It’s a tough economic climate out there. So whilst everyone else has their head in their hands, that’s when you can steal a march by seeing new business opportunities.
So, How to find work and generate income:
There are several major routes that Contractors can follow to find new opportunities:
1. Sell more existing products to existing customers
2. Sell existing products to new customers
3. Sell new products to existing customers
4. Sell new products to new customers
Route 1 is the quickest, cheapest and therefore easiest route. Here are a couple of ways you could try it:
· Increase personal contact with your customers. People buy from people. However, technology gives us an excuse not to sit down with our customers any more. And business suffers as a result. We no longer understand what customers are doing and saying – and often find out only when it’s too late.
· Increase your customers’ understanding of the full breadth and depth of your offerings. They may buy more from you if only they knew what else you did.
· Add value to what you are selling. Encourage involvement with a further contract, if that helps you to buy better and offer a volume discount to the customer. That’s a win-win that can increase profitability for the Contractor.
· Increase your marketing activity – don’t wait for them to come to you, go to them. Look at ways that you can regularly keep in touch. Send successful case studies, newsletters, information about new products, services or, ways of doing things better. Plan out a series of strategic marketing activities that can help to engage with the potential customer and encourage an enquiry. It doesn't have to be an all singing, all dancing affair or cost the earth. Build the desire. Drip feed them ;-)
· Learn from your competitors. What are they doing well that you could do too. Far to easy to poo-poo what other are doing and miss an opportunity that could generate some income during tough times. Just look and read LJN to see this.....
Whatever the prevailing climate in the economy, people will still buy things.
The key question is, ‘How can you ensure that they buy from you?’
The alternative?, sit on your backside and bitch about it....
Adapted from Streetwise Subbie Ltd
Views: 57
Replies
I disagree. I think what Gary is saying is absolutely right for a small business trying to increase its productivity.
People love familiarity, but don't always appreciate the full range of services that one can offer. A personal touch in this instance is the best way forward in my opinion.
another excellent post as always Gary
No problem, Tony. However, I think you may have misunderstood.
One does not typically have a 'personal' relationship with major corporates such as BT, EON or BG, but as a small business you DO or SHOULD have a personal relationship with your existing clients. I'm not advocating cold calls at all (see the OP), but you should be talking, chatting etc with clients listening for clues of required future work or services. Just good, plain business sense.
How many times have you experienced this type of conversation some months down the road..."If I only I'd known you did <task>, I would have got you in - thought you only just cut grass..etc ". Where <task> could equal Walls, Fence Repairs, Shed bases, Jet washing, planting....
The whole point is - do your clients know what services you offer...? have you ever explicitly told them & how often ...? do you assume they know or remember YOUR capabilities....?
If they do, great you should be max'd out all year round......
It is irrelevant whether you have employees or not...you still need a pipeline of work to keep you busy all year around....unless you are lucky enough to afford to take large chunks of time off work.
The business philosophy is that it is cheaper to acquire work from existing clients then go spending a lot of money on advertising, spending time dealing with it when there is a profitable stream of work available from your existing clients.....if you know how to access it.
So, how would you gain work ?
tony h wall said:
We work primarily with residential customers and our product tends to be a "one trick pony" so to speak (perhaps not the best term) so our greatest difficulty is in getting the "quantity" of customers. We have thought of selling additional products and services but worry that this could dilute our service. We do find that our customer service goes a long way with recommendations though. We have just been doing a job at Newark near where we are and they gave us a brilliant recommendation http://www.drive-cote.co.uk/testimonials/elston-newark-resin-bonded...
Understand, but you are ideally placed to sell an established solution/product to a new customer (ie Route 2). Are there other simpler, connected solutions you could offer to existing customers (ie Route 1) while not diluting your current services while working towards Route 2 ?
Should you focus on getting referrals from existing clients? They must be your biggest 'asset' as you already know them, have the experience, customer service, recommendations which places you in a fantastic position. How could you entice them to refer you ?
Faith Caine said:
Always good to question anyone's approaches - it often helps clarify or tease more info out to benefit everyone :-)
tony h wall said:
This is a constant "battle" we have. We do offer a referral fee to our customers but some times it can be 3 or 4 years before people come to us or they have our literature for a number of years ( I saw your advert/had your leaflet and have had it stuck on my fridge!) Our product is so speedy - unlike block pavers who labour and toil, putting their signs out for passing trade, we can be in and out in a day (optimum weather, size, customer and conditions). I think the difficulty is that as a cost for a product it is quite a large pay out and is a one off. We do get some who once they have had their drive completed they look at having the paths done for example. We have thought about a database purchase (marketing file that sort of thing) but this can be a bit too vague. I keep looking for residential based forums/blogs but find that they are a bit sketchy!
The points raised by Gary are spot on. This is what serious businesses do and its what we should all be doing to improve our businesses
Given this thread was started in the normally 'quiet' period of our industry (ie Winter), now that Spring is here I was wondering asking how people are finding their current workload and future pipeline?
Has the weather delayed projects, works or stifled customer enquiries ?
Have you any plans in place ?
Due to the "one off" aspect of our business as opposed to on going, (yes if we do a drive we may get a path) our main criteria is getting "fresh" customers so to speak. I do use google ppc which I do find every effective and also trying to blog regularly. However, I have used a lead supplier but once again because we are so "specific" as our prime business these are quite minimal and sparse.
I do work for an all round company as well and have used a lead supplier for them. This has been very dense on the number of leads - however I would have to question the "quality" of these leads. With both of these the weather doesn't seem to affect the enquiries at the time in fact because of the snow and the fact people are in more I find that the enquiries increase. Our activity however doesn't!
Going back - I find that irrelevant of which service it is for, the customer should have regular and constant communication acknowledging, updating the client that sort of thing.
I do find that there is a big difference between a lead supplied by a lead supplier and the ones I generate through PPC, advertising - enquiries that come to us of their own accord we are able to develop more.
We find generally that even with delays whether relative to the weather, problems or any other reasons, as long as we keep communicating we can generally manage the work.
I am also a believer that just because you don't get a sale for whatever reason, doesn't mean that you can't be informative and helpful. We have enquiries come back to us up to 3 and 4 years later! I like all our enquiries to go away saying "thank you for your help"
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