Last Monday I took my wife to lunch at Panera Bread. I ordered half a sandwich and a bowl of soup; she got a salad and a Diet Coke.
The total bill: $24.95. For two people.
As we sat down to eat, I couldn’t shake the thought that I had just paid over twelve bucks per person. For lunch.
I’m not cheap, but still. $9.49 for a salad? $5.29 for a bowl of chicken noodle soup?
Wendy’s was only 100 yards away—we could have been in and out for around $10 total.
Oh, well. Happy wife, happy life, right?
Later that evening while half-watching the Texas Rangers game on TV while reading stuff on my phone, my wife suddenly and enthusiastically shouted, “Hey, I LOVE that salad! This is the commercial that made me want to go to Panera and get one!”
I looked up, and sure enough, there was the $9.49 Strawberry & Poppyseed salad that my wife had from Panera sitting on my TV, tempting women (and a few men) all over the Dallas-Fort Worth area to want one.
And in that stupid little story, my friends, is everything you need to know to grow your business to $10 million in sales. Or $20 million. Or $70 million. You name it.
Three crucial ingredients:
1. Sell awesome stuff that people genuinely love.
2. Charge high prices.
3. Use TV advertising.
In that order.
One of my clients started his kitchen and bath remodeling company in Kansas City in 2008—right as the recession was just getting started.
Despite that, in just four short years they had topped $10 million in sales (Year 1 – $1.5MM; Year 2 – $3.5MM; Year 3 – $6.8MM; Year 4 – $10.1MM). Now they’re edging toward $15MM, and possible national expansion.
They are the clear #1 kitchen and bathroom remodeler in KC—the next closest competitor only does something like $2MM.
Here is their formula for success:
1. Sell awesome stuff that people genuinely love.
2. Charge high prices.
3. Use TV advertising.
In that order.
I won’t go into detail about everything they do to build AWESOME kitchens and bathrooms that people genuinely love. That could be an entire book. And I’ll touch on it in a future post.
But I will tell you this: They have raised their prices by 15% an astounding FIVE times since starting the company.
That means a bathroom that used to be $10,000 is now something like $20,100.
Which is basically like charging $9.49 for a salad. Or $5.29 for a bowl of soup.
I’ll also tell you that they poured all of their profits for the first few years of the business into TV (and radio) advertising. All. Of. It.
They were spending $1 million a year on advertising long before they were doing $10MM in sales.
And now the owner, John, drives a Maserati. I’m not really into cars—but he drove me to the airport in it after shooting some TV ads last year and I have to admit, it’s a pretty sweet ride.
The formula is simple—but like anything else in life, there are details you need to know.
Which is why I’m offering my new 2-day seminar.
In the seminar, I will walk you through everything you need to know to break out of your current comfort zone and double, triple, quadruple your sales.
It’s not pie-in-the-sky BS. It’s what companies hire me to do.
John hired me because he wanted to go from $10MM to $20MM.
Also:
• I took an HVAC company from $40MM in 2011 to $130MM last year.
• I’m just now starting year 2 of a 5 year plan to grow a company in California from $30MM to $100MM.
• We’re about to start working with a $10MM company in MSP to get them to $30MM by 2020.
• A window and roofing company in the Midwest got stuck at $65MM and hired me to consult with them to get to $100MM.
• An east-coast window company has recently hired me to help get them from $80MM to $150MM.
It’s what I do. I’d like to show you how to do it.
To find out more about the Make The Jump seminar, head on over here.
P.S. In my next post, I’m going to tell you why you’re probably CHICKEN to raise your prices, and how to go ahead and do it anyway.
Click here to read more posts in my “Make The Jump” series:
© 2017, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.
