Posted by Rich Harshaw on May 13, 2014.
Post Category: Quick Tips.
The First Thing You Have To Do Is Find A Way Make People NOT Want To Kill You…
Old School Canvassing Requires A Van, Constant Hiring & Firing,
And The Nerve Of A Mormon Missionary.
Here’s An Easier, More Effective Method That WORKS.
Written by Rich Harshaw
Note: This article is part of Monopolize Your Marketplace’s ongoing “Contractor Marketing Quick Tips” series. This information is not meant to be comprehensive; it’s simply meant to give you some quick ideas.
I know a thing or two about “the nerve of a Mormon Missionary” and knocking doors. I spent two solid years in Taipei, Taiwan in 1988-1990 knocking door and learning every Chinese way imaginable to say “GET LOST!!!!” I’ve been chased by dogs, threatened by what appeared to be mobsters, and have had countless (and I mean COUNTLESS) doors literally slammed in my face.
But two years is a long time… and I don’t really handle rejection very well—in any language. So I experimented and found some interesting ways to lower the number of rejections, and lighten them when they did occur. I also found many ways to get invited into people’s home and have intelligent, productive conversations with them.
So when I started working in contractor marketing, one of my first orders of business was to help home improvement companies with canvassing. The advice below isn’t meant to be the comprehensive treatise on canvassing—that will come later in a different post. But I do want to share some things that I know will work better than what you’re doing now.
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Posted by Rich Harshaw on May 8, 2014.
Here’s A Plan To Plant Some Money Now… And Harvest Even More Money Later.
Once You Know What Your “Most Important Number” Is, You’ve Got To Find The Cash To Pay For The Marketing. Here’s How You Do It…
Written by Rich Harshaw.
Last blog posting I challenged you to set a goal using my “Most Important Number” method.
In a nutshell, your Most Important Number is the number of sales per month you need to get in your bread & butter product category that would get you where you want to be, financially speaking.
So if you’re currently selling an average of 8 window jobs a month (assuming windows is your “main” product), would 20 jobs per month get you where you want to be? What about 25? Or 50?
Whatever that number is, that’s your Most Important Number. Go back and read the posting again to fully absorb the concept.
This week’s challenge is more formidable: to figure out how to get the money to create the marketing budget to get to your Most Important Number. While we’re doing that, we’ll also cover how to spend the money.
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Posted by Rich Harshaw on May 6, 2014.
Everybody WANTS To Be Swimming In Cash… Here’s Some Practical Contractor Marketing Advice To GET YOU THERE.
You Need To Find Your “Most Important Number”; It’s The Missing Link Between Where You Are Now And Where You Want To Be.
Written by Rich Harshaw.
Let’s talk about goal setting for a minute.
If I ask 100 remodeling contractor business owners to tell me their goals for their business, 100 of them will respond in terms of an annual dollar figure: $1 million in sales. $3 million in sales. $10 million in sales. Whatever their number is.
While these goals are commendable, they’re also big, vague, and hard to wrap your brain around. If you’re currently doing $1 million in sales and you’d like to get to $2 million, it’s nearly impossible to see how to get from point A to point B. These kinds of goals are stillborn; they lack power to motivate because they’re too hard to conceptualize.
Which is why I encourage remodelers to figure out their MOST IMPORTANT NUMBER instead.
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Posted by Rich Harshaw on May 6, 2014.
Be Careful. You Might Accidentally Make Your Entire Town Hate You.
And The Phones That Just Kept On Ringing.
Do Not Try This At Home.
Written by Rich Harshaw.
I’m serious. Sometimes the stuff that works is so specific to a situation that it’s not really replicable anywhere else. If you try to do or use what I’m about to show you, you very well might fail. You’ve been warned.
So… I recently gave you some examples of some radio ads used by a company in a small town. I got a lot of positive feedback from professional, small-town remodelers who said they could identify with that kind of company. I love writing and running those kinds of ads because they do such a wonderful job of capturing the company’s identity and communicating it with power, precision, and passion.
But sometimes—for reasons known only to myself—I stray from the middle of the road into some pretty strange paths.
Nordine Remodeling is one of those cases. I met George Nordine and his wife Sandy 4 or 5 years ago at a seminar. George is one of those big, burly teddy bear contractors; he’s a super nice, super honest, “never harm a fly” kind of guys. He ran (and still runs!) a nice little roofing and remodeling company in Normal, Illinois. I had a lot of fun using Aim ‘N Flame negotiation tactics with his Yellow Pages rep.
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