If you operate in the residential construction space you need to be aware that emotions play an important role in how your customers connect with you. You need to connect first at the emotional level and using stories is a great way to do this.
Best of all your past customers become your extra sales team and will have much better credibility in the eyes of prospective customers than you will.
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If you are in the residential market and still providing free quotes, you should stop. It’s called free consulting, and you won’t be successful giving away your time. Doctors don’t. If you have had the unfortunate need to visit a specialist medical consultant to discuss a problem and consider a potential course of treatment, they will probably charge you between $500 and $1,000 an hour for the privilege of their advice. It is unlikely your hourly rate is that high, but you are still providing a similar advisory service to your potential customer.
In providing a quote to a potential customer, you may be doing everything from putting together some initial numbers to providing some preliminary design work and saving the customer significant money through your experience. Learn how to start charging for your quotes and increase your sense of worth.
As a business owner in today’s fast-paced online landscape, you can’t afford to ignore the power of digital marketing. Google and Meta (Facebook, Messenger and Instagram) are the two giants in the digital advertising world, offering a range of advertising options to help you reach your target audience quickly and effectively. Before diving headfirst into these platforms however, it’s essential to understand the basic strategies that can help you make the most of your digital advertising budget. You can waste a lot of money on digital advertising so it’s important to understand the key strategies that every small business owner should know before investing your hard-earned money and time.
If you want to want a strong value proposition that makes people want to do business with you, you need to do much more than write a short fancy sentence…or even a long sentence. While you can sum it up, the summary itself doesn’t carry much weight. Your actual value proposition needs to be woven into the DNA of your business and your relationships with customers. Only then can you start to communicate it to the market through your advertising/marketing.
Read about what make a powerful Value Proposition here.
For those of you old enough (like me) to remember Leonard Nimoy as Mr Spock on Star Trek may also remember the Vulcan Mind Meld trick he used to perform. In order to understand a subject person better or uncover hidden memories, Spock would place his hands on a person’s head and mentally become one with them. He would then be able to think as that person thinks and of course help save the day in some way.
What does Star Trek got to do with marketing for builders and trades?
In terms of marketing for builders, quite a bit it turns out. When developing your marketing and sales strategies, I want you to think, “Vulcan Mind Meld” as the first thing you do BEFORE you think about spending any time or money on implementing tactics.
Why? Learn more…..
A good way to naturally rank higher on Google (everyone’s goal) is to ensure that your construction website blog has a good amount of useful information on it that Google recognises as helpful to potential customers. The problem is not many tradespeople are natural writers, or even know where to start. That blinking cursor in the top left hand corner of a blank screen can be a frustrating and scary thing.
As a residential construction company, there are several blog topics that you can write about to showcase your expertise and provide value to your readers. To help get those creative juices flowing here are some ideas:
Who has put hours of effort into pricing a job only to loose it to someone else that the client says “is a better fit”? Everyone, right? This can be even more frustrating if the other company has put in a higher bid! Why didn’t you get the job? Your price was competitive. You do quality work. You have the capacity to do it. What it may come down to is that the prospective client didn’t TRUST you enough.
But you’re a trustworthy person! Can’t they see that? Well, possibly they can’t, or at least you didn’t do enough to build up that level of trust more than the other company did. In the residential market in particular, building up the level of trust at the early stages of the sales process is vital to increasing your chances of securing a sale, without having to slash your price. With the country going into a period of economic and political uncertainty, consumers are going to be looking even harder for companies that give them a feeling of comfort and certainty.
While most construction businesses are still pretty busy and the runway of work ahead should see you into 2023 without too many issues, the longer term picture is looking a bit more fuzzy. It’s time to start reviewing what you are doing in the marketing and sales space and look to make some improvements.
There is a habit of many business owners in the trades to just take what the market dishes up and not put some proactive systems in place to generate work. “I get all my work from word-of-mouth” is what I hear a lot. That’s great when WoM is working, but what if it isn’t? What’s the back-up plan? Usually there is none. This is particularly true when the market is stronger and the perceived need to generate leads is less. With building consents running at record levels over the past year, you can understand why marketing has not been high on the priority list of most people. Inflation, Covid, supply lines and labour shortages have naturally dominated the headlines. A downturn in building activity however will naturally make some of those issues die away. The need to generate more leads and improve your conversion rate will start to sneak up on you if you don’t take proactive steps.
Bumping up against a cheaper competitor, especially in tighter economic times, is a fact of life. Hoping it won’t happen isn’t a good strategy to deal with the problem. What you need to do is take proactive steps to differentiate your business in the minds of the customer, because if you can’t express logical reasons why your offer is better, the customer only has one point of differentiation to guide them…..the price.
The key to doing that is making certain that the customer — not your service or company — is the core of all your sales messages and make sure that there are financial proof-points. Here’s what you do:
Whether you have a high-touch, personalised sales method, or a more automated, templated one, the ability to take a new enquiry through to the point of sale is vital to the sustainability of your business. Without sales your business will die; it’s that basic. Sales are the lifeblood of any business and yours is no different. So how do you improve the percentage of enquiries that turn into paying customers?
There are many moving parts to this process but having a really good start to the sales journey for the prospective customer is vital. Start right and your chances of securing the sale, even at a premium price is higher. Of course the reverse is also true. Start out wrong and you will probably never make the sale. Luckily the first few contacts you have with a prospect is also the easiest and the cheapest place (in terms of your time) to make improvements to your sales conversion rate. It is also the most efficient place to qualify someone OUT of your sales process and thus waste the minimum amount of your time. Time is probably your most valuable resource in your business and so you need to protect it and spend it where it is has the greatest payback.
The first few contact points you have with a prospect are likely to be a phone call and then some sort of scoping meeting. It’s vital to make these early touches as professional and as powerful as possible. You need to start building rapport and trust as soon as possible (for those prospects you haven’t qualified out), and I have listed a few hints and tips to help you refine your processes here.