The opportunity to absolutely dominate your local remodeling market is still wide open in every major geographic area across the US and Canada, yet so many remodeling businesses struggle immensely each and every year. This is partly due to the fact that up until this point, most of the sales and marketing "gurus" have completely ignored this industry and have focused primarily on other markets. It is partly due to the fact that most remodeling businesses focus (or get lost in) on production and largely ignore marketing.
Is this a result of a lack of good information or is it a result of poor mindset?
After spending over 15 years in this industry and meeting countless remodelers, home builders, and contractors, I think I know why so many other consultants have ignored this industry. Somewhere around 95% (my estimate) of remodeling and home improvement oriented businesses refuse to focus on marketing and instead focus on production. Therefore, the vast majority of smart marketing and sales experts have given up on this industry or didn't even attempt to help. Is the remodeling industry too stubborn to change? Or is it something else that is leading to a bottom heavy industry?
It starts with every remodeling business shifting from a production related mindset (getting the jobs done) to a client generation and business building mindset. A shift needs to happen NOW and this will begin with focusing on marketing first, instead of on selling and production. You can't sell a job that you don't have a lead for, and you can't produce the work if you don't have the job. It all leads back to getting your marketing strategy and marketing funnel in place first. This does not mean you ignore your existing clients and jobs; however, you must free up some of your time, effort, and money to focus on marketing moving forward or you put your business at risk.
Seems backwards huh? I thought so too and struggled with this for years and years in both my marketing business and my remodeling and home building business. I spent so much time being the technician and worrying about production that my sales revenue had serious ups and downs. This type of business was not a business at all - it was a frustrating "job" disguised as a business.
Every time I focused my efforts on marketing and being more entrepreneurial, I could increase sales 25%, 50%, and even more in a very short period of time. Something had to change and that change had to come from a better mindset. You MUST shift to focusing on marketing with everything else being secondary if you want to survive and grow a real business. When you have a marketing funnel and sytem that produces real jobs, you have cash, and when you have cash you can hire good people to solve other problems.
Big Players Are Entering the Remodeling Market and Are Gobbling Up Market Share
My biggest concern for the small-medium sized remodeling and home improvement business is that there are bigger and better companies entering the remodeling space each and every year who are marketing focused and go after each market very aggressively. They are entrepreneurial and marketing focused companies that can quickly put you out of business if you do not make some changes. And you can't sell a prospect that doesn't exist so focusing on selling ahead of marketing doesn't make any sense either.
Scott DeGarmo said it best in an issue of "Success Magazine"
"The big money goes to those companies with superior marketing operations. Entrepreneurial companies of today must evolve from being sales oriented to being marketing oriented in order to now win the consumer."
Now, I don't want to be all doom and gloom here and this isn't meant to scare you, but you really do need to put a plan into action sooner than later and shift your focus now. The days of being the only one in town that does what you do is over. More choices exist than ever before and with search engines making it so easy to research, qualify, and validate a business faster than ever before, you must have exceptional marketing above all else. Relying solely on architects, designers, and referrals for business is extremely dangerous for the future of your business, but this should be part of an overall marketing system.
Most remodeling businesses do not have exceptional marketing. Most remodelers don't have anything that even resembles a marketing message or a plan of attack. I get it...they are busy. Busy putting out fires every day and sixty and seventy hour work weeks are the norm. They wonder why they do what they do each and every day and pray for an easier way. There are answers to these problems and the only viable way to get real freedom in your business and survive is to grow. Or make the business so simple that it can run and thrive without the owner, and the service is such high demand that people constantly seek you out every day for those services.
Billions in remodeling and home improvement services and products are sold each year and growing a very steady rate. If you honestly believe in yourself and the service you are offering, shouldn't you be looking to get as many of the "right" NEW clients as you can possibly handle? And if you cannot afford $1,000, $3,000, $5,000 or more to invest in marketing and to make people aware of your business each month to acquire new remodeling clients, isn't that a problem you need to solve sooner than later?
Inside Your Business vs Outside Your Business
You can't spend all of your time developing the inside of your business (production, sales, and systems) and neglect the outside (marketing). At some point the inside and outside of your business have to match up and preferably the outside will grow larger than you can handle. And when it does, watch out! But right now you are probably all lopsided and bottom heavy when you need to be top heavy, working towards figuring out the bottom as you go. You can have the greatest service in the world but if no one knows about it, you are in BIG TROUBLE.
Most remodeling businesses deliver a great service but struggle to delegate to others on the production end. You cannot do everything yourself and there are plenty of smart, skilled people out there that can help you get projects done. If you are making lots of mistakes and finding it difficult to hire, simplify your services so that you can succeed now. If you are struggling on the production end, your services are too complicated and you will continue to struggle. That will not change over night. Stop doing what you are doing and start making some changes.
In the meantime, get a marketing system in place that can start moving you towards steady growth and profits so that you can hire better people to help you through your problems. You cannot grow if you do not have new projects and you cannot hire the next project manager or "internal" staff unless you have steady revenue flowing in all the time. The answer is Marketing Marketing Marketing!
You are losing over a million dollars per year or more from bad marketing or NO marketing. Let me help you figure out what to do next with my Free Marketing Strategy Session. I also have a couple of additional bonuses I want to put in your hands as well. I am not sure how long we can offer this so sign up today to get on my schedule.
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