The phone rings. 

You answer it. 

It's a prospect

Now what? 

Virtually all home improvement contractors drop the ball right here. They get so excited about this new prospect. They can't wait to get out to the prospect's house and make the "sale".

They spend one to two minutes on the phone and miss this golden opportunity to set themselves up as the most professional company and yet it is so easy to do.

Stop wasting your time dealing with prospects that only want the lowest price or are just kicking tires.

One of the first tools I get into the hands of my Closing Success System clients is a prospect interview script.  It's much more than a tool to gather their information. 

It takes is 5 minutes to avoid wasting 2 hours or more on a sales call you aren't going to close - especially if you know you offer a quality system at a competitive price.

Your Goals When Someone Calls Your Company

• Weed out the low price shopper (you know those people who have been brainwashed by that gargantuan retailer that preaches to always have low prices - they never say the lowest - just low).
• Use the hours and hours you?ve been wasting on low price shoppers to focus on closing the good and great prospects.
• Determine if this is a project you want to quote (profitable) and that you are capable of handling.
• Get the prospects buy-in to review your material that you are sending them before you meet. Skip this step and you will leave a lot of money on the table!!

Getting the prospect to buy in to reviewing your material is critical. 

This does several things, it establishes you as the person who is helping them make the best decision whether they choose you or not.

It also sets you up as the expert in the field.

And you will walk into the prospect meeting as the most professional company available and that translates into a significantly higher closing ratio.

A Special Note for Small Companies

Even if you don't have a full-time office staff to answer the phone - use this when you call your prospects back.

You'll eliminate the 10% or more that will waste your time because all they care about is price or they aren't read to buy. This alone will make you more efficient.

Spend 5 minutes so you can save the estimating time you've been wasting on these low end prospects.

Until Next Time,

Mike Jeffries

866-926-5100

Mike@ClosingSuccessSystem.com

One of our painting clients is doing the entranceway to a condo complex for a management company. The management company gave him the job but was squeezing him for a few bucks at the end so he gave them the reduction of $100 in return they are letting him put door hangers on all 42 units.

Smart thinking by our client to get something back - now what should he put in his door hanger?

He was going to use a letter format (inexpensive - no graphic design and easy to customize).

Here's what we suggested he include in the letter:

Start off by saying "your management company entrusted us with painting your XYZ area and we will be painting on May 17 to May 19.

If you are thinking of doing any painting in your home and if you would like to see the attention to detail we use in every project - please stop by."

His Offer: He is offering a spring special of 2 gallons of paint with any project over a certain dollar amount and is including a tear off for this (a $100 value).

He is also offering his consumer guide on how to hire a professional painting contractor that we created for him.

Here is the PS (people always read the PS)

Even if you don't need any painting now - hang on to this coupon and I will honor it when you do need painting. Better yet - if you refer me to a friend, relative or business associate and they hire me I will give them the same offer and DOUBLE your offer.

This is an example of combining multiple marketing strategies:

• Referral - borrowing on the name of the management company
• Multiple offers - savings and information
• Marketing to the now buyers - with the savings offer and marketing to the thinking about it buyer for the future
• Referrals - offer of the same savings to the person they are referring you to and adding an incentive for them to do that
• Radius marketing - marketing around a job and offering to let them see your work up close

So from one job - he will have a very good shot at 42 other prospects and not just now but in the future too because they will hang on to the offer.

Until Next Time,

Mike Jeffries

866-926-5100

Mike@ClosingSuccessSystem.com

Past Customers

We once worked with a client that had been in the painting business for over 30 years and had done about 100 jobs a year during that time. What was truly amazing is that they had never contacted any of their past customers. Imagine how much business this company lost because they never followed up. I asked another painting client of ours what his biggest frustration in the business was and he said "people that hire us, like us and then can't remember us several years later

Past customers are a great source of repeat business and for many companies their largest untapped source of business.

They have already made the decisions to hire you so you don't have to sell them or at most you will need to reconnect.

I know of a remodeler that does 2 inspections after he completes a project. He does the first on the one-year anniversary and the second on the two-year anniversary. In a remodeling project there are almost always some little things to fix. He uses his visits to reconnect and to find out if they are planning any additional work.

He told me recently that 22% of his sales come from doing additional projects that the prospect brings up on the two-year anniversary.

How to do this:

• Reactivate, reconnect and stay in touch - do mailings, email and phone calls if appropriate
• Do after the project inspections (this isn't just for remodelers)
• Tell them about new services or products with a newsletter or quick email.
• Make a special announcement when you complete a great project to let your customers know. You can include a link to a portfolio and short story about the project.
• In your reminders: ask if they have been thinking about any home remodeling or update projects and offer them advice if they are considering doing it themselves. Oftentimes you can point out the challenges and they will realize they should have you do it.
• Remind them about referrals and ask specifically if they don't have any needs now.
• Ask if they are happy with the service providers they are currently using so you can refer your joint venture co-marketing partners.

Until Next Time,

Mike Jeffries

866-926-5100

Mike@ClosingSuccessSystem.com

If you have ever had the experience of seeing or hearing about another company doing work for your customer then you will know why this section is so important.

Here are two examples based on stories I have been told:

• A company does landscape maintenance but their customer didn't know that they also do design and build and hired another company to put in a new paver patio
• A painting contractor completed an exterior painting job for a customer. The customer also wanted to install new gutters but never mentioned it to the painting contractor and hired someone else to install the new gutters.

When I was growing up my dad was home for dinner every night at 5 and "organized sports" consisted of choosing sides at the playground.

It is much different today and people are all busy with traveling sports teams, volunteer organizations, longer hours on the job, aging parents and more. We all have plenty of things to remember and think about.

As a business owner it is your job to educate and remind your customers, prospective customers, referral sources and all business contacts about all of the services you provide.

Most people put you in a box - they think of you only for the specific service you provided or one that they have heard you talk about and that can lead to lost opportunities.

One of our very successful clients is a home remodeler. We created all of his marketing and he never mentioned that they have one crew dedicated to roofing. It wasn't until about 6 months after we started working with him that he happened to mention it. I wonder how many of his customers are unaware that they do roofing. My guess is most of them.

It is your job to stay top of mind and to remind customers of all of your services.

They will forget no matter how many times you tell them.

Until Next Time, I Wish You Much Success.

Mike Jeffries

866-926-5100

Almost every prospective client that calls me says something like this "I need more leads."

I think that most people mean "I need more quality leads."

Fundamentally there are really only 3 ways to increase your sales:

1. Increase your leads
2. Increase your closing success
3. Increase your prices

So let's start with a basic principle by setting your lead generation goal. A very smart business coach once told me when I was starting out "If you don't know where you are going, any road will take you there."

Step 1: Put together a chart of what your sales look like right now.

Break the sales down into types of projects or services. Make sure to include the average sale in each category. The idea is to find out the average value of each lead that you closed.

Step 2: Summarize the number of leads you received by source, the total clients you closed by lead source and the total sales by lead source.

Here is the setup of another simple chart you can use:

For example:

Most contractors will close a very high percentage of referrals - most likely in the 70% to 80% range. 

Leads from lead sources like Service Magic are likely to be much lower - most likely in the 10% to 20% range.

Yard signs typically yield a higher closing rate because prospects can usually see the work or may have some other connection to the client or area.

Directories by their nature tend to generate more price shopping but you can minimize this issue if you put into place the strategies and tactics discussed in later sections.

Why it is important to track the number of leads by each source and also your closing success?   The reason is simple; it takes a lot of time to respond to each lead. When you know your success rate by lead source you can focus your efforts on getting more leads from the best sources. These will be your quality leads.

Step 3: The last thing that you need to do is to match up the amount of resources that you are investing in to each lead source. It is important to consider how much time is involved to generate each type of leads. It may be tempting to put a low dollar amount on the cost to generate referrals but that ignores how much time may be necessary to generate those referrals. Lead or referral groups typically don't cost a lot in dollars but the time investment can be high.

The primary reason you need to estimate your time is because time is a scarce resource and you have a lot of other demands on your time. If each referral takes an average of 5 hours to generate it and you only have 5 hours a week to devote to lead generation then that may or may not be the best use of your time each week.

Step 4:
Then break it down by lead source to determine what mix of increases (or decreases) will get you to your overall goal. The reason I mention decreases is because you may have a lot of leads coming from a particular source but have a low closing rate or a lower average profit for those projects. In this instance you probably want to eliminate some of those leads or figure out if there is a way to up your closing rate and profits on these leads.

The lesson is that you may be keeping busy and bringing in business. Unfortunately, if that business isn't profitable or is at a lower profit level than the rest of your business it isn't where you should be spending your time.

Step 5: Investing your time and your money in the sources that provide the best return on your time and money should be your next decision.

Once you have established your overall goal and the specific goals by type of lead source you can put the strategies and tactics in place to maximize your efforts.

Call for a FREE Marketing Evaluation Call.   In about an hour, I'll walk you through the process I use with all our clients to make sure they're spending the right amount of time, effort and money to get all they can out of all they got.

Until next time, I wish you much success,

Mike Jeffries
866-926-5100