How can trades increase their conversion rate

How to increase your conversion when doing a survey and quote

There are things that you should be doing to increase your conversion when you go and do a survey for a job and then quote, many trades don't do them so if you do you can clear up.

I once went to look at a job for a rewire, during my survey of the house another electrician that had been booked to quote turned up.......2 hours early and unannounced, the first lesson here is turn up on time, do not be late or early!

He was in the house for no more than 5 minutes, looked around a bit asked the owner how many sockets and lights he wanted, He then said I suppose I better write this down took out a scrappy note book, then looked at me told me how much he'd charge and left. 

Doing a survey is marketing too!

When you go to do a quote, be presentable, take time to build rapport with your customer and understand what's important to them about using a contractor. I designed a quote sheet to use on a clipboard which allowed me to get all the information I needed, and it then helped later when working out the quote, the key thing was it looked professional and more importantly showed I cared about the customers job. Another key point is to make sure to get an email address.

Make sure you have a template on a word processor that once you have completed the quote save it as a pdf (portable document format) to send in an email (I use word as this allows you to do this) immediately as you send the email call your customer to let them know you've sent it, so they know to look out for it. This is also another contact with the customer.

I use Gmail for emails, please note though you can set it up to send through your own domain, I do not use my Gmail address to send business emails, also gmail has a free app called yesware that can track email opens and when people click on any links.

Make the call

Once you know your customer has opened your email call them between 24 and 48 hours to 'check' they've got the email, here is another point of contact with the customer and you can ask if they have any feedback on it and if they'd like to go ahead with the work.

More contact = More business

So why have I been saying to make so many points of contact with the customer, well if you do these simple things you'll increase your conversion, because the more contact you have with a customer the more they will trust you, remember you and hopefully like you, they'll see you as someone who communicates well. I consider all these things marketing, and it means all the marketing you've done to get to the survey stage would have cost you less.

By the way the rewire job I spoke about earlier, I not only got the customer told me that the other guy was much cheaper but because I was more professional he wanted me to do the job.


To your success
Paul Jennings

What does marketing mean for trades?

Marketing to me means so much, but for most businesses marketing is just about getting your name out there to get more leads to business, but to me it's way more than just getting a lead to a potential customer.

Marketing in your construction business is a combination of everything you do, yes it is your website, the advertising you do, the networking, all the stuff you do online such as your social media marketing and your brand.

It should also include everything after you've had that call and gone to look at the job to do a quote.

It is the way you are with the customer at the initial survey, it how you present the quote and how you communicate with that potential customer after - do you call to follow up see that they've got the quote? (there are ways of knowing that they have got the quote - but that's another post) do you ask them if they have any questions? If they say they've had a better quote at this point, because you've called it's possible you could still win the business. Do you keep in contact after you've finished the job? if you don't you're potentially losing out on future work for them or getting a referral and imagine if they referred you to a friend and it became a big commercial job.

Marketing is all about your pricing too and I don't mean you have to be the cheapest, you just have to be the best and offer the most for their money, we call that value, despite what most people think people do not buy on price alone it's not their first concern, if that were true we'd all be driving around in a Dacia Sanderos and wearing clothes from Primark. (sorry if you drive a Sanderos and wear clothes from Primark, there is nothing wrong with that).
  
Something that will make you stand out is if you offer guarantees, like my 'Money where my mouth is Guarantee' that states if I don't get a return on

investment for my clients after 12 months then I'll work for them for free until I do. So do you guarantee that your customer will get what they want or will get a return in some way?

Marketing is also about how you interact with your employees or subcontractors to get the best out of them, what do they get when they perform well?
You know there is an old saying that 'you get what you look for or focus on most' so if you look for the bad in people you'll certainly find it. 
I once heard of a local electrical company that had tracking devices fitted to all the vans without his employees knowing, So he knew when they weren't where they were supposed to be, however as he hadn't told them he couldn't confront them as it's illegal to have them fitted and not tell the staff. 

Now how this works is that when he would then see the particular employees he would be mistrustful of them and have to keep his knowledge inside, what happens is, he would be thinking about this and his body language would be giving off little signals that were mostly un-perceivable, the employees would then subconsciously pick up.
They would un-be-known to them, not like their boss and probably not be sure of why, they would then not work at their full potential and when they could, skive off.This is called a self fulfilling prophecy (A bit like the papers have done with recessions) the boss got what he was looking for!

So how do you treat the people working for you?, how about looking for the good stuff and rewarding them, it'll be cheaper than the cost of fitting tracking devices. Do you have a referral scheme in place? so they can get commission for bringing in work rather than doing it as a private job?

What about what you do for other businesses and the community do you actively look for business for other business people you're connected with? not just in another trade but all industry's and do you look for ways to help out in the community? too, you know if you help enough people get what they want you will automatically get what you want.

When I work with my clients, I look at the whole business marketing, because if one part of the marketing isn't working well, it's pointless doing anything else!



To your success
Paul Jennings

Marketing for Trades is here.....

Welcome to my Marketing for Trades blog run by me Paul Jennings, I run a business called .......wait for it........Marketing for Trades. If you run a construction business then this blog is for you. Over the coming weeks, months and years I'll be publishing blog posts for trades people all about how to market their business.

Back in 2005 I started an electrical contracting business, I learnt a great deal about how to market my business, what works and what doesn't work and I also spent and wasted a lot of money which became an expensive education  I intend to share that knowledge with you so you don't need to spend as much money in the same way!

One thing I found on that journey was that I really enjoyed the marketing aspect of running a business and made the decision to get out of the electrical industry, So in 2012 I started a marketing business then thought why waste what I learned about marketing for my electrical business, so I decided to focus my time on just helping construction businesses.

So here we are with the Marketing for Trades blog, you'll learn lots of great ways to market your construction business online and offline.....including blogging!

To your success 

Paul

PS if you'd like to read regular marketing tips then you can catch up with me on my Google+ page