It's all in the follow up....Touch your customers.......

Okay now I have your attention, I obviously don't mean touch your customers physically, you'll just end up with a criminal record! I'd prefer that didn't happen!

How to convert more quotes to customers

What I mean is, the more contact you have with your potential customer the more likely they are to use you for the job, you'll show that you give a better service and care about them.

So you've sent your quote to your customer and wait for the phone to ring.........and you wait and you wait.

If this is you and it more than likely is, as this is what the majority of business owners do, I'll guarantee you're losing money and in more ways than one.

How much contact can you have?

The more contact you have the better, It'll keep you in your customers mind. After you've sent a quote out there are points you contact the customer to get to the front of their mind. 

Your first call should be to make contact to see if they got the quote and this should be done within 24 to 48 hours of sending it.

If you send your quotes out via email you can use email tracking to see when the potential customer has opened the email, then you know you can call them, if you use gmail you can use YesWare which tells you when the email has been opened or any links clicked on.

I have sent quotes out before and they had not been received because either it got lost in the post or I'd got the email wrong, so it's really important that you do this if just to check!

Your second call if they have not already asked you to go ahead with the work or had a look at your quote properly will be to see if they have any questions and this should be done around 48 hours after the first call.

Your next point of contact (should you not get the work) should be to send a card to say thanks for giving you the opportunity to quote and should they need your services in the future you hope they will think of you (If you do this, they certainly will)

Get marketing information

If you've not won the work it's a great idea to find out why, if you find that the reason reoccurs often, then you can change your approach for futures quotes.

If it's price then you can be sure that the customer hasn't seen what value you offer, you can then work on ways to make sure future customers will! 

 

If you get in early enough, you could even ask for a copy of a competitors quote to see if you could match or beat it, by getting a copy of the quote you also get to see how your competitor quotes and if they do anything that stands out that you could incorporate into the way you work! If you don't call though you won't get any information.

Keeping in contact with past customers

It's also important to keep in touch with customers you have done work for, this may be through a newsletter, Christmas card or just a call to make sure everything is okay.

I wrote more about this in the post How trades people and property businesses throw money away  

To your success

Paul

Don't waste your time.........Why social media doesn't work for tradespeople

Doing the wrong things on social media will waste your time

I've been using social media with success since 2008 and although what I'm about to talk about has been happening since I've been around and it seems to be an increasing occurrence, I've recently been looking more in depth at the social media accounts for some trades on facebook and twitter etc and have had some follow me, all I see are posts about their business, posts such as we can service your boiler for £xxx, leaky pipe - give us a call on 07000 xxxx etc and there is always a logo for their profile picture. 

Social media such as twitter, linkedIn, Google+ and facebook doesn't and never will work for a lot of trades people, simply because....they get it wrong. 

The worst thing that they do is when people do follow them they send an instant direct message back telling them about their service, Or recently I had a plumbing company send me a message out of the blue which is called an @reply, if you add someones twitter profile and then write a message they will see it, the @Reply message went like this '@Paul_Jennings When did you last have your boiler service, we can.......' you get the picture, now when trades people use social media this unsolicited way, it simply will not work! Let me just say this...

Social media is not an advertising platform  

If it were then this would be okay behaviour, Social media is a 'social' platform, a place to network, to stay in touch with people, to make friends/ connections.

This advertising social media style may work for large faceless corporate companies like Sainsburys, McDonalds or JD Wetherspoons or though in my opinion they should consider taking the social approach and the top people, CEOs directors etc should get involved and make it more personal.

Still need proof?

I like to put it like this, imagine walking in to a pub to meet some friends and wearing a mask of your business logo and speaking at people, with no conversation and telling them what you can do for them, how much and to call you on..... how well would that work for you, imagine being on the receiving end, how would that feel.

Social media is just like a virtual pub. There is an old saying that people buy from people and it's true, so when we're using social media be just that, a person.

So some top social media key tips from me would be 

• Use a profile picture of yourself
• List what you like to do, sports, music, films
• Interact with other users through conversation
• Look for ways to help them that isn't to do with your business

When you use social media this way it just works! behind every tweet and profile there is a real person, one of the keys to social media marketing is to build up a following of people who want to know you and are interested in what you say, the main way people are interested in what you have to say is if they know you are interested in them. So search for people that are local, follow or friend them and look for ways to interact so they follow you back.

When you build up a following of people that have got to know you over time (Sorry I forgot to mention it'll take time you're not going to get a response in just a couple of posts or tweets) Who do you think they're going to call next time they need a boiler service, an extra socket installed or an extension built? 

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