Last week I was going to St Louis and when I arrived at the gate at Midway Airport I stoped at the counter to check how full the fight was. Usually Southwest has very full fights but this was my lucky day. The agent told me their were approximately 35 open seats and when I told her I was already A16 we agreed I need not upgrade. I was checking some emails on my laptop when I was summoned back to the counter by the gate agent.

STRANGE!

She handed me an envelope. I asked what it was inside and she said she wan’t sure, so I decided to open it on the spot.

Inside was a Thank You note from the three terminal mangers for Southwest. Their was also a SW luggage tag and a business card holder that adhesively attaches to your cell phone. Two mundane give-aways but they were SW branded. The Thank You was hand written and very thoughtful. Two morals to the story; first always remember the power of a hand written thank you note! Secondly, while other airlines were making news for disturbing passenger interactions, my airline was personalizing notes and giving away trinkets to their best customers. I’ll bet the total cost was under $2.00, but it was the personalized thought in an industry that has all but forgotten great customer service. Thank you Southwest for anther great experience.

If They Can Do It So Can You1

A few years ago, I bought some really nice diamond earing for my wife while we are on a cruise. I had heard of the jewelry store before and they had a decent reputation so I was not uncomfortable buying the earing out of the US. Besides they were duty free, right!

I admit that I haggled pretty hard and in my opinion made a phenomenal purchase. This was confirmed during an embarrassing moment at our local jeweler who noticed Sandy’s new ear sparkles. He is a super honest man and confirmed we made a great buy that he could not match.

But the story isn’t about the purchase of the earrings. It is about what happened afterwards. Inadvertently I must of filled out a form that listed our birthdays and anniversary. And yesterday was my birthday and the store owner called to wish me a happy birthday. Just like he does for Sandy on her birthday and our anniversary.

This is a high-volume jewelry store on the island of St. Kit so the call was probably a little pricier than your USA unlimited plan. The call was a sincere, happy birthday. Not trying to sell us anything or even an innuendo of a solicitation. But it was thoughtful! And we would definitely consider another purchase from them. I am even going to write a “trip advisor” post because I am so impressed with the customer service follow-up.

In the world of sales this was a luxury purchase not a necessity. We differentiate this by the term Gold Medals verse German Sheppard’s. I have to ask when is the last time you called a customer just to say happy birthday or happy anniversary. Do you even know when their special day is?

If not, find out and start building more sincere relationships. It will pay off with long term loyalty.

We feel your pain.

Finding skilled, creative, affordable web designers borders on the impossible.

We’ve been searching for a graphic designer who could create a couple of dozen minor images for our website. The design needed to be consistent with the color scheme of our new logo and banner. Most of the images were identical except for text.

My normal, incredibly talented and fun, designer was swamped remodeling her house and couldn’t get to us any time soon. So we had to branch out and find a substitute designer. Who would of thought it would take us three months to find one that was (1) qualified (2) available and (3) interested. We’ve got our fingers crossed he will work out well for us.

We will not bore you with the dozens of stories we’ve heard from contractors who have ended up being held hostage by their web programmer. Suffice it to say it happens more often than not. So if you have been suffering these types of problems, don’t feel like you’re special. You a member of a very, very large group.

Recently a client of ours dropped a line that just cracked us up…because his point was so dead on and tragic.

Allow me a moment to give you a little insight into his thought process.

Dennis’ background is unique for our industry.

He came from the printing industry.

That’s one rare trait among contractors. Another is that he has built several successful businesses.

How did he end up in construction?

To start with, he’s probably a little crazy.

🙂

The real truth is that he sold his printing business; retired; got bored playing golf; and decided he missed the challenge of running a business.

In other words, he wanted back in the game only the game he chose this time was construction. Obviously, Dennis is a glutton for punishment.

He’s had his company for a little over a year. In that time he noticed there was almost no bottom to the price cutting contractors will do in order to land work when they’re slow. And that’s where he came up with his observation~

“Racing To Zero!”

It is SO dead on. That’s what makes it both so funny and so tragic.

Even during boom times, there’s always a contractor out there who wants to give his work away for free. All the while whittling away at the solidarity of your client relationship.

The price slashing that is going on now is  numbing. It really is like everyone is in a race to zero. To complete, total ruin.

Try not to be one of those who is undermining our industry. Learn to prospect, qualify, and sell. Then price your services fairly.

Best of luck with your business.

Wishing you great success,

Ron & Guy

Reach Thousands of Prospects Instantly – For Pennies (2 to be exact!)

If telemarketing makes sense for your target market, check out the new telephone broadcast message system that’s DIRT CHEAP and incredibly simple to use.

Check it out here: cbcron.ibuzzpro.com

My buddy Kelly Olcott of The Databridge (www.TheDataBridge.com) dug into the price, features, and interface and came away flabbergasted. He was banging my phone line pleading with me to sign up and start broadcasting messages (side note: my business generates leads for his business).

Here’s why Kelly was so excited.

He had been researching broadcast phone services for years and realized the only companies that could afford the services owned the phone lines (AT&T for example).  Kelly knew that broadcast telemarketing would be hugely successful if the price would drop enough. Well, it has. iBuzzPro brought the cost down so far, it’s almost irrelevant.

Check it out here: cbcron.ibuzzpro.com

With iBuzzPro, you can simultaneously call 10,000 prospects with your 30 second message for, are you ready, $200!

How much would it cost you to touch 10,000 prospects with direct mail? Answer $5,000.

How long would it take a live caller to reach 10,000 prospects? Maybe 200 hours? At $10 an hour, that would cost $2,000.

Check it out here: cbcron.ibuzzpro.com

If you think it broadcast phone messaging might work well for your business but aren’t sure, run your questions by me. Tell me about your business and it’s target customers and I’ll tell whether I believe this lead service makes sense.

Good luck with your business.

Ron Roberts,

The Contractor’s Business Coach

P.S. If your business is struggling to get GOOD leads, check out the DIY lead generation systems available through my Products page.

Whew…FIVE Months in the Making

I am THRILLED to have this project behind me.

Between staying ahead of my coaching clients, writing newsletters, working on content for the upcoming membership site (which may have finally been named), and getting organized with my business partner, Guy Gruenberg, I have been slogging forwards on this video.

Don’t let the short length fool you. A TON of effort went into it.

First off, thank you to everyone who helped my refine the list of 10 biggest mistakes contractors (commercial) make. The original list never felt just right. This list does.

Next, I had to rewrite the report.

Then, I had to figure out what type of video to make. The initial plan was to be a live video of me presenting the mistakes. After watching tons of presentation videos, I discovered that PowerPoint videos were more entertaining. After more research, it became apparent the video shouldn’t be much over three minutes in length. Like most speakers, it takes me 10 minutes to get going. So, chop-chop-chop.

Then, time to track down a professional to add sound, narration, and do the editing (thank you Bob Dusin, friend and professional voice and sound man). I simply don’t have those skills…yet.

Bob was amazing. Video is done and now on YouTube.

Click the play arrow above to watch it.

Let me know what you think.

If you’d like to make a YouTube marketing video, I’d be glad to help out. It is the future of web traffic generation.

Have a great Labor Day!

Your friend,

Ron

The construction market is quickly becoming survival of the fittest. The weak are not going to survive.Their errors will become too great to overcome. Welcome to life during a recession. You may be too young to remember what a real recession feels like. You’re about to find out.

I am hearing two stories from contractors these days: many have no work at all and others are actually doing quite well. The middle ground, the place where most contractors lived, has all but disappeared.

Contractors who haven’t set their sales and marketing engines to full throttle are asking for trouble.The contractors who are doing well all appear to have well established marketing and networking systems. They’ve spent years building up and taking care of their contacts. That past effort is paying off in spades.

If you aren’t busting your butt chasing working and promoting your business, you’d better get started. Good work is not going to walk through your door. You’ve got to dig it up before somebody else does.

Bid prices are dropping like rocks. Your competition needs work and is willing to take it close to cost just to keep their crews and equipment busy.  That’s not a game you want to play. You need to find a better game because the truth of the matter is…

Recessions shake out the week business owners.

That’s why many economists believe mild recessions are a good thing for the overall economy (of course they are turning a blind eye and deaf ear to the suffering of the masses who don’t have the financial safety net to weather the storm easily).

The owners who don’t  know how take care of their customers and their staff are going to lose.The owners who can’t see past the immediate almighty dollar are going to lose.

It really is going to be survival of the fittest. The only saving grace is the government’s tried and true formula for breathing life back into the economy: huge federal construction projects. You might want to begin positioning yourself to take advantage of the opportunity that is likely to arise.

So sad but true.

“I paid for new. It should be perfect.”

Bet you’ve heard that one more than once.

The expectation of perfect quality is a plague that’s been thrust upon commercial contractors by design teams. They got away with it for years but lo, the boomerang came back to knock them senseless. And boy are they paying for it financially.

Home owners came to their expectation of perfection all by themselves. They are paying hard earned cash for work around the house and they want to make every dime go as far as it can. They don’t understand how darn near impossible perfection is and few contractors have the backbone to tell them.

I saw this coming back in the early 90s when I was working as a design engineer at an MEP consulting firm. Unfortunately, it has come to pass.

When designers (primarily architects) pitch their services to developers and owners, they try to convince them that if the owner hires their design team, they will create comprehensive construction drawings and specifications that will force the contractor to build the building properly (i.e. perfectly). The ids have been doing this in their never-ending fight against the design-build model.

All that it has achieved is to convince owners that they DESERVE and are paying for perfection.

Naturally, the boomerang that came back to knock design teams out was when the owners starting charging them for the cost of errors and omissions (that’s the exact trend I saw developing and ran away from like someone yelled “FIRE”).

Here’s the message contractors should learn: competing on quality is almost a waste of breath. Perfection is EXPECTED. In this day and age, nobody would hire you if they thought you would deliver anything less.

Sometimes, names are misleading.

Take the term Referral System. When you hear the words “Referral System” what type of system does that bring to mind? Word-of-Mouth, right?

Time to think outside of the box. I invested in a referral system how-to guide that presents and explains 109 different referral systems. 109!

Definitely time to get out of the box.

Referral systems are the most predictable, cost-effective lead generation system out there. Print advertising doesn’t stand a chance against a well designed and executed referral system.

Let me share one example – The Old Fashioned Contest System.

In this system, you offer multiple levels of prises based on the number of referrals received by a specific deadline. Using referral cards (www.sendoutcards.com) or letters, send the referral offer to potential referees (prospects) on behalf of the referrers.

Get the referral names and contact information from the referrer. Do as much of the work for the referrer as possible. Don’t limit your referrer list to your customers. Include your friends, family, and all the 250 or more people who know you (dentist, tax accountant, neighbor, etc).

Always give a small gift to the referrers just for participating. Give bigger gifts (e.g. an IPOD) to the contest winners. By the way, gifts motivate better than money for this type of referral system.

Everybody loves to WIN a contest and for some strange reason places more value on the gift than it is really worth (that’s why cash doesn’t work so well, it’s too obvious what the gift is worth).

Time for an admission. A little truth in advertising if you will. The how-to guide I mentioned earlier is David Frey’s Instant Referral Systems and it is available via my products page (the link at the top of this page).