A David Creation

One of the joys of running a service business is dealing with the ups and downs of a full and empty schedule. Most of my clients are painting contractors. In the winter months, they are all scrambling to keep their crews busy. In the spring and summer they are swamped with work. It actually is a good problem to have, but some of them are actually turning away work due to having such a full schedule of booked projects.

An Example of the Business Growth Cycle

A slight detour for a moment (though it is related) A number of years ago, I shared this similar frustration to my business coach I had when I was involved in Vistage International. I told him that we had these ups and downs and had a hard time growing our business knowing that winter was approaching and we’d have to downsize again. The same cycle each year!

The business coach shared with me how a business works and grows. In short, it is called “growing pains.” To grow a business, it is and will be painful. A salesperson’s job is to sell jobs (profitably). He should not be as involved in all the other aspects of the business such as production and customer service. He just needs to sell.

Then production will see all the jobs he is selling and wonder how he is supposed to schedule all the work. He will conclude that he must hire new employees. This brings up another set of problems, training and customer service issues. When you hire new employees there is a training period. The staff that has been with you for awhile also might get a little frustrated because they have a “green” (new employee) helping them.

What happens when you hire new employees and have to train them? Customers might complain just a little bit more because of the growing pains you are experiencing. This too is normal, the business coach told me. You will then be forced to make sure you have good training and procedures in order. You will also make sure you deal with your customers concerns. There is no way around it.

So there is the cycle. To grow a business, you have to be ready to face the fact that you will have those growing pains. You need to face them head on or you will continue to go up and down in your business.

4 Things To Do When Swamped With Work Now

Now back to the main purpose of this blog, what are a few things you can do now when you are swamped with work.

1. Make sure you have a plan. Prepare in advanced for the uptick in work. You need to look at the previous few years to see when work really picks up and slows down. If April 1st is the date (historically) when the phone really rings off the hook, then your plan should begin ahead of schedule. This might be looking for an estimator in January and February. It might mean hiring a few extra employees in March.
2. Raise Your Prices: If you are really swamped, you also need to look at what you are charging for work. To keep staff busy during a slow season, most companies will lower their hourly rate, even operating at break even numbers for a time. Sticking to your plan of when you know you will typically be busy, start bidding work at your normal and profitable rate ahead of schedule. So in March, don’t offer any discounts.
3. Don’t Let Customer Service Suffer: This is probably one of the most difficult things to do. When you get so busy you lose sleep, it is hard to keep customers happy. Going back to step #1 (have a plan) make sure you plan out how you will keep customers happy. Maybe it involves taking an employee from the field and charging him or her with a few new responsibilities during the busy season. Make a temporary position and call it “Customer Happiness Manager.” Create a job description for this person that might require another 8-10 hours of work each week. This person can possibly help estimate/bid smaller projects, call to confirm start dates, follow up on how the job went, write thank you notes, encourage online reviews, ordering supplies, etc.
4. Don’t Stop Marketing: The last thing you don’t want to do is pause any of your marketing efforts. When you send your mailers, email blast etc out, just don’t discount. Keep your name out there in front of your target audience. This is also a great time to plan ahead. See if you can pre-sell work for those who are not in a hurry. Tell them about your slow season or a “rainy day” special.

What Do You Do When You Get Busy

I am curious to what you all do now when you get busy, what ideas you have and what you plan to do this season. I do hope you are off to a great second quarter like many of the contractors I’ve spoken to lately. Let me know by email or in the comments below.

When I experienced my first Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program around 2000, I don’t remember ever seeing or using “Tags.” Instead the CRM I started with (ACT!) used Categories. Then you were able to “multi-categories” contacts. Fast forward a few years, when CRMs went cloud based, companies started something new: TAGS. The confusing part is that many CRMs have several things that are related: Tags, Categories and Type. In this post, I’ll focus on Tags, because this is a question I get asked often.

What is a Tag?

Nutshell CRM’s website does the best job of describing what a tag in a CRM program is and what it does.

Tags are a way to organize your data in ways that are more customized to your company. You can generate lists of contacts, accounts, and leads based on their tags.

A few examples of how I’ve seen tags being used for contacts: Designers, Architects, Design-Build Firm, Website, Google, Do Not Contact Again, A+ Client and so forth. 

Avoid the Bad Habit of Using Tags Too Much

It is easy to have fun tagging contacts. Yet don’t forget, the search functions in many CRM programs today are very powerful. I find it much more quick to use the search function and a keyword/phrase and find what I need. My CRM Base and Google Apps, for example, have keyword rich searches now. Therefore I’ve avoided spending too much time tagging contacts. I like the general rule for tags, “Less is Better.” So avoid too much tagging or you’ll then be hunting through tags to find what you need. I’ve seen this mistake made in a program I use called Evernote. A user will save an article, a note, a file etc. and then create a new tag. Pretty soon, a user has 100 tags with only a couple items in each tag (which is basically a category).

My Favorite Way of Using Tags Today

Keeping with my “less is better approach,” here are a few recommendations:

1. Create a short list of tags for your company to use and stick to this plan. Don’t keep making up new tags, or it will get out of hand. I did this last week for a client using Pipeline Deals. They got into the bad habit of having lots of tags that they did not need. Each person in the company had their idea of what they called a tag! We created a Google Document and shared it with their team of the Master Tags and Secondary Tags. Now everyone is on the same page and are not allowed to add to the list!
2. Use tags for very specific purposes: This might include a mailing campaign or email list. If you want to send a mailer to your commercial clients, have a tag called “Commercial Clients.” If you want to send an email blast to your residential clients only, create a tag called “Residential Clients.” If you don’t want to keep things even more simple, I have a few clients who have a general tag “Commercial” and “Residential.” Why? Because they don’t want to separate out leads and customers. They want everyone to be included in a mailing or email. It is up to you. 
3. Small or Temporary Projects: A manager of his sales team can use tags and assign them to an office or salesperson to follow up. So he can have a tag called, “Monday Follow Up List.” He can have a person click on that tag each monday morning and know which contacts to follow up on that day. When he or she is finished calling, he simply removes the tag from that contact. You get the idea.

Tagging, if used correctly, can be a very helpful tool to manage your organization.

Do You Find Tags Helpful or a Royal Pain? Let me know in the comments below how you use, avoid or plan on using tags moving forward.

Have a Very Nice Day

A more “personal” blog today*

One of my favorite modern day storytellers is a man named Bill Harley. As a kid I remember listening to his tapes over and over again and memorized many of his stories. He also wrote a lot of songs. The one that came to mind when preparing this post has these lyrics:

Sometimes I get so hungry
There’s a sandwich that I love to eat
It’s made of pickles and jelly, spaghetti,
and doughnuts
I tell you it’s a really good treat
But when I eat it sometime that day
Someone will come up to me to say

Oh Gross, what is the matter with you?
You know you eat the weirdest foods
I say
Thankyou kindly have a very nice day
I just like to be that way

We all have weird habits don’t we? We also have opinions about sports, politics, parenting, food, religion and so on. I’m surprised at how easy it is to be critical of others. It is easy to say or express to an employee, a vendor, salesperson or a cashier the words, “What is the matter with you?” In other words, we are basically saying, “You are stupid!” As a business owner, I’ve thought and expressed my disappointment to people who are not me many a times. I want what I want! I am a tough guy to please! I want the best service, the best food, less typos in a post, the fastest email response: basically no mistakes or I’m not happy. Why? Because I’m part of the Me Economy.

The Me Economy

What I’m calling the “Me Economy” is nothing new really. It has been around since the beginning of time. Generally speaking, people are more concerned about themselves first and then others. Jesus knew the problem of mankind well when He told His listeners these words in Matthew 7:12 ESV, “So whatever you wish that others would do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets.” From that verse came what is known today as the “Golden Rule.” Jesus was saying that it is natural to take care of our own needs, wants and desires. He wanted His followers to do something that was unheard of: love others…even your enemies (i.e. unreasonable customers).

Even though it has always been a problem, it has gotten worse in the world since the rise of quick communications and technology upgrades. My dad often misses the times when he used to be on the job painting and get a page to call someone back. This was not all that long ago. He would get to a good stopping point, put down his equipment and ask the owner of the home if he could use his or her telephone. It was not considered rude to ask to do such a thing. In just 20 to 25 years, we would not even think about asking a customer to use his phone. Many of us would stop what we are doing to pick up the phone or return a text message in seconds, not 15 minutes or an hour later. Why? Because we are living in a hyper “Me Economy.” We want instant answers and service. We have literally no tolerance or patience to wait! Technology has its place in business, but I’ve experienced some of the problems with it too. It is always readily available. Many times I’ve found myself using my device to administer more of “me-ness” instead of what it is really meant to be used for: organizing my life and serving my customers.

How to Make a Difference

As I have mentioned above, I’ve been one of the top contributors of the Me Economy, and I want to do something about it. One of the ways I plan on making a difference is by how I communicate with people that provide a service to me. The next time I’m at a restaurant and the server screws up my order…or the food isn’t just what I had in mind, I’m not going to make a big deal about it or write some nasty, 1 star review. When I’m at Home Depot, Walmart or Best Buy, I’ll make a point to say thanks to the cashier or salesperson for helping me out instead of critiquing their every action on how they treat me.

Your Takeaways

How do you treat your vendors, salespeople, employees and so on? Better yet, how do you respond when a customer criticizes your company? Do you take it personally and vow to get even? Or do you say, as Bill Harley said, “Thankyou kindly, have a very nice day!” Then go and make that customer’s day! How can you attack the me economy today in your personal or business life? Let’s purpose to slow life down just a little and enjoy this season of life. 

*This blog post was inspired after listening to a 2-3 minute devotional before a game of basketball this week. 2x a week I get together with some local guys, many who are Christian men and women. One of the older guys leads a short devotional and prayer time before we hit the court. 

Pricing on My Site

Since I started my marketing business in 2009, I posted my general prices on my website. Four years later, I’ve not regretted that decision once.

1. It keeps the tire kickers away who are not serious. 
2. It might educate a few others looking to do the same thing I’m doing and how they should charge. Fine with me! 
3. A business owner may want to do some research on someone he is looking at hiring and see if the quote he/she received is reasonable. You never know if they’ll ask me for a quote too!
4. Or for those who are serious in working with me, they know I have nothing to hide. I talk about the cost with prospects right from the beginning. Those who know me know that I’m an open book. 

Pricing On Your Site

So should you post prices on your site? In most cases, I’d say yes: even if the prices are just ideas or approximate numbers. For example, I know it would be hard for a remodeler to say, “Remodeling a kitchen cost $50,000-60,000. When in reality, a kitchen could cost $100k or more for some homeowners and less than $50k for less features for other homeowners. Or one can go to Lowes and do the kitchen as a DIY project for less than $15k. However, to build trust and credibility, a remodeling contractor could give approximate cost for a renovation project based on certain types of projects using pictures and case studies. So if a homeowner sees a project a contractor completed and loves it, he or she would know it cost $90k+ range. You get the idea.

You really have nothing to lose by posting your prices on your website. Your competitors are not doing it, and who cares if they see your prices anyways. If you are the company that is not afraid to post your prices, you will be looked at as more trustworthy and honest. You also don’t need to be cheap to post the potential cost of services.

Take a look at this blog title from this well known pool company in Northern Virginia, River Pools: “How Much do Above Ground and Inground Swimming Pools Cost? This blog, among others, has worked very well for this company in generating leads and new business (over $1.7 million on just one post).

Ready to Get Started

The more open and honest you can be about your company, your service, your process, your pricing, your team etc the better chance you will have at closing jobs and avoid the competitive bloody ocean battle over prices.

I know some of you contractors out there have already done this. Let me know how it is working for you in the comments below.

Pinterest and Houzz Intro

In 2009, a little website called Pinterest popped up. Pinterest is a social media site that allows people to “collect and organize” things (pictures) they love. The buzz words for Pinterest are “pin,” “repin” and “boards.” This site has grown popular for the female audience, nearly 80-90% of its users (as of late 2012). My wife uses Pinterest almost daily to get ideas for decorating, organizing, gluten-free recipes and more. It was not long after I started testing out Pinterest when I heard of another social site called Houzz.com.

What Is Houzz?

When I first stumbled upon Houzz, my first thought was, “Houzz.com is the Pinterest for the design and remodeling industry.” Instead of “pinning” a picture to your board, like you do in Pinterest, a user will add the photo to an “Ideabook.” So one might create Ideabooks that are called “Cabinet Ideas” or “Nursery Room” etc. A person will find a color that he or she likes and slide it into the proper Ideabook. The credit for that photo always goes back to the company that uploaded it.

A year ago, most remodelers, painters, designers and architects did not know what Houzz.com was! Today, almost all of them do and so do a growing number of homeowners. Houzz is an internal search engine for the design and home building market. A homeowners can type in keywords such as “cabinets,” “green walls for bedroom,” “murals for kid’s room,” “hardware ideas for modern kitchen” etc. Then pictures that have been properly labeled with keywords and descriptions begin to show up in the search results. It is a very cool idea!

The other thing Houzz does is allow homeowners and other professionals to look to hire a pro. Houzz has created a business directory for a growing number of metropolitan cities. Houzz business profiles also allow your customers to post a review about your company.

Example of a photo of a painter who uploaded this photo of a project recently…and it has been added to over 1,000 ideabooks already.

So Should My Business Be On Houzz?

Yes and No! It takes a lot of effort to get involved with Houzz. If you are an interior designer, a design build firm or an architect, I think Houzz is crucial for your business. If you are a painting contractor, Houzz is also a good idea but will require a bit of a time commitment. One has to take good quality photos, have a plan for uploading those photos on a regular basis (not just once), has to enter keywords for the best photos and get involved in using all the other features Houzz has to offer.

Houzz has begun to roll out special advertising opportunities as well in certain cities. I’d recommend building up your portfolio with a good amount of photos and then start looking at the cost of ads. You can also spend time answering questions people have about their home. This is a good way to engage with people and help brand your company.

This is a very brief blog article on Houzz. There is lots more to know! Curious though, who is using Houzz now? Any results from your efforts?

I got a call this morning from a client who said he was having syncing issues with his google calendar to his iphone. He had sent me an article that Google was stopping support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync…and thought maybe that was causing the sync problem. The good news is that was not the case, and we did get his calendar(s) working again. How did we do it?

First, I just realized that not all my friends and customers knew that if they are using Google Apps for Business, they can sync multiple calendars on their Apple devices. Also Google, without telling us, changed the old Google Sync URL. The “new” URL I sent to my client solved the calendar problem.

If you are having a syncing problem with your Apple devices go to this URL:

1. https://m.google.com/sync/settings/iconfig/ 
2. Then follow these steps from my old blog post: http://www.adavidcreation.com/how-to-setup-multiple-google-calendars-on-an-iphone/

Most of the time this will clear up any calendar syncing issues. You might need to wait 5+ minutes for it to work. Be patient, and let me know if this solves your calendar syncing issues between Google and Apple devices.  

My brother forwarded me a company email he received from the VP of his company. He works for a large commercial developer on the west coast. I’ll paraphrase and summarize the conclusion of the email from the vice president which I felt was a great reminder for any business in today’s economy:

Let’s keep our eyes and ears open for new opportunities from clients and through your connections/networks. Do not let a phone call or conversation end without asking “So, what else is going on out there that we should be looking at?”

…And when you do hear about something, try to collect some basic information: What, where, when, why, how, who…

You might think this is common sense, but I sure do not hear it much these days (and I don’t practice it much myself: but I should). It is a great reminder for me, and I’m passing it on to you. I have done this before and had others do it to me…and it works. It is a way to ask for referrals, in a nice way!

Example, a remodeler, when finishing up a job to a happy client can end the call with, “Appreciate you working with my company Mrs. Jones. By the way, have you heard any of your friends discuss when they might be doing a remodel?”

Have you had success using a similar “close” to a conversation? Love to hear about it.

The dust has begun to settle on Social Media sites. The majority of the world is familiar with Facebook, Blogging, YouTube and Twitter. A few extra geeky people know how to use Google+ too. The dust has also settled on Social Media Marketing. How’s that? What I mean is that the pace is slowing and the online culture is maturing. Most consumers are familiar with the common social sites, and have a certain taste regarding what they want to see on their wall, their Twitter feed or their search results. Often people like to engage their preferred businesses online, but fickle opinions can turn quickly to annoyance and frustration if the company is doing too much social media marketing.

Keeping it Social and Real

We have all done some form of networking in our life. We begin a casual conversation, chat a bit about what each person does, and end by exchanging contact information. Sound familiar? The people that achieve success through networking are those who keep it real and are genuine. They are considered good social networkers. They know how to engage and talk to people.

Who are the ones who fail at social networking? Those who talk too much and don’t have the permission to keep talking! We all know people who are just annoying. They try so hard to get their marketing message out that it actually turns people away. At a networking event, we try to avoid this type of person like the plague–we just can’t stand listening to him toot his own horn. This same annoying person exists today online.

Folks have taken their same social struggles with them online. They think the ticket to more business is posting more often, sharing more videos, liking other people’s post, and so on. I’ve watched numerous businesses who have hundreds (or thousands) of followers, yet have almost no two-way engagement. In other words, they are posting, liking, and sharing, but not getting any real response from the audience. That word, “audience,” is the problem. We need to invite them to be participants.

I once listened in on a webinar where a social media expert on Facebook told her listeners that Facebook engagement really won’t take off until you have at least 500 fans (likes). What she didn’t say is what type of fans. How about real fans: people who really like your service or product. This is known as permission marketing. It makes perfect sense. You use social media marketing carefully, and to those who really are followers. Then you use common sense to know how much sharing is too much.

I personally don’t think a service company should be posting more than 1-2 times a week. The companies that really do well posting more often with good engagement are those who have a very unique product or service. For example, I’ve seen a startup brewery get a lot of new likes and engagement when it posted pictures or a status update. Why? Because it is a very unique and new business. People are excited to be part of something new. Now that business owner will need to keep up with being real and engaging with his audience. He will have to make sure he never becomes the annoying social outcast (yes, it can happen even to a brewery).

A Quick Review: Be a common sense business owner, keeping your marketing real, unique and engaging. Don’t embarrass your product or service with multiple annoying posts a day, thinking you’ll reach more people.

Have you ever been discouraged to find a competitor you did not know you had above you on the first page of Google? You’ve worked hard to stay on or near the top right? You look at their web page and it looks terrible and you think, “How on earth did this one make the top rank?”

This blog post is just a quick reminder to stay the course on good web marketing practices. Don’t worry about your competitors. Just keep doing what you know is best.

So what is “best” you might ask? Be more genuine and real on your website. Google is aware that there tend to be some pretty bad websites on their search engines who are using “black hat’ techniques to get ranked. They have actively begun to crack down on these websites. Over the next year, I think you’ll notice many of those sites will get removed or moved down in the ranks. This includes video marketing too (just fyi). Those who are genuine with content and post regularly on a blog should very well be rewarded by Google.

So now you are wondering what can you write about that would be interesting to read? I’ll leave you with two ideas, 1) Continue to answer questions that your customers have about your industry or your particular company. And 2) begin writing about the projects you are doing: tell the story! Don’t be concerned if people don’t subscribe or follow you in 2013. Just stay real and consistent. Be the place that people think about when they think of your service. When they land on your website, tell your story; and tell it well!

The prompting for this particular post is because I’ve seen proof of some of the sites I’ve worked hard on practicing what I’ve preached, and they are ranking a lot better today than they did even a year ago. We didn’t change anything. We just stayed consistent and continued to write and post good information. Those spammy sites are now ranking below!

How do you afford to market your business?

How much should you spend on marketing?

Two great questions! Small business owners often ask me this, bogged down by the head trash that they can’t afford to spend money on marketing. There are a number of ways to answer this, depending on your specific business marketing situation.

Marketing Is Not Always About Spending Money

For some of you, you don’t have to spend money to market your business. Instead, you have to spend your time. Everything you already do is marketing: networking, making phone calls, knocking on doors, blogging, social networking, etc. You sell yourself and you sell your services. That is one way to “save money.”

But then you have to ask yourself, “How much is my time worth? Is this the best use of my time to grow my business?” Maybe it is for a little while, but when you start booking work, you should consider spending some money to have someone else handle the details of your marketing, so you can get yourself out of the “hourglass.” If you really want to grow your business and manage your business, you will need more marketing manpower.

You Can’t Afford NOT to Market

I’ve said this before in other blog posts and borrowed this saying from others: Marketing is everything you do or don’t do in your business. The way you answer your phone calls or respond to emails is marketing. You are (hopefully) telling your prospects something positive about the way you run your business. So you can’t afford not to market. You are always marketing. Therefore, make your marketing shine. Make changes in your business that will make every prospect want to become a customer for life.

Create a Marketing Plan

The best way to know how much money to spend on marketing is to do a bit of planning. It is not a lot of fun for most of us, but the more you know about your business, the better. It is actually very rewarding to know how much a lead actually cost or what your closing percentage is on any given job. My clients typically run monthly or quarterly reports on their marketing efforts. We then look at where all their leads come from, how many were sold, lost and what the cost of those jobs were. We then can determine which efforts we’ll continue, will cut or put more effort into in the future. So market research and review are vital to the success of your company. I will add that, depending on your business, not all marketing dollars will convert right away. Sometimes you have to create a plan that is primarily branding-related.

I recently had a customer tell me he didn’t really like advertising with a certain vendor. He thought it was too expensive and wasn’t sure the return on investment was worth it. I asked him to send me a market and sales source report. I ran the numbers and came back to my client and said he should spend more with that vendor! Why? Because his closing ratio was very high, his average job cost was good, and the amount of leads he received were more than any other source. Therefore, if he cut the marketing dollars down, he’d cut his total revenue down as well. He took my advice and spent more with this outfit.

Basically you need to know what your revenue goal is for the given year. What do you want to produce? Then you look at past data if you have it. If you don’t…do the best you can. Then you can put together a plan and calendar of how you’ll plan to market your business. Depending on your industry, you might need to set aside 2-3% of your targeted annual revenue goal and sometimes 4-5 or even 8-10%. As an example, most painters I work with average 3-5% for an established business. If they are new and just starting out, they would budget 7-10% of their revenue goals on marketing.

To Sum it Up

Here is a good practice on how you can begin to “afford” to market your business. When you finish a job, begin setting aside 5% for marketing efforts such as your website, mailers, trade shows, etc. Do this during a healthy month of business when sales are good. Then after 30 days, take that 5% and create a basic plan of how you’ll spend that money on marketing efforts. It is really about being disciplined and consistent, which will bring you the results you are looking for. The companies that are successful with generating leads don’t stop marketing.