Pages

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Take my part-time pressure wash business to a full-time operation

Hey, Pete: I lost my job recently and the only chance I have is to take my part-time residential pressure wash business to a full time operation. The weather is turning and I just can’t make the phone ring. Any ideas that might help? – Steve J.

Steve, you are really up against the odds here. My first thought for a guy with your kind of budget restraints is networking. Meet as many people as possible and tell them who you are and what you do. Here are some off the cuff ideas:

• Advertise in community newsletters ($30 - $50 each)

• Make sure you are listed WITH ANY CREDENTIALS you have on EVERY business locater web site. It means yp.com, local yellow pages, yelp, kudzu, etc. That also means Facebook and Twitter, too.
• Join BMI and CC
• Find out who acts as Welcome Wagon for new home owners in the best subdivisions. Do work for that person (for free?) so he or she can see your quality. Get that person to include your “welcome” gift in the package
• Speak to a Homeowners Association meeting/ Garden Club/ Home Improvement Committee. Hand out calendars or pens or business cards. DO NOT buy cheap business cards!
• Write “How To” articles for the same newsletters you advertise in. If you are a lousy writer, get your mother or sister to clean up what you write. Try to be seen as the expert.
• Every job you do, you have to sell to the twelve houses around that customer. (3 on the right, 3 on the left, six across the street) Put something in the mailbox saying “I just did a great job on the driveway at XXX, and I would like to do a great job on yours too”. That will work!
• Is your truck lettered, or do you just use a magnetic sign – or worse, no sign? Image is everything, so at least buy some logo golf shirts to wear to do an estimate.
• Do your estimates with the customer present and ask for the work on the spot. Never just leave an estimate in the mailbox or tucked in the screen
• This is not the best advice to give, but you need to think “outside the box” as they say. Stand in the pressure wash area of a home improvement warehouse store and offer advice with your logo shirt on from about 5-7 in the evening Wednesday through Friday. Shoppers are just off work and thinking about buying stuff for their weekend projects. These stores have way too few employees and customers are always looking for free advice. You might get the chance to give one a price.
• Hand out business cards for gutter cleaning outside one of those same home improvement stores on Saturday morning. It is a job no homeowner wants to do. (The store will boot you out once they discover you are there, but not before you get 50 handed out to potential customers. Don’t stand right in the doorway where you can be seen.)
• Order the marketing manual for more ideas.

No guarantee that any of these things will work for you. The important thing is to try everything possible. The worst thing that will happen is that you will sharpen your people skills pretty quickly doing this stuff.

Your first challenge is to get some jobs. After that, we need to go to work on making you fast and good at doing those jobs. From that point, success will come.

Joining any association will eventually lead to contact with other contractors who will share good information. Not all information you get will be of equal value, however, so you have to be selective. The guy who readily shares his “secrets” with you could really be on the verge of going under, and you would not know it. You should limit your sources to folks you know (or can easily see) have reached sales in the millions (or at least hundreds of thousands) and model your behavior and thinking to be like them. Politely ignore the guy who is doing $60K a year in sales.

The internet can be a source for information, too, but be warned that it is full of misinformation at the same time. It seems like everybody has something to sell to guys in your shoes. There is no magic potion you can buy for $1000 that will fix your situation. On the other hand, thinking more like successful business owners will almost always solve your problems in time.

Again, be selective. The most successful people you have ever heard of aren’t openly sharing their formulas. You will never see Warren Buffet popping up on web sites bragging about what he knows and what stock he is buying next. That man is too busy making money to waste his time like that. People on the internet sometimes claim credentials and results that are completely fabricated. I know guys who modestly and quietly do millions of dollars in profitable sales, and I also know a guy who loudly claims to be a marketing guru and cannot afford gas for his truck.

As far as joining organizations, they are excellent networking opportunities. You should attend their functions (i.e. Columbus PWNA Convention last month). Joining will get you listed on the associations’ “Find A Contractor” pages, but I cannot honestly say that will get you enough work anytime soon that would justify spending $300 or $400 today. Instead, I would rather see you spend that amount on marketing your services and improving your image and/or professional level at this stage of the game. Join next spring when you can breathe a little easier.

There have been a number of industry Round Table events over this last year, including one at our shop in Georgia. It was a two-day meet, with equipment demonstrations, speakers, new products, etc. It was FREE, which fits your budget to a “T”. If you read my newsletter you will always know when events like this are happening. We are planning to put on a Round Table again next April in Georgia.

You may or may not be doing any reading these days, particularly with the stress of making your business work. If not, though, I think you have to change your habits right now. Reading will make all the difference in your success. We will start easy with a couple of key concepts for you.

Here is your first ‘homework assignment: Check out a book on Guerrilla Marketing by Levinson at the library. Once you have read one or more (it is a whole series) then read these articles as supplemental inspiration. The idea is to change how you think, so that you become an automatic “marketing machine” even though your budget is limited.

http://www.gmarketing.com/what-guerrillas-know-about-email

http://www.gmarketing.com/where-and-when-to-begin-marketing

http://www.gmarketing.com/the-process-of-marketing

http://www.gmarketing.com/entrepreneurial-thinking

While you are at it, check out the book “e-Myth Revisited” at the library. It is a fast read, but go slow anyway. It teaches experienced business owners not to bake the pies (you will understand after you read) but it teaches new business owners to start on Day One with systems. Required reading for EVERY business owner because it changes how you think about setting up and running your business.

The next step will be books on sales techniques. You need this information, but you shouldn’t go there until you have these other things (systems and marketing) planted firmly in your thought processes.

My philosophy is that you have to think and act like the owner of a successful business in order to achieve that goal. From the very first day, behave the same as you would behave if you were the President of Ford or Apple. Read the thoughts of industry leaders in order to think like they think, and your business will feel the difference immediately.

Sorry for rambling here, as I am taking calls in between sentences and new thoughts just kind of pop in all the time.

You can do this, my friend, and you haven’t spent a nickel so far learning how. Just do what I am suggesting and we will grow your business together.

Good luck with all of this! Thank you for being a customer of Sun Brite Supply, too.

Pete

No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you for your interest in my Blog. I encourage you to submit your own comments or posts. If appropriate, new posts will be reviewed and published within a day.

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.