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.
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, 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:
Twitter and Instagram: @changescape
You may also contact this number for more details: 636.549.8745
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, 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
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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.
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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
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