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Something I was always proud of with my remodeling business was our team’s attitude. I didn’t want to just own a business and earn a decent income–I wanted a career and a team around me that was passionate. I wanted us to be the best. I desired to have a great team of people that were focused on our clients and the big picture. I call it having a “culture of success.” Building a culture of success is an integral part of creating a work environment that is productive. It doesn’t mean if your team is productive that they will always be productive. After all, success is not an event. It is a body of work that is maintained over a long period of time. To have sustained success, you must develop a culture—it’s a body of work. Here are a few key elements to help you build a culture of success.
Empower your employees. Employees usually leave a company for vari
ous reasons, but I believe the strongest reason is a feeling of spinning their wheels. Employees want to be part of their company, involved in decisions, valued, utilized wisely, and have their ideas heard and implemented. When this happens, the employees will not only be appreciative, they will be more productive and have a better attitude. A better attitude is infectious and can lead to employee retention, while keeping a fresh outlook on your company. As an owner/manager I always thought it was essential to empower employees to think on their own, be creative and act as a team of profit and loss managers by holding them accountable for their part of the financial statement.
Be the person “in the middle.” When you have good information funneled to you, you will be able to make good decisions. Most business owners and executives also understand the importance of time management skills. You need to combine the two to effectively manage a company. As owners, we are extremely busy. Sometimes we become so involved in the day-to-day that we forget we also need to be effective as managers of people. Our employees need guidance and a leader that leads by example. My recommendation is to get organized!
Manage your time wisely by holding meetings that are pre-scheduled and have an itinerary. I found that holding Tuesday morning production meetings were most effective. Why Tuesday? On Monday, we were very busy starting the week and everyone’s mind was focused on getting the week started. After the first day of the week and settling in, a Tuesday morning meeting is the perfect fit.
Have the meetings on time, be organized with a set itinerary and be interactive with employees. At our Tuesday morning production meetings, I was able to gather information from all the employees at one time. It eliminated the need for numerous phone calls that interrupted my day and my team’s day. Here is a list of the information I reviewed at the meeting:
Performance metrics and accountability. You should have performance metrics for every aspect of your business. You should have sales reports that show closing percentages and return per lead; marketing reports that show cost per lead; cost per advertising vehicle etc…;and production reports that show an overview of your projects with job costing and gross profit margins.
Reflect and evaluate.
I also recommend going off-site on a weekend. I would turn my phone off and sit in a library with a cup of coffee and reviewed the financials and performance metrics. I had a business partner that went with me, so this was very beneficial being able to sit and talk away from the day-to-day environment. Follow these steps and you’ll have a good start to for a “culture of success” in your business.
From the Remodeling Magazine Blog
If you position yourself — and your business — as an expert in your field, more people will seek out your business. Finding a niche is a great start to positioning yourself as an expert.
Many contractors think that by appealing to as many people as possible that they will have a better chance to get more work. But as the saying goes — Jack of all trades, master of none. You can’t be all things to all people.
A niche would be a particular area of expertise that your business excels in. Focusing on a niche says to potential clients that you are focused and, hence, an expert. If you were a potential customer needing a new kitchen, would you call Mike’s Home Remodeling, ABC Construction, or Creative Kitchen Remodeling?
Focusing on a niche and positioning yourself as an expert narrows the competition and puts you into a better competitive situation and makes it easier to have your business stand out. If you don’t stand out, customers will separate your business from others based on one thing. Price. And competing on price is a bad place to be because someone else is always willing to go out of business before you are.
Focusing on a niche benefits clients in numerous ways. A niche allows you to perfect a skill, perfect your sales presentation, perfect the process from start to finish on every project and will likely enhance your customer’s experience. When you have mastered a specific process, you can use this to your advantage with clients.
Your process becomes a tool, the lifeblood of your company, how you operate, and communicate. Your process is how you structure yourself and your business, how you present yourself to the homeowner. It’s also a confidence builder. Ultimately, when you can enhance your customer’s experience you will be able to build an excellent reputation. The last time I checked, experts usually command a premium and receive it too.
Once you’ve got a niche and present yourself as the expert, you can stop chasing more work and a higher volume. Instead, you’ll be freed up to look to your profitable project and your profitable customers and grow your business wisely. Please give this some serious thought heading into the new year.
From the Remodeling Magazine blog
When you are on an appointment in the home of a potential client for an initial meeting, you may be working a little bit too hard to make an impression on your client. Have you experienced this? When you or another representative from your company is in the customer’s home, you usually feel the need to establish trust and do this by talking about your business instead of listening to the customer talk about what they need. However, this may not be the best approach. When you are working this hard to sell your company, you might lose focus and miss out on discussing the actual project and the connection with your customer. Or, conversely, you may be rushed to focus on the design and miss the essence of establishing an emotional connection with your customers and the foundation to a good relationship.
At the first meeting, there usually isn’t enough time both get to know the customer and talk about the design. So what is the solution? From a marketing and sales standpoint think about being memorable, remarkable, unique, and creating an advantage that is different than your competitors. We always talk about creating an advantage as a small business owner and the need to differentiate your business and be memorable. How about some homework for the customer before the initial meeting?
Working with my client, Pinnacle Renovations, we have implemented a unique process to make the initial meeting more about what the customer needs and establishing a strong relationship. Owner Paul Klassen now sends his customers a project idea book, which evokes a good response from his customers and has enhanced his vision of creating a family-focused, relationship-based team at Pinnacle. This Project Idea Book was something I created and used in my business and when presented to the home owners properly, can establish be very appealing to your ideal client.
How can you adopt this for your business? Send customers a project book that takes them through a few emotional thoughts that need to be translated to paper and requests the family’s participation about their home and project vision. The book has areas that encourage the homeowners to express ideas, add photos, and articles.
When you schedule the initial appointment, tell the homeowners that you’re going to send them the project book as a PDF document via e-mail. Then send the e-mail with a “read” receipt to ensure they have read it. This same e-mail should include your process of what you’d like to accomplish at the initial meeting, and even subsequent meetings. Your conversation with them to explain the book would go something like this:
“We use this project idea book to help you share your thoughts, creativity, feelings and ideas with us prior to the first meeting. We want to ensure you have some quiet, thoughtful time to think about your project. This gives us valuable insight to better help you with what you want to accomplish with your home. As part of the project idea book, we’d like to request that you and your family include ideas, clippings, and pictures. We can review these during the first meeting. The book sets up a collaborative process that we find works best for remodeling projects.”
What happens when you establish a relationship between you and the client that is unique and is about communication and sharing ideas? It will move you leaps and bounds ahead of the competition. This will establish the trust in you and your company and will connect with them on an emotional level. A true win/win!
From The Remodeling Magazine Blog
The Art of Differentiation! One of the most important marketing strategies the small business must master is the art of differentiation. Finding an important point of difference, one that matters to your ideal clients, and promote it.
Here is something to think about.
What do you do for a living? No–what do you really do for a living? Imagine trying to deliver a plain box to your friend or your prospective customer. How would you get them to understand they need what is in the box? What if they are faced with two existing boxes to choose from and you have the third.The current challenge for remodelers is that right now, your box just looks like the other two boxes right now.
If your business looks and acts like all other businesses, you are a plain box. If there are 3 boxes lined up next up each other, and priced at $1.99, $2.99, and $3.99, which box would you purchase? Most would say the less expensive one. Why? If all the boxes appear the same, all that is left to compare the three is price. Competing on price is a bad place to be because someone else is always willing to go out of business before you are. What will you do to ensure that you are not a plain box?
From the Remodeling Magazine Blog
There are two essential elements to focus on when you plan a business marketing strategy.
One is Educating your potential clients, and the second is to become creative by Reinventing your marketing. When you’re planning a marketing strategy, think of reinventing your company and being creative. Whoever said “if you keep doing the same thing expect the same results,” didn’t own a business. If you keep using the same marketing strategy and expecting the same results, the business world could pass you by. Methods that worked well in the past might not work now or in the future. To effectively market your business, you’ll need to re-invent your company.
When you educate your ideal customer and guide them through the buyer’s cycle of getting them to “know, like, and trust” you, you’ll make considerable progress towards earning the project. One of the purposes of your marketing process should be to provide clarity to your customers and clients–basically, walking a prospect through the process, which allows you to convert more prospects into clients. Creating a plan to lead clients through this process really forces you to create a marketing process and is the beginning stage of a true marketing system that helps your company convert leads to clients. It helps you take someone who shows an interest in your business and using that momentum to make them a client.
One step in the early stages of the buyer’s cycle is allowing the prospect a chance to get to know you and your team. Effective marketing is about getting in front of people with frequency, with their permission and providing great content and useful information. Ideally, this stage should be about education and building trust by sharing your expertise, and should involve the concept of permission marketing.
Permission marketing is the privilege of delivering a personal and relevant message to your ideal client. Your ideal client should expect and want this information.
Here is an example of permission marketing:
Develop a “white paper” of useful information your potential clients value. If you are a kitchen designer, would your customers be interested in an information packet called “The Best Modern Kitchen Designs?” If your ideal clients desire modern kitchens, take control of this niche by educating them on the topic. Create a form on your website that allows them to request this valuable information or “white paper” and receive it via e-mail, or by downloading a PDF from your website. This will make them feel as if they are receiving something of value. This is a great way to engage them and begin to lead them through the steps of the buyer’s cycle.
The information packet is just one idea to start potential clients on the path of the buyer’s cycle. Identify specific methods you use in your business to walk a prospect through the sales process and create a system that takes them from that “know, like, and trust” to buying, referrals and repeat business. Remodelers don’t have any difficulty thinking of systems for building a project, but they rarely develop one for marketing. Now, to reinvent your company, deliver this “white paper,” in a unique way or one that is different than your competition:
Not only have you provided excellent content, but you are positioning yourself as an expert in the subject in your potential clients eyes and networked with a tradesman, or a strategic partner in your field. Do you think if it’s valuable this potential customer will forward the link to friends? It’s easy to use a Flip Minot camera to take a video and upload it to YouTube or burn it to a DVD. Emotion and passion drive successful people in our business and it is that same emotion and passion that creates something that is unique and different. Find creative ways like this to deliver your message to prospects.
From the Remodeling Magazine Blog
Many times in sales meetings, a salesperson will say to me, “Teach me how to close.” He’ll tell me, “I couldn’t overcome that objection and I keep hearing the same objection over and over again.” Going over a strategy that will help the salesperson handle that objection and working through a solution is always a good idea, but did you ever think about the possibility of overcoming it before it even arises? That is the true solution. How do you do that? Here are a few points to consider:
No one likes to be sold. Everyone likes to buy. In today’s remodeling and home improvement market, it is more important than ever to understand that the moment a customer says “you’re hired” and becomes a client is based on emotion. The prospect makes the decision to become a client based on knowing, liking, and trusting you.
An educational sales process. An educational process that answers questions before they arise is ultimately the best path to reach your customer on an emotional level. When you make an effort to educate the client, you reach them before the objections have time to dwell in their minds. That translates to less effort and time on your part to convince them you are right for the job. If you try to convince a prospect towards the end of the sales process, their uncertainty at your closing will erode any “like and trust” they had in you.
Effective marketing increases your sales conversion ratio. Today’s marketing requires lots of content, lots of education, and lots of trust-building via sharing your expertise. Too many marketing messages focus on the company rather than the customer. So as you craft your marketing strategy and materials, keep the customer top of mind.
How do you do that? Most homeowners view remodeling as a commodity and feel that one company can provide the same results as another. To compound the situation, most remodeling businesses do not have a marketing plan or marketing materials that counteract that perception.
Some marketing phrases I’ve heard include: “You should buy from us, because we have quality and service”; “Buy from us as we have been in business for 25 years and are reliable”; “We are built from trust.” None of these statements give you a green light or a sales advantage.
These are all expectations and not a point of differentiation. How do you communicate to your community and prospective buyers that your business is different and can solve their problems or fulfill their needs? You need to focus on your unique selling point by communicating the answers to these questions:
Once you identify your unique selling point, use it in all of your marketing materials, sales presentations, and community outreach. If you convince the prospect that your company’s work is not a commodity, you’ll educate him or her into being a client.
Learn how to grow your remodeling business through construction education, remodeling classes and exhibit hall activities. Don’t miss your once-a-year opportunity to learn about new building products and build connections within the remodeling community. The Remodeling Show is sponsored by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), NAHB Remodelers and Remodeling Magazine.
Frustrated with the same old marketing approach and not getting results? No leads are coming in and you’re competing on price. Learn to separate yourself from your competitors! Differentiate and Dominate! Stop competing on Price! Learn new strategy that you can implement today!
• Differentiate your business from your competitors.
• Work with your Ideal Client and be more profitable.
• Establish a consistent lead generation system.
• Stop competing on price.
