Top 12 Mistakes Contractors Make When Selling Their Services

by Luis Chavez | Aug 18, 2020 | Offline Marketing, Sales

Top 12 Mistakes Contractors Make When Selling Their Services

What does your top competitor have that you don’t? They likely have a better sales funnel than you. You are likely missing out on many new better paying clients because you are not aware of some of the mistakes you are making in your sales funnel. If you get 100 leads, but out of those 100 leads you only convert 35 of those leads into clients. This means you likely have some leakage in your funnel. Here are some ideas that will help you plug those leaks from your sales funnel. These are mistakes contractors can make when selling their services:

1) Not Having Quality Leads Can Be a Mistake When Selling Services

I often see contractors sign up with companies that promise them leads. The problem is that many of the leads they are buying are also being shared with other contractors. Also, sometimes these leads are looking for jobs under $300. Therefore, it’s important that you first focus on creating marketing strategies that can get you quality leads. Showing up on Google for high intention to buy keywords will help you generate more quality leads. You can accomplish this by having a high-quality website and great search engine optimization. You can also sign up to create a Google ads campaign. This will allow you to only bid on keywords that are likely to convert into higher-paying clients. The key is to focus on getting the right traffic and not lots of traffic. You can use Google Ads’ Keyword planner to find the best keywords for your business.

Mistakes Contractors Make When Selling Their Services Without Leads

2) Not Answering Your Phone Is Something to Avoid When Selling Services

Congratulations! Your phone is ringing and it’s a new lead! Do you answer your phone 100% of the time? I am often shocked at how many of our clients have missed calls when we look at their Google ads report. We normally share this report with the owner of the business and the receptionist and like magic the percentage of missed phone calls dramatically decrease. It’s not uncommon to see our clients have 20% of their phone calls be missed phone calls. We understand that you are driving, with a client, or on the job site and can’t answer the phone. However, that phone call you missed could have been one of your most profitable projects. You’ll likely call them back and start playing phone tag, but by the time they answer your phone call, they are already signing a contract with your competitor.
leakage 2

3) Not Having Good Phone Skills As a Contractor Can Be a Mistake

How many of the leads that call you to turn into appointments? If you answer your phone and have a system in place that generates quality leads, then the answer should be 80% to 90% or higher. Your goal should be to set up the appointment and pre-qualify your client to see if they would be a good customer. You are more likely to set up the appointment if you focus on asking the lead more questions. This way they feel better understood. You’ll want to close the conversation with “For me to get you an accurate estimate, then I’ll need to set up a meeting with you. Are you available this week or next week? Tuesday or Friday? Morning or afternoon? Baam! You closed your appointment and didn’t lose the lead by having the prospect say, “Let me check my calendar and I’ll call you back”.

The Most Successful Contractors Use Quality Phone Skills To Sell Their Services

4) Not Confirm Your Appointments

Before heading out to your appointment you should set up your e-mail to send them a reminder the day before. You can do this by adding them to your Google calendar under “invite”. Moreover, you should always confirm the appointment over the phone. It’s not uncommon for people to say, “Oh, I forgot! Was that today?” Unfortunately, by now you’ve wasted time and gas by showing up to an appointment that could have gone to a paying client. This is an avoidable mistake contractors can make when selling services that can be solved by confirming your appointments.

Appointment Reminder

5) Not Having Compelling Proposals Is a Mistake Contractors Can Make

One of the worst things you can do is to compete based on price because there is always someone that can do it cheaper. Explain to them why you are better than your competitors, show them your portfolio, certifications, reviews, and ask plenty of questions. If you can better understand why they want something, then they are more likely to buy from you because you understand their needs and wants. One thing to also keep in mind in this step is to make sure you only take on clients that aren’t going to suck the life out of you. One bad client can sometimes drain your time, energy, and sanity. If you see many red flags, then sometimes it’s best to say no to a customer that you know will be a headache.

Not Having a Good Proposal Is a Mistake Contractors Make When Selling Their Services

6) Not Having a CRM

Do you have a system in place that documents all of your leads? We like to use bitrix24 because it offers a lot of bells and whistles for free. Sometimes you’ll have the perfect proposal for your prospect but they still won’t buy from you. It’s not you, it’s me. As a result, you must document all of your leads into a CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software and create a follow-up system. You are more likely to get that lead as a client because your competition won’t have the stamina to follow up on that lead that you did an estimate for 6 months ago. If you need help setting this up, then feel free to reach out and we’ll get it done for you.

Leakage 6

7) Providing Mediocre Service

Sometimes it can be tempting to cut corners when you are feeling overwhelmed and busy with many projects. However, it is critical that your customers are not just satisfied with your service. It is extremely important that they are completely satisfied, because without it, then you won’t be able to plug the leakages mentioned below.

Mediocre Service is a Mistake Contractors Can Make When Selling Their Services

8) Not Asking For Referrals Can Be a Mistake Contractors Can Make

Congratulations! You have completed a job and you did amazing. Now what? You may often assume that your customers will often refer you because you did a great job. The fact is that people are more likely to refer you to their friends or family if you ask them the direct question. “Do you know anybody that can benefit from our services? We can get you a $50 gift card for any successful referrals.” Try it! I promise you won’t regret it. You will only have to pay them $50 if their lead turns into a client.

Referral Example

9) Not Asking For Reviews

If people are spending a considerable amount of money with you, then they are likely to be reading your reviews online. Therefore, you must send a text message and e-mail to all of your completely satisfied customers with a direct link that will allow them to write a glowing review about your business. You should make it a habit to have your customers write a review as soon as you finish a project. You are more likely to get more leads if you have 33 glowing reviews versus your competition that has 5 average reviews. If you need help with this, then call us at 559-553-5000 and we’ll help you get a direct review link setup.

Asking For a 5 Star Review Isn't Mistake Contractors May Make When Selling Their Services

10) Not Cross-Selling or Up-Selling Is a Mistake Contractors Can Make

The people that are more likely to buy from you are your existing clients. Do you keep a database of your existing clients? When was the last time someone from your staff called them and said, “Hello Mr. Smith, this is ____ from ABC company, We helped you with ________ back in __________. Everything working out well? I am glad to hear that! What other home improvement projects did you have in mind? Or when was the last time you did maintenance on _____? This alone will help you generate more sales from the people that already know and trust you.

Repeat Customer Example

11) Not Documenting Your Sales Funnel Systems Is a Misstep That Contractors Can Make

Great job! You’ve been able to plug all your leaks mentioned above. However, the key to any business is to have your business run smoothly without your presence or with little involvement. We recommend that you create a Google drive folder and document all of your step by step guides. All of your checklists, scripts, resources, onboarding process, offboarding process, etc. This way your managers can easily train new employees or help your existing staff follow your systems. If you don’t document these things, then your staff will begin to default back to whatever feels easier for them. For example, they’ll probably get a phone call from a lead but do a mediocre job, because you didn’t document the script with the questions, they should be asking to qualify your leads. Moreover, you might get someone that quits and now the new person doesn’t know how to use the CRM system you had in place and you don’t have anybody that can train them. If you have video tutorials and guide on how to better work your sales funnel, then you are more likely to have your business run smoothly when you are not present. The goal is to have you make more money with less time from you. You are more likely to accomplish this if you document your systems and get your staff to buy into them.
leakage 11

12) Not Tracking and Adjusting

If you don’t win a project, then do you know why? Are you documenting the reasons why people have decided not to do business with you? Maybe your proposals weren’t itemized or maybe your competition has a nicer portfolio. Perhaps your reviews are lower than your competition. It’s important that you document this data. This way you can adjust your approach and get better results. Remember when you assume you make an ASS of U and ME. Don’t be afraid to ask the difficult question: “Mr. customer I understand you decided to not hire us for your project. I was hoping you could give us some feedback as to why you chose to not hire us.”. This data is so critical because without it you’ll never really know the best way to adjust your approach. Are you currently tracking where your leads are coming from? It’s important to track every dollar and every phone call. For example, if you spent $500 on your marketing, then how many phone calls did that generate for you. How many of those phone calls were quality leads? As digital marketers, we love to look at reports and numbers. We are obsessed with knowing what’s going to get you the best results possible. We believe in helping you get the maximum results for as little as possible. Call us today at 559-553-5000 and let us help you set up a marketing system and a stronger sales funnel that can potentially double or triple your sales.

Tracking Expenses

We hope you learned something new, but more importantly, we hope you found something that you can take action on. Remember that if the only thing we needed was more information, then we would all walk around with a nice six-pack. So, what action can you take today that can help you improve your sales funnel and stop the leakage in your business?

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How to Make Your Website More Persuasive With These Tips

by Luis Chavez | Feb 15, 2019 | Offline Marketing

Make Your Website More Persuasive

Making your website more persuasive can be achieved when you focus on the main goal of your website. Here are a couple of key questions that one should keep in mind: What are we selling? What message are we sending? How can we be the solution? How does our solution benefit our target audience? By addressing these questions you will be able to construct a persuasive message.

Who Is Your Target Market?

Knowing the audience to whom you are selling your product or services is very important. This will make your selling point extremely successful. Ask yourself, “Should I aim for quantity or quality? Am I speaking to an individualistic mentality or is it a collectivist mentality?” Individualism thinking is when you care about how it affects the person themselves.

How can your product or service impact them? This is different from collectivism thinking, which focuses more on the bigger picture. For instance, how is this going to benefit them as a group, team, community, or even their family?

Moreover, you’ll want to know the demographics of your customers. Income level, single or married, children or no children, location, gender, interest, and etc. Who is your ideal customer? As you will see in the next section researching your type of audience is key to having a more persuasive website.

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What Is Your Message

The message that you send to the targeted audience is the next quest. So having more than one message and several different approaches are important because there will always be more than one audience type. I often see customers try to sell all of their services under one web page instead of creating one dedicated web page per category.

For example, let’s say you have an auto mechanic shop and you have a web page named “Services” and on that page, you list tire service, engine repair, oil change, and brake repair service. The problem with this is that it’s too much information under one web page. Therefore, Google and other search engines will not rank you on the first page because it is too vague.

The better option would be to create separate dedicated web pages that talk about a specific category. Similar to what we did here with RJ Automotive website. If you look at their web page, you will notice that under services each category has its own dedicated web page.

This means that if you have a brake problem, then you will get the information you need on that brake problem on that web page without having to weed out all of the information that is not relevant to your problem.

Once you have categorized all of your services on your website, then you will want to take advice from the famous philosopher Aristotle by applying pathos and logos. By using pathos, you are using the emotional appeal that will target people with a high sense of value, integrity, and respect — people who want to know how this will benefit them personally.

For this approach, you can start by saying something like “Imagine what it would be like to ______” and then show an illustration that depicts the positive results of purchasing your product or service. You can also show a picture of the consequences of not buying your product or service.

When using logos you are using the logical approach. This approach focuses on what their concern is, how I am going to benefit from this, and is it going to help me make money or succeed in my business.

Finding out what type of people you are talking to works best in my point of view. When people are focused on what you are saying, you can slow down and concentrate on what message you are trying to get across.

This means less is more; the quality of information is going to make the difference. If your audience can’t focus on your message, then you will lose them.

I always laugh when I see billboards on the freeway that have way too much information because people simply don’t have the time to read them. The same applies to your website. If you have a banner or slideshow on your website then it needs to be clear and to the point, because you only have one to two seconds.

If your audience wants to learn more about your proposition, then there should be a call to action button like “Apply Now” or “Get Started Today!” or something to that effect. Moreover, people respond better when they feel a sense of connection.

Another form of sending a message would be to bring up problems that could be an issue for them. This brings us the question of how I can solve your problem.

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How can we be your solution?

One of my mentors used to say, “We get paid to solve people’s problems.” The more I thought about this, the more I realized it applied to my life every time I made a purchase.

It is important that we open up those questions. But make sure that you have put in the time to research what you are marketing and that you are prepared for foreseeable problems and solutions.

This will put you in advantage to direct the conversation as if you are a hero. You might even just start off your marketing effort with “Are you having these problems?” and then state that you can resolve them. Be sure that you come across as “The Problem Solver”. This gives the audience a sense of confidence in giving their time to listen to what is being offered.

Being specific, setting a vision, or a resolution is helpful in opening up their perspective to view in a different set of eyes that are not ready to shut you down.

How our solutions benefit them?

Building trust towards the audience is mutually beneficial for both the audience and the marketing effort.

People want to interact with people they trust and have similarities with. When you are offering solutions you get to know where they live, what they like, and what inspires them. This will give you and the audience a sense of connection that will allow them to receive your message without resistance.

People like to feel as if they have made a good choice.

The audience always wants to know that they can trust you and that you can get things done. Most importantly assure them that your customers are important to you. I always recommend that you get your clients to write reviews on Google local listings, Yelp local listings, or Facebook. For example, on this website you can see that the reviews are being sourced; therefore, it gives the review more authenticity.

The other benefit of doing this is that you create social proof. In other words, if all of these people can highly recommend this business, then they must have good service. In fact, according to Yext.com, a leading online directory service says that even a one-star increase in your reviews can increase your revenue by 9%.

Are you ready to start converting more of your existing visitors into paying clients? Knowing something is half the battle, but taking action on what you learned to make all the difference. What action will you take to help your website become more persuasive? If you don’t have the time or prefer to have an expert marketing agency like us help you, then please reach out to us today at 559-553-5000.

www.chavezwebdesign.com
Written by Noemi Chavez

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