Hey contractors these marketing systems will create a flood of great leads

Hey Contractors, These Marketing Systems Will Create A Flood Of Great Leads

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In a previous article, I introduced you to the six systems that control the fate of your construction business. To refresh your memory, they were:

1. Marketing


2. Sales


3. Staffing


4. Planning


5. Tracking


6. Financial Control

In this article, I am going to expand on the seven components that should come together to form your marketing system. Do you remember that the sole purpose of your marketing system is to generate a flood of qualified sales leads?

Whether y...

Construction, contractor, business, advice

In a previous article, I introduced you to the six systems that control the fate of your construction business. To refresh your memory, they were:

1. Marketing


2. Sales


3. Staffing


4. Planning


5. Tracking


6. Financial Control

In this article, I am going to expand on the seven components that should come together to form your marketing system. Do you remember that the sole purpose of your marketing system is to generate a flood of qualified sales leads?

Whether you cash in on those leads is a sales issue. Do not expect your marketing system to close sales and ring the cash register. Do not expect your estimator to do that either, that's not his job nor is he well suited for selling.

To generate the volume of quality leads your business needs to achieve your sales goals, you need marketing systems for:

1. Generating leads from new customers


2. Generating leads from existing customers


3. Prodding referrals from existing customers.


4. Collecting testimonials.


5. Building relationship with your customers


6. Publicizing your business


7. Developing new advertising pieces.

Lets dive into the seven marketing systems, discuss their purpose, and highlight a few tricks that will make them productive for you.

1. Generating Leads From New Customers.

Here is the mountain all businesses must climb - generating opportunities with new customers. Getting them is really not the problem. Getting them without breaking the bank is the problem.

You cant afford unlimited advertising. You cant afford to hire a large staff of sales personnel to cold call everyone. You need an efficient and effective system for generating new leads.

Here a couple of tips for that.

Get your website up and ready for prime time. It is your most cost effective method for capturing quality leads. You may not be computer oriented, but your customers most assuredly are.

Second tip, copy the successful advertising practices of a best-in-class peer. You will need to contact contractors outside of your city to pull this one off.

Track down the best in the business. Get the owners name. Call them. Youll be amazed how generous non-competitive peers will be if you approach them humbly and with genuine respect of their incredible success.

Every time you put a new lead generating system in place, monitor its effectiveness. Tweak it and monitor the improvement or lack there of. Keep tweaking until you learn the most efficient method for generating the quantity of new customer leads you need to fulfill your sales goals.

2. Generating Leads From Existing Customers.

You need a system for stimulating repeat business. Sam Walton used to say that the first time someone bought, he had a sale. The second time someone bought, he had a customer.

Your easiest sell is to your existing customer.

You need to prompt those repeat sales. If your service is cycles (landscaping, pavement maintenance, painting, roofing, air conditioning) send out reminders when they should be approaching on the date they would need new service.

As a job finishes, ask your client what future projects they are considering. Put the information into your scheduling calendar and start calling them or mailing them prior to that time.

If you have multiple services, send advertisements and coupons that invite them to try the services they havent used yet. If you offer a maintenance service, send educational materials that explain what maintenance should be done...and offer to do it for them.

If you already have a large customer base, expand your services to tap into all the goodwill youve already created. Your existing customer base is the most valuable resource your business has. Learn how to mine new sales from it.

3. Prodding Referrals From Existing Customers.

Word of mouth advertising is the most effective means of generating leads from new customers. What carries more weight with you when deciding whether to buy something or hire someone to perform a service for you?

Advertising?
Exhaustive research?
The recommendation of someone you trust who has previously bought the product or used the service?

Its human nature to take the word of a trusted advisor over all other information. The one thing we all hate is spending money on something that disappoints us. So we take the word of someone who already purchased and wasnt disappointed to avoid regretting our purchase.

Now flip that around. Your customers can be your most effective sales people if you encourage them to.

To stimulate referrals, you need to:

(a) Ask for the referrals.
(b) Make it easy for them - create the referral letter.
(c) Reward them for the referral.

Referrals always work best when your customer contacts their friend on your behalf. Getting the friends name and mentioning that you were referred works nowhere near as well, but it does work better than having no referral.

4. Collecting Testimonials.

Testimonials should be the fuel of your advertising efforts. Testimonials overcome buyer resistance. They have greater influence on buying behavior than almost everything else short of a direct referral.

A process for collecting testimonials should be built into your customer close-out. Typically, if you ask for one it will be granted. Most satisfied customers are happy to provide testimonials, assuming you give them some guidelines.

Store your testimonials in accordance with the benefits they speak to. That way, you will have them ready at hand to prove you will meet your prospects needs when making a sales call or submitting a proposal.

5. Building Relationship With Your Customers.

People buy from, and keep buying from, people they like.

You need a system for maintaining your relationship with your customers. Typically, that means tracking and celebrating their birthday, their spouses birthday, their childrens birthdays, etc.

Send handwritten greeting cards on their special occasions. Send handwritten Thank You cards upon completion of the work. Track their hobbies and send them interesting information as you come across it. Make them think they are never far from your mind and you will have a customer for life.

6. Publicizing Your Business.

Since advertising is so expensive, you need to be set up to take advantage of every opportunity for free publicity.

Local newspapers are often looking for content. Any time something of substance happens in your business you should send it to them as a press release. That would include landing large or high profile contracts and receiving industry awards.

Get to know the business columnists in your area and become a source for quotes. Give interviews to magazine editors and feature writers.

Give presentations to Rotary, Lions, and other clubs. They are always looking for presenters. The subject doesnt matter. They will remember someone representing your firm spreading goodwill among business leaders.

Strike up joint ventures with other businesses that serve your clientele.

All of these efforts need to be organized, scheduled, and assigned to someone. They need to be part of system.

7. Developing New Advertising Pieces.

The development of a new advertising piece should be the result of a well executed design process.

Start off by identifying the market segment you wish to target. Choose the problem(s) you are going to solve. Come up with a killer offer. Round up the appropriate testimonial or three. Then find a graphic artist and copy writer to pull it all together for you.

Do not outsource your advertising decisions to an advertising agency or consultant. They do not know your customers as well as you do. You or a trusted employee should make all final artistic decisions.

To make sure the advertisement is going to pay off, set a budget for the advertising and the expected income. Share the budget with your designer. Set a deadline for when the advertisement will be ready for delivery or distribution.

Before releasing the money to print the new piece in quantity, it should be tested for effectiveness in a test run of a small set of prospects. Track your results and modify the headline and offer until you arrive at a combo that produces a significant increase in buyer response. Then roll out the full advertising and start raking in the new sales.

 

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Hey contractors these selling systems land great paying work

Hey Contractors, These Selling Systems Land Great Paying Work

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Do you realize that the sole purpose of your selling system is to land negotiated work? In other words, to close deals and ring the cash register.

Getting to participate in a lowest-price-wins bid does not require salesmanship nor does it amount to selling.

In the construction industry, selling is defined by being hired, or in other words, landing negotiated work. You need 10 systems for landing enough negotiated work to grow your company profitably.

1. Assigning and...

Construction, contractor, business, advice

Do you realize that the sole purpose of your selling system is to land negotiated work? In other words, to close deals and ring the cash register.

Getting to participate in a lowest-price-wins bid does not require salesmanship nor does it amount to selling.

In the construction industry, selling is defined by being hired, or in other words, landing negotiated work. You need 10 systems for landing enough negotiated work to grow your company profitably.

1. Assigning and Prioritizing Leads

If your marketing system is doing its job, you should be receiving a flood of leads. You need to create criteria for sorting and prioritizing those leads.

The best way to do that is to identify and communicate the profile of youre "A", "B", and "C" level prospects. Know the characteristics that your best customers share.

Your "A" prospects are the ones who are looking for the benefits that you excel at and can prove it with case histories and testimonials.

Your "B" prospects are the ones you often are a good fit for, but not always.

Your "C" prospects are the ones your competition is a better fit for.

Whoever is assigned the responsibility of sorting through the leads must be given clear criteria for assigning "A", "B", and "C" grades.

2. Qualifying Leads.

You dont have time to waste on "C" prospects, "B" prospects who arent a good fit, nor "A" prospects who are married to your competition.

When you call on your prospect, get right to the heart of the matter. Tell them that as valuable as their time is to them, your time is to you. If they are willing to answer a couple of questions honestly, it may save both of you considerable time. Test their fit to the quality and style of the service you provide.

If they arent going to value your services sufficiently, politely inform then you are not interested in their work and be on your way.

3. Following Up With Prospects.

Marketing research shows that vast majority of customers buy after the seventh contact. Whats that mean to you? You had better plan on following up several times with your prospects.

Heres another piece of relevant selling information:

You will slip from your prospects awareness after 21 days. If they dont hear from you for 21 days, your chances for a sale diminish greatly. Because buying is an impulsive act, timing is everything.

You need a follow-up system that lets you get back to your prospects quickly and stay in close contact with them until their decision is made.

4. Creating Proposals and Presentations.

You need standard templates for your proposals and presentations. The templates will allow you or someone who works for you to quickly pull together a professional, persuasive proposal and presentation.

If some combination of text, financial figures, and pictures are needed, make sure everyone who is involved understands their role.

Test your proposal design until you find one that consistently moves the client to the decision you seek.

5. Processing Orders.

Your staff needs to understand exactly how orders are to be processed. Information must reach the scheduler, the operations person who arranges for material purchases, and the accounting staff. The paper trail must be well defined and adhered to.

The filing system should be well organized and centralized. Once the sale is closed, the order processing must go smoothly to ensure a successful project and a happy customer.

6. Following Up With Customers After Their Project is Finished.

Follow up with every customer within two days of finishing. Make sure the customer is satisfied with the work and will not hesitate to pay the bill.

If the customer is displeased,address the situation head on and try to rectify the problem quickly.

Send a thank you card. If the project was high value, include a gift certificate to dinner or a donation to their favorite charity in their name.

7. Motivating the Pursuit and Procurement of Profitable Sales.

Implement a sales compensation plan that rewards salesmen for selling profitable work. Make sure the system rewards all salesmen equally for identical performance. Keep the sales team focused on high profit work.

Any competent estimator can land low profit work. If salesmen are going to earn their keep, they must close on a bundle of highly profitable work.

8. Improving the Salesmens Selling Skills.

Virtually nobody in the construction arena can afford to hire a proven rainmaker. You must learn how to grow your own.

That means you need to coach your salesmen. If they develop beyond YOUR ability to help them, hire a sales coach.

Few things will bring money into your company faster than a highly skilled and motivated salesman.

9. Networking.

Its not who you know but who knows you.

Your network is your early warning system for new opportunities. The better your team is networked, the greater the likelihood your company will be the first to learn about a lead.

Networks take time to build and nurture. You must stay in constant contact with your network to keep yourself at the forefront of their minds. You need to send business their way.

Networks work best when each member is helping the others succeed.

10. Strengthening Customer Relationships.

You need a system for strengthening your relationship with your newer customers. Your goal is to become an invaluable resource to their personal success.

You can do this by helping them solve problems you have expertise in. You can do this by providing budget information for work they should or may undertake. You can do this by passing along contact information of individuals who will help them get ahead.

The assistance you provide need not be limited to their professional interests. If you discover they are passionate about a hobby, forward hard-to-find information that might be of interest to them.

Of course, the tried and true method is to take them out to lunch or dinner or take them to some type of event. The value of the customer determines the amount of time and money you should invest in the relationship.

Regardless of how you do it, you must stay close to your most valuable customers.

Final Note

You probably noticed that closing the sale is not listed as among the 10 selling systems. Closing is a skill, a very valuable skill. You that someone in your company must have.

 

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