Marketing Tips

You Should be Delegating NOT Abdicating Your Remodeling Marketing to the RIGHT People

June 22, 2013 by Ryan Paul Adams

First, let's start with the definition of abdicating and delegating so we are all on the same page when it comes to how to market your remodeling business correctly.

Abdicating - to renounce or relinquish a throne, right, power, claim, responsibility, or the like, especially in a formal manner: (source - Dictionary)

When you are abdicating you are giving up responsibility and trying to wash your hands of the whole thing.

Delegating - to send or appoint (a person) as deputy or representative. (source - Dictionary)

With delegating you are appointing someone with your company or externally to help with something. You are not giving up responsibility and you are still involved in the process just not as much.

Too many businesses aren't marketing their businesses at all and just waiting for leads and new clients to magically appear on their doorstep. This is one of the strangest things to me and most frustrating. Business owner who wait for things to happen instead of making things happen using proven methods and systems. At least try to do something to make your situation better. Sometimes that requires taking a risk and making a mistake. Other times it involves actively finding the right people in your industry who understand how to help you.

Marketing your business and keeping the engine going is your #1 responsibility, nothing else comes close.

And those that are typically marketing (or trying to) are doing it all wrong. I realize you have a lot on your plate and running a remodeling business is not easy, but abdicating your marketing is just plain dumb. When you are abdicating you are looking for one quick fix to make you rich and this simply doesn't exist. You need to fully understand the process and the people you bring into to help you need to know what they are doing.

When You Give Up Responsibility, You Give Up Control

Here is what happens when you give up responsibility....you completely give up control of the process and 99% of the time you are giving up control of the process to the wrong people. And guess what? Most of the so called "experts", agencies, or people that claim they can help you are really not capable of helping you at all. You end up wasting a lot of time and money and typically your mistakes are compounded. You jump from one provider/agency/person to another hoping that this time it will work.

Does this sound familiar?

You hire an intern or some low level person with not even a basic understanding of marketing to take over all your marketing. You don't want to do it, nor do you understand how to do it so give it to someone else. "This isn't my area of expertise so I let someone else do it. I just hired this kid out of college to handle this for me."
You hire some SEO company that tells you they can get you ranked on Google. "They promised me they could get me on the first page of Google for $50/month. Thought I would give it a try. What do I have to lose?"
You hire your 3rd company that tells you they can you ranked on Google. Been burned twice now, this time this company seems for real! "This company promised me some free advertising to go with getting my website on the first page of Google for $100/month! Can't really tell if it's working or not, but the sales person sure seems to think it is."
You tell one of your family members to setup a website and mail some postcards for which you will pay them $15.00/hour. This will surely work, won't it? "Son, you can set up a website can't you? Well do it and let me know how it turns out. We also need some postcards sent out, see what you can do about that."
You buy some book or product that promises you everything under the sun. You read it, do nothing, and it collects dust on your desk. "Boy that was some great information. If only I had time to do any of it I could generate a ton of new business."
You buy some advertising in your local paper because some sales person showed up at your door and told you to. "Let's see how that ad does in the paper. That sales person sure was persistent. This has to work this time, doesn't it?"

You try some different things and you continue to abdicate to others yet you fail to understand the core of what would make any marketing actually work. For marketing to actually work, you have to craft a great powerful message. You need to start with this before you can implement any tactics (a system or a detail of tactics like SEO or direct mail). The very first thing I do when starting any client in our marketing systems is we setup two 1-hour calls to help craft a killer USP, a competition crushing guarantee, clearly identify our niche, and understand who are target client is. Not everyone is a prospect; you need to understand this first!

Only a select group of people are worthy of your services and we need to identify who those people are before we can implement a marketing system that is loaded with tactics. What makes your service better than anyone else's? Why are you unique? What do you stand for? For how long will you stand behind it?

The Pushy Marketing Sales Person Isn't Qualified to Help You Just Yet

Delegating marketing tactics don't work unless you have the marketing foundation and messaging behind it. I have analyzed several of the big internet marketing agencies, most are doing $50,000,000.00 or more per year, and NONE of them take any time or thought into helping lay the proper foundation before you start spending money on media. NONE. ZERO. ZILCH.

Why?

Because they don't understand marketing, they only understand the tactic they are selling. For these companies to grow to that level in sales, you will never speak to anyone in the organization that is smarter than you right now. That's a big problem. You want to find people that are smarter than you in areas that you are weak. And if you are weak in marketing knowledge, the last thing you want to do is hire a big company with the low man on the todem pole handling your marketing. They will not have the knowledge to help you. I have seen this time and time again.

They aren't qualified to help you grow your business unless you have everything else figured out and you can delegate very specific tasks to them to complete.

Don't Jump to Tactics Before You Differentiate and Perfect Your Message

You can't jump to the tactic or media stage without clearly differentiating yourself from the pack. You will not get the response you are looking for and will waste a ton of money in the process. You will jump from one idea to the next making one bad decision after another. Listen, no one is going to figure this out 100% without your involvement. This is your business and you are the only one that fully understands what makes you unique and better than the competitor down the street.

The next time you go to hire someone to "help" you with your marketing, and they aren't asking you about your messaging, ideal target, guarantee, and uniqueness...RUN! They aren't qualified to help you with anything at this point.

Need more help growing your remodeling business? Take advantage of all the FREE resources I have on www.RyanPaulAdams.com and download my "3 Killer Ways to Grow Your Remodeling Business" today.

Model Your Business After Those Who Have Succeeded

June 7, 2013 by Ryan Paul Adams

Tony Robbins said it best -

"If you want to get a result -- make more money, lose weight, be more successful in business, or ANY other goal you desire-- all you have to do is find someone else already getting that result and model what they do."

There are a lot of super successful remodeling businesses out there yet so few remodeling businesses take the time to model themselves after those that are crushing it. So many of you are trying to reinvent the wheel and making terrible decisions on where to invest your money to try and grow.

The concept is simple, find a business that is doing really really well and find a way to integrate as many of those ideas and systems into your own business, package it slightly different (your unique angle) and you will have a nice business if not a great business.

There are no new ideas in the world, only different angles on the same ideas. With the marketing systems I have developed, I have taken ideas from a lot of different experts, some with a lot more experience than I, and found a way to package it better, improve certain things, and integrate a full suite of software experts to do the work. And the most important thing I have done, is to replicate our efforts in the same industry as much as we can....why? Because through repetition comes improvement and enough data doing the same things many times that we actually know what works and what doesn't. Shouldn't you be doing the same?

Expecting a Different Result from More of the Same

For starters, too many remodeling business owners have ridiculous unrealistic expectations when it comes to marketing investments. How many of you have hired an internet marketing company or local "SEO guru" for $100/month? Or $50/month? Or some ridiculously low amount and expected the world from it?

Most marketing books and marketing courses you could take would mention investing roughly 10% of expected gross sales into marketing. Especially for newer remodeling businesses, it's a good rule of thumb and a good place to make my point. If you were to hire a marketing company at $150/month to build you a site and do some "seo", and this was really the only marketing you were doing, you would be expecting to generate from a $1,500/year marketing investment $15,000.00 in Gross Sales. That is exactly what your expectation should be unless you plan on investing a ton of your own time on top of the $150/month you are shelling out. I don't know about you, but $15,000 a year in Gross Sales doesn't sound like a business I would want to invest time into.

Ask yourself, would you take on a remodeling job for $100/month? What in the world could you possibly deliver for $100 and make anyone happy? The only thing my company could do for $100/month is local optimization. That's it, and that is not going to change your life or your business. Might be an ok place to start if you have ZERO money for marketing, but it is nothing that is going to get you excited and help take your business to the next level.

One of the leading contractor marketing companies out there offers a complete marketing program for under $150/month. I have had a few clients that used them at one point and got nothing from it, but I cannot speak to the results other clients have gotten. I know that in my local area, I can barely even get a small black and white ad in my local paper for that each month. Remember, you get what you pay for so don't expect much from cheap people and services as they simply don't work most of the time.

Risk vs Reward

Low priced services rarely work and I don't care what we are talking about here, they rarerly do unless it's mostly software driven (something where a human doesn't have to do anything). Even if companies like the one I mentioned above outsourced all the marketing work to some low cost area of the world, they still can't physically do much of anything as far as a service goes (seo, social media, reputation, design, etc) and still make any money to stay open. So that means you might get something shiny and nice on the front end (first 30-60 days) but after that, you are left to figure it out on your own or for more money. Time is money and the longer you wait to figure things out you put your business at risk.

If you were starting a basketball team today, who would you pay top dollar for, Lebron James or Hasheem Thabeet? Both were top picks in the NBA draft a few years ago, but if I wanted to put the best team on the court, I would go get Lebron James and pay him is $25million + because I know the return I would get would be significant for my franchise and the risk/reward is really powerful. You need to identify situations like this in your own business where you can bring on top level talent, systems, services, and software.

Situations like this exist in your own business yet you continue to reinvent the wheel and try to get things done on the cheap. It's normal and natural to want to get things done inexpensively and try to do things differently than those who have experienced true success in your industry. Typically, you have 2 choices, acquire all the knowledge that you need to grow your business, or find people who are experts in the areas where you are weakest.

The Remodeling Businesses That Succeed Typically Have the Following in Place

Entrepreneurial Mind Set (they are no longer contractors!)
Good Systems in Place to Get Work Done
Repetition (they do the same things over and over as much as humanly possible)
Highly Educated (not by a university, but through seminars, reading books/industry publications, hiring consultants - basically they devour as much information about their industry as possible).
Have Incredible Desire to Succeed
Consistent Marketing Systems (typically - online, direct mail, and solid referral programs)
Use Direct Response Marketing (even piece of marketing they do has a very specific offer and goal in mind)
Have Great People at the Top and Good People to Fill Specific Roles
Outsource Weak Areas and Hire the Best People They Can Possibly Afford

Find someone who has been there and done that in your industry and mimic what they do. You will get where you want to go much faster.

Filed Under: Blog Posts, Building Systems, Business Growth Tips, Marketing Tips

Get Control and Grow Your Remodeling Business

May 20, 2013 by Ryan Paul Adams

Ever feel like your business and life is out of control?

Does your average day feel like you are putting one fire out after another?

Are you left wondering where the next lead is going to come from?

My grandfather once told me that "you need to be in control at all times and the best way to do that is to never give it away." I think I was 14 at the time and had just started my first business. That stuck with me until this day. He went on to say "Don't make excuses. Ever! You need to find your way through every situation and look for the opportunity that is right under your nose." Every time you make an excuse about your situation or blame something else, you give away control. My wife calls it "giving away your mancard." Same could be said for a woman and a "womancard" phrase should be developed.

So lets talk about control and what that really means for your remodeling business and for your life and the lesson I learned from my grandfather when I was 14. He was a masterful entrepreneur and understood a few key concepts about getting control that all the great successes understand. Our society is filled with excuse makers, doubters, and negativity runs rampant. I don't read the newspaper or watch the news on television because its mostly all fear and negativity. My success depends on those 2 things never creeping into my consciousness, so I don't partake. How about you?

Stop blaming external forces like the economy or a recession. Everytime you blame the economy or the recession on the core reason you are failing you are giving away your control. When you blame something or someone else for your failure you aren't taking responsibility for your situation.

When I hear someone complaining about the economy as to why they are "slow" I ask them one simple question. "If I am a potential client, what is the #1 reason I should hire you vs another company?" They don't have an answer because they haven't even thought about it, which means they aren't differentiating themselves in the market. If they aren't differentiating, I know right then and there that they aren't marketing themselves well, or at all. I am speaking with someone who has no control.

And if they had an answer, the next question would be, "how are you going about "attracting" new business vs chasing it?." Most remodelers chase the next deal but if you are positioned correctly, you should be in the drivers seat with full control over your own destiny. And most of the time, what that looks like is a steady stream of qualified people lining up to do business with you. You are in control. You aren't chasing.

Money Doesn't Disappear. It Moves.

Money rarely just completely stops flowing out of a remodeling sector, nor does it disappear. It simply changes hands or moves. In a recession, the middle class might cut back on remodeling their kitchen, but the affluent rarely do. Is that a market opportunity or should we just go back to complaining? You need to see opportunity in everything.

The best year I ever had in the remodeling business was the year that real estate and the economy took a nose dive. Competitors went out of business or sat idoly...but we kept marketing and positioning our uniqueness and had a really strong year. I had just discovered the power of building a killer USP and guarantee that crushed anything my competitors were offering. I was looking for opportunity when everyone else was watching the news and feeling sorry for themselves.

And if the middle class cuts back on installing their dream kitchen, they still might go for something a step below their dream, especially if you can make it easy on them by lining up the financing or providing attractive payment terms. Can you create a targeted marketing campaign to the middle class market offering a streamlined kitchen package with easy terms that make them say YES? You bet you can. Control and Action.

Very few people have control in their business (and life) and even less take action. There is a lot of money to be made in every remodeling market, but people need to know you exist and what you can do for them that is different from every other contractor. If you can't guarantee anything and don't do anything special or unique, its probably time you did something else.

Need more help growing your remodeling business? Take advantage of all the FREE resources I have on www.RyanPaulAdams.com and my download my "3 Killer Ways to Grow Your Remodeling Business" today.

Filed Under: Blog Posts, Business Growth Tips, Marketing Tips, Remodeling Marketing Tagged With: Control, Remodeling Economy, Stop Making Excuses

Buying 3rd Party Remodeling Leads is a Fools Game

May 14, 2013 by Ryan Paul Adams

Buying leads from 3rd party providers like Service Magic is just plain insanity, especially if these are the only consistent leads you are getting. I have seen countless remodeling contractors chase around weak 3rd party leads, waste tons of time, and lose lots of money only to be left frustrated and confused by these types of lead services. It seems like a good idea, but the the real question is why doesn't it work?

Smart People Don't Use 3rd Party Sites to Find Remodeling Contractors

Yes, I said it. This isn't meant to be a jab at anyone but it's true. Smart people do NOT use 3rd party websites to request estimates from local remodeling contractors or to find any contractor for that matter. Think about it...would you rely on someone else to pick the next 3 or 4 contractors you were going to hire?

Most people understand how to search online. I would go so far as to say that most people are experts at using search engines these days. We have become so good at searching that we can quickly determine paid search ads from organic searches. We can make super fast buying decisions based on search results, how they appear, what they say, and how well the search aligns with our intent. All in a matter of seconds. We know when we land on a site like Service Magic that this is not what we are looking for to make a final decision on who to contact.

Your best prospects are NOT on Service Magic or any other 3rd party lead site. If you want a lousy lead and a sub par prospect at best, continue buying leads from a 3rd party. Great prospects know how to find the best local businesses to contact directly. They understand how to read reviews, blog content, and to quickly determine if the local remodeling company they just found is legit or not. This doesn't take that long to do so why would I use some 3rd party site to narrow this down for me?

Smart people know that those local businesses that have a great website, lots of positive reviews, good content, social presence (even a small one works!), solid guarantee, and are on page 1 of Google are typically legit. Now it's just a matter of contacting 1,2, or 3 of them and feeling them out.

You Are NOT Positioned as the Expert

Before you go and buy another lead from someone you need to understand the mentality of someone who uses a 3rd party service site. They want the cheapest service and they want you to be at their mercy. In their minds, why else would a contractor use a service like Service Magic? The contractor must be cheap and you are giving the prospect all the control. They simply submit a button and 3-5 contractors magically kill each other for a crappy project for no money. Doesn't sound like a business I want to be in yet so many of you continue to give away your money for so called "leads" and aren't investing anything into your own brand and market leadership.

You have no leverage and no positioning when you try and turn a 3rd party lead into sale. The prospect doesn't know you at all. They haven't watched any of your videos, they haven't read your reviews, they just plain don't know you.

Marketing is all about creating that emotional connection with your prospect. Just about every product or service you buy is trying to accomplish this at some level. You could be featured on the cover of Remodeling Magazine this month and your 3rd party lead won't know nor would they care. You are just another name in a long line of people that called them that day and they would be hard pressed to remember or distinguish any of the remodeling businesses that called them from the lead request form they filled out. They have NO emotional connection to you and aren't looking for that. If you take anything away from this article, that might be the most important thing to remember.

Every time you give away money for a lead is another dollar you failed to invest in yourself, your brand, your reputation, and your own leads that you control. 3rd party leads are something you should try as a small part of your marketing to fill your funnel, but NEVER EVER EVER should it be the only thing you are doing unless you want to simply swap your time for less money than you are worth...if you can even get them to say yes.

Become your own Service Magic and start selling your lead overflow to other contractors and control your own destiny. It's well within the realm of possibility for those who market themselves correctly and attack the market.

Need more help growing your remodeling business? Take advantage of all the FREE resources I have on www.RyanPaulAdams.com and my download my "3 Killer Ways to Grow Your Remodeling Business" today.

Filed Under: Blog Posts, Business Growth Tips, Internet Marketing, Lead Generation, Marketing Tips, Remodeling Marketing Tagged With: 3rd party lead sites, lead generation

Cost Per Acquisition Formula for Remodeling Businesses

May 9, 2013 by Ryan Paul Adams

Knowing your Cost Per Acquisition is vital information for any remodeling business to know, and will help improve your marketing, allow you to have more realistic expectations, and help you plan overall marketing to meet your growth goals. Watch my short video as I demonstrate how to determine the CPA using Google Adwords Keyword Tool

To determine your Average Cost Per Acquisition, we use the Google Keyword Tool to get some good data. Google Adwords is all competition driven. Google does not arbitrarily set the cost per clicks in Adwords, the competition and bidding environment does. This is really important to understand what I just said. Adwords is one of the best tools in existence to test the competitiveness of your market.

A competitor of yours would not spend $100 per click in Adwords for a $200 sale and remain in business for long, but they would for a $1,500 average sale and most likely remain in business and profitable (depending on what service they were selling).
Learn this formula inside and out and you will be able to determine your CPA in your local market and have a better understanding of what you should be investing online to drive leads and new customers.

Formula for Determining Customer Acquisition Costs

This formula will help you determine what competitors are willing to spend in Adwords to acquire 1 new customer with a Visitor to Sale (Closing the Deal) Ratio of between 1%-3%. I am already taking into account industry average conversion rates (visitors to leads) with this formula, so you don't have to do anything else.

Write down (or research in Google) some of the top keyword phrases used in your local market. Use keywords with at least 2 phrases and some with up to 4 words (no more than 4 at this point). Copy and paste those into the Google Adwords Keyword Tool (make sure that Columns - Approximate CPC is selected)

Adwords Tool - Take top 4-5 keywords (2-3 non-location, and 2-3 geo-targeted)

Example:
Keywords + CPC
remodeling boston $37.75
remodeling contractor boston $38.60
remodeling company boston $53.04
remodeler boston $46.96

1% Visit to Sale Ratio
Average $44.09 x 100 (1% conversion to sale rate average = 100 clicks to get 1 new customer) = $4,408.75 (what competitors are willing to spend to acquire a new customer on average). Most likely the average sale in this market is about $44,000 ($4,408/.10(10% Marketing Costs) = $44,000.00 (I actually compared this with some industry data after I ran my CPA formula and I was off by a couple thousand bucks).

3% Conversion to sale ratio
Average $44.09 x 100 = $4,408.75/3 = $1,469.67 (3% conversion to sale rate avg = 100 clicks to get 3 customers or 33 visits).

Average the 2 numbers above $4,408.75 + $1,469.67 = $5,878.42/2 = $2,939.21/Average Cost Per Acquisition.

Want to Know What Your Average Cost Per Lead is?

With a 20% Close Ratio Expectation (1 out 5 leads turns into a customer on average for most local businesses) divide the above CPA $2,939.21/5 = $587.80/lead

Now, if a client in the personal injury attorney market told me their CPA was $500.00 to drive a $44,000.00 Client/Payout, I would say it sounds a bit off to me, but not impossible (they might have great attorneys, strong referral base, awesome systems in place, retention marketing, have weak competitors, no competition, etc). More than likely though, they would probably be in the $2,900+ range for Cost Per Acquisition costs.

What Are Your Growth Goals?

Once you know your CPA, you can determine what your marketing budget should be for the year to achieve your overall revenue growth goals.

Based on the example above:

If you need 10 new clients per month: 10 x $2,900 = $29,000/mth marketing budget
If you need 20 new clients per month: 20 x $2,900 = $58,000/mth marketing budget

The Cost Per Acquisition formula can be used for almost any industry and does not factor in an lifetime value of each customer. If you get referrals from most of your customers or you customers end up buying from you again, you could lower your Cost Per Acquisition number 10-20% or more on average.

Remember, you want to be conservative here and realistic. Start measuring exactly what it costs to acquire 1 new customer once you get your marketing going and hopefully you do much better than what Google tells you it will cost to acquire a customer.

Filed Under: Business Growth Tips, Marketing Tips

3 Strategies to Generate and Measure Growth in Your Remodeling Business – Part 1

March 30, 2013 by Ryan Paul Adams

Part 1 of a 3 Part Series

Recently, I wrote an article about How to Prepare for Growth in Your Remodeling Business and I reviewed some key action items for all small-medium sized businesses to consider before they start generating growth. Today, I am going to focus on exactly what you need to be implementing into your business to generate and measure growth in your business online. Remember, you have to have a mentality for growth for this to work and you have to want to be the market leader not a follower. If you successfully implement the 3 strategies below, you WILL have a clearer picture of where your leads are coming from, you WILL cut out waste in your marketing budget, you WILL get more traffic and leads, and you WILL close more deals. Doubling sales in 6-12 months with these 3 core concepts is not uncommon.

1) You Have to Track!

#1 on our list is more a measurement strategy, but before you can start driving more prospects into your sales funnel and closing more deals, you need to setup tracking systems to measure all of your marketing channels. With today’s technology, tracking every single marketing investment you make is a no-brainer. But for most remodeling companies, they are doing very little if any form of tracking. From analytics, social monitoring and measuring, call tracking and lead tracking, lets review the tracking systems you need in place to then be able to generate explosive growth:

Google Analytics- is #1, and having analytics setup correctly on your site(s) is extremely important. You need to setup conversion Goals for all the lead forms on your site and start paying attention to the important metrics like - New Visitors, Return Visitors, Referral Sources, Pages/Visit, Traffic Sources, and Goals. You need to find out where your prospects are coming from online and offline.There are some paid analytics tools out there that are very good as well, but at a minimum you need Google Analytics if you want to rank in the search results and measure your marketing. Google is also using your analytics data to determine where you should rank...a topic for another day.
Social Monitoring/Measuring- social media may be one of the most overly hyped marketing channels in existence for remodeling companies. Social media should never be the 1st thing a remodeling company does to generate new business or you will surely fall short, but you do need it in your mix at some point for a few key reasons. While it can bring new business and new leads, for most of my clients, we use it in our mix to stay relevant, to share our content, and to keep people up to speed with our clients brand.If you are really creative and have a lot of extra time to invest in social, you can make it a successful way to grow your business, but you need to have a solid strategy in place.

Also, almost all the major search engines using social metrics of some kind to help determine ranking in major search engines, so this is important to know. Having a good social media monitoring software will help you listen in to what is being said about you personally, your company, what your competitors are doing socially, and give you a clear picture of how well your time in social media is paying off. I implemented this recently and was really surprised at how many times my name was being searched online as well as how many people were sharing my content. Exciting stuff!
Call Tracking- every marketing medium you use, you should be using a unique call tracking number to determine the effectiveness of that strategy. Ideally, you should be call recording all in-bound calls as well, and this can be accomplished with the same platform as your call tracking number provider. This is extremely important for every business to implement.Use a unique call tracking number on all postcards, catalogs, print ads, display ads, radio, tv, etc. Do NOTuse multiple call tracking numbers online to track local directories. All the top local search distribution services and Google are all about consistency with your Name, Address, and Phone Number, Address (NAP). Using multiple call tracking numbers will certainly screw up your NAP online and lead to below average results. It's safe to use multiple numbers pretty much anywhere else.Lastly, you should be registering and using multiple domain names to track specific marketing campaigns offline. This is a real easy way to zero in on what is working and whats not from postcard mailings, radio and tv ads, magazine, newspapers and more.
Lead Tracking - having some type of CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software is key to track leads and lead sources from as much of your marketing as possible. Most CRM’s can have steep learning curves so be careful which one you choose to start. Keep it simple wherever possible and at the very minimum use something that will allow you to track your sales opportunities/prospects and the ability to automate following up with those prospects.

Read part 2 of 3, Be Everywhere Your Customers Are!

Filed Under: Blog Posts, Business Growth Tips, Internet Marketing, Marketing Tips, Remodeling Marketing, Tracking and Measuring Tagged With: Call Tracking, Google Analytics, Marketing Analytics, Measuring Marketing ROI

5 Things You Need to Do to Prepare for Growth in Your Remodeling Business

October 3, 2012 by Ryan Paul Adams

No matter what stage you are in with your current remodeling and home improvement business, the principles I am about to share (if applied) will help you prepare for growth in your business. It’s amazing how many business owners I meet with who aren’t implementing any of the core principles I am about to share with you. In every market, ample opportunity exists to grow your business, but most are not prepared to take the plunge.

Preparing to grow is as important as generating the growth, and to actually grow your business you have to have the “mentality of growth”. You have to want to grow if you have any dreams at all of finding financial freedom and getting out of the craziness of “doing” vs. running your business. Think about it, if you don’t grow, you can’t hire more people, you can’t get stuff off your plate, and you can’t buy your dream home on the Maine coast (or insert big dream purchase here). Worst of all, you probably can never sell the business you created. No business buyer that I know of wants to buy a business that has flat or decreasing sales year after year.

Find out the 5 Things You Need to Do to Prepare for Growth in Your Remodeling Business:

1) Focus on One Thing at a Time

Its truly amazing how many business owners I meet who run themselves ragged each and every day. Jumping from one task to the next and not really ever feeling like they accomplish anything. They are mentally drained, moody, ineffective, and the passion for what they are doing is slipping away. Stop being the “everything” to your business and focus in on one thing at a time. Instead of trying to get 3 things done at the same time, hammer out one specific task until its 80-90% done, or what we call “Good Enough”.

I will talk more about this in #2, but the successful business owners and entrepreneurs have mastered the art of getting stuff done, shutting off all distractions (phone, email, co-workers, internet, etc) and once that task is good enough, move onto something else.

2) Good Enough is Good Enough

Too many business owners procrastinate on getting specific high priority stuff done. And when they do get the time to actually work on something in their business, they want it to be perfect. Perfection is not a bad thing unless it’s preventing you from ever getting anything done. Most of the time, 80-90% completion on a task/business process/sales process/marketing strategy is going to be good enough to get you going and get you results. Get it out there and start using it and tweak it down the road as you get feedback from your employees or prospects.

Now, I am not suggesting that you settle for mediocrity in anything you do. But I would bet that most of you, when you are focused, produce better than average “stuff” and that “stuff” when integrated into your business should help you grow. From sales process checklists to marketing plans to implementing your internet marketing strategy, someone needs to be leading that charge or at least outlining what needs to be done. That person is typically you so get producing!

3) Become the Go-To Expert in Your Industry

Having a great product and great service is only half the battle in your market. Most companies have a pretty good product that would satisfy 80% of the market, while 20% of the market needs something a little more exclusive. What market are you trying to serve? If you are like most companies, you are going after the same 80% and it can get very competitive. You need to become the expert in your industry.

Designate someone within your business, preferably the owner or the guy/gal who’s blood, sweat, and tears has manifested the company, as the expert. This person needs to be producing awesome content in your blog on a regular basis, or hiring someone who can ghost write for them. In the timber frame market this is a little difficult because it truly is a very specific housing niche and not every writer can speak to this market. Also, consider writing a book or producing a “shook” (10-15 short book) that positions your company as the go-to-expert in your market.

There are lots of ways to craft yourself as the expert in your market like:

Podcasts
Start a Radio Show
Articles
Blogging
Create a Book
Webinars
Social Media
Instructional Videos
Seminars

I think you get the idea. Decide what platform or combination of platforms work best for you and start positioning yourself as the expert in your market before your competitors beat you to it. You need that platform to position yourself and the longer you wait to do this the harder it gets. Reverse engineer the people you look up to in your industry and see if you can implement some or all of what they are doing.

4) Put on a Show

No one wants to cold call or chase prospects around. You have to be properly positioned in your market to have people knocking down your door to do business with you. Become the business they remember for all the right reasons. Send your top prospects a digital book with virtual tours showcasing the lifestyle your prospects want with, and include a bottle of wine. Get creative with your “show: and I guarantee it will pay off. Think outside the box when it comes to putting on your show. The cost to acquire one new customer in the your market is probably not cheap and its not getting any cheaper. You have to maximize the potential of every prospect that you come in contact with. Positioning yourself as the expert and putting on that show will separate you from the crowd.

5) Creating Better Systems

More business owners moan and groan about this than anything else I suggest they do. You need to implement systems for everything you are doing, and create systems on how to create systems. Everything in your business needs a specific process for how it is going to get done. From hiring to firing to sales and marketing, and crafting the perfect customer experience, all need systems. I highly recommend you read “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande. This book goes into great detail on how to create great checklists for everything you do. Remember, if you don’t have the grow mentality, you are not working on your product, you are not building systems to scale efficiently, and you are becoming less relevant in your market.

Your top competitors are growing which makes it even harder for you to continue on with the status quo. Why?

Because they are getting more and more market share, so even if you are happy with the way things are, you won’t be for long. Having the growth mentality will eventually lead you to creating a great lifestyle for you and your employees and get you out of the chaos. There is no business that I know of that is static. Things are constantly changing and unless you adapt to change, and adapt fast, be prepared to be disappointed some day down the road when your competitors are 100 miles ahead, if they aren’t already.

Filed Under: Blog Posts, Business Growth Tips, Marketing Tips Tagged With: Creating Systems, Growing Your Business, Preparing for Growth