Happy Customers Keep Coming Back

In the past month, I have replaced three cell phones for our remodeling company. The phones were old (at least two years old) and had worn out. It was time to upgrade. Of course, not all three phones went out at the same time! So I made three separate trips to my local Verizon store.

A problem developed with one of the new phones. The talk time was way too short for our Production Coordinator who uses her cell phone constantly throughout the day. She found herself re-charging the battery at least twice a day. She asked if there was anything that could be done to fix this problem.

So I took her phone back down to the local Verizon store. When I purchased the phone, the sales person told me about a 30 day exchange program. If we didn’t like the phone, bring it back within 30 days and they will exchange it for no charge other than the additional cost of the new phone, if any.

The problem was it was day 38.

I politely explained the situation to the store manager and asked what could be done to alleviate the problem.

To my surprise, he acknowledged that the 30 day limit had passed but, since I was a regular customer, he would make the exchange anyway. So I ended up buying a better phone.

Sometimes good customer service means bending the rules. Not a lot, just a little. Happy customers come back and tell their friends. Do what you can to keep your customers happy.

Healthy Sales from a Healthy Attitude

I recently had my best sales month. It was my best sales month in the history of my company. Yes, the most I’ve ever sold in one month in 22 years of selling remodeling.

And it was right in the middle of the current economic crisis. And did I mention that my county has the highest foreclosure rate in the state?

How did I do it? It has a lot to do with my attitude. You see, Annette and I decided that we are not going to participate in the current economic downturn.

Sound silly? It’s not. Our attitudes have a lot to do with how we view the world around us. And we decided that we are not going to view it through a lens of doom and gloom. Instead we know that there are people out there who need and want to buy remodeling services. And then we set out to find them!

It felt great to reach a very high goal. And we rewarded ourselves with a nice dinner out. And then it was back to work on the next month.

Book Review: Fearless Living

I recently read the new book, The Essential Laws of Fearless Living by Guy Finley. Guy says that we have an insatiable desire to be someone in the world. What drives that? The wish for power, he asserts. We think that power will put us above the world of the ordinary. It will move us out of our unremarkable daily lives and into a life of excitement and pleasure. We are running from the fear of being no one. But, as Guy points out . . .”what we resist persists.” So by living in fear and discouragement because we are unable to move away from the fear, we are only bringing more of the same feelings! It’s a vicious, never-ending circle. We try using power to control and possess others – a really bad idea Guy points out because by trying to control another person, we are, in fact, giving our power over to that person. So not only are we not in control, someone else has control over us! Not exactly what we had in mind. So instead of trying to control others, give to others what we ask from them. That is the secret to receiving what we wish for from others

Most of us automatically resist the unknown. But in order to become fearless, we must practice self-liberation. We live in negative states of self-doubt and fear. But if we realize that these states are voluntary, not mandatory, we can begin to free ourselves from their imprisonment. The more we think negative thoughts, the more we sink into negativity. And the more we live in negativity, the more we react negatively. We must realize that negative reactions make nothing better!

So how do we become fearless? By letting go of those limiting beliefs. And how do we find our limiting beliefs? Through self-reflection and thought. Put a question to ourselves – such as, what do I fear? – and really think about the response. Self-awareness puts us in touch with the higher intelligence that already lives within all of us.

Stop trying to change the world that we see. Instead begin by changing the way we see the world. Work on the inner first and the outer will follow.

Need some new customers? Look to your past customers first.

Chances are if you have been in business for any length of time, you are sitting on a potential goldmine of work.

That’s right, your past customers have more work for you to do. And they have friends and family who have work for you to do.

That’s assuming that you did a bang up job the first time around. And that is all the more reason to make sure that you do!

Past customers always have more work. Remodeling is funny like that. Once a customer remodels one area of the home, the remodeling fever has been ignited.

It’s your job to keep the fire burning and to keep your name in front of your past customer. How do you do that? By establishing personal relationships with them.

Send them thank you’s, anniversary cards, newsletters, we miss you letters, Christmas or Thanksgiving cards, Valentines Day cards, e-mails. Or just stop in to see them or give them a call on the phone. The idea is to keep that personal relationship going.

Staying in touch with happy, satisfied customers will bring you more work.

Regards,
Annette

You and the Economy

Do you listen to the economic forecasters?

You shouldn’t.

Why, you might ask?

Because all those talking heads you see on tv and the articles on-line and in the newspapers discussing recession, inflation, and the housing market crisis are generalizing the economy for the entire country.

The truth is that the economy is not the same in all areas of the country. This is an awful big nation! And you will find differing economies in different regions.

An even bigger truth is that within each region and even within each county and city you will find some areas where homes are selling well and people have jobs and money. There will be other areas where things are not so good.

The geographic area that our remodeling company serves also happens to have the highest foreclosure rate of any other county in the state. If I bought into the doom and gloom, I’d probably just close up shop for the next several years and wait it out.

But I don’t buy it! At the beginning of the year we set our company goals high. And, guess what? We are right on track.

How do you keep all of those negative commentaries out of your head? It’s simple. Turn them off! Turn off the talking heads and the daily economic gloom.

Instead listen to something positive. Buy some tapes on selling strategies or marketing. Listen to a motivational speaker. Anything but the negativism.

Because the only economic forecast that really matters is the one that you create in your own head.

What Is a Small Remodeling Company, Anyway?

Have you ever thought about what being a small remodeling company means?

I started to think about the connotation of the word “small.” I even went to the dictionary to look it up. And sure enough, “small” did not have the positive message that I was hoping for. According to Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary, one meaning of small is “Being of slight consequence; feeble in influence or importance; unimportant; trivial; insignificant; as, a small fault; a small business.”

Wait! A small business--insignificant? Unimportant? That is definitely not the meaning I was expecting! And yet, that was exactly why the word “small” was bothering me. It just doesn’t fit. It’s not what small business is all about. And I’m sure it’s not what your company is all about. So I set out to find another word that meant small but had a positive ring.

Interestingly, the US Census Bureau does not define small and large businesses. Instead it provides “statistics” that it says “. . . allows users to define business categories in any of several ways.” You can visit those statistics on-line . Looking at the statistics for nonemployers (those companies that do not have employees), I find that these companies account for over 75% of the firms in the U.S. but only account for 3 ½% of the revenue. That makes sense. And that’s not even counting the companies who have a couple of employees. So I guess if I was looking at the pure number of small companies versus large companies, defining a small company as insignificant is a misnomer. But looking at revenues, it’s not!

Now the US Small Business Administration does define small versus large businesses. And checking the Specialty Trade Contractors found in Subsector 238 under Construction, I found that the cut-off for small versus large is $13 million. Wow! That’s a lot of money! I dare to say that many remodeling and trade contractors would never come close to making $13 million in a year.

And then I became curious as to how many remodeling and trade contractors do actually make more than $13 million a year. I checked out Qualified Remodelers Top 500 listing for 2007 and found that only 69 contractors out of 500 fit that bill. That’s a little over 13% of the list. That leaves a good 86% of the Top 500 remodeling companies in the country that are considered small businesses.

So now I’m seeing that “small” as in small remodeling company cannot have a negative connotation when a majority of the businesses in this industry fall in that category.

Build Your Own Field of Dreams

The other night I couldn’t sleep (a result of too much on the mind), so I aimlessly flipped through the channels until I came across one of my favorite movies, “Field of Dreams.” The premise, in case you’ve never seen it, is that an Iowa farmer receives messages from “the beyond” to “build it and they will come.” He proceeds to plow over perfectly good fields of corn (a cash crop) and erects a baseball field, complete with lights and stands for visitors. His wife thinks he’s crazy, his family thinks he’s crazy and his community thinks he’s crazy. But then other people start seeing the ball players who have come to play at Ray’s Field of Dreams – ballplayers from the past long since dead. And his wife and young daughter start to believe. He is sent more messages from beyond and Ray sets out on several adventures, picking up a famous writer and then a doctor who once played with Shoeless Joe Jackson.

Many ascribe the “Build It and They Will Come” philosophy to how not to build a business. There is a valid point there. Many businesses have failed because the owner did not find out if his or her product or idea is a viable one.

But in the movie, the voice beckons, Ease His Pain. And isn’t that exactly what we try to do in our businesses. We are trying to ease someone’s pain.

But easing just one person’s pain will not get you very far in business. Hopefully there are others with the same pain that need the same service.

And in the movie, that premise plays out at the end. Ray’s pain of having separated from his father at an early age is healed. At the dramatic conclusion, we then see a column of headlights as far as the eye can see down that rural Iowa farm road. These are others with the same or similar pains, coming to be healed.

Now I know it’s just a movie, but the similarities are there. We find someone with a problem. We solve it. We test to see if there are others with the same or similar problem. We find them. We tell them about how we can solve their problems. Only then will they begin to come.

You can build your own field of dreams. But don’t expect your business to flourish just because you’ve begun a new enterprise. There is a lot of work involved in getting those people to know you are there and to believe in you enough to buy from you.