Do current world events have you (and your clients) feeling a bit overwhelmed, nervous, panicked or ALL of these? Absolutely! Me too! (And don’t even get me started on gas prices!)
These negative feelings mean you must respect your residential customer’s ‘Personal Emotional Space’! ‘ After all, you wouldn’t burst into your customer’s homes without knocking, would you? So, stop barging into your customer’s mental ‘Inner Sanctum’ without permission! For example…
KickStart: STOP🛑 losing money BEFORE you focus on increasing gross sales. Read on…
Profit: “The revenue remaining after all costs are paid. These costs may include labor, materials, interest on debt, and taxes.”
Ah yes, that wonderful and too-often elusive word, “profit”. And yes, as a Home Service Business owner you need (and deserve) LOTS of profit.💲💲💲 (Which should be calculated AFTER paying yourself a fair wage for your labors.)
Ya gotta feel sorry for the poor retailers!😥 They’ve got pandemic problems, ‘supply chain’ issues, staffing challenges AND stores get ‘price shopped’ like crazy! After all, I can easily get 10 or 15 price quotes in a few seconds online for any manufactured good! (And you thought you had ‘Price Shopper’ issues!)😲
Remember, ‘people buy any commodity based on who offers the lowest price’! (Customers know a commodity is the same no matter where you buy it so why not go with the lowest price?) However…
Marketing your residential services to nervous, skeptical, fearful and sometimes downright confrontational home owners can be a REALLY tough sell!😲 Honestly? For most routine maintenance and/or repair services at best a 1st-time caller will view you as a ‘tolerated irritation’! GULP!
“Hey, Steve! Just wait till they get to know my sparkling personality!”💖 ABSOLUTELY! If you (and your employees) instinctively build great relationships with home owners you’ll go far!
BUT WAIT! How can prospects ‘get to know you personally’ while shopping anonymously over the internet and telephone? They can’t!😥 (Here’s one great resource to ‘win over’ first-time callers!) However, a great trick to super-charge your sales is to…
KickStart: BEFORE you diversify into a new service STOP🛑 and ponder on Steve’s ‘8 Introspective Questions’!
di·ver·si·fy: “enlarge or vary the range of services or products of a business.”
Hmmmm… does diversifying sound good? Maybe. As with so many undecided business questions, “It all depends.” Above all else one not-so-simple question…
KickStart: When you honestly don’t know what to do… WAIT!
Motivational speakers constantly exhort you to “git ‘er done” and “get moving”! But since Steve Toburen isn’t a ‘goo-roo’ I’ll remind you that sometimes ‘Procrastination Pays’! Say what, Steve?😲
Yep, when I’m honestly perplexed on what to do going forward I’ll engage in what I call…
‘Creative Procrastination’: Waiting on events (or just plain ‘serendipity’) to show you the next step.
Let me be clear on what Creative Procrastination (CP) is NOT! CP doesn’t mean slacking off and then complaining that a) the economy is bad, b) competition is too fierce or c) there are too many ‘Price Shoppers’ out there! (Our industry is full of excuses like these and so many more!)
You need quality employees to give their best consistently. The answer is to measure employee performance fairly and reward accordingly. Here’s how…
KickStart: Rework your employee’s compensation (and culture) to reward extra effort while also holding them accountable for ‘avoidable mistakes’.
The definition of “compete”: “trying to get something others are also trying to get!”
“Ummm, thanks Steve but my middle name is ‘Compete’.😁 I’m getting my competition’s customers like crazy! So, I’m also getting their profits too! WOO-HOO!”
CONGRATULATIONS, ‘Compete’! However, in today’s brutal hiring environment you must ‘differentiate’ yourself from 1000’s of competing employers to successfully compete for- GREAT EMPLOYEES! But fear not, help is on the way…
KickStart: ‘Charging more’ let’s you pay more to attract better applicants! (And keep the great team you’ve already built.)
I’ve always pushed my students to “charge more”! Why? After almost 50 years in this industry (I started young!) I’m convinced the vast majority of residential service contractors do not remotely understand the TRUE COST of daily business.
But hey, I’m not really a ‘number crunching accountant’ type of guy! So instead, I just preach to my students:
1) “All other things being equal… its better to have LOTS of money instead of having NO money!!”
KickStart: Calm (and win over) nervous home owners by helping them feel ‘in control’.
“OK, Steve, I totally get respecting our customer’s Personal Space! But what’s up with this ‘Emotional Space’ stuff?”
I understand your confusion! However, two Core Principles of Service Engineering are: