4 Overlooked Sales & Marketing Techniques! *They all have to do with appearance.
I am posting this because it might be overlooked due to being pretty foundational but newer people to business might not know. If you are new to business, you are actually skilled at what you do, but business just isn't taking off, then read this. If you get offended easily, then don't continue. However, if you really want to grow and improve yourself, then read on. Appearance - This is going to take some serious ability to be self-aware and evaluate yourself for growth. Some people might not want to bring this up because "just do you" is a cultural norm now, but the reality is that people are going to judge your appearance before they ever hear a word you say. We might want to assume people will overlook appearance but they might not and we just have to understand that is a reality no matter how we feel about it. Here are a few things to consider: Professional Attire - If you are the owner of your business and you are trying to sell your services you shouldn't show up to sell the way you would to just any other casual occasion, or to do labor. Step it up. Wear nice shoes, slacks, and a collard shirt, or button up shirt. Make sure your clothes are neat, clean, and not a wrinkled mess with stains. Hygiene - Make sure you have decent hair cut and don't look like you just crawled out of bed. If you have beard make sure it is well groomed. Wear deodorant and make sure you smell nice. Make sure your breath smells good too. Keep gum or mints in your vehicle. Piercings & Tattoos - I personally hire guys/gals and I don't personally care about piercings or tattoos but our customers might. Just take that into consideration and make an attempt to cover them if you see that this could be a factor in certain sales situations. Weight/Personal Care - This one could get some hate but its just real. I'm not even 100% where I want to be with this one. Here is the reality... being healthy and in shape takes discipline. When you show up as someone who is in shape and not overweight it communicates something without using words. It communicates discipline. People want to hire people who are disciplined and do what they say they will. When you look good, then you don't even have to say you are a disciplined and consistent person because your presence communicates it. You will also show up into rooms with more confidence which will help tremendously when selling. Language - you may cuss like a sailor and that is fine. But when you are in a sales situation air on the side of caution and clean up your speech. Speak professionally and never bring up politics or religion. Vehicle - Make sure your vehicles are clean and organized. I don't care what you say. People will judge you based on your vehicle. That is just the culture we live in. I'm not saying you have to polish your work truck but make sure it is clean and organized. If you have papers covering your dash board, fast food that is a month old shoved in the dash, and bottle, cans, and other trash falling out of the floor board when you open the door, then do better. Have a place for your tools and equipment and keep them clean and organized on your vehicle. Website - Your website is going to make a big impression on your customers. How you do one thing is how you do everything to your clients. If your website is unprofessional, messy, unorganized, and confusing then your clients might think that you are all those things. Take time, or money to invest into having a nice website. Social Media - If you are not present on social media (personally or professionally) and posting professional looking content, then you are communicating something to your client. You could be communicating that you aren't active, you aren't truly professional, or if your content is low quality...clients might view you as being cheap or low quality. Business Practices - This is such a simple concept. Have professional business practices and standards. Answer your phone. Show up when you say you will. Do what you say you will do. Be organized and clean. You can ignore all of these little things if you think they aren't important but I can promise you if you are letting your offense of any of these things keep you from doing them, or giving them attention then that is probably part of why you aren't growing. I promise you that companies that are growing and doing big things take all of these things into consideration and constantly try to improve them. Make excuses for yourself, or start making changes. This is all part of your brand. You want a better brand, then make yourself better. Raise the standard. Always be improving and evaluating. Make it easy to refer your business because your professional standards are so high and seen by all that make contact with you. Never get complacent and satisfied always find ways to improve. When you do this be ready for the new opportunities that will come your way!What Are the Best Practices for Expanding Painting Service Contracts?
I have a painting service contract for our customers. It has worked out well for the last year but we haven't signed up a lot of customers. I think we have 15 customers on service contracts right now. I really want to vamp this up but I am hoping to get insight from other businesses on best practices for service contracts. I'm also trying to figure out if I should just sell as many as I can and then hire a full time person to service those clients, or keep slowly adding them until I can hire someone full-time to do it. I have been hesitant to go after this super hard because I don't want to be in a position where I can't get to our service contract clients for too long.Customer Appreciation Dinner/Event?
Do you put on an annual customer appreciation dinner/event for your customers? Maybe a cookout, or a dinner at a nice restaurant? I am thinking of doing this to engage with clients and build even better relationships for the purpose of repeat work and referrals. If your company is doing this, or has done this please share your feedback.
Outside workers, what are you doing to stay busy in the winter months?
I wonder what other service providers are doing in the winter months? Are you taking the time for your team and you to relax and recuperate? Holding training sessions? Are you offering other services to stay productive? We have relationships with homeowners and business owners and can offer other services for them, wondering of there are are crazy shifts in services out there? For example, the lawn guy at my parents house puts up their Christmas lights and decorations. Would love to hear other stories like that!
Painters: what ideas do you have for the cold holiday season?
(This post is inspired by "VOTM"'s post to landscapers.) Painters, have you found ways to add to your income during the months when it's too cold to do exteriors and interiors slow due to holiday plans/decorating? Looking for ideas for next year, residential or commercial. 🙂Seeking ideas for developing power partnerships to better work with clients & grow our biz?!!
Hi all, We are a local fire protection company here in Los Angeles and we do both sales and service of fire extinguishers, as well as specialty fire equipment and resources. I am putting this question out there both for connections and suggestions on best developing power partnership with other local companies that work with residences, properties and businesses, to help collaborate on our services provided and add more value to them and more revenue to both partners. Example of our power partners are roofers, GC's, management companies, HOAs, solar companies, fire and water damage companies, Security and locksmith companies, Insurance agencies... Would love to hear your feedback and suggestions and love to work with you as well, if we could benefit from partnership. This, would be a more effective way to grow our businesses than social media or other passive ways I believe! Payam. Lavi | Supervisor PalFirePro.com
Sales Marketing
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Hey everyone, I am wanting to automate our process for sending out a "Thank You Card" after specific milestones in our customer journey. For example, after doing an estimate, after the job is completed, and then start a sequence of Holiday post cards. Is "SendJim" the best way to do this, or is there another software that you use to do this?
Direct Call Leads
We only pay per qualified conversation with homeowners. After a few years of hunting down bad contacts, getting ghosted and wasting money on ads and ad managers we internally built out a system that only costs money when a homeowner directly calls us looking for our services. It’s been a gamechanger and we even started selling these calls to other roofers and other industries/home service companies because there’s no real risk. Either you talk to a homeowner who wants you to come out, or you don’t pay. They can be kind of expensive but our ROI is at about 3.4x for a while now using it so I’m never going back to our old methods…unless someone has a lower risk option that doesn’t consume a ton of time.
