This actually ties in with part 2 where we covered staying in touch with your customers. Many businesses think they are doing a good job staying in touch with their customers if they send them their specials and advertising materials. This does keep in touch with your customers and it is better than not doing anything.

However, if you want really loyal customers, you have to send them stuff they want to receive. It is O.K. to send them specials and try to sell to them once in a while as long as a lot of the way you communicate with them causes them to want to get more stuff from you.

In other words, send them something they want to get from you. This can be done economically and create goodwill with your customers. There are actually a lot of ways you can do this.

One way you can do it is to send them cards for special events. One of the best is birthday cards. Almost everyone loves to receive birthday cards. If you send them to your customers, they will feel much warmer toward you just because you remembered their birthday.

Many businesses send Christmas cards so I think the return on them is watered down. However, you could send out Thanksgiving cards and that will really help you to stand out from the crowd. If you want to split up the year, you could also send out 4th of July cards. There are a lot of options here.

Another way you can send them something they want is to send them a gift certificate when they refer someone to you. If you do a great job for your customers, they will refer others to you. They will be more likely to do this again if they receive a thank you card with a gift.

My favorite way to send customers something they want to receive is to send out a monthly newsletter. Not many contractors do this, but I have done it for over 4 years now. I am doing more business now than I have ever done. I attribute most of that to my monthly newsletter.

A couple of rules about newsletters. First of all, don’t make much of it about your company or about what you do. Let them know what you do in each newsletter, but make most of the newsletter fun and enjoyable. Include things like jokes, stories and quotes. Also include personal articles in it to let your customers know that you are a real person.

If you would like to see a copy of my very successful newsletter, you can email me at herb@contractorriches.com . I can also do a newsletter for you every month. This is the easiest way to make sure that it gets done without creating more stress in your life.

The third way to do it is give great service after the job is done. Many contractors fail at this point. Part of the problem is that most contractors look at each job as a separate job by itself. The way they should look at it is as a way to get and keep a customer.

The difference is that a job is a one time thing. Once it is over, we have to find the next job and we don’t get any more money for that job. I think that is why many contractors do not give good service after the job is done. They don’t see any more money coming from that job, so it is not high on their priority list to do it.

On the other hand, if they look at the job as a way to get and keep a customer, then the relationship is an ongoing thing where the contractor can continually get and keep income coming from that customer, either from repeat business or from referrals.

This is the correct way to look at customers and jobs. That is why it is so important to offer great service after the sale is made. Customers are more likely to hire you if they know you will take care of them if they have problems.

If there is an issue with a job you have done, it needs to be addressed as soon as possible. The problems actually need to be taken care of before new jobs are scheduled. The quicker you take care of these issues,  the more impressed the customer will be.

You see, we live in a word where few businesses take care of their customers. If you show that you will respond very quickly to their problems, it impresses them and they are more likely to become a loyal customer. Customers usually can understand a mistake being made, but they aren’t so understanding if you don’t take care of the problem.

Other ways to offer service after the sale is to make sure you answer any questions they may have about the finished product, help them with warranty issues and get them paperwork or any documentation they may need for tax purposes or their records.

If you offer great service after the job is done, it will go a long way toward building loyal customers and keep the jobs coming in to keep you as busy as you want to be, at the prices you want to charge.

While doing an excellent job is is the beginning to creating loyal customers, that alone will not build loyal customers. The next thing you need to do to keep your customers loyal to you is to keep in touch with them on a regular basis.

So many times, contractors tend to think that if they do a great job for someone, then that customer will remain loyal to them for life and never do business with another contractor. This is a nice thought, but it does not portray reality.

The truth is that everyone’s memory fades as time goes by. We all lose touch with people that at one time we felt close to and had warm feelings toward. Your customers are no different. If you don’t make the effort to keep in touch with all of your customers on a regular basis, don’t be surprised if they choose another contractor when they need more work done 2 years from now.

Some contractors send something to their customers at Christmas or once or twice a year. I don’t think that is enough to keep your customers loyal to you. It’s like calling a friend once a year and expecting them to remain a close friend. Believe me, I’ve had close friends with whom I’ve been in touch with only once a year or less and it’s not long before we don’t keep in touch at all for years and we lose track of each other.

I have seen contractors who send something to their customers every quarter. This is better than once a year, but it still doesn’t build the kind of customer loyalty that you want to build.

In my opinion, customers need to hear from you a minimum of once a month in order to be loyal to you like you want them to be. As an example, I have customers who I haven’t worked for in years, but they still refer others to me and still are trying to help me get more work. That is the kind of loyalty you want to build in your customers.

If you won’t make the effort to keep in touch with your customers at least once a month, why would you think that you deserve to have their loyalty? Loyalty is much stronger than just being satisfied with your work. Satisfied customers don’t complain, but they don’t go out of their way to tell others about you either. Besides, they can get satisfaction from a lot of contractors.

So if you want to make your business a lot easier and enjoyable, make the extra effort it takes to build loyal customers and you might be surprised how little other advertising you need.

The same was true for many other businesses. People bought groceries at the same grocery store. They went to the same lumber yard and the same hardware store. Many times they knew the owner and were on a first name basis.

Then we got away from all of that. The big chain stores came in and everything was about price. Now people want service and value. Many contractors think that it is still about price, but price is often not the determining factor. Actually, when it comes to many businesses like contracting, people want to go back to the days when they did business with only one business.

The difference is that they are not going to go back to you just because they want to be loyal. They have to have a reason to be loyal to you. They do want to be able to call just one guy for everything, but that guy needs to fulfill their needs.

This means it is up to you to make sure you do what it takes to create this loyalty. One of the ways you can do this, is to do a great job. This is the foundation for the kind of loyalty. The big three car companies didn’t always do this and they opened the way for foreign car companies to come in and take away their market share and profits.

There is so very little excellence in many contractors work that people are pleasantly surprised when they find a contractor who will do whatever it takes to get the job done right. If you are determined to do the job right, you probably can’t be the lowest priced contractor. Don’t even try to do that. It is important to be fair, but price can be very elastic in our field. Often the price is higher in our own heads, than it sounds to the customer.

Doing an excellent job means that you will have to monitor your helper’s work very closely. You can’t allow them to jeopardize your business. Unless you are a one man band, you will need to set some systems into place to ensure that every job is done to exceed the customers expectations.

Now as I mentioned, doing an excellent job is just the foundation to build this customer loyalty. This is like paying admission to get to compete for their loyalty. If you pay the admission, you get to play. If you don’t pay the admission, then you are already out of the game. There are several other things you need to do in order to win your customers loyalty.

I will cover some of these other things in the next few articles. Come back next week and learn how you can build iron clad loyalty in your customers.

The most important parts of almost every persons life is their relationships. That is just a fact of being human. We value our relationships with our families, our friends and God more than anything else in life. In fact, almost every person you know, will list relationships of some type or other as the most important thing in their life.

So why don’t we use this in our marketing? In most marketing I have seen, businesses market about price or services or product, but they seldom use their marketing to build relationships. I have seen some evidence that this is changing.

For instance, a few times I have seen businesses tell their story and occasionally they try to get their customers involved in a community like a special membership or to get them to an event.

The truth is even if people tell you the reason they do business with any company is price or value or service, the relationship they have with someone in that company is a huge part of the real reason they do it.If you think about it, much of the reason small Mom and Pop businesses can compete against the huge chains is that people feel like they know the owner and therefore they trust them.If you want to build a loyal following of customers who only want to do business with you, then it will help a lot if you spend some time and money working to build relationships with your customers. You see most people are looking for the “guy” they can call. They don’t want to go through the hassle of screening a new contractor every time they need something done. They just want to be able to call one person they trust to do it for them.

If you can become the “go to” guy for enough customers, you will never have to worry about where your next paycheck is going to come from. Loyal customers will almost invent a reason for you to do business with them.

I will tell you from experience that these customers are easier to do business with and they will not be as likely to shop around as new customers will be. Not only will they do business with you repeatedly, they will send all of their friends and relatives to you.

I want to encourage you to work hard and spend a good percentage of your marketing budget on building relationships with your customers. Your competition will not be likely to do it, so you can dominate your market after only a couple of years of doing this successfully.

If we do not change the direction our government is going and start to downsize it, I think we will have a very difficult environment to do business in the very near future!  I believe that government is out of control.

One of the greatest indicators of that is the national debt. Since the numbers are so large, I will break it down for you to a smaller scale so we can comprehend how out of control it is. At the current debt levels, each person in your home is in debt over $45,000 if the national debt were spread out evenly. That means the average family of four is in debt almost $200,000.

This is greater than many families mortgage on their home! How did this happen? It wasn’t that long ago that our nation was the greatest creditor nation on earth. Now we are the greatest debtor nation on earth.

Do the people we send to Washington really think we need that much government? Are they afraid that if they let us keep our money, we won’t be able to take care of ourselves? Besides what enterprise that the government has taken over have they been able to run profitably yet?

During the last budget “crisis” the republicans and democrats were fighting over whether to cut the budget by a little bit or by a tiny bit. And this is with a projected deficit of over a trillion dollars! The “scare” was if they didn’t agree to this, the nonessential parts of the government would shut down. Well, that doesn’t scare me near as much as the government staying in business!

My theory is that all of these career politicians are only in Washington to do stuff that benefits them, not what is good for the nation. The problem is that they promise “candy” to the voters and people vote for them to get the candy. Also, many if not most of them lie and promise to bring sanity to government until they get elected. Then they get brainwashed or something by the others in government.

Thomas Jefferson said, “When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people there is freedom.” If that is true, then we are very close to losing our freedom.

Do we really need the government regulating everything we do? Or are our customers mature enough to decide for themselves how they want us to do business with them?

I for one think that I would rather have the government out of my life except for basic national defense and a basic police force. I am all for prosecuting criminals but I think this much regulation can make us all “criminals” and is going too far.

I’m not saying that we shouldn’t try to get new customers, we just need to realize that completely new customers are the hardest to get and they are also the most expensive to get in terms of marketing dollars spent to get a customer.

The other thing about repeat and referral customers is that they are usually easier and better to work for. Very often, they won’t even get a second estimate. If you treat them right, you will be they contractor they want.

The reason many contractors don’t advertise to current and past customers is because they assume their previous customers will remember them and they will call them if they need them. I can tell you from experience that they will remember you for a short time  if they are reminded about you by something or someone else.

However, if it has been a couple of years since you worked for them and you have done nothing to keep in touch with them, odds are if they need another job done, they will be starting back at square one when it comes to choosing a contractor. If they know how to get in touch with you, you might get a chance to bid on the next project.

I prefer to be the contractor of choice that they call immediately when they need a job done. In fact, most of the jobs I bid on, I am the only bid and the customer just wants to know how much it will cost. I even have several customers who don’t even ask for a bid at all.

The key is to keep in touch with your customers on a regular basis. I have discussed ways to do this in the past , so I won’t go into depth on that here. The biggest thing I want to stress is how important it is to to stimulate the repeat and referral business that we already get.

If you double the repeat customers by spending your marketing dollars with them, you can make a huge change in your business. Don’t ever assume that all of your customers remember you and will call you back every time.

I know from experience when I started doing this, my repeat and referral business at least doubled and now I spend less and less on trying to attract new customers and more on stimulating repeat and referral business.

This shift in thinking has helped me to be able to grow my business when most contractors are really struggling. If you give this a try, I think you will be pleasantly surprised at the results.

Today, however, doing a great job is just the entrance admission to stay in business. Doing a great job is what is expected. If you want to stand out, you have to offer more than that.

Customers are looking for more than just a great job. They are looking for a great experience along with a great job. Customers want to feel good about what you provide for them before, during and after a project.

One of the big things you can provide to help the customer have a great experience is to give good communication. This ties in with managing a customers expectations.

You see, customers may expect a different process than is normal or reasonable. The more you communicate with them about what to expect during the project and the timeline for the project, the happier they will be when the project goes according to plan. However, if you don’t communicate well, they may expect something that you can’t deliver and they will be unhappy when you don’t meet their expectations.

Another way to give them a great experience is to manage the appearance and behaviour of the personnel who they come in contact with. A good business should at some point include a code of conduct and of dress.

If you have employees who use a lot of crude language, that can offend a lot of people. I’ve even heard of plumbers who have as part of their promise to customers that they will not see any plumbers crack. If they make that promise, it shows you how important appearance is to customers.

A third way to give a great experience is to keep the customers property as neat as possible while you are working there. Customers do not like a big mess to live in while their home is being worked on. I met with a couple once who complained that the contractor they had was creating dust and taking way too long on the project. They had been covering their bed every morning with plastic for months. By this time they were getting tired of it.

The fourth way to give a great experience is to give service after the project is done. You may not want to open the job up to criticism, but it can make the customer feel good if you ask them if there is anything they would like changed about the job. And if you get a call about a problem with the job, take care of the problem cheerfully and promptly.

Always remember that providing a great experience is a great way to lead to continuing business with the customer and their friends and relatives.

I’ve also seen a lot of jobs that were pretty decent, but if you looked hard, you could find problems with them. It is difficult to do every job perfect. However, if we are to consistently get referred by our customers, we need to deliver excellent quality in our jobs.

If we are doing this properly, we will be delivering even better quality than the customer expects. If we usually hear from the customers that what we are doing looks O.K., then we probably aren’t delivering excellent quality.

If we are delivering excellent quality, then we should be getting some written testimonials about how well customers love our work.  We should also hear frequently from customers that they love what we are doing for them.

Now if you have employees, this will take some extra effort. You see, most employees try to do things just good enough to get by. You cannot allow this, especially now. Customers have the power in this economy, and they know it.

You may have to get rid of some employees and work with others to instill the correct attitude in them. My thought on this is that I have to be pickier than my customers so I don’t let things slip by on the job that could cause a customer grief later.

The main reason that delivering quality is so important today is that it can have a multiplying effect. If you do great quality work, it can multiply the effect your marketing has.

If you deliver average work, it won’t really help your marketing and you will have to spend more money on marketing to get the same amount of work.

If you allow substandard work to be done, it will multiply how much money you have to spend to get a customer. That also means you will have to compete on price alone, and this will seriously cut into your profits.

The bottom line is that if you want to make the most money, you will have to  deliver excellent quality in all of your jobs. If you get this right, you will find it much easier to get jobs and to consistently make a good living.

As an example of cutting expenses, my sister has a tutoring business where she helps school kids learn better and she has a preschool. She wasn’t making any money, so she left the nice expensive building she was in and laid off some of her help. She rented one room from a church and downsized drastically.

As a result of this, she saved almost $3,000 a month in expenses and she actually increased her preschool attendance. Because of this, she is now making money in her business. I’ve seen contractors who had nice buildings and offices with staff who do not make as much money as the guy who runs his business out of his truck.

One thing we have to be careful of as contractors, is to not let our ego determine business expenses. Sometimes we get a nice office to make us feel better or we take out an expensive ad just so we can see our business name in big fancy letters.

One of the things we can check to see if we can cut expenses is to look at our office. Do we have a secretary or office person that is unnecessary. I was investing in real estate a several years ago and I had a secretary/office manager/ property manager who got a check even when I didn’t. When the business fell apart, I let her go. In retrospect, I could have saved approximately $150,000 if I would have used systems to manage my time and did her job myself.

Another place we need to keep an eye on expenses is our advertising. We do have to be careful here. When times get tough, some contractors cut out advertising all together. This can be a mistake. When there are fewer customers to be had, we really need to do all we can to get and keep customers.

What we need to do is to track our advertising and to keep that which pays for itself and get rid of the advertising that doesn’t pay for itself. I do this by asking my new customers how they heard about me. If I don’t get any responses from an ad after several months, I drop the ad.

A third area we can cut expenses is with employees. Sometimes contractors think the way to get jobs done and to impress a customer is to send a lot of people to the job site. Most of my jobs will not have more than one or two people on them. But those guys will be very good and I have found that fewer people on the job increases productivity. If an employee isn’t making us money, we owe it to ourselves and our families to get rid of them.

Other places to look at cutting expenses are vehicle costs, tool purchase versus rent, and excess insurance. If we examine all of our expenses and cut out everything that doesn’t make us more money, it might be surprising how much our income can increase.