and have that be that's one of the best parts of their system whether it would be referral marketing or referral rewards whatever the case may be. Yeah. So, we teach that, and we call that sales and you know marketing would kind of be at the tail end of that. But we teach that, and we call it affinity marketing. And I have a book on call affinity marketing by May. Cool. cool. You know this is really been awesome. Off I've got the whole sheet of notes. But there's a lot of great content there. Just you know making them feel like the hero and being there guide them and not really selling them anything but just ask them where they are so that they can pick and choose the points that they want to move to because you've helped them along those lines as being their guide or that's the perfect way to put it the way you put it being their guide, we are going to help you get to where you want to go. Yeah, I think it's really tempting. You know this is old school marketing. Dave, you and I both over 35. So. I'm always over 35. Me too, but back then I mean you tried to make your brand a hero. You talked about what you could do and how amazing your company was and how long you've been in business. But that's not the way our brains are wired. No, our brains are all wired to think that we're the hero. And so, if you can show your clients how they will get to be the hero and you will be their guide you know the genie in Aladdin or Yoda to Luke. That's going to fit their mindset a lot more Oh absolutely. Absolutely. This is really being awesome content. I got it. I know everyone. So how can our listeners get in touch with you Chris? www.Twobrainbusiness.com is our Web site. People can actually book a free 30-minute call with me through the website, and on Amazon, on barnesandnobles.com. If you look for Chris Cooper, you'll find my books. And that's probably the easiest way call. Hey. Wow, that was a really great interview. Great talk with Chris Cooper about retention of long-term clients and here just a couple of takeaways that I took away. And I wrote notes, I’m just real quick real clean for you. But here's the key. Constant communication and it had a path to follow up and he always asked the client where do you want to go now. What do you want to do now? How can I help? These are just some great key takeaways to help you build and go through this again because there are some awesome nuggets here on how Chris builds his business and helps others and I love them some of the stuff that's customer-driven it's not sales driven. So, to your success continue learning more being better and all that you do so you can have the dream lifestyle. The dream business you want to have the lifestyle you wanted to create. So, until the next time. Have a great week.
You may visit this website to know more details about Chris Cooper: Chris Cooper’s book two Brain business get 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.
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, 11 January 2018
When is the best time to raise prices? Today I’m going to talk about what most contractors are afraid to do raise prices. We talk about all the time and acknowledge it. I need to raise my price, but most are afraid to raise their prices. So when is the pest time to raise prices and how do I do it And I want to tell you all the time whenever you can but tell us about this systematically. Ok, so I'm a firm believer that most of the time our prices are too low. Now there are some guys out there that just rip people off and jack people up. And so, we're not going to go there. We're going to talk about delivery of value. Getting your best price that you can get and to continually raise your prices until you hit a resistance point. I want to talk about Disney World. You know they have a tendency to raise their prices. They're continually raising systematically until there's a resistance and when there's a resistance they stop and then your ticket sales will start rising again and then once they get them to where they want them then you'll start raising prices again. So that's really want to talk about your value to raise your prices because most times every contractor I see is cheap for the most part. I mean you’re talking about the majority. And I want to get you out of that room with that thinking of how but I want you to be able to raise your prices. I'm a firm believer that if you wait until tomorrow. Raise your prices by 10%. None of your customers would ever notice that difference. So, rule number one tomorrow is the day to raise your prices to raise them by 10%. So, I know a lot of you guys are saying right now we're going to complain again complaining. Listen, if they complain they don't understand that you're in terms of maybe gas has gone up. And a lot of other things have gone up systematically supplies have gone up. Then they really don't understand what it takes to run a business. And listen they've been here for a long time and they don't understand this. Guess what. You don't need them as a customer because you’re supposed to be doing this for profit, not for fun. Listen, let's take this, for example, the other day I go running through McDonald’s and I go to pick up a cup coffee and I think it was a sausage burrito. Now when they came out, sausage burritos , You know I do the dollar menu. I didn't get coffee. And so, the other day not too long ago in and it’s like a dollar thirty-nine dollar for dollar forty-nine out for you what it was but it was like it jumped 50%. And guess what. Nobody complained. And everyone's still buying sausage burritos. So, my thoughts to you or my question to you are, what's it going to take for you to raise your prices so that you can be profitable. And that's really what it comes down to being profitable in the marketplace. So, let's go over a couple of things and we'll just talk about them briefly. OK so here's something that would really scare the crap scare the crap out of you. Dan Kennedy is one of my mentors. I read all of this stuff and women was thinking my business and he says, what you need to do is raise your prices by 5%. That's a great philosophy but it will scare the crap out of most of us because we'd be afraid of losing half of our business. Now, what would really happen if we lost half of our business and we raised our prices we'd be making the same amount of money with fewer clients. And wouldn't that be a cool thing? But we're all afraid to do that. So just do it in small increments. OK, just small increments. Going back to the McDonald's scenario where they ran up 49 or 50 percent in their pricing. Do you think they made more profit? Well absolutely. Do you think they slowed down on their burrito so they may have but if they slow down 2%? They're still making more profit if they so than 10%. They're still making more profit. But for the most part, you know it's not going to happen. So, another great time to raise prices is really when you're busy. So why would you want to do that while you're busy? You've got things scheduled out you don't really care so much depends on who you are about you know filling in that gap because the gaps are already filled. Your pipelines are already filled with work so you can raise your prices to raise it for elasticity to see how far you can go before you know they'll say no. And if they say no then the next one brings it down a little you get to play with it when you're busy. But here's the exciting thing is here's what I want you to think about if you're afraid if you're really afraid to raise your prices I want you to think about this I want you to think about how important it is for you to be profitable in your business to pay for the things that you've always wanted to pay for your family. And so, if I'm just going to put this in a perspective and maybe you like it maybe you don't. And I really don't care. Is it more important for you to supply the necessary needs for your family? Or are you going to try to make your customers happy by giving them cheap prices? You have to. You have to answer that but I'm going to say listen you don't want to be a commodity and that's really what this is all about raising your prices so you are no longer a commodity. So, if you're if you're doing proposals if you're doing estimates by price only stop it. You've got to give value. So how do we give value in this whole context? Well if someone says I want a price for paying so a lot of guys will I've seen guys write painting proposal on a lot of cars or they'll just say well we're going to pay the interior house this room this room this room for X amount of dollars or even pressure Clinton to do this-this this and this. But I want you to think about it and here's where the real value comes in. I think this is personal. This is one of the things that I do and it helps me become more professional and less of the commodity because I give them a complete breakdown of what I'm doing of how it's going to get done. The process is going to go through. And you know most one guy's proposals are one page. Mine can be 10 or 12 pages depending on what we're doing because I put so many so much stuff in there that I sort of kill them with professionalism knowing honestly, I know you're saying well they're not going to read all this stuff. I know they're not going to read all that stuff but here's the important thing because you have all that stuff. They're not going to say wow this guy has a lot of stuff and the who gets one page say this guy is not very professional. So here let's go into the process of the proposal and the pricing. I'm a firm believer in giving you know three-part proposal. Good better best or high medium and low and it due to an hour or you to do high medium and low not low medium high. And for the most part, most people will go towards the middle. But when you do an I'm going to I'm going to pick out myself for the most part for paying proposal so let's just say that I have someone who wants the interior painted on their house. And so we're going to go through and we're going to line item everything we're going to put to paint for the ceiling the painting for the trim work that broken out towards doors and casings and then another one for baseboard and then another one for crown molding and then another one for miscellaneous. If they have additional work and then I have one for walls only. And then you know closets and then I'd do a breakdown of the prep work that we're going to do to go through the covering of the furniture taking off of the switch plates of the work that needs to be done to have this make a complete project so it's not just painting. A lot of guys think about they are going to paint. No, you're not going to the paint you're going in to create and it's not really an illusion you're going to create the facade and then run not even a facade you're going to create this system .Step one step two three fourths of five steps 6 7. And why are you going to do that. Because this is where the value is the value is putting together the process so that when the customer looks at this painting of walls throughout the house well if some you guys don't know this the wall space is about two and a half times that of the square footage space. So just for the fun of it just say have a thousand-square foot house. You're going to paint two thousand five hundred square foot of wall space two times not two coats of paint do you see where I'm going. You're going to the extremes so they're going to look at it and say wow I don't want to do this amount of work and I'll do it myself. This is worth the real value is. And if they don't want to pay the price that's fine. But you've created value there and the profits in the profits.
You know I was looking at here is the funny thing the other day I was looking at a proposal of a guy for putting in a floor they put in a proposal and in a proposal, they put in ripping up the old floor. But not only did they put in as a square foot price of covering everything with plastic. Who would have thought that floor guy going to charge you to cover it because you think well he's going to just install a floor? Well no because they had to do leveling. So there was so much for the leveling and that you know so he did this in the same. So the customer's going to say man I couldn't I couldn't do that. So I would be willing to pay someone to come in and do that. And this is where the customer sees the value of the price because a lot of times it's not just the price. Granted there are some people that shop by price but really when you're dealing with most a lot. I'm going to say a lot I'm going to say most people they’re looking at price number four or five. The main reason they look at the price is to see if they're getting the value for the price that you're charging. So that's why I always go into infinite detail when I'm doing proposal I put in you know repairs would repairs replacement all kinds of things so that they know that when I'm doing it that I'm going to be professional about it I'm going to cover the furniture and take the switch plates off and then I'm going to actually I can even give him a price for not moving the furniture. If they want to then when they come and say, geez this is a lot more than I expected I can look and say OK what don't you want taking care of seeing that takes out of their mind. The thing about discounts because you're saying why don't you want to be done in this proposal. And you're thinking why if I say I was higher than I expected. They're thinking oh he's going for the discount. No, I don't do discounts because I don't like giving money away. I would rather not do something, we could cut out. I had one customer once who just said Oh I never thought about that and I said well this is something that you don't need to be done but you asked to have done should we take that out. Yes. Oh, I can live with that price. So, it's defining what the customer wants giving them the value of what they want. And now you can get the price by doing that because you've raised your price to be profitable. Well how. Here's one thing that I see consistently with a lot of guys is they really don't know what it takes for them to be profitable. They don't know what their bottom line is they don't know what their expenses are they don't know what the payroll is they don't know what they are. All other ancillary expenses are like their insurance or gas or truck or truck rental and car rental but there their truck payment. And so, you've got to take all these into consideration and then figure out what you're based on 40 hours. Break it down into what your per our cost of business is doing. And now add profit to that and depending on what your cost per hour is then you add your profit. Now I know lots of guys that will go. Yeah well, I can do 20 I can do 30. I'm going to be real honest with you. If you can't run a 45 to 50 percent profit margin on your stuff then it's going to cost you to do business because there's going to be things that are going to be hidden like mistakes and errors and broken stuff and reduce and so there's got to be room in there. For all the stuff that you are might not consider. And then there's enough profit for you to fix it instead of getting mad insane or getting mad and walking off the job because I've seen a lot of guys do that. So, this is where you basically want to be in this area so that you can raise your prices so that you become more profitable. Ok, so I'm going to tell you a little story about Steve a guy that I used to do a lot of business with and work on the same line. When I did a lot of new construction Steve was a carpenter and an excellent carpenter for a matter of fact he was a homebuilder. And then he moved to Florida and he just did trim carpentry for his first trade. And he was very good at that. Got a lot of business. One guy and sometimes he had to helper but most of it was by himself and like I said sometimes he did have a helper. But here's what happened. One-day Steve was working on this really huge house big house and he was there for a couple of months. And every once in a while, a contractor or one of the other guys in the trades would come by and take Steve for a walk out back and say, Steve, you need to raise your prices. You're too cheap you're just too cheap. And basically, what's happening is you're given the rest of us bad names. You need to be up with us. Not that we're they were super expensive but they needed to be needed to be up with the rest of the crop. He didn't need to be cheap because he really wasn't. His work was that good that he could raise his prices and not worry about it. But he was looking at fear mode. Which a lot of you guys do. And then this went on for a couple of months. Every once in a while, one of the guys would come in and say Hey Steve take him out back. They didn't beat him but they came up back and talked him and say hey listen you really need to raise your prices. You are too cheap. I don't even know how that you can live the way you live and pay the prices. Of course, I knew he lived in a mobile home so he didn't have any expenses. But still, it doesn't matter. You need to be able to put money aside for days when you're slow. Come on you're not going to be busy all your life and no matter how good your funnel is every once in a while, you're going to slow down a little. So, I guess it's the end of the project. The homeowner is sitting down making out Steve a check for his invoicing and Homer looks at Steve squirty eyes says, Steve, I got to tell you, you do excellent work but you're too cheap Steve goes what. He says you're too cheap goes can I raise my prices. He goes on the next job. So, I want you to know that you know doesn't matter happens to everyone. The fear of raising prices but really the customer knows when you're too cheap. And listen to this guy and all of our customers will take advantage of us as long as we're cheap they're not going to say you're too cheap. This guy was nice but most people are not going to say oh you're too cheap we don't want to do business with you because you're too cheap. But if you raise your prices they're still going to continue to do business with you. Why. Because they're not dealing with you on a price basis. They’re dealing with you on a relationship basis and you need to keep that relationship going and the relationship needs to make a profit. You need to make that profit. OK so here's another thing I want you to consider in your pricing and all the time. And, here I am stuttering because it really does make me stutter some of these things that some of the guys I come across off. Go into price wars over their services. But here's what I want you to know. Throughout the country, don't matter where you are. There is a shortage of legitimate licensed contractors in your trade. Granted there are people coming up through the weeds that are cheap and inexperienced unlicensed but licensed contractors for the most part. There is a shortage throughout the country and but yet even the licensed contractors have a tendency, for the most part, to fight amongst themselves all over the price because there we go. They're afraid of raising the price, they're afraid of not getting new work. And you cannot grow a significant viable business living in fear. It's just not going to happen. So just a quick overview. You're going to have to raise your prices. Well in order for you to raise your prices so that you know what it's going to take for you to be profitable. Because a lot of times we will lower our prices to compete on something. And when we get through, it actually costs us business, cost us money to do business with that person. I want you to sit down. I want you to go through and figure out what are your overall expenses. Line item everything. It's really simple. Just take a piece of note paper write down your expenses your truck. You know what they are you are you should know what they are. Write them down. Figure it out per hour basis then add 45-50% too it. And I want you to think about adding profit to your products that you are using. So, if you're a carpentry you upsell you up the price. You got to go pick it up. So, you either charge for picking it up by the hour or you charge the profit for the product, same thing what do you guys that are doing paint. You charge retail plus you don't charge retail because you're buying at 20% discount. You need to charge retail plus a percentage of profit or do your wholesale plus 45 I don't care. But there needs to be profit in everything you do because that's the way business runs. Every other business runs that way. So, raise your prices to become profitable. That's the only way that you're going to continue to survive but you want to do more than survive in business. You want to grow. You want to exponentially grow. You want to grow your business. You may want to grow it into more employees or more service trucks or whatever the case may be. But in order to do that, you have to start at a point of where that's what does it take for me to be profitable from day one from the very beginning. And where do I move out from there and don't play with those numbers? Because always remember the prices, the prices, the price. And when you cut your price, you cut your profit and then you have to figure out the numbers. I don't know what is it going to take to overcome that. So, if you actually cut your price and I'm going to cut it off with this if you cut your price by 10% you have to sell 50% more to make up for that difference. Think about that. Just think about that next time you want to give a discount. It's not the discount today is what is it going to cost me to make up that profit tomorrow. So, hey thanks for listening. I know that this is an item that a lot of you guys are afraid of doing. Just do it implement it and get it over with. And because like I said you need to profit in your bank account today. So, go grow your business and build it the way you want to don't have it run you-you run your business.
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Wed, 10 January 2018
Today we're going to talk about chatbots. Using Chat Bots to Triple Your Sales Conversions without being tech savvy. With Heather Havenwood all about using Chatbots within Facebook to grow your business. I'm happy to have a returning guest with us Heather Havenwood. And we had her on a while ago and she offered up some awesome content to know who you're selling to. So, after this episode, you might want to go and listen to that episode of know who you're selling to. But today we're going to talk about chatbots. How to triple your conversion rates with your sales without being tech savvy. So, if you don't know about Heather let me tell you a little bit about her. She is CEO of Hazelwood worldwide. She's sexy boss, a serial entrepreneur and is regarded as a top 40 in internet marketing business strategies and marketing. She since marketing her first online business in 1999, brings together clients and personal coaches. She has played an active role in online marketing world since before most of us even had computers. In 2006 she started developing and growing online information marketing publishing company from ground zero to over a million dollars sales in less than 12 months starting with a list of the product name or an offer. Heather and molded her clients into successful gurus now known as the expert in this field. She is awesome, and she really knows her stuff. So, let's welcome Heather today. Heather so great to have you again. And I'm just so excited to really talk about chatbots. I know it's something new that I've heard about a little but almost nothing. So, this is going to be exciting. Thanks so much for being with us. Thank you for having me. This is going to be a lot of fun so it's going to be different and chatbots, feel like what's a chatbot, I will explain all of that. Awesome. OK. All right. So, here's what chatbot is. I mean just kind of dive into it if you're ok with that. My name is. My name is Heather Havenwood and I'm a marketer in an online marketing for since 2001 and I had my, I actually got my online degree my master's degree in 2010. My first million online was in 2005 right so I've been around a long time in one of the things about me is I'm an early adopter. Not everyone's like that. I got that from my father actually. Whenever there was a change of technology from BETA to VHS to like those discs we had for a while he was like the first one out the gate to buy the technology. In fact, in 1985 just to give you I guess when I get this from 1985 he had a physical bone in his car wired in his car he drove 80 miles from our house to the nearest train and when the train ran by he called his buddy and said look I'm, I'm in my car and a car phone is like 1985. OK. Wow. And I think it was like 50 dollars a minute or whatever it was. But this is before the bag phone. He was one of the first people in Houston Texas in the 80s to get a phone and he was very proud of that. So that's just I think that's where I get it from. I'm a true early adopter and I kind of have it. It's like I've heard about it. I'm probably late. I just have this kind of weird thing. But, I will say with chatbots it's a little bit different technology, but it really is the future. So, let's kind of take you back down to a technology lane if you will. Right. Let's start with good old-fashioned Yellow Pages. Yellow Pages. I remember going up we have yellow pages. My grandmother lived on her yellow pages. He wanted a plumber, or they wanted a roofer, they wanted whatever they open the yellow pages and all the market people talked about the yellow page remember that. Yeah absolutely. All right the bigger the ad the more people who will get to read the copy. And then what you trying to get them to do. You tried to get them to do what. Call the office sure. That was the thing. And then you got them to convert from there. Then we had the big explosion of online marketing in the last couple least of decades. Is it all about ads. Now no longer Yellow Pages but now that it was newspaper ads direct mail it's all about no matter what your ad is Facebook, online, Google, Yelp what are you going to do. Call. You still want them to call or go to your Web site and call. Especially with service-based businesses. Absolutely. Mainly because you want to say what's going on what's happening. When can we meet? Here's what's happening with text messaging. So, let me give you kind of an example. Go back three years. I opened a weight loss company here in Austin. So, it was a service-based business. Local business right. And it was kind of a new business and so what we want to do is again like you guys we wanted them to call to set an appointment. But from the beginning, I knew that a couple of things one of our target markets was women in the construction business even though it's predominantly male-dominated the customer is the woman. Absolutely right. She's the one dealing with the leaky roof she's the one dealing with all of that. The plumbing situation even though maybe you know the man comes in to fix it. The customer is a woman. Absolutely. Go back to this weight loss program. I knew the market was women and women like texting more than men. There's stats on that. OK. So, I thought to myself OK well we're going to set this phone number up. Obviously, we said the phone number, but it was a virtual number for the beginning. There's all kinds of companies you can use Grasshopper, Google Voice, whatever. And the number one thing that I said the company we have to make sure the phone number is textable and the like really __, it has to be textable and it has to be text was such a way that no matter who is working that day, myself I work in the office as virtual or anybody that we actually had in the office that they physically, they could text message back the customer as fast as they possibly could. So, it first happened my staff was like no one's going to text us or on my watch. Sure, enough we put on all our ads either on the Website, Yelp, Google ads whatever our thing was when we did even radio we said call or text number, call or text number. And guess what happened. We had people text and they say: “I just heard your ad on, I just saw your ad on Yelp, whatever can you tell me more about it?” Now here's what's happening. People are busy. They got their lives going on their moms or whatever they're busy lives right. They go oh I really want to try that. I'll send them a text but they don't really want to have the time to call and have this big conversation. Right. Right. So, it's their way of kind of like oh I'll start something and then like a follow-up. But they don't want to e-mail either because they kind of want to talk to somebody, so they text. Now here's another example. So, we actually had a huge amount still, do have you drop people texting. And then what we do is we'll text back and forth a little bit and then go hey is this a good time to call you so we can now continue the conversation get your schedule and then they’ll go “Yeah, come in 10 minutes or actually give me five minutes. Yeah. Call me now” Boom. Now we’re calling, we've had we've had a connection, come on the phones, schedule an appointment, you'd be surprised. Well the interesting thing, I’m hearing you're going through the whole sequence. You’re texting back and forth and you're creating a dialogue and a familiarity and then you're asking them permission to call them which then they're saying yes. Yeah exactly. They reached out with the text which is what I call a soft connection. No commitment. And then-then we would always encourage our staff to say try to get on the phones as fast as possibly can so they can answer questions faster. Of course, and get an appointment. And but when you're in that dialogue then you can have a permission-based conversation where you're like hey is a good time call you when should I call you? Perfect timing I'm driving. Great. You know or hey you're going to be on speaker with the kids. No problem. You know so now you're calling them and they are inviting us to call them. I know that's so awesome. It is also, that we did. So, here's another thing and give me another example here just in case you're just like oh I don't believe it. I had a gentleman who was in a mastermind with me who his agency did all was managing all the lawyer infomercials to just commercials right across the country and that the lawyer was one of those ones where it's like: “Do you this crazy sickness I can never say it. OK. I can't say I call this number does you have this. This is, call this number. You know your part of a class action lawsuit” So that was his agency like blasting this and their conversion wasn't getting very high and they didn't understand. So, they, once someone said someone called in the customers who are feeling like and she goes well someone called in the other day and said they tried to text the number and nothing happened. And of course, everyone in the agencies that text the number that they go to. Why don't you make the number textable and see what happens? So, said what we could do that. Right. So, they made the same phone number. No changes really textable. And I think on the ad they put, call or text. What do you think happened? They got and ended with texts because nobody wants the call and really talk to somebody right now. Exactly. They don't want to be sold. Right. And you also don't know maybe they're in a loud factory or maybe a hospital, maybe they didn't want to actually talk to, they can't, maybe they legally can't, maybe are in front of people they don't want to have a conversation about right. Oh yes, let’s talk to a lawyer right. So, there are all kinds of reasons why people text versus call. Sure. Right. My sister, when she's in a certain area of her work. She can't take calls because for some reason the area is restricted. She's like I can text you but I can't call you back. Right. So, stuff like this you just realize that you can still get in communication and so give the customer through text so what they did they made it textable and they got inundated their conversion went way up and they're all happy. Right. Yeah. Instead, they made the customer service people take the text and they, it’s just like chat nowadays. I mean I go when I do customer service for clients or I go into a software that I'm purchasing the first thing I do is chat right because I have music in the background or I have you know kids screaming the background the dogs, but I can chat through what I need but I can't get a call. So, the point do you want to do more of that and that's where chatbots come in. OK So, here's what's happening now because people are already used to texting. And sometimes people don't even want to give out their phone number because when they text you, you’re the front of them. Yeah. What's happening now is Facebook early 2017. They opened up their API. We will talk for a second. They opened up their API for their messenger which is their texting communication right. They opened it up, API really from the concept of what do we do with this thing. We want more people on our platform. We pretty much want to take over the world. We don't want anyone anymore to even use their phone. They want us to call and voice call and video call and do everything with Facebook. How can we get more businesses to use our services? How can we get more businesses on our platform? They go well let's open up the API and see what happens. They open up the API. Kind of like OK developers go. We don't know how to sell this so why don't we just open up the platform. And there's about 40, 50 companies in San Francisco area and they are kind of tap the shoulders on and said OK. You start your own company and we're going to let you API into our service. It's not for the public it's just for like who we tap and see if you can find a way that will you know will basically increase the amount of businesses on our platform. So that's what happened. And it's only been around pretty much since the first quarter of 2017 and what's happened now is there are all these different services trying to figure this out where they are now no longer on their Website no longer saying things like click to my Website or click to chat or click to call. They're saying hey click here to talk to somebody right away. And it opens up the Facebook messenger app on desktop as well as mobile. And so, what happens is you now are engaging with the company via their Facebook app, via their fan page or their business page immediately. Interesting. Yeah. So, then you can move them from there to wherever you want. Here's a link to site for a service. You know why don't you give us a call I'm available right now. By the way, you're on our fan page if you click on this link it takes you to our service agreement whatever you want. What they're trying to do is have it so that business is really no longer would have Websites they just have business pages. Wow. That’s interesting. And that's why I think it is. And it's clickable so here's how it hits it and then I would go to the next level of this. So, I'm going to give you my chatbot link right now and I want everyone listening to go to this URL and engage with my chatbot and notice how different it is than going into our website to opt-in or just calling me or anything like that. Notice the differences here 's the URL, ready? Yup. www. askheatherann.com. My name is Heather Anne so, askheatherann.com. Now you put that in URL, no matter if you’re on desktop, no matter if your iPad, or your phone it's going to happen. It's going to open it and it's going to turn, you'll see that like open and open again, and it will go right to Facebook Messenger. Wow. Ok. . Yes. So that once you experience it now mine's customized and the first thing it says is like “Hi” and it starts to have a conversation like Hi I'm Heather Havenwood. This is what I do, you know. And then I ask it a question. The first question I ask when I ask you is “What's your name?” What am I doing? I'm building a list near you. David, you're like great Dave. They'll say tell you what do you own a business because that's what I do. Right. And you can say yes or no. “Great!” right you're in a business that's awesome because that's what I do I help businesses expand their space expand their revenue through different through exposure visibility and profitability. You go, “Great!” And it will tell you what I like because “I'm a bot. I don't know if you're man or woman. Will you tell me if you're man or a woman? Then you say, “Man” Type in MAN. “Great!” Right. Expands things, I go, tell you what I should give your free gifts just for your time today. Here is. Will you please give me your e-mail address? You type your e-mail address. Press ‘send’. Awesome. Here is your gift. I just had an entire interaction with you. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Now here's what's cool about it. Why you're having that interaction. If I can actually watch you do this entire process live. Like I can be sitting at my desk as a customer service person or the CEO of the company. Watching people interact and at any moment in the middle of the conversation. I could just like come in and go “Hey”, “Hey, how's it going?” And I can totally take away the competition of the bot and just literally have a conversation with you. I don't know what to do. And the chatbots going. You can literally have someone go Oh hey you know I'm here right now we're available we can get someone out. Can I get your number to call you right now and what's going on? What's your address? Now, what can we do for you? Start actually communicating with the right way via chatbot and everything's recorded and everything you can see at any time. Wow. That's way, way better than a Web site. It's way better than a website right. First of all, it doesn't go there then opt-in and you get autoresponder. You just need a whole process right. And so, you can so much time. But here's the cool piece. It also brands you it has a conversation. There's a company here in Austin called the Reliant plumbing. And oh my god they, they do the best ads. They really do. I have to give them credit. The radio ads and ads and its husband-wife team. I’ve never used them but I hear their stuff all the time. And, the radio ads. it's husband-wife team. And they have this kind of brand, the whole fun team going on. But they’re still on plumbing for God’s sake. And you got to rate it, it’s funny. So, they lost the whole brand through fame. Now they just drive people to the website of course and their brand and their phone number. And I don't they do text messaging but they've created this kind of funny brand. Between them, you know between the husband-wife. He acts like these guys as goofy guy and she acts like she's like seriously honey you know like that whole thing. Imagine if you had a cartoon of them were few ones with chatbots and high, and all of a sudden you had the spokespeople the CEO's husband-wife team basically talked to you go “Hey!” And they had this little fun banter for ten seconds. You're reengaging with them and you're reengaging with your brand. And that's key because we want to, at the end of the day businesses what do business people it's human to human interaction. They don't run businesses with brands. But what they what they what we're doing now with artificial intelligence basically is rebuilding connection with bots which is aka a cartoon of Disney. We have a relationship to Winnie the Pooh. We have a relationship to Mickey Mouse. We can have a relationship with a cartoon right represent something to us. Remember that the movie with Tom Hanks where he's alone on an island for forever. He literally had a relationship with a volleyball called Wilson. Right. Right. He built this interaction with it. We have this is old school, Wendy’s. You know we've had interactions with the dog, Spot. I think it was Budweiser. We've had we've had relationships with inanimate objects before and cartoons. That is a way to connect with an audience. So that's how Chat Bots allow, you to do that and it also allows you going at one level but also alleged that sustained interaction fast speed connection with the with the with your customer and you don't have to have a big hole. You know there are services you get that are called chat services. Yeah. Yes, that's true. That takes a little more manpower right because any anybody in your office can be logged into and be a part of the Facebook business page. And anybody can be having a conversation with a client. It starts with the CEO. Yes. Yeah. It's kind of interesting because it's like you know even when you get a text on your phone or you check it always before you will an e-mail. So, the chatbots if you’re on the other end you just know that it's up and running all the time and you would be able to use it so much better than answering the phone ain’t it? Yeah absolutely. And plus, on top of that you know you again you don't know are people going on in the background their world right. Being able to chat and have a conversation with a service provider like Hey I like to have you come out roofing. I've got a hole Yeah, I live in South Elvis or the South Austin. I really rather have it on Tuesday and how this whole conversation and go Yeah. Well, we have something available 2;00 on Tuesday. Here's my address. Thank you so much. We'll follow up with you in a week. All that can be done. In fact, my head my AC go out actually three months ago and believe it not I was very impressed. This company texts me a text me but the only thing that I think they did incorrectly is that I had a phone number I called. And then the text came directly from the technician. The problem with that is a different phone number. Wouldn't it be that everything comes from one place? That's the beauty of Chat Bot. You don't have three numbers right. It could be anyone. Right. Because the technician can leave. They can leave the company tomorrow, in a year, and you really don’t want to have that right. When you want to own the customer. And with all the technology there is today you can have all your phone numbers from the company forwarded from one out. Yeah. So, if I have five technicians they could all be routed through that one number. Exactly. Yeah. So that way. Anyway, like I said with Facebook how Facebook as if I own a Facebook page and I own a business I can have you as they call it editor. I don't have this system. I can have a business manager all the editors at any moment. Everyone's texting from the same location to the customer. So that's continuity. Right, it’s continuity to the customer, so a customer's text via Facebook Messenger. They used to clock smart. That sounds great. Awesome. And then all of a sudden you have the technician Mike go “Hey Sarah. This is Mike your technician”. And again, it's coming from the same place it's coming from Facebook Messenger. Just want to let you know I'm on my way. I'll be there in 15 minutes 20 minutes. I'm running late. Whatever. You know if there's any problems or any changes please just text back to this Facebook Messenger and either myself or someone from our team will help you. Right. And that's a cool thing to do because like now I and my other business have people when I talk to them though I'll ask them what method you prefer. And they probably say text me the most. Most of them are saying text now because they're on the go and no glance at a text and no answer. Or you know at times I’ll call somebody and knows you know on my phone and says I can't take the message now so they end up getting a text right. They got texts right. And I've actually had a situation where it was a service provider and I said I can't get on your calendar. You could text me and like well we don't text them you need to step up. They are in the real world so the point is that you want to have both right now. I think having your phone number textable. You can do this you can do that through Central, you can do that through Grasshopper, Google Voices is a lot of different areas you can do that is OK. But then also having the Facebook ad or the Yelp ad, you can literally text have the URL go right to the messenger. So askheatheranne.com goes right to the chat box experience. It doesn't go to my page. And then you click. No, it goes right. Right. Right. The Chat Box experienced first thing actually the interaction. And you can actually like you so you say you can give a free report or give me a free gift from there. Absolutely. Absolutely. And then you can then you can send them to your web page if you so desire to. Exactly then definitely. I mean you'd be surprised nowadays. I mean just the other day I went to Facebook I'm looking for a new gem on something. I went their Facebook page, their business page and this was me testing them. So, went their Facebook page a business page. And I went to their message and I started texting them questions. Now, it was late at night. Like it was late, was like ten o'clock and I didn't expect them to respond at all like I expected either they weren't going to respond, or two, may or may not respond in the morning if someone's actually managing their Facebook page. What's interesting about it is the owner, she responded in 20 minutes. She’s like “hey yeah, I was sleeping. It’s all right, Sure, you know what Why don’t we give you a free weekend. Love for you to come in. My name is Sam, I’m the owner. I love to connect with you and see how we can support you. I was like “Awesome!”. Because well have the days of weak control of when people buy over. The nine to five is over. And so, I'm not saying you have to sit there all night. You know, and you can't ever turn your hours off and you can but have to allow people to connect with you when they want to connect with you. And lots of times it happens at seven o'clock at night when they're at dinner and their husbands like we got to fix the plumbing Let’s push it in the morning. Doesn't work anymore. It's like you know what I'll text them right now and they'll get it in the morning and they'll call me when I'm running around 8 o'clock in the morning because of so many of those in our weight loss company people text as after hours. Really? You know the interesting thing too is like I've done a lot of research, not research but you know playing with other people's websites and see how they respond. You know to email him or send him an email from their website and nobody virtually nobody checks the email that they get from their websites. Yeah, that's really strange to me. I get a lot of people don't. But if you do a texting and it is going right to you in a different format than you know, I think that's pretty awesome just the way that that whole thing set up. I’m going to have to check it out. So how did you pick up your URL? You just put it into when you set it up. Yes, you can buy your URL anywhere, of course, godaddy.com or whatever. And then ask. It doesn't make sense. I just I had I had it sitting there and now you can make it whatever you want. You can make it your company.com/contact us what you can make it whatever you want it's just an easier redirect obviously, because we’re sitting here sitting here the audio you know you know I've explained to you what it is or what's happened with the API with Facebook the techie is to notice nowadays your Facebook Messenger is now an entirely different URL M./ What Facebook did is basically, Facebook now has two websites, it’s Facebook.com and m.com. Yes, so that's why your app you have an app for Facebook and an app for messenger. OK. From a distance, so your Facebook business page Messenger is literally an entire another URL. And so, this is new to me. So, I could have Facebook off. Right. So that's how I open up my desktop with Facebook because it's too much drama. But I can communicate with business people all day long on Facebook Messenger. So, I close Facebook, but I open that messenger and I go to m.com/ you know and that opens up my messenger so all I see on the desktop is messenger. Anyone talking to me. I don't see any of the blog posts or drama or ads or any of that stuff because that's turned off okay. So, it's two, it's two entities at this point. You look at Facebook as if there's two companies two URLs and that's why the messenger literally is its own world and they're going to start. They've already started but they're slowly rolling it out. They're going to start so that you can actually advertise inside of messenger. So eventually, especially 2019. That's a good or bad thing. Yeah right. The cool thing though about that for a local business right. Save money or whatnot. A local business you can really you can really focus on people that are in their message or app at 10-mile radius or at a 50-mile radius. The other thing with that is here's what's really cool which I forgot. So, let's the moment you start interacting with my chatbot and I mean the moment all you have to say is hello. And that's considered it opt-in. So, what's happening in the background is I'm connected to a third-party service remember this third-party company I told you about I'm connected to a third-party server I pay $20 a month and there are tons of out there. One of them is called many chat spells it M A N Y C H A T.com, 20 bucks a month. What it's doing and again it's this open API company okay. What it's doing is at the moment you say “hello”. OK. On my page the moment, many chat considers that an opt-in. You've interacted. You've interacted therefore you are at opt-in. Therefore, you're now on my list. I can broadcast. I can send a New Year’s Eve or Christmas Eve special to anyone that's ever interacted with my business page messenger ever. You're on my list. The cool thing about that looking e-mail list right is the messenger app is an 80-90% open rate. Message my broadcast my message list. I'm going to get a huge open rate versus an emailing blasting my list. Wow. This is just the beginning it's only been around not 11 months or so yet. It's a whole new world the about ready to explode. It is. It is and it's geared towards businesses. It really is geared towards businesses because Facebook wants to pretty much take over the business page. They want to take over the Yellow Pages right. They want to be the pages for the world so they don't know how to do that. So that's how they opened it up and now all these things are kind of coming about with entrepreneurs and they're all figuring it out. I mean a chance really expands $20 a month. All it does is basically talk to Facebook and as a third party or you know interaction that they've got the blessing from Facebook. So basically, what the Many chat does is it take everyone that interacts with you it just takes their information, stores it with you it just takes her information stored it for you. It's pretty good. So, think of it like a Manychat, board member or eye contact where you log in and you say I want to send a broadcast tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. and I want to have a little image. You don't make the thing about Chat Bots you know broadcasting for Chat Bots as you make it short like a taxi you'll see like an image in like a little thing like “Awesome offer new year's offer click here or call us now for your offer” like Texas small. Yeah. Right. But then you press a button and the system sends it to everyone on your broadcast list. So, 90% open rate of your offer. Wow, that's pretty awesome. It is awesome, right? I'm just thinking about what awesome possibilities. So, so what I do. I work with companies to do that. I mean I set their Chat Bots and it starts around a thousand dollars to do a full set up. And the reason why it takes that much money is that yes you can do it yourself there are many chat bot but I do an entire process and a marketing process of how are you using text now and how can we integrate that with your current system. Consulting involved. So, it starts with thousand usually about a two or $2,500. But I mean how many clients do you need to make up one, you know $2,400. Right. One or two in the construction business. Sure. Especially if what you are selling off its roofs. It's one deal if it fits windows and doors are its kitchens and yeah, it's one deal. Take care of it in an armpit. So, I hope that helps and I love for people to get a hold of me at www.heatherann.com and that is my own private page. So, I am the one answering questions of you really seriously have a question you can just literally message me and it's me because I'm the one logged in. Or you can go to call with www.callwithheather.com, callwithheather.com and that is my schedule on the phone with me and have a conversation and let me know how I see you I can help you know to consult with you and your marketing. I do marketing advice right, so I work with service providers as well as authors and speakers specifically and how do they increase their ROI their current marketing. I do a lot of local businesses so lawyers, Service providers, Weight loss. That's cool. That's awesome. Yeah. And if they if they get in touch with you and www.askheatherann.com then they'll get a whole preview of what they can possibly expect to get you know on the short side. Yes absolutely. And are actually looking at. Call and interacts with them. So that's pretty cool. This has really been cool. Thank you. Thanks for having me. I really appreciate it. This is just killer information like the last time I know how to do the Chat Bots that's the last time was. Know who your customer is so you can sell them. Yeah. Forgot about that other piece about that know who your customers. Just circling back. Yeah. Though women like to text more than men. Like I said that earlier. That is why if your target market is women, this is just brilliant. I mean it really is brilliant. Really. I know that the technicians usually are men were generalizing of course but women are usually the ones writing the check. Right. I agree. Just like my daughter, she has six kids don't even think about calling her. Oh my. Oh my God yeah. Text her, and if one of the other kids see this they'll pick up the phone and text back. But she barely really answers the phone. Well, I can only imagine. Right. So yes, I'm surprised she can even text but a good example. A lot of what I mean. Yeah. You’d be surprise texting I'll do stop in there. They're doing all kinds of things and they'll text. But getting a phone call out of them is like forget about it. You'd be surprised how just doing this one thing can really just increase your conversion. Because remember your target market is. And if you're over there going I'm old school. What the hell are you talking about Heather? I’m like “What? look you're not your market. You're not the one writing the check. Yeah. They’d get up to speed or die, it’s about it. Let the millennial business owner take your spot in the market. Exactly. My father last, I checked I haven't even tried it in a couple of years. He hadn’t a flip phone. You know like he doesn’t even get texts but he's an early adopter too which always makes me like what happened to you. I think he got retirees, forget it I’m not an early adopter anymore. But I did my first text message in 1988. 1988. And it was. I was working for a telecom company and we, of course, have the cell phone and that Nokia; the Nokia dealer was there at the offices way back. You remember that. And they were explaining to us text message and were all in the conference room about 10 of us. And I never forget it. And I said to my friend Brad, “Brad I'm going to text you ok. Hold on a sec” I put HI. You know you heard his little phone go ding ding. He’s like WOW, I got it. He's like OK I'll text you back. Hi. Oh my God, Oh, my god. We are in the same conference room. It was like, Woah, that’s so, really, how did you get to. So, things had changed a lot. Oh yeah. We still want to talk to humans. We still want to have a relationship with the people that we're giving money to. So, believe it or not, text us. Text us here. No, it's not something that's going to get progressively more interesting let’s put it that way to interact and engage with our customers. So, thanks for having me I really appreciate this. I really appreciate you being with us this morning. It has been an awesome day. This has really been some awesome content. Heather has just given us some tremendous information on how you can jump ahead of the game. Jump ahead of your competition and be that guy or gal that's in control of what's going on within your business triple your conversion rates. Figure out how to use chatbots is just another tool in your toolbox. That's all it is. So, until the next time, we meet be profitable, have fun enjoy your business. . You may visit these websites to connect with Heather Havenwood: 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, 9 January 2018
Discover How to make your customers feel Important should be number one on top of your list. We want to give a wow factor to our customers and basically the wow factor is doing what other won't But really boils down to doing what others don't. We all want to build ultimately a business with sustainable growth, sustainable profit. Treat our customers exponentially super good. So how do we do that? First of all, we want to build ultimately a business with sustainable growth, sustainable profit. So, in order to do that the best way to do business. And yes, we do need customers and acquire new customers all the time but mainly we need to treat our customers exponentially super good. I like to call it the WOW factor and basically the wow factor is doing what others won't. What others won't. But really boils down to doing what others don't. So, let's just go through a list of some of the things that you can do to make your customer feel important because when your customer feels important when my customer feels important then guess what. Not only do they want to continue to do business with me, but they let others know more often about you and the services you provide. Wowing your customer is really simple in today's market. It's very simple. We want to go into the expediential growth stuff the stuff that really sets you apart. Some of the simple things are just a handwritten thank you. Now a handwritten thank you note to your customer. I really appreciate you thank you for doing business with us. Same thing for a referral. Oh, my goodness it just it just sends them over the top when they get a handwritten thank you note. Thank you so much for referring us. How about just answering the phone. These are simple things returning phone calls. And never letting that customer drop off. And so, if you get a customer that you call them back and they don't answer, or you had to leave a voicemail just let them know say listen I promised that I would get in touch with you. And I'm not going to stop until I do. So, therefore, that kept you off the hook of actually saying or feeling like I'm really badgering that person but you're not badgering. Because they asked you they asked you to get in touch with them. How about sending them a gift a token of appreciation for when you finish up that job or even sometimes Let's let's start with that one first. A gift of appreciation a thank you thank you card with a gift. Could be brownies. It could be a cookie. It could be a little gift something you put in the mail to them. Just an appreciation of something that you found that they liked or noticed that they liked or had collected at the house. And I've even done it for people who have dogs. I also send the dog a gift that is just unheard of because people don't think about that. Listen you're saying why that cost $ 15.00 max 15 you can do it for 15 dollars. Just send a thank you card and brownies for 15 dollars or thank you card and a small gift for fifteen dollars or less. Why wouldn't you do that? You're saying wow why would I do that. Oh man are you kidding me. This is just crazy I can't. You want to thank them you want them to feel important. But guess what. You don't have to take 15 dollars out of your profit figure it into the price. Are you kidding me just this is a wow factor? It will. It will make your customer feel so appreciated. Because no one else does it. You want to rise to the top. You want to bring yourself up to the top of the pile of contractors that you've got your hand raising above all the rest. You want to do multiple touches a year. So how do I do this sequence? There are certain ways you can do. You can use send out cards. You can use Send Jim or Radius Bomb. I don't know if any you guys have the herd of Send Jim but if you go down to the bottom of the page. One of our sponsors is Sendjim. You can click on the link there it'll take you over to a video. And yes, it is an affiliate link. We do get paid for it for sending you over but it's the same price as you would pay if you went to direct. However, you do it just do it. Just go there. Add the sequences to your touch points throughout the year. Newsletter's. Oh man, I am a big fan of newsletters to send out newsletters on a monthly basis. And if you're going to say why would I spend money on a newsletter. I'm going to tell you why. My statistics show for every dollar I spend on sending out a newsletter. I get 21$ and 67 cents or 76 cents something like that back in return. Throughout the course of the year, you don't get too much of a return like that in many other areas. Why. do it Because the customer feels important. You're keeping in touch with them you're always on the top of their mind. This is actually a wow factor if done correctly. So, go in the show notes, go to the page, go to free stuff. You can download a link that will give you an example of the newsletter that I send out for my painting business and it's free. I mean just get an idea of what to send out. Now if you want to do an e-mail that's great. But also remember that your e-mail is only going to be eight to 10% open rate with a legitimate and I mean they're all legitimate. But with a mail newsletter, the way that I send it out everyone gets a 100% open rate when it arrives. They look at it at least they remember you. You're on top of mine and they're going to call you and say Oh man I've been thinking about Dave. They were thinking about Bob let me give him a call. And listen it is awesome the way that they respond. So how do you do this? You got to get their data. You've got to get the e-mail you got to get your mailing address you got to get some time their anniversary. Listen here's a thing that some restaurants do and you could actually implement this into your system is they send out half a birthday card. So, they know when their birthday is. So, they send out a half a birthday card to say hey it's half a year to your birthday have a birthday card. Here's a certificate or a coupon for a free drink or an appetizer with your dinner. Come in and visit us and enjoy your half birthday marked on us. So, think about what you could do with your own your own business your own contracting business. You could do an anniversary card. Oh, this not if you knew what their anniversary was when they got married but how about the anniversary day of the work you did. So, this is a one-year anniversary. We just want to thank you for doing business with us and put in there something that you might want to a new product, new service that you're selling or maybe you did some work last year that needs to be cleaned up may be pressure cleaning. Well you know we did your driveway and house last year it's time to freshen that up to kill the mildew and the algae. The same thing with a painting you could put together something for an interior touch up, a walk-through discount. a So, these are just some things you know you can do that with. You need. Like I said you need to get to thank you. There is a, go on the Internet you can find out. Pull up weird holidays and it'll give you a calendar of certain things that are happening weird like. So, you want to get weird and have fun with the weird holidays. OK so here's a couple I just pulled up and here's some thoughts as they go through January 4th is National Spaghetti Day. What if you boxed up a pound of spaghetti and you send it overnight mail or something like that and said Hey It’s National Spaghetti Day. It January 4th just wanted to celebrate that with you. Here's some thoughts. Oh, here’s January 15th Blue Monday, however you want to do that. January 13th National Pie Day. February 9th is National Bagel Day. Here’s one, February 5th World Nutella a day. So, you see where I'm going with this you could have so much fun by doing stuff. One time I had buttons made up according to holidays. You know some buttons made up I had. It's not my fault day. Sent him out to a bunch of customers for fun. So, there's so much you could do just to make them feel important. What makes some feel important that you are paying attention to them. That's what makes them feel important. So how are what are some of the ways you can come up with a zillion ways to make them feel important? It's always but it's always making you at the top of their mind. So, when someone thinks about her they're talking about having the service that you do when they hear that they go oh here's Bob you need to give him a call. Here's his number. And you know so you might. Oh, I was thinking about this here's the thing you could send them your contact information in the form of attacks as say keep this on hand and just you know when you think about us and you're in a conversation you might want to just send this over to a friend. Your whole contact information so good it's there. So, I know that this is going to make if you do this, this will put you so far ahead of your competition, that you don't have to worry about anybody stealing your customers because they'll be yours for life. So, let's take it a little bit further just a little bit further depending on the business you're in and the contracting that you do so let's say that you're a remodel contractor. Couldn't you take pictures of all the work you did to do before and after picture put it in a postcard and say “Hey can I send these to your friends that they know that you just updated your house and that and you might have their real estate agent in there and fun stuff like that.” So that's another one. Here's another one so that I that I know that some people do. And it is a killer strategy. I mean a real killer strategy. Depending again the contracting business you do if you're remodeler you do kitchens and bathrooms but mostly kitchens. This could be done with an outdoor barbecue or something like that is do you know the before or after picture or do the pictures say we just and celebrate the picture had this huge 6 by 6 by 9 inches. I think the postcard made because you can actually make those up and you can send them out for 49 cents. They don't go out Lark's mail and send them out to their friends inviting them to a dinner party to the new kitchen the new outdoor grill. It's that's really. How do I do this? Why would I do this? Why would I spend the money? You know you just add that to the price figure. Five hundred bucks and you want to really so I here's one that's just at 500 dollars for the party. You tell them Listen we'd like to throw help you throw up. We would like to throw a party for you when this is all finished. And of course, now you're going to be on your best behavior all the way through this deal. You're going to have to keep in touch with them you have to keep contact when they going to be better than anybody else, so they will allow you to do this. I had one contractor that I was talking with and he was doing a kitchen remodel in a house that I had just painted and we had the same coach, same business coach and he goes ha I'm doing you know the remodel for this customer and I'm running into a small challenge because she runs her business out of her house and she has the back bedroom which I knew that and I said So what's going to make you different than every other contractor that comes in. He goes I what do you mean. I go well here's the deal. They're really nice people. They want quality more than price. I know that because I've dealt with them. And if you go into the transaction with listen we know that it's going to be a pain in the neck for you to be there with all that work going on and all that noise and all that chaos. This is what I'm going to do. I'm going to rent you an office space for a week or two weeks till we get through the front of the demolishing and contracting and noise and the chaos. And I said I guarantee you that she will go for that and that will set you apart from everyone else that she's getting a price from. So, if you do that I will almost guarantee that you get the job. And you know he did that because he wowed her. He wowed her, and he got the job. So, it's all about how are you going and why your customer from the very beginning all the way to the end of the transaction. And then after the transaction so that she continues to keep a contact with them keep them on top of mind and continue to wow them. And just by going over some of the things that we talked about in this podcast. Guaranteed that you'll stay top of mind to all of your clients now and for everyone you do business with in the future because the key is make them feel important and when they feel important they will never leave you. That's the main reason customers leave because they feel like no one's paying attention to them. So, if you're keeping in touch contact with them 12 or 14 times a year, you touch base with them even if you throw in a phone call to say Hey Hi just wanted to say hi and says thank you for past business, and if you don't want to do it have somebody in the office do it for you. Hire somebody it doesn't matter just get it done. The key is to make them feel important. Wow, them, do things that no one else will do or is even considered to do. And be profitable. That's the name of the game. Be profitable. So, it's really the simple things that will grow your business to help you become more profitable to have more sustainable growth and then you know it's your business you're building for your lifestyle and make sure that you are in control of the business and the business is not in control of you. So, until the next time. Have a great week. . Be profitable and we'll see you again. Later.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, 8 January 2018
Reggie Brock talks to us today about in s and outs of insurance work and managed repair programs and where it is heading In the construction industry Is It good or bad. You have to decide for your business I have another awesome guest Reggie Brock and Reggie has been in the last three years has been in the construction business. But, regarding managed repair companies and he’s been into 23 years in the insurance industry, seven years in the roofing contractor and consulting and two and a half years as the director of Manage Repair Program. So, for some of you guys who don't know what manage repair as far as the insurance industry works going on. How it was good for your business or bad for your business. And I thought it'd be really great to have you Reggie on the program so he could explain some of that to you guys who are in the insurance industry or doing business with insurance companies and for some of you guys who might think about whether you want to wade into that area or jump in, however, you want to do it. So, Reggie I just want to thank you for being with us today so you could share this. I know this is an important topic for a lot of contractors. Well first, thanks for having me David and you're right. This is concerning insurance work with its retail work. Insurance is a part of that. Or if you want to get into the insurance industry. This is a segment of the industry that really needs to have great consideration given to it. And, my job, my opportunity to really show it and then other places that I just educate and to inform. Dave, I'm not going to tell people what recommendation particularly through our conversation or just get the full view so to speak of the industry and the impact that manager cares having not only just on the industry. But there them as individual contractors as well. All right. So, you know we talked earlier about this and I know that there's a lot of guys who make a great living at doing insurance work. And I think for you they were in Manage Repair Program. So, you can explain a little bit differently but there are pros and cons aren’t there? Absolutely. There's no question about it. And you know it's like anything, in my opinion, Manage Repair is not for everyone. Right. And insurance work is not for everyone. And you know I mean I think that people do make a great decision. People, many contractors to make a great decision. They just need to have an abundance of facts right. And so, when you hear a lot of the conversation that you've heard like in the last eight months to a year and the industry has been pretty negative about managed repair in some circles. And so, what I found in listening to that information is it was more fear based and it was they just didn't understand so based upon my background you know 23 years in the insurance business I understand policy construct I understand payment I understand how the insurance company views things. I mean the guys that are out doing the work, the contractors I did that for seven years. I know what it's like for those guys get knocking’ doors. So, they are knocking until their knuckles bleed. I know what it is to be on a roof that I have no business being safe. And then the second the third side of it is you know I've worked with the manage repair company for two and a half years so really what I'm able to do is come up blend without endorsing. So, I want to speak good information to these contractors. They'll make up their own mind based on facts not just feelings. Yeah, that's pretty awesome because I think that so many times we get asked. Contractors we'd see dollar signs. Right. Or like I remember when I first went into the painting business. My brother was in the painting business. I saw a big wad of cash and said I could do that, once I started doing all sorts of you know started this road I got to finish it. It was so much harder than just looking at the end results But you know a lot of times we get into things like I'm really trying to say is we get into things under false pretenses. So how do we how do we get by that? I know, we’ll talk about that a lot of that today. Your job is basically like you said to inform you said there's a lot of negative stuff going on But a lot of it has to do with failing I guess from my information on the right procedures and paperwork and stuff like that. Yeah, I think I think the biggest difficulty for most contractors that I talked to who had been. let's start with the guys that who are you know most of their business work is working insurance claims.
Manage Repair Programs are really a secondary way of working and insurance claims most contractors are not comfortable with because they have really contractors generally speaking control the insurance job from start to finish. So, to speak. And the problem Dave is that contractors and insurance companys for years and years and years have been more enemies. To some degree right. You know the insurance company they will overpay at times, contractors think they underpaid, and really that was caught in the middle as the policyholder. And so, you know I made a lot of times because of that bad mentality so to speak. The policyholder suffers from a servicing standpoint and an experiential standpoint so you know managed to repair is just another version of how insurance claim work. It's just that the controls look a little bit different. And so honestly to really understand the shift you know. Here’s one of the things that I hear all the time is Reggie you know Manage Repair is it a trend or is it a shifted you know like I know Dave that you know trends come and go it’s not anything you need to be concerned about that if there is a shift you better prepare yourself. One of the top ten insurance companies last year basically lost money they spent more money than they took in all but three of them of the top ten carriers across the country. They're going to make adjustments and usually Yeah. And usually what happens is what motivates that is really two things and that is there's a sense of overpayment that the insurance company has had a claim that they paid too much money for. And the second thing is there's usually fraud involved in billing. And you know from a historical standpoint that's kind of a hint that things arent going right. Those are the indicators of what it meant when insurance companies are going to get a better grip on its payment and reconciliation. And that's kind of what's happening right now. I'll give you a perfect example I'm with contractors constantly and all the contractors tell me they know I'm underpaid I'm not overpaid you know they're not giving me too much money and I ask them if you ever had you ever done work or been paid for work that you didn't do and all of them are like, well absolutely not. Well if you just look at a simple roof and gutters to be replaced because of hail and windstorm. You know there’s most of these guys out here, or not most of them because they're crazy high deductibles I mean especially we do a lot of work in Texas. And there's a lot of. And I'm sure certain Florida's kind of the same way. There are high deductibles that these homeowners are having to wrestle with to get the claim handled and so they pay out of pocket So contractors creative in one of the things that they do is they take money that was allocated for a repair. And you know they don't do it and they use the money that was given to the homeowner to offset the cost that the deductible. Now isn’t that fraud? Well, it's not. When it becomes Fraud is when you send the insurance company a bill stating you did the work and didn’t because the way insurance companies set their pay up is that they’ll give the contractor, the homeowner money upfront to start the job that they want to make sure they pay all the money that they want to make sure the work was actually done. And so, in a lot of cases like for example gutters things like that. Contractors you know get reimbursed for work that they didn’t do. And that's where the fraud comes into play. So that's kind of historically what's created the shift that we're seeing today. OK, so I'm going to ask a question for her because we're the guys that know nothing about insurance work and manage repair is because I don't know. And I'm just gathering stuff I know it we talked a little about it before but manage repair is basically a go between the contractor and the insurance company is that correct. That's a pretty good way to describe it. You know we're a third-party administrator. Companies like us are. And you're exactly right. Rather than the conventional method of a homeowner called to set up I have roof damage you know they'll call the insurance company and the insurance company route's it to their field or generators and they all have the conventional way of doing it. What made these repair companies do is they find qualified certified contractors in areas all across the country. And then when a claim them from a carrier partner that they have a relationship with a particular insurance company a claim comes in and the insurance company will generally rub it to the managed repair company who then from start to finish manages through the contractor the local contractor the project until completion. And so, the insurance company has what you know they trust the banister payer or third-party administrator. That's what some many of these companies are called to handle the customer experience right from start to finish. So, there's not a whole lot of moving parts so to speak. This confuses homeowners. And so Manage Repair Company sits in the middle way the customer of the contractor and the insurance company tries to coordinate what I call a smooth landing with the customer experience with. All right. Exactly. You know I'm thinking I'm going to play the Devil’s advocate. I’m going to think about it from a homeowner’s point of view and then from a contractor from a point of view, I think that Manage Repair would help me have a better experience with both the insurance company and the contractor because there is, in essence, a mediator. And now from a contractor’s standpoint. And so, before you go to a contractor let's talk about homeowners for a second. You bring up a point. The homeowner, If you and I don’t know how, or where you live in the US, but like in Texas and Colorado where I spent a lot of time. Hailstorm comes in particular and it’s like ants on a landfill in a neighborhood right. I mean people knocking on doors. I mean there’s flyers being left the door and they said so what happens is homeowners truly don't understand who to choose in many cases. So, one of the things that a Manage Repair Company provides a requirement from the insurance carrier is the vetting of the contractor. So, they have to pass financial background they had to find credibility in the local market. Those type of things, that also when a homeowner says Hey I'll say that one of our preferred contractors that contractor has gone through the strenuous process before they ever can walk on the property. That creates a lot of confidence with the homeowners. I didn't mean to interrupt but I will I see the next perfect the perfect scenario because you know as a homeowner I want to know that I’m not stuck in a truck that has been ok by the insurance company to do my work yes because I just can't tell you from an experience from a family member. We had a process where they directly worked with the contractor and the insurance company and it was not it was very interesting. And it really it took probably two months longer than it should have. Right. And not saying that they were good or bad either way. It's just I can’t see the benefit of especially the family member because she was on the phone every day, almost little every day between the contractor and the insurance company where it could have been handled with the one person and they could have been done and in a way, that was acceptable to all. Yeah and the home owner’s ordeals with the Manage Repairs Programs, generally speaking, getting them whole or back to like normal life isn’t much faster project much faster process. Because the insurance company with most of the Manage Repair Companies that they have they have very strict requirements in terms of getting that homeowner back to a lack prior to a storm in a very expedient way. So, there's not a lot of finger-pointing . I mean it’s a very process driven system that ultimately is geared to the way it is to make sure that the customer experience is what the insurance company promised. So, it's interesting you're right. Now just like with anybody. I mean there are people in Manage Repair Contractors and Manage Repair Companies who mess up and you know create problems that are by and large that's kind of the reason behind Manage Repair from the carrier’s standpoint and how often is to vet them to make sure that they've done work in the past. Good for their word and the reputable men are honest and all of them. And there again from I’m not talking about from the contractor’s standpoint from two different areas because I would think that from the contractor who is above board who is honest about his business dealings. Really goes out of his way to create the value for the customer. And I believe most do. I agree. I believe that most do and of course, it's the squeaky ones that screw things up for it but I think again from that contractor who's been vetted that this poses a unique situation for them. The fact that they don't have to deal with the insurance company you know in their dealings they've got you know the Manage Repair Company and that if they're good at what they do and there are like registered with a managed repair company that it is a nice avenue of income. Right. I'm not going to say because I'm always I've never been an advocate of putting all your eggs in one basket. I believe in multiple things of income. That's why I say it could be a nice avenue of income from them for them as long as they do other things. And that's you bring up, that is the greatest point probably of this conversation. Manage Repair should not be looked at as replacement but simply the addition to. Because honestly depending on the type of Manage your Repair Program you're involved in I can pretty will tell you that contractors are going to make generally as much money in particular with working to manage repair because major repair companies have to be paid. But if you look at the work that they're doing and what we're not doing and compare the income cap is strange is a lot closer than most people think. The biggest thing that we hear from, I've heard from contractors was manage repair programs is that a couple of few things number one: By going, send basically by an insurance company because you're a preferred contractor to the homeowner, the homeowner knows who you are coming as a contractor. It kind of moves you to the front of the line in terms of marketing. Because you are endorsed, when I say endorse you're absolutely vetted by the carrier and that just create confidence with the homeowner. The second thing it does is it puts them into neighborhoods and usually because of managed repairs, especially in roofing. Manage repairs there's such a quick turnaround in a big storm hit area that got us with a major repair program getting there first get his side or her side of the arch. They get the roof done. In many cases before the other company’s insurance suggests even better out there. So, it's giving them a huge advantage. Yeah. And there again, it’s from a marketing standpoint. You don't have to pay for marketing. Why do you need to be paid as much? I mean and I'm not saying and like you said the variables are close. So, there's a lot of things that you need. You should consider is that you know how not to pay for a multiple callback stuff like that because my face and my appointment are being made for me in a sense by a referral and your closing rate are always higher with such. And then you know I mean the smart contractor is not going to wait to put a sign in the driveway or in the yard saying oh you know we've done this or we're confident this is going to go out and you're going to do five or 10 rounds and say hey we're a trusted adviser or trusted by a managed repair for these companies or insurance companies you know can we assist you in any way. That's a great point. I mean that's a real winning card played here so to speak if you don't mind me saying it that way and you say I need to make sure that there is like going into an ice cream shop when it comes to looking for manage repairs. You know there's a variety of tastes. Right, and each of them do different things you know. So, I hear guys saying well manage repairs does this. No, they don’t. They don't they have a different taste and a different approach to the market. And in many cases, they have different services that they render which kind of helps a contractor realize Well you know. So, this is not a minor Manager Repair. It is. Is it an another as you said Avenue to the business that I'm already doing that can help me add income strain to our portfolio as a business so to speak and you know so I guess what I'm trying to say in that is everything there's so many different varieties. What I try to help guys to do is OK how do I choose which means prepare to be a part of them, like for example, my next year I'm sure that there’s an A-Z. You've got find the one that's going to fit you and in your business. How you operate your business I would imagine because I'm sure there's a like this. So, one of the things that I took us the most important is you need to be a part of a Manage Repair Program that is extremely close and what they do to your core competency as a business. Right. So, if you're a roofer you need to be looking for MRP’s or Manage Repairs or third-party administrators that their focus is on roofing. And why is that. Because the transition will be easier you'll understand. The training will be closer to what you're already doing so that it won't be a huge lead in terms of energy. The second thing I tell them is you need to figure out what the what I call the exchange rate is. What am like giving as a contractor and what am I getting in return. Because if it doesn't make sense for the time you're getting and there's proper compensation that you feel then you don't need to do it. Doesn't matter how sexy or how trendy or whatever the opportunity is made for sure that it makes sense in terms of the time and it's not just yours but the resources required of your staff. That's what people do not to make monetize off and that is what is okay for me to run one of these assignments when they give it to me. And so that because I have a guy, he does a lot of transfers for one of the local roofers in town. He makes a lot of money but he does all the paperwork and you know that’s, you know he does it all by himself. It's a lot of time invested he said. Nobody understands the amount of time I am invested in doing make sure the paperwork right. And you know he's kind of down to almost the size now, and he's worked with the adjuster so much in the past that you know they've helped them and they help more now than it did before. But yeah, you're right. Those times spent that you don't even think about you know going into it. Right. A couple of the things I would notice I took at, this look. What kind of program is it that that stretches your credit or your cash. Right. So, if I get a storm in under the roofs I mean most guys you know these big national companies so they you know they've got a local roofing company and they have credit limits. And so, you know three or four storm comes in pretty quickly these guys run out of credit and are having to wait for you know mortgage companies to release funds or whatever the case may be. So, you need to be really, really, careful that the opportunity that lays you has opened a reality. And from a credit standpoint you get a look and ask yourself OK how’s this manage repair company help me avoid getting myself into a credit crunch. Same thing with cash. You know you need that. I mean these needs to guys to ask OK if I do a job for you, how long am I going to have to use my cash before you pay me what you owe me? Right. So, most of these major care companies are extremely quick on the draw when it comes to pay because they don't understand that they say they get the big ideas and these big eyes are wide open say they oh great. What a great opportunity these manage repair companies are.
And then in the essence you know, if you ask if you really just back off of it. Look at it. It might not make sense because of your credit, straining your cash capabilities. It doesn't mean you're a bad contractor just means you need to look at that stuff before you jump into it. Yeah because it's all about you know you're doing it for the money you're thinking about it to make you more money, to do more business. And in the end, you know it's like guys who grow too fast and they're putting themselves out of business because they know how to handle it. Exactly. Who’s coming in at that time? A hundred percent. So, is our manager repair company’s good programs have been involved in? I think generally so. And I think that they ever say that we've talked about today is considered it makes good business sense for some not all. You just got to slow yourself down and look by the company that you're looking to talk to. The true fear factors. What am I giving? And what am I getting in return? Right. And so, guys I know here's the thing that I was just thinking about too is the time to do it is before you need it. Right. So, if you're thinking about doing you know next storm season or you know if he knows stuff like that happening and start doing your research now because in the middle of a storm season when it hits you're going to just grab at the closest straw you've got and you may end up being a loser. Well, the other thing is the storm and storm that are so hectic. You know what I get afraid of is that people getting involved in manage repairs at the point of a storm at the event that just happened. Boy sometimes everybody bends the wrong direction in terms of training in particular what ultimately happens is it's a bad experience for here. The manage repair company, the contractor, the insurance company and most importantly a bad experience for the homeowner so I concur. If these guys are interested storm season for hail and wind kicks up probably in March. Now's the time. I mean start looking around. Put your oars in the water so to speak and just try to figure it out because right now there will be no pressure. Most major repairs some of them are still run running, some clients buying large they're gearing up for the season before us. So, I agree with you. This has really been interesting. Just a lot of new stuff that I've never thought about and I'm sure that a lot of guys do think about it for how do I do it. But this is information. Useful information I think for you. I really appreciate you being on the show and going through this. Is there anything in the back your mind even thinking about you want to say that you haven't gotten out yet. Well you know I mean I think that the best thing that's been said that needs to be reiterated is just make a decision on that manage repairs not going away right. I mean manage repair is going to grow in scope, more carriers are starting to roll out these types of programs across the country. And it's only going to get. Let me give you one statistic I'd get egotistic so badly, bear with me on this one. So, insurance claims right now, less than half of all insurance claims that that occurred in 2016. I don't have data for 17 yet. Obviously in 2016 less than 1 percent of all insurance claims done last year were done through manage repair program. That's nothing right. But it always that has kind of come out of that less than 1 percent. It's been crazy. people are confused and frustrated and aggravated. Now they're saying by 2020 10-12% of all claims will be run through managed repair program. Why. Because it's allowing the insurance company to control the cost and to offset some of those as we talked about earlier that is overspending and fraud. Now before this thing gets so overwhelming it's too late. Take now just to analyze, gather your facts and you'll make a great decision for you as an individual and a contractor to your local market. And that's kind of what I would think sets it off for me, Dave. That’s pretty awesome. I think that you know demand manage repair program could be as far as the insurance company was looking at could also be in the long term you know to keep a lid on prices of insurances going up. Yeah, I mean it again. Go ahead. And everything is happening in a due season anyway. That's true. That's true. That's really been awesome. How do our listeners can talk to you if they want to know more about manage repair or pretty much in terms of insurances, what's going on? How can they get that? Right. All right. That's awesome this has really been great. I really thank you so much for sticking with us today and share all the stuff that's going on that might make it really easier and help you understand a little bit better. So it's cool. And I know that you will put your LinkedIn. You know to connect with you on LinkedIn to you first from the show notes. So thank you so much for the time, your interest in the topic and hopefully, it’s been helpful for contractors You may visit this website for more details about Reggie Brock; https://www.linkedin.com/in/reggiebrock/
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, 5 January 2018
5 Things You Should Never Say, Always Say If You Want to Make More Money. Clint Arthur takes us through key components to make more money. Make more money have more fun. Conquer your fear of public speaking become a confident and charismatic person you've always wanted to be. I just want to introduce you to a. Highly motivated guy Clint Arthur. He's gonna be our guest today. And Clint is the bestselling author of Speaking game seven finger secrets revealed says that there are five things you should always say if you want to make more money and Five Things You Should Never Say If you want to make more money and I'm looking at the cover of his book which is pretty cool seven figure speaker secrets revealed. Make more money have more fun. Conquer your fear of public speaking become a confident and charismatic person you've always wanted to be.. Clint. I'm just so excited you could be here because I know this is going to be a lot of fun. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you I really appreciate your taking the time to record this and I'm excited to help everybody in your audience to have more fun make more money and gain more confidence and charisma.
Every time they open their mouth to say whatever to anybody to their kids to their spouse to their boss to a boardroom full of people to a hundred people at the PTA meeting or to a thousand people at some kind of conference if you ever open your mouth and speak this next 30 minutes is going to change the way you speak and the impact that you have on the world and influence you can make on the world and on your pocketbook and bank accounts forever.
That's awesome because we're really all in speaking game no matter what we do aren’t we. Every time you open your mouth you are trying to influence somebody if you want to go to a certain movie or to a particular restaurant or if you want your kids to clean their room or if you want to get your boss to give you a raise or to implement something or if you're trying to negotiate with a customer or with a contractor this is going to apply to you.
Every time you talk and the things that we're going to talk about here are going to be things that you can do every single time you speak to anybody so that you can have more influence and impact and income that's so cool.
Yeah because we all need to work better on being better is so that we can be better at everything. I know that’s not the right thing. Exactly. Sure, what the heck. No no, no, we need to be better. That's exactly right. And you know Donald Trump is whatever you may think about him politically. Let's cast that aside let's just think about how successful that guy was as a speaker. He gets paid a million dollars to go show up and talk for an hour. That's not a bad paycheck even for Donald Trump. That's not a bad paycheck. And that's all because he's a good speaker. And what are some of the funny things that he says you know I do this bigly you know so you're right. We all need to be better at this.
That's right. And it's not your words. It's not it's not necessarily the words that you say. It's really how you say things that is the biggest impact. However today we're going to talk about five things you should never say if you want to make more money and then we're going to talk about five things you should always say if you want to make more money and words have an important part of this whole thing but when you get into the speaking game book and you start learning the methodology of the speaking game you start playing the speaking game every day.
When you talk you'll see it's much less about what you say and it's much more about how you say it. But for today's purposes because this is a sales oriented moneymaking oriented podcast, let's talk about the Five Things You Should Never Say if you want to make more money and the first thing you should never say if you want to make more money is, let me think about it. See, I recently learned from one of my friends who is a founding member of the National Speakers Association that I make more money than 99 percent of the speakers in the National Speakers Association. And I've only been doing this for about five years now as a as a professional speaker and my ascent has been meteoric you know in GKIC world. I set the all-time record for a speaker selling from the stage at GKIC.
No one's ever sold as much as me and I really do believe that I know what you should do, what you shouldn't do when it comes to speaking and making money and the first thing you should never do is say let me think about it because decisive people make more money and people who make more money are very decisive.
You go to a restaurant with a person who makes a lot of money. They take a quick look at the menu and they know what they want and they say I'll have the steak, I'll have, fish tacos, I'll have the shrimp whatever they want to have. They just look at it they decide and then they say it. And when you're talking to somebody we all know what it means if somebody says if you say let me think about it.
What that really means is no but I just don't have the guts to tell you no to your face. I don't want to have that kind of confrontation with you to tell you no. So really what you do is you're opening up a loop. You're making the contractor or the salesperson call you back and find out. Well do you want to do it or not. Then at that time you'll say no or maybe you'll be such a chicken that you just keep blowing them off and never respond and get to squeeze everybody’s time. The way to make money is to waste less time and to be direct and decisive and say yes or no and decide.
So that's the first thing you should never say to make more money is let me think about it.
The second thing you should never say if you want to make more money is you should think about it. Don't tell customers or prospects to think about it. Encourage them to take action and be decisive. You and I know you know as a contractor as a sales person. It's a numbers game. You got to go through x number of proposed rules in order to get X amount of Yeses.
And on the other side of that you've got to go through x No’s. However, many no’s it's now. So if you're selling 2 percent you need to get a no for every yes. So, you have to get a no because that means you're one step closer to getting a yes. So, don't encourage customers or prospects to think about anything encourage them to make a decision and say hey you got all the facts here's the price here's what we're going to do. Would you like to move forward? Yes or no. And then when they say they wanted to say let me think about it. What do you need to think about? Here's. All right here. Is it a yes or no. I'm happy either way I'm going is happy with. No as I am with a yes. You're not hurting my feeling right.
It's I think about it that drives me nuts because it's more time sucking out of my schedule. That's right. And we all know think about it means it means no. But it just means you got a follow up and make another call and or two or three or four or whatever.
The third thing you should never say is you want to make more money is I woulda coulda shoulda. Now in life you're going to win some you got to lose some you're going to break even on some don't have regrets just learn lesson. Some lessons come cheap some lessons come expensive. I've had $50,000 lessons where it just came right out of my pocket 50 grand. Those were expensive lessons but I learned the lesson and I don't regret what I did. I have learned the lesson I paid the price and a lot of times some of the most expensive lessons are the best lessons. So, I don't regret them. Just learn your lessons and move on.
They call them seminar. It’s an expensive seminar I went to. Yeah I get it then a lot of travel I had to travel to China my most expensive seminar, geez.
All right then the fourth thing you should never say if you want to make more money is: Let me give you a discount. That drives me nuts. Don't offer people discounts. First of all, you're not doing anybody any favors giving them a discount when you give somebody a discount. They feel like they're getting less value. The only way to give a client a great experience is to charge him a lot of money and make them pay full price. If you don't charge them full price if they get the discount. Now they're looking for flaws in the product. Now they're feeling like they didn't get as good of craftsmanship or workmanship or it didn't happen as fast or the alternative is you may feel like you're entitled to delay the job or not deliver it as quickly as possible or as well as you should have.
Because well after all I gave the guy a discount. And that's a really bad recipe for success. It's not going to bring you the best success the highest paid people don't give discounts. Do you think Tony Robbins is getting any giving any discounts? You think Dan Kennedy is giving any discounts. Never. Never. They pay they charge full price and they give full value and that's the way to do it.
And then the fifth thing you should never say if you want to make more money is the the other side and that is. Can you give me a discount? Yes. Now a lot of people ask for discounts and that's a really negative way to approach things you're going to make a lot more money focusing on making money than you will if you try to save money especially on little things like you go into a shop or you. You're dealing with a vendor and you say hey man can you give me a discount on this and you're really much better off being the vendor's favorite customer being the customer who pays full price money on the spot.
Yeah all the time. And then you'll get the special treatment and the special favors that you need when you're in a crunch and that's when it really is more important that you get the service and the quality that you need is when you really need their help. You can only get that by being the best customer. That's why I always pay full price and I pay. Boom. Johnny on the spot. When I when I owe people money or when I hire a vendor or a contractor I always pay promptly because I want them to feel like I'm their best customer because I get the best treatment that way.
So those are the five things you should never say. Think about it. Let me think about it. I wish I would have could have should or let me give you a discount or can you give me a discount. Yeah those are two words I hate discount. Give me a discount. Can I have it now. That's not even in my vocabulary. I just, drives me crazy.
You really have to educate customers to understand that discounts are not in anybody's best interests. Really. Even in the customers worsening trust to give them a discount, I have a guy that I was talking to not too long ago. He is a roofing infighting and window guy in Rhode Island and I was just talking about marketing, one of my favorite subjects. We are talking about how he's grown his business from one and a half million, to 15, five million in the last couple of years.
And I said well what's your best marketing piece. He said You're not going to believe this. If I tell you I believe anything he goes I have a door hanger. When my crews are out I'll go to a few houses run and they'll put it on and open anything. It’s basically a coupon for a 0 percent discount. Wow.
And he said and then I go to explain him why we don't give discounts because in order for us to give you a discount we are going to have to raise the price. And that's not valuable to you. Wow that's very interesting technique. Yeah. I love doing podcasts because you learn so much from listening to this stuff.
And let's get into the five things you should always say. You want to make more money and this is some really fun ones.
The first thing you should always say if you want to make more money is your full name.
Now when I call people I always say hey this is Clint Arthur. Saying your full name is a very subtle power grab and a very subtle power statement. You're saying my full name is important. I am somebody and I'm not just Clints I'm not just Joe I'm not just Jack or JR I am Clint Arthur the one and only Clint Arthur.
And all celebrities do this. And you have to look at what celebrities do because they're playing the toughest most competitive game of all which is the celebrity game and what they're trying to do is to position themselves as somebody important. And ultimately you know that whole saying people need to know, like, and trust you before they're going to do business with you.
I don't agree. I think that's wrong. They need to admire you like you and trust you they need to think that you are better than them in many ways. Certainly, they need to admire your ability to deliver a contracting job on time. And for better houses than theirs they're not going to nobody in a mansion is going to hire a tract home contractor to come in and do work.
He's only going to hire a guy who's done work on the best mansions to come and work on his OK mansion and they're always going to look for somebody who is the most admirable, the high-status person they can get in the category that they're looking to hire.
And by saying your full name it positions you as somebody who is that important. You can even do this with restaurant reservations you call them and say hey this is Joe can I get a reservation for two at eight o'clock. Or you could call up and say hey this is Joe Smith I'd like to come in with my wife for dinner at eight o'clock. And what the reservation is just thinking at that point is who the heck is Joe Smith.
He must be somebody and you know it's kind of funny just listening to you say that you know this is Joe and then this is Joe Smith. There's a different influx in your town when you say your first and last thing name. Interesting.
Yeah I was talking about this with one of my financial advisor clients and he told me that he started implementing this technique and the very first call that he answered that way he said. Jeremy Montrenga, when he answered his phone. That's what he said. Jeremy Montrenga and that set the tone for the whole entire customer intake and it resulted in the biggest client ever brought on board because the tone was a certain direction and power right from the beginning and that's what you can get when you use that kind of full name technique.
The second thing you should always say if you want to make more money. Give me the money. Now that may mean there's different ways to say that essentially. Essentially that's what you're saying is give me the money. Now this is the very first thing they taught me when I was a student at the Wharton Business School is get the money. That's what they teach you at business school. How do you get the money? How do you get it as fast as possible? The number really this is one of the most important things you can do is ask the customer to give you the money if you don't ask for the order you have a lot less chance of ever getting the order.
There's very few customers who are going to say hey I want to buy this thing. Let me give you the money. There's very few who are going to do that. Your job as a salesperson is to ask for the order which is asking for the money. So, don't ever be chicken about that. Always be happy to allow the customer or the prospect this opportunity to make a decision to give you the money. It's very important.
Yes. When the customer has asked you to be there, has asked you for a proposal it is not time to be shy and not ask for the order. I agree. And too many people too many salespeople never do ask for the order.
Now the third thing you should always say if you want to make more money and this is really important is I'm the only one in the world who does this. Now this is a marketing stance or positioning statement that's so important you don't want to be one of 10 window contractors who install certain windows. You want to be the exclusive licensed distributor of Fleetwood windows.
You want to be the exclusive distributor of Fleetwood windows in this region. And if somebody wants to get Fleetwood windows they have to come to you. Otherwise they don't get Fleetwood windows and I know I'm building my dream house right now in the Hollywood Hills. I haven't a whole house full of Fleetwood windows.
That's what they're going to be. You know why. Because when I go to sell that house 10 15 years down the road those fleet windows are going to add value. I'm going to be able I'm going to be able to say hey my house. Every single window in this house is top of the line Fleetwood that's money and I'm and I'm going to do that and I'm going to pay up for the exclusive Fleetwood guy to come in and install them and buy them for me and bring them to me and install them perfectly because I know that and I try to do the same thing in my work too.
So, for example I invented the speaking game and I'm on www.speakinggame.com if you want to play the speaking game, I’m the only one selling the speaking game there is nobody else talking about how do you play this game. How do you make money when you speak like this? There is nobody else doing this so if you want to learn speaking game you've got to go to speakinggame.com and you have to buy the speaking game book and you have to opt in and give me your email address to get the free bonus videos because there's no other way to get it. Alternatively.
Auto repair shop owner named Dave Steagall and he came to my local TV publicity training program. Oh, you know I got. You know. Shawn King from risk free guaranteed. Yeah that's who I was talking about Shaun King. He's a client of mine. Is your song King. Yes, song King came through celebrity launch pad. He's done 30 television appearances. No, it was because he was at the seminar I was at.
In Rhode Island and it was kind of funny because we were talking about that and he was positioning himself to open up different places throughout the United States. And he's already going to be the number one guy because he's already got credibility from TV station.
Yeah, he was on Fox Los Angeles. He booked so many of those shows that my celebrity launchpad. Then he went books a whole bunch more off cold calls the way I taught him how to do it. And if you want to do that I'm the only guy in the whole world who teaches how to book yourself on local TV news and talk shows.
So, if that's of interest to you then you can get that from me and that's a powerful position and you as a contractor you need to figure out a powerful unique position for yourself so that you can take advantage of this third thing. You should always say if you want to make more money. Like we've been talking about and then the fourth thing is I don't discount but I can give you this bonus.
When people ask you for a discount. It's you can't just shut them down cold the smart way I believe to shut down the request for the discount is hey I can't give you a discount but I will throw in this bonus for you because I really like you. So for example you know what can we do. Well I could install I'm thinking of a good a good thing for a contractor. I know. When we're doing the alarm system I could install a bonus with regard to like a camera that you could have. I'm not going to discount the price but I'll throw this in extra for you just to make you feel better.
And the last thing is the fifth thing you should always say if you want to make more money is I'm very grateful for this that or the other thing. Look we live in the United States of America. We many contractors are fortunate enough to be entrepreneurs. Owning your own business and we should be grateful every freaking day man.
I mean the opportunity that we have the lifestyle that we lead we made the best lives on the whole planet. And I'm grateful every day for my opportunities to make money when I talk and to have great clients like Shawn King or Dave Steagall or other people who come through my trainings and pay me a lot of money to teach them this stuff so that they can go out and make their unique impact on the world make the world a better place.
I think that you know the contracting industry delivering homes and improving homes for people is such an important and valuable service. And I'm I'm grateful for all the contractors in the world. I've been working with one I'm building my I'm building my dream home right now and I'm very grateful every day and I try to express gratitude as much as I can for the benefit of others and also for myself so that I can stay grounded and be grateful for what I have because gratitude man, that is a powerful ingredient of a happy life.
Oh yeah. There's so many people that they’re who have a lot of money they're not grateful on their kids. They're just miserable all the time because they haven't learned the gratitude effect. Amen. So there you have it man. Those are the five things you should never say and the five things you should always say what do you think about that.
Hey I'm with you on all of that stuff. You know like I don't discount but I can give a bonus. That is my favorite one because I hate giving up the cash. Yes. It's so funny. You know there's like some kind of ego with attachment to the cash and getting paid what you're worth or what you're not worth.
And yeah, I think too many guys are. And you know and here's a funny thing is I think a lot of you know people that do discount and it goes back to what they're always looking for discounts. They figure in order for people to buy from them they have to give a discount which is just totally wrong thinking
One hundred percent man, it all comes down to are you the guy, are you the ball or are you the player that you always wanted to be. Like I say to a lot of my clients. When you drive up to the valet parking stand you're the guy that every valet parker is hoping is going to come up to the valet parking stats. You got money you've got a car that runs. You've got a great lifestyle and you're the guy who should be tipping them two three five dollars. You're the guy.
And the only way you can be the guy or lady as the case may be the only way you can be the guy is to be the guy. Right. There's nobody who is going to put that five-dollar bill in your hand for you. You got to pull the five and put it in the valet parkers hand and beat the guy. And that's the whole thing about discounts. And asking for discounts or giving discounts if you give or ask for discounts, you're not being the guy.
No definitely not because you're, like you said you're taking the value away from yourself and what you can supply that customer. Yep you know I have it happened to me once was kind of funny and it came out of left field. You know usually you know when you're in the contracting business you can read people and you know how they're going to talk and react.
And I had this one lady you know is that your best price and I'm gone. Now this was a 2-million-dollar house and it's just you weren't thinking that. And I’ve gone “Oh, where did this come from?” So, I really had to think about aside, I did that I said “This is what I can do. I said I can give you I can upgrade the paint which was really you know from and that was not that much more expensive but it actually made my job easier.” And I said why don't we give a 10-year guarantee and the paint and you know all that stuff will up this 12 years and they were totally ecstatic about that.
Yeah. There you go. Cause I didn’t, wasn’t about the money. It was more about what kind of value can I give that. And in place of the money because I think in the long term like you know getting ready and you're going to put those windows in you're in your home you're not thinking about what it's going to cost you today. You're thinking about what is going to return me in the future.
That's right. And today especially today with quantitative easing QE 2 has printed up so much money. There's lots of money out there today. It's not about is there enough money. It's about people getting the experience that they want. It's about people feeling like they're getting the value. I'm not saying you should rip off customers and overcharge them. I'm not saying that. I'm saying you should charge the right price for what you do. You should get what you're worth, what you deserve and the price that the market will bear without ripping people off. I agree. Right.
And people are more concerned today about being treated fairly, getting great value and getting what they want. The experience that they want. Especially from a contractor who's going to deliver on time, deliver in a pleasant way not be sending drug addicts and alcoholics to their house. Not having unfortunate experiences where damage cases are done or accidents happen and it's just it's just about being professional and delivering a first-class experience to people today and then it's easy to get a lot of money people are happy to give you a lot of money for a first-class experience.
I agree wholeheartedly. Oh, cool man. Hey this has been a lot of fun. Any anything. I know we went through those five and five. Is there anything last minute that you to just share with our listeners on the back of your mind? Hey we covered a lot of stuff. If you are interested in the speaking game, go to speakinggame.com and get those free videos.
And the book, oh my gosh so proud of this book. It’s hardcover book. It's my first hardcover book. And I'm really excited about it if you do buy the hardcover, e-mail me your receipt and I'll immediately send you the Kindle book and some bonuses and if you want to find out more about my TV training like Shawn King had, or other ways that I help my clients to immediately position themselves for six figures and seven figure contracts like without changing who you are, I can change the way people perceive view.
And if you're interested in that go check out www.clintarthur.tv and you'll see some of the ways that we do that and I'm happy to hop on the phone and enroll people into a much better and brighter financial future by repositioning yourself as a high money earner. Awesome.
Connect with Clint Arthur
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.
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Thu, 4 January 2018
Can I Write That Off with Craig Cody; Ever thought about what you can write as a business expense Craig goes into some true but seldom used write off strategies. You might just be amazed you are going to love the topic is “Can I write that off?”
Today I have a returning yes because of you guys. His name is Craig Cody and Craig is a certified tax coach, certified public accountant, business owner and former New York City police officer with 17 years’ experience on the force in addition to being a certified public accountant for the past 15 years.
He's also a certified tax coach and as a certified tax coach Craig belongs to a selective of group of tax practitioners throughout the country who undergo extensive training and continued education and various tax planning techniques and strategies to become as well as remain certified Unser. With his organization.
Craig has co-author Amazon best seller book Secrets of the Tax-Free Life and today I'm excited because this is one that you are going to love is the topic is “Can I write that off?” Craig thanks so much for being with us today.
Oh, thank you very much for having me today.
I'm psyched. We got such a great response to you being on here. The last time that this is really I know is going to be fun. I know it's always fun for me but it be fun for a lot of our guests too. Can I write that off? Boy that is probably a thousand different things or a thousand different questions we could ask.
I don't know if I've ever been asked that question before. Can I write that off? First you have to get everything out of your shoe box and put it in order before I can tell you whether you can write that off right.
That's right.
Sometimes when I tell them yes, they're actually really surprised. Yeah. Because they're just grasping a store straw they’re just open right. Exactly, exactly.
OK here's what I want to ask you, and then what is the most unique thing that someone has asked you Can I write that off? Oh it was probably some type of cosmetic surgery.
And I'll leave it at that. Leave it to the imagination. OK.
I'm sure it's not so I'm sure that. And I know a lot of people.
You know it's getting that time of the year. And you know as they go through all their income expenses and stuff and they're gone I'm sure of that I can write it off or I wish I can write that off.
What are some of the things that you want to tell us about that.
Well some of the unique things. Let's talk about OK. You know can I write off my pool? you know. And that's one of them when they're shocked when I say yeah well if you have a home office you can write off your pool because you're allowed to have a home athletic facility for the use of your employees and you and their families. So that money is typically a little bit of a shocker.
So, what if you live up north and you have a game.
If it's a gym you could write it off. Not a game. OK or a pool or even if it was an ice skating rink we have a few of those. You could write that off. Yeah. So, you could write off you actually depreciate the actual pool and you could write off the operating expenses. Sweet. You have just had to document everything. A lot of things just come down to making sure you document what you're supposed to.
So, one of the other fun things a lot of business owners come up to you and say give us a list. Some are probably crazy but that's OK.
Yes, some of some of them that they can't write off they come up to me for. But you know there's a lot of times they'll come up with a medical expense items and you know you know can I write this off while you can write it off but you're not going to get the benefit of it unless we do it a certain way.
Another thing that's actually interesting is if your child goes to a special school and maybe they have ADHD or ADD or there's some reason that they have to go to a special school that could actually be a legitimate medical deduction and we could create a medical expense reimbursement plan so that can work. Well we just had a client that had to pay huge fees for rehab that they thought they were going to write off to schedule late and moves like thirty thousand dollars of deduction.
So, we were able to show them how to do it the right way and take four hundred thousand dollars and such. So, you need to ask. You know that's really what it comes down is she should ask and you should have somebody that's you know willing to look into things and not just shut their mind out and is willing to invest in education and learning what's out there that you can do. There's so many things out there. So many things and that's why when we work with clients sometimes they're shocked or wait I could write my pool off. Yeah you can.
Yeah that's why it's so important to have someone like yourself as a member of a team because you are a team member right. Everybody
should have a team. You know we you know we spend so much time working on our businesses, building up businesses you know can't do it alone. We need to concentrate on what you're really good at and have other people deal with the stuff that you're not really good at.
Yeah that's the main thing. So, what I'm going to have I kind of friend who has a multimillion dollar business I'm going to think about some of the things that actually had so like you if you have a boat you could possibly right to potentially you could write that off for some time. But, will you advise it? You really have to be careful on that. OK. But typically, if somebody buys a boat and it can actually be a second home and they can write interest they could write the interest off on their own schedule day.
So, there are rules with that that a lot of people watch you fall on this subject. That could be a good thing. You know there's a million-dollar limit on mortgage interest and stuff like that but they might that might change in the next 24 hours might become a loan.
I figured they might go higher. I don't think so. I mean I think that tax money. Looks like big business is really going to get a big bulk of whatever this tax savings going to be. Well that's a whole another story for a whole another day. Where that comes from. Yes eventually. So OK. Let's let's keep moving on. What can I write off stuff that most people don't even think about? Most business owners. Yes.
I mean people don't think about their home office. They definitely don't think about that. Some people do but most people don't. They don't think about you know their medical expenses they don't think about how to properly do that.
They don't think about how to write off their kids. You know Camp high school tuition, hockey you know hockey lessons are hockey camp and stuff like that. All right. So, there's a way to do that by hiring your kids and then you pay them directly and then you let them pay for the camp or the school directly out of their bank account.
Well I you know I brought that up to son in law the other day because he is a real estate agent. Of course, he's technically in his own business. I say, you know what I said your kids again old enough where you can hire them and make them pay for their own stuff and he goes. Yeah, the last time I talked my accountant about that he said there was no benefit to it. I said “fire him!”
Right. Exactly. Get somebody that thinks properly. Right. Exactly. That's very true because if he's a realtor and he's a schedule C that's a home run. Yeah, I said you know just there's stuff that they can do you know for your business that you can pay them and let them start paying their own bills. Right. and Write the whole things off.
Exactly. Make nondeductible expenses deductible and you know I spend a lot of time going to you know advance trainings and learn this stuff. Yeah so you know the typical CPA has to do about 30 to 40 hours a year in training. I do easily two weeks if not more. Right. Because now you're learning the ins and outs of what can and can't be done.
And you think well I'm not going to go there. But no, I will go there. You would think that everyone would go for that. But there again that's why we have different personalities, we have different thought processes, and different things I just need to find the right person who will work with you on your side. That's all it really is. Exactly it's kind of like working versus a new business. That’s amazing.
Yeah. So, we have yes, we have hiring the kids we have the home office we have them your current truck expenses and if you have a home office now or you travel from one office to your other office becomes deductible where you can have, too often you can have a home office and another office and do both of them. Oh yes so let's just say you know in my case I spend easily two hours every morning and answering e-mails and doing stuff. Plus, you know easily two hours’ time on the weekends.
It's always you spend 14 hours a week working from that home office. Then it falls under the rules and it's qualified. OK so and most people I speak to you know that when I tell you I got to do 14 hours they look at me like 14 hours? You know I'm working 60 hours or 40 hours in my regular office and I'm home and I'm doing e-mails, I'm doing billing, I'm doing this. You know that's a drop in the bucket.
So yeah that's a huge thing because I was there again. Not that I have two offices but I was always kind of under the impression you could only do one. No. Now well think about if you're a real estate company and you have multiple offices. Yeah. Why can't you. You're allowed to deduct the rent on all those offices and all the expenses that are associated with same principal to dental practices. So, and we all do a lot of administrative stuff when we're sitting at home or whether it's you know in an office or you know the TV which is which means you know I'm working in your office so you should be doing it in your office in front of the TV in your office. Right
Right. That’s why I have one right here. So, have. Exactly. Matter of fact I don’t even know if it works but haven't thrown it out yet. So yeah. So that's a bunch of things that you can do. Then we have the you know you're about to rent your home out 14 days a year and not pay income tax on that money. So that's an interesting thing that is very interesting.
Could you rent it to your company for a Christmas party or a new year's party or any other kind of party during the year. You can do that or you could rent it as a you know especially with air BMB that's really popular. Yeah but you want to make sure you don't go off with the14 days because if you go over the 14 days it's all taxes. All that's taxable yes. So is it 14 days total or is that total OK. Those 14 days total for the year. So, you know that has just brought up like for where I live every once in a while, you know you have a super bowl that comes here you could rent out your house for the weekend for megabucks.
And you don't have to pay that. You know I had a client that used to rent the house in Brooklyn for movies and they used to pay me that was wonderful they were paying a $5000 a day. So conceivably if she was able to get on that rented for 14 days you know she would have made you know a lot of money.
Yeah. Would have paid part of her mortgage right. And she would not have had to claim any of it legally on a tax return. Oh, I love that. And you just got to be careful that you don't go over the 40 days at least. So, you need two guys who everyone is listening as you need to think about how you can do that in different venues. You know if you can't rent it out, you know rent it out for your party you have an associate renting out for a little party. I don't know it doesn't matter just get. Figure out how you can get the 14 days in there because it could it could be worth it to you.
Exactly. Exactly. So, but yeah there's some interesting stuff out there. And I think what everybody needs to do is they need to communicate with the CPA and stay in touch with them and make sure that they stay in touch with each other. So, you know they could all help each other keep more of what they're making.
Yeah that's the key. I always say that’s where the profit that you never see is when you pay to the IRS. so let's get to keep more of it. Exactly. That's the that's probably the easiest profit to make. You know rather than going out and getting more clients, you know they get more of it. Yeah. Yeah because you were thinking about paying less and now you get to keep it. that correct at all. That would be nice if we keep it all.
But the thing happens no right as much as that that's legally allowed. So that we can have more fun and do whatever we want with it. Yeah there was. Right. There was one the Supreme Court justices that quote it says there's nothing wrong with structuring your so use to pay the least amount of tax possible. Who was that guy? OK I have to because I knew it. I want to it wasn't Holmes was it?
No I'm thinking it might have been Marshall but I'm not exactly sure I was OK. I remember that. Yeah I remember that reading bunch stuff. It's my responsibility, it's my job to pay As little as possible because it's written in the tax code so that I can I just have to be able to know where it is and what it is. And that's why again we're going to talk to people like Craig so that we cannot do that. OK. Have that team member.
Exactly and it was actually William Rehnquist. There is nothing wrong with the strategy to avoid the payment of taxes. The Internal Revenue Code doesn't prevent that. That's a statement from Justice cool yeah. So that's pretty awesome. I love that. OK. What’s another really weird thing that someone’s asked you if they can write off that was available. That was available. That was available.
You know cosmetic dentistry you know somebody had to get new guess you want to call them false teeth implants. And you know the first time I heard it, you know like, that can’t be deductibles. I go back to my grandparents and with the old dentist and it is you could actually write it off as legitimate medical experts. While I would think it would apply to certain industries. But what the heck. You know I'd like fewer news anchor act or something like that than it would be part of your income producing.
Right but if I don't have if I don't have teeth I can't chew food so I can't eat so I can't survive. So that's another way of looking at it. Yeah pretty wild. Yes, sometimes just a matter of the way you document different things but I think that one's a pretty straightforward one was the first time I heard it I was a little surprised. You know I've gotten some weird ones over the times and you know you know my dog obviously you can't deduct the cost of your dog now you have. If it's a Rottweiler and it's in a junkyard Yeah that's a different story because every army of service. Exactly. OK. But that's not a huge cost for pet poodle at home. No you can't deduct that. What about if you tried to pay them by the hour and they'd have to have a social security number. There social security number. I have a lot of fun with these huh? People try, “Can I claim my dog as dependent?” NO. Well you feed them then. And that’s a statement from Joe Justice.
I think the biggest one was the pool is something that people were very surprised about or the school. Yes. If they have to go to a special school that you know those are typically pretty expensive things and they could save you a lot of money. Yes, specially some schools. I mean yeah, I can imagine. I mean some schools are expensive as expensive as college.
Yeah some of them are more expensive I think on what the school is for it to be very expensive. Same with rehab can be very expensive. And the ability to structure your fast seat to write that off as a good thing. Yeah. Wow that's amazing. Again, that's just knowing the right people who know the right things. That will put your whole tax perspective into profit and put into profit making mode. Right. And I mean I guess I could throw a little thing in it that's really more towards contractors and rehabbers and stuff like that is you know domestic production activities deduction. What’s that.
It's basically a deduction that was meant to keep jobs in the U.S. versus going overseas and giving these factories that say OK a credit or a deduction for juicing goods in the United States I guess as the bill was written it was expanded to include construction or remodelers and stuff like that and it basically if you take that they called Qualified productions activity income and you take then your qualified activities expenses and you get your net income.
You take 9% of that. You get a deduction on your personal returns. If let's just say you're a new home builder or you do spec and you know you have five hundred thousand dollars in net profit you know you can wind up with like $45,000. deduction. It's very often missed. Wow. Yeah wow that's pretty good.
Wow. Wow. One thing you know that's why it pays to go and you know go to conferences and learn and socialize. Talk to other people that are doing different things. People love to share ideas. Well yeah, and then that’s what makes you the expert in your market place Exactly. You know the go to guy and you know the little you know more than your average CPA because you've taken the time to become the expert just like we tell you know our contract to become the expert take that extra time to become you know the certification or you know become the expert learning more from an expert in their field so that they become now they become the go to guy like you become the go to guy to contractors they've become the go to guy to their clients.
Yes, exactly exactly. So, it's yeah it's it's a consistency in in the whole growing your business standpoint. Yes. I think that kind out of odd type of questions that's your standard questions that they asked us. So what's the funniest on that you've ever got that just flat out and now she was. Somehow, she called the office and she was a lady of the evening. OK. And she had questions about what she was able to dock or what she wasn't able to dock.
I'm not sure we're bitcoin fits into all that and that and crypto currency but we'll see. Yeah I am. That's. It's kind of funny how many experts there are crypto currency now. It’s amazing. I mean they're popping up every day. I know. I'll let them pop up down to. I’m afraid to even consider that. But that's me. That's so. Hey Craig you know this a real awesome man. I'm just. Can we. Can I write that off? That's been a lot of fun today. How can how can our listeners get in touch with you so they can get more of your information and to actually contact you personally if they want you to help or consider you being on their team. Sure.
Well they can go to our website. It's Craigcodyandcompany.com. and actually if they go to craigcodyandcompany.com/secretweapon They can get a free copy paper copy of our book. Almost most recent book “The 10 most expensive tax mistakes that cost business owners thousands”. They could also call at 5 1 6 6 9 4 0 5 1 or email it craig@ccodingcpa.com.
And I'm sure you will have all that information in your show notes. Yes we will make sure everything goes was on our show notes so everyone can go to and download and get whatever information they need. Excuse me I'm losing my voice here. Awesome. So that's has really been fun. I'm glad that you are all our guests today and we got talking and I'm glad that you are going to be at the podcast . Yes. That sounds like a fun thing.
You may visit Craig’s website by visiting the link below: www.craigcodyandcompany.com/secretweapon
email: craig@ccodingcpa.com
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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Wed, 3 January 2018
The American Dream Revisited: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Results – Gary Sirak. He’s been helping other people achieve their American dream for the last 35 years. These are stories about everyday people creating extraordinary results in their lives and the those around them a true inspiration
I've got a really fun guest for you today, and his name is Gary Sirak, he’s been helping other people achieve their American dream for the last 35 years. He's president of Sirak Financial Services in Ohio, a company founded by his father, Stance Sirak back in 1957 and the company will celebrate 60th anniversary this year. Gary has written two books. First, “If your money talk, what secrets tell?” In this books about personal finance and the most common mistakes people make with their money and so many people make the same mistakes again and again and again with their money that you decide to do something about it. The second book the book we're going to talk about today is the “American Dream Revisited.” Ordinary people extraordinary results. It's deeply personal subject for Gary. While it's true it was a survey and deepest in this conversation in a coffee shop that spurred to write this book and the ideas and beliefs of the book that’s been with him for his entire life.
So, I just want to welcome you Gary for being with us today. Thank you, Dave. And so, I love the part about your book was thought about at the coffee shop. It's like so many those businesses that were put together on a napkin
Well kind of. I'm addicted to mochas.
I really am. And between work and my home there are four coffee shops that I frequent. So, I kind of rotate them as they all make different ones, they all taste varieties of chocolate and coffee but I literally stop every day at one of them.
And I was in a place called Karma Cafe one morning, sitting down and just having my mocha thinking about my day, my week, my month, my life whatever I was on that day. I mean I never really remember that.
But as I was sitting there four college students sat down right behind me Dave, and they started talking about the American dream which really piqued my interest because I've always had an interest in the American dream. So
I heard them and I kind of slid my chair a little closer to them and my back.
Them I want to hear what they were saying and then very quickly the American Dream was referred to as the America Disaster. And three of them were really negative. They talked about college debt, credit card debt, tough job market, all these things that were negative.
And then finally the one person who had the same thing said listen I don't really agree with you guys. I think you know life's good. I'm going to pay my college loans, I’ll pay my credit card off. You know I'm going to have a good life he said. I feel like I'm really getting, I’ll get a good job, and they shut him down in a matter of seconds. And he never said another word. But the conversation was just very ugly.
I told people that day and this is a Tuesday and I love Karma Cafe with some really bad karma.
It was just a very negative experience. I was very disappointed and bothered me in about four nights later I woke up in a middle of the night and decided I was going to write a book to refute their opinions. And I just was gonna. I just believed that they weren't right. And there's no reason in the world to be that young and that negative. And it just really disturbed me.
Wow that's pretty amazing. And you know I was like you were talking about that for people. It was kind of interesting that the 25% of the people were positive Yeah. Exactly. And so, it really runs close to 80 20 rule all the way around doesn't it.
It really does. It really is that 81-year-old of. It is accurate that men were a long time ago Yeah.
And everything still comes. There's the 80-20 and it keeps you break it down down down farther just gets crazy with the numbers. So, you got to write your book. And what were some of the highlights in there that helped you. I mean it was pretty good perspective in a sense where you got to hear both sides and it peaked you to really move in that direction to refute it. So, what were some of the things that really get your attention during that conversation.
Well a couple things that happened I realized that I needed to find people that achieve their American dream.
So, what I did is I started asking friends acquaintances who was the most interesting person they know or they knew that still living? Who did they know the most interesting person in their life that still living that I could talk to.
And people started throwing names at me and he said well what about. And I said well the American dream. I’m writing this book and I told this little.
Oh, I know this lady in California, I know this guy in Chicago. So, I started getting names of people all across the country, and a guy in England, and a guy that you know migrated here from South Africa and just fascinating. I ended up doing 25 interviews Dave. Wow.
And I took the 25 and I picked 13 of them that I felt most congruent with. I felt like they were the ones that fit. They were after they were in the model of what I was really trying to achieve. And so, each one after another felt like they were in the right place. So, I ended up with 13 stories. And it was kind of unique and how it all came together because I really hadn't planned any of the thing except they broke up they going right away.
So, the interviews were very interesting the 12 that I didn't use, I didn't use for a whole host of reasons sometimes I didn't like the credibility or lack of credibility. There were some things that just didn't feel right or sound right. And deep six those and the people that I ended up with I had a very nice feel about it. And I was able to fact check them enough that everything they said was true.
That's wild. So how long did it take for you to pull this all together? Close to a year.
What was the most out of all of this story, who’s story was the most interesting?
Well it's funny. There were three that I really, I always think about. And one of them is a man who actually became a friend, a dear friend, had survived seven Holocaust camps. Oh wow. And not only the surviving but he ended up coming to Canton Ohio. By the way home of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Oprah coming to Canton Ohio and being a physician and taking care of people in this town.
And I got to know him because I was on a basketball team and he was the team physician for the basketball team although he knew absolutely nothing about basketball.
He did understand when you got beat up. What chances do you have? When you weigh what I weighed you get knocked around a bit so he just became friendly with him and then later on he became a client and I got to know his story fascinating man. So that story clearly resonates. There's another man that I found equally interesting. He
was an Old Order Amish farmer and he had an eighth-grade education and his wife and two kids left the order which is very traumatic events and move to Canton and started a company and he did this with no money or anything and just all on a leap of faith.
And at the peak of his business success he had a 186 million in sales. Nineteen hundred employees, 13 locations across the country. I mean just fascinating what he was able to achieve. So, those are a couple that really stand out. But there is another way I always find incredibly interesting and she's actually down your way. She's in Jacksonville. Her name is __ Echiveria, and __ was brought up in the Bronx and she was a girl gang member a quarter and girl gang member. And her story of how she escaped the gang and how she turned into the person she is today. A great story. Just and a wonderful person by the way.
So, every single person that you talk to and I think where you are really trying to make the point was that everyone has a story and everyone can overcome the odds if they choose to. Yes.
And that is exactly correct. Every single person in my book had adversity had trouble had nothing for anyone of them and they all overcame them.
You know it's kind of interesting. And I've said this to color.
I know you on the straight today a couple of other people and you know it seems like it in our society today people look at success and they see the top of the iceberg and the base of the iceberg is all the trials and tribulations all the hard work all the sweat all the tears and everything that got them up to a certain point for you or I see them but the interesting thing is for those people who are the iceberg that we're looking at. They still see themselves like a halfway point yeah.
They really do. Actually, one of the key points in the book and I found this unique once I really sat down and did all these stories I was looking for points where there were links between the different people. OK. And one of them I came up with was that the people that I interviewed all had an amazing ability to not just look forward and see what they had accomplished but to look where they came from and their sense of achievement and what they'd accomplished once we started talking and they look back where they started from. Remarkable how they would think in terms of that and a lot of them said gosh I haven't thought about this in years. But yeah, I started out it was really tough and all that. And
I said Yeah look where you are now.
I just haven't done that long time and said it really helped rebuild my self-esteem and my self-worth and it made me feel proud to look at all the things I've accomplished she said because sometimes there's one person in particular talking about Whitney Hadnagy. And, all of a sudden, we are talking and I realize we got on my copy which I love to go back and see where everything started from.
I mean I get on my desk to look at how I started looking to lots of people start and what they've accomplished. It's just a remarkable journey backward and fun journey too by the way. And that's what I'm in this for all these people were much more backward based than forward base which is really very interesting.
And you know here.
Yeah you know that's really interesting that you said that because I think that the people are just, they don't really think about what they've achieved.
They think about what they haven't achieved or there's so much more to do.
And we get lost in that.
And that's kind of funny because I'm in that process my own self I think we all go through it at different times or all the time just at different stages. And I was talking to my wife this morning and telling her I’m going to put this webinar and going you know it's yeah, it's so I'm doing it and I'm going. And then I started thinking about you know introducing myself in a sense you know who are you.
And then I started looking at all the stuff they've written and I'm going Hey I have done a few things you know but you don't look at it from that standpoint you're thinking about I could do so much more. I haven't done this yet. It's pretty wild.
Well that is exactly the point. So, I'm a financial adviser and I help people with their money I help them. Right now, I'm helping a ton of people with their retirement or helping them gain money so they can retire. And when I find out is I'm also a cheerleader in a lot of ways.
I'm inspirational to them because they're stuck and they don't need to talk to when they talk to me and they say wow you’re really fun to talk to because you inspire me or you make me feel better. I sleep better at night which are all very nice things to say and appreciate it.
But I also find out the reason they say that is because I get them to go back and see what they've caught where they've come from and where they are now and it just makes them feel better. I've got a guy right now going through a divorce which is really tough. And I've been on the phone with him a few times now helping him because his self-esteem has gotten kicked in in the gut and he's really down. And I said wait a minute look at who you are what you've accomplished. Look at how cool your kids are. I said that didn't happen by accident. I said Yeah. One person rejecting you. And that's true but there's 300 million people out there that don't know you and some do and the ones that know you really care about you. I said so don't focus on the one that doesn't Wow that's amazing. It really is you know man that's such a great thing right there because we do get stuck in at home. I don't want to downplay it too much but we do have like our own little pity parties. I've been there from time to time and I go I can't, I can't afford to be here I need to go somewhere else. But it's I think it's just part of human nature where we just have a tendency to go backwards instead of looking too far forward. I mean it's just really weird on how it just all comes together. And I like the way that you've been presenting that and I'm sure your book really demonstrates that especially with each one of these stories of these people who you know come through. Not a bad place. Well I mean in the beginning you're probably was in a bad place. I think we all start off in different places and we can consider it good or bad but it's challenging let's put it that way. Clearly counting and you're right. And it's funny. Someone asked me what do all these people have in common. I can tell you one thing when they all started it was all about food, clothing and shelter. Was it about being rich? Was it about making a ton of money? It was just can I provide for my family. Yeah. What do I need to do to provide for my family? How do I get that accomplished? That's really where we started that and quite frankly that's kind of how it went down. So we're looking at this and saying if that's the case these people had something very similar to everybody else I've ever met who was just starting out. And that's you got to start somewhere. And when you start you don't start at the top. You start at the bottom and you work your way up. That's just how this being goes. Yes. That's amazing. I know cause, it's you know I look at kids going through school. It's for some grandkids I've got one just graduated she went into high school and I'm gone. Awesome. You went from the top of your class to the bottom of the totem pole. And then you graduate high school you go into college to graduate top of your classes go to the bottom of the totem pole. And then, each stage of our life. That's what we go through as we go, we reach a pinnacle and then we start something new. And we got to start at the bottom. We have this. There's no place. How are you going to learn? That’s the thing. How do you learn. It was the point that came out in the book club where was all these people fail. And sometimes they fail a lot the whole time. And they all had the same response I said Well how did you overcome failure. So, we don't have a choice. It's food clothing and shelter Gary. We didn't have a choice. Failure wasn't an option. Delaying was an option but failure was not an option. We were going to make this thing work come hell or high water. And they did. That's so true. Failure is not an option. It's the only time you fail is when you fail to get up and start over again. Exactly. I know it's kind of funny I would thinking the other day and I'm going you know I've been in business for so, so long. The other day it was and it wasn't too long ago and I think we all go through this at a certain time. I was really sick and of course you know it doesn't matter whether you're in business for yourself or not when you're sick it doesn't matter. You just do what's gotta get done you know. And so, I said to somebody this, you know this these are times like this when I wish I had job when I could call in sick. Yeah, I know there are many days where I've felt the same way. I have lots of people around me. We have a pretty good-sized staff. But quite frankly there's things only that I can do. Right. And some days I don’t wanna do them. No I said Are you sure you can do it. No. So you see you know I really need to teach them how to do those things so if I don't feel like coming in I can actually do that. Right. And that's just that's another part of the process that all it is. It is. It's really how you replicate yourself and give somebody else in position to take over for you. You just teach them. Tricks. Yeah that's it. That's amazing. So, in the course of your book what were some of the things that that were eye openers for you. Well here's an interesting one. I interviewed a guy named Duez. Duez lived in South Africa grew up in Johannesburg and moved to the states because at the time he's an Indian living in South Africa which had all kinds of issues. And there was violence everywhere. We saw so many people injured. And when I interviewed him and he came to America with like a thousand dollars and turned out to be very, very successful. In fact, he actually owns a mini mart and a drive through and he's just a super nice guy. Charitables can be a couple kids both of whom are going into med school and it's very, very interesting talking to him. When I talk to him though the main reason he came to America was freedom. He said, Gary I need needed freedom to vote. I needed freedom to have a chance to get a job. Means, that there, I would have been stuck in the system I would have never owned my own business in the threat of violence was so prevalent every day. He said I can't say how many people he said I was knifed in a fight and he said I can’t tell how many times that you know I had to fight or how many people I knew were killed in fights he said. Just ridiculous how many people were threatened every day in the streets. And he said I had to get away from that. He chose to come here. And he ended up here because he had a relative that owned a motel and he came here and clean rooms for him until he could figure out what to do with his life. So, the idea that America provided opportunity is really the point that I think has been trying to make your America has really been an opportunistic country if you take advantage of your opportunities and all of the people that I interviewed took advantage of those. Right. I think you know going back to the conversation of you know those four guys in the coffee shop that they realized that there was an opportunity and the other three were not really thinking about an opportunity but thinking about the long-term effect of paying back a loan or Bill or you know and it was something that they chose to do from the beginning. Absolutely. And I'll say one thing about this is if they were sitting here today and they really felt sorry for themselves and then that came out really loud and clear also. They really did feel sorry for themselves. And I guess that's ok you're allowed. But, I don't think you want to go in the light, feel sorry for yourself. I just don't think that's a real healthy thing to do. I just don't think that comes out positive energy. Yeah you know because you end up like you know we go back to the percentages you know like 75% of the other people out there are whining, complaining and just don't see any good in anything. Right. It's funny Dave. As I’ve gotten more successful for a long time. One of my key ingredients that I look for on the clients I work with are making sure they have a positive attitude and that they have a go forward attitude not you know not put their head in the sand attitude I really want people that are progressively moving forward in life that are exciting and dynamic and entrepreneurial. Those people. I like that and I have fun with them. I don't do so well with the others. It just doesn't resonate quite so well Yeah this doesn't seem like it would fit well with your personality. You sound like that fun-loving guy who loves to help other people and wants to always moving forward directions and then you would give it all. But if they're going to fight every step of the way then it's just a losing battle for everybody. That is exactly the case so I've really gotten pretty, pretty careful about who I do business with because of that and someone have said you know you're pretty exclusive and I said I'm not exclusive I'm just careful. So, I just know who I'm going to fit with and who I’m not going to fit with and I don't want to waste my time. Well you know I think if more business owners thought about that you know from a different perspective on how well do we do we work together instead of going after the end result which is you're not going after you're going after the solves their problem. In place of collecting their money exactly. And I don't I don't try and solve their problems anymore Dave. I use to do that. That was frustrating now just give them suggestions. Right. They have to take action because I can't do that for them. In the beginning. I try to do that for them and I had to engineer things but that was miserable and so many times I was doing things that they didn't have they weren't so long as I was I said OK this has got to stop. This is frustrating. We don’t do that anymore. It will be more like pushing spaghetti. Right. Pretty much Leave them the water they have to drink. I can't make over. So, this has really been exciting. I love the way you brought this all about. I loved the interviews with the people and just the whole brings back you know that American dream Revisited. And it's just like you said the American Dream Revisited: Ordinary people, Extraordinary results. So, there’s extraordinary results in each one of us if we dare to dream. Yes, and take advantage of our opportunities. We all have them. It's a question of seeing them recognizing it's an opportunity and then doing what it takes to make it work for you. And I was with someone the other day and there were some that started in the company and he started the lowest end of the totem pole and he asked me what I thought. And I said, would he make any comments that OK's He’s not making much and what is he doing. They called me and said OK. I said this is temporary. He said Why do you say that. He said he's way too talented to be left in that job for very long. They are going to see if he has what it takes to work on the bottom. I said they're just testing it. I said so let's find out how this plays out. Anyway, it was funny it was about six months ago and he got his first promotion and the promotion was pretty good one. What was really at the bottom. I mean they jumped him about three levels and that's awesome. They saw what he could do. But he was humble enough to start at the bottom. Absolutely. And below where he wanted to see all his friends were making more money and they were giving him crap which they would and said No, no I'm going to do this and we'll see what happens. Yeah. Yeah. It's just like there's a young guy I know it's a bartender in a bar. And then 15 years later he owns a bar and it's a very successful bar. And he goes really well at it and he started as a part time bartender but you know he did whatever that owner had him do to the point when the owner said hey I want to sell the business would you buy it because you fit the culture of what I tried to do here. That's awesome. Yeah that's plenty of opportunities. We just have to be willing to look with open eyes. Yes. And don't let people talk you out of it. That's the other thing that amazes me. The people around people I always mention. And it didn't come out in this book but it came out in “If your Money Talks what Secrets would it tell?” and that’s upgrading your friends. So, many times I have found people that were so negative around that I just don't want to be around those people so they stop being my friends. And I stop calling them and stop going out to dinner with them because I didn't want to be around negative people. It just wasn't fun. And I just wasn’t, I mean they complain about everything, and I’m thinking man this wasn’t enjoyable. This is like going to the dentist and getting a tooth bowl without Novocain I know I've gone out to people that dinner right. Well I went out to dinner with a bunch of people one day and I said next to one person when I left my wife, I said listen, if they come out to dinner with us again, great but don't ever, ever sit me next to him again ever. Right. And it's like one guy one day it was kind of funny at a family function so I can say this because it's family. And one of my in-laws says you know you're lucky and I go explain luck to me I don't understand it but explain what you're saying. He goes you can afford anything you want. And I look and I says No I said I can afford anything you want. But I can't afford anything I want or everything I want. It's interesting how perception isn't really reality after all. So, I work with some people that are massively wealthy and massively wealthy and they're just not happy people. And I don't like hanging around them I don't really like working with them all that much because they're not fun to be around and their money is OK as long as I deal with them on a regular basis. But it's just not a group because they're just we just don't have it in common. And so eventually they'll go away. And I don't get sad about that at all because I think of myself, good I don't have to go to deal with this guy anymore. I mean I can think of three of them right up top of my head that I’ve left that I was maybe I helped touch them up Dave, I don't know. Sublimely, maybe I did that and all I know is gosh I don't have that point with the people anymore. I sort of smile about that. Yeah that's pretty awesome. That is really awesome. Hey Gary this is really been awesome and I just I just love the whole concept. How can our listeners get in touch with you and maybe just talk to you about your book or work when they buy your book?
We've never had answered an email so far in the four or five years I've been doing this, as I've always responded when someone sends me something and I do get things sent to me I guess I've gotten some very interesting questions over the year. I said really, they're asking me that. And you know I can smile. Yeah. Anyway, I never forget Dave I was doing this and I got a call from somebody what kind of refrigerator that I buy? What? I said OK. Why would you ask me? and he said well your proof smart about a lot of stuff, we’re thinking you might know something about refrigerators. And I said how much do you know about refrigerators? I said that’s what they like and they said OK well thank you. I mean that was just, it was just an interesting phone call. I’ll bet it was. It’s kind of funny. That was pretty awesome. So www. GarySirak.com and Amazon and that's where my books available and they're both on there and. Yeah, I just thought thanks for taking the time to share your story with us share your book and the experiences. It's been a really, really been a fun time. Thanks Gary. Dave, thank you. You may visit Mr. Sirak through this website: www.garysirak.com Get your copy of Gary’s Book The American Dream, Revisited: Ordinary People, Extraordinary Results 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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