Let’s take a quick trip to Imaginary Land…

Say you want to bring on another salesperson.

After poking around, you find a guy who has been in home improvement sales for 15 years.

You bring him in for an interview, and he nails it. He clearly has a ton of industry knowledge.

You call his old boss, who gushes about him. He tells you that your new sales guy knows how to close.

After you work out a base salary and commission package with the guy, he signs on.

You put him through your company’s sales training. He absorbs everything like a sponge.

So far, so great.

After a couple training and shadowing your top guy, for a few weeks the moment of truth comes. You hand him 10 leads…

… and he closes one sale.

Your company’s average closing rate is 33% for first-call closes, and 40% for follow ups.

Uh-oh.

The second week doesn’t go so hot, either: 12 issued leads, two sales.

The guy is a newbie, so you cut him some slack.

But things don’t improve in week three: 11 leads, and just a single sale.

You begin to get nervous.

You direct your sales manager to dig into the issue. He discovers your new salesman is not following your sales protocol… at all.

He drones on and on. He doesn’t ask prospects enough questions. He gets flustered after objections.

At this point, you’ve invested six weeks and over $10,000 in his hiring, training, leads, and salary.

Do you get rid of him?

Do you give him another chance?

Do you hop in your DeLorean, gun it to 88mph, and travel back in time to start over?

The answer is obvious…

YOU FIRE HIM, PRONTO!

He is not just falling short of your averages by a giant margin, but he’s also costing you a lot in lost revenue. If your typical sale is $8,000, the eight sales he lost cost you $32,000 in gross profit. You really have no choice but to fire him.

Logically, you’d also give the boot to any severely underperforming employee. Dreadful accountants, substandard installers, bad receptionists—anyone who isn’t pulling their weight.

So why do so many contractors stubbornly clinging to websites that don’t get the job done?

By that, I mean any website that doesn’t do what websites are supposed to do: Make prospects fall in love with your company so they contact you, schedule appointments, and hire you.

Actually, I already know the answer to my question. I’ve asked hundreds and hundreds of remodelers.

Here is usually what they tell me…

1.  Don’t Realize The Website Is Not Performing

This is by far the most common reason. Business owners often have no idea their losing prospects left and right because their sites lack the power to turn lookers into buyers. They don’t understand the key elements of conversion, which includes an Identity, headline funnel, social proof, and evidence.

2.  It’s A New Website And They Don’t Want To Start Over

This the second most common reason, but it makes zero sense. This is like holding on to the salesperson in the story above simply because you’ve already invested time and money in him. It’s an emotional, even prideful decision that’s illogical. It’s ALWAYS more expensive to keep an underperforming website (or employee) than it is to bite the bullet, start over, and do it right.

3.  No Confidence They Can Do Better

This relates to #1. It’s the misconception that all websites will perform about the same as long as they look relatively good. In addition, many business owners have already been through the “website development” ringer with a few marketing companies over the years, and they’re convinced that they all stink. While that conclusion is largely true, it’s not ALWAYS true.

4.  Get Compliments About Website

Cognitive dissonance on display here. It’s tough to believe your website is underperforming when everyone says it’s great. But consider the “tryout” episodes of American Idol. Someone who is AWFUL auditions and honestly thinks they are amazing. For years, family and friends have told them they are great. But when they are scrutinized by professional talent evaluators—and common sense—they’re clearly terrible. The “American Idol Effect” happens all the time with websites.

5.  Don’t Understand How Important A Website Is

This is becoming rarer these days. But there ARE still business owners who are convinced that only their repeat and referral business they’ve gotten the past 30 years can continue to sustain them. They simply don’t believe their lousy website hurts their sales. Except that’s not true. It’s exceptionally difficult to see the business you’re missing from a crummy website—after all, you don’t see (and therefore miss) the people who never call.

Is This You?

Clearly, a terrible salesperson is easier to spot than a money-sucking website. That’s why we provide free Website Conversion Audit for businesses curious to know if their website is pulling its weight.

We’ll scrutinize your website and grade it a 0 to 100 scale based on 18 specific elements.

It’s our opinion, but trust me… if we say your site scores a 32 out of 100, you have a lot of work to do. (By the way, the average score is 32 out of 100… yikes!) We’ll also analyze your SEO and PPC rankings and grade your “website visibility.”

If you discover you’re hemorrhaging opportunities, give yourself a break.

You’re in business, and you’re going to make mistakes. Those mistakes are going to cost you money sometimes. It stinks, but it’s called life. Just don’t continue to knowingly make the same mistake—that’s just silly!

Click here now to get your Website Conversion Audit.

P.S. Since I’m on the topic of great websites, I want to remind you about MYM’s Awesome Contractor-Referral Giveaway. If you know a contractor or company that needs to “fire” their current website and replace it with one that gets REAL results, refer them to us now. You’ll win an AMAZING gift if they become the next MYM client.

You’d Be Surprised How Often Contractors’ Marketing Fails To Explain What They Actually Want People To Know

Here’s A Sales Letter That Tells The Prospects Everything EXCEPT What’s Actually Important.

(And It’s A Lot More Common That You Might Think.)

By Rich Harshaw

I guess the thought of writing marketing just freezes most people’s brains.

There is really no other way to explain why there is such a massive gap between what people KNOW in their brains and what they SAY when they sit down to type up a marketing piece.

This letter (below) is a perfect example of what I’m talking about: It’s well written—your 11th grade English teacher would probably give this an A. It’s coherent—it makes a decent case for what the problem is. And it has a call to action—it asks the reader multiple times to call for a free inspection.

But behind the beautiful prose lurks this letter’s dark secret: IT’S TERRIBLE, and it WON’T WORK!

It’s terrible because it tells the reader a bunch of information he THINKS he already knows, that he doesn’t think applies to him. Meanwhile, the truly important part of the discussion is completely omitted. That’s right: the #1 thing that will make somebody take action is not in the letter at all.

That’s where I come in.
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When You Say Things That Make Sense To You…
But Not Your Prospects….
Your Sales Letter Is Not Going To Work!

Written by Rich Harshaw.

Beware of the “Curse of Knowledge.”

Simply put, it means that the more you know, the worse off you are. If you’re an expert in a particular field, it’s nearly impossible to imagine what it’s like to NOT know everything you know. So you tend to assume that others share that knowledge—even when they don’t.

The Curse of Knowledge is what causes window companies to brag to prospects about “extrusions” in their marketing and siding companies to quote prices “by the square.” Just because your entire living depends on understanding extrusions and squares, respectively, doesn’t mean your customers have the foggiest clue what you’re talking about.

The owner of an electric company recently submitted a two-page sales letter to me that was doomed by the Curse of Knowledge from the first paragraph to the last. Which meant that readers couldn’t understand the letter, which meant that they had no idea if they needed his services or not. Which meant that they didn’t call… which meant that he got no sales… which meant that he couldn’t buy his kid the GI Joe with the kung-fu grip for Christmas… and… well, you know. It was all downhill from there.

So let’s take a look at the letter. As you do, let me point out that I really like the Napoleon Dynamite-looking doodles and scribbles all over the page. They give the letter a certain kind of charm and appeal; they’re goofy but not stupid. They invite the reader to engage in the letter, but promise that it won’t be too heavy-handed. In short, I like it.
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Guessing Games Are Fun For Children And Game Shows, But Terrible For Advertising. You’ve Got To Take A More Direct Approach!

Written by Rich Harshaw.

A remodeler recently submitted the following ad to me for feedback and suggestions:

As my brain attempted to process what I was seeing, here were the thoughts/reactions, in order:

• That green font looks like it’s off the front of a can of Monster Energy Drink.
• Whatever this is stops bugs, pollen, rain, and wind—it must be some kind of fabric.
• What’s up with the secret service man? Why is he so angry?
• Huh?

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