3 minute read
Bottom Line
Change your goals, change your business
Many companies report to the job with goals of simply completing the work, making a good impression, and collecting a check. They pack up their tools, leave the site, and hope the customer calls when it’s time for a repaint in five to 10 years. If this is your approach, you’re missing opportunities for interim revenue from those customers. If you’re truly interested in collecting some of that revenue, you need to change your goals by viewing every job as an opportunity to build a long-term relationship with customers.
Build relationships to build your business
Investing in your company’s ability to create long-term relationships with every customer can pay for itself many times over. If you’re thinking ‘I already have a CRM, I’m all set,’ think again. While CRMs (customer relationship management technologies) are great for managing contact info and calendars, they can’t provide the insight needed to help you create a customer experience that not only wins business, but wins long-term fans. To do that, you need to take an objective look at your processes and figure out what’s not working and what should be capitalized on to build better relationships and create and a pipeline of recurring work.
Conducting a customer satisfaction and retention audit
There is a 3-step audit process you can conduct to ensure your company is investing in the right areas to capitalize on turning completed projects into: a) customers with future project opportunities, b) referrals to prospective customers, c) verified testimonials for marketing purposes, and last but not least, d) recurring revenue.
The 3-step audit is simple, yet effective
The first step is to create a ‘customer journey map’ by imagining yourself as the customer looking for a company for a big project. This process will help you visualize your sales process and call out those areas to invest in making improvements where you find customer pain points, and lack of professionalism or general dissatisfaction on the part of your company. You want to build long-term residual revenue relationships right? Small details are key here. Ask yourself: Is your appointment scheduling system efficient for both parties? Do you give customers the convenience of requesting an estimate—and viewing it—through your website? Is your website well-designed and professional? Are your company vehicles clean and decaled? Is your employee attire branded? Every business can make small investments to improve in these areas, which work to increase your likelihood of beating out competitors and winning projects. Start by listing your sales process and noting where you could make improvements.
The second step happens after the job is complete. It’s of the utmost importance that you have a strategy to turn that customer into a walking advertisement for your company. Invest in software, such as Review Reminder, to ensure you get a testimonial that will help give your company more credibility. Similarly, consider investing in designing a referral program for when past customers recommend you. For example if a referred customer awards you the job, maybe you give the referring customer 5% or 10% off on their next project. Boom— you just gained one new customer plus future work from the original customer who referred.
The third step happens after the testimonial is completed. How can you build a long-lasting relationship with a customer without being pushy? Invest in social media content, articles, videos and blogs on your website to help keep customers engaged and educated while not directly working for them. Monthly email newsletters are also a subtle way to keep them engaged with your company and also of making them aware of current industry trends. The goal here is to provide value to them via your content so that they will remember your company as the one that kept them informed and educated. Added to the memory they have of you as the expert they had a past experience with is why they’ll consider you for future projects. COLE DEROUSSE is the business development lead at Major Painting. He holds a degree in marketing from Creighton University and has received notoriety for leadership and excellence in Small Business Marketing and B2B Service Marketing on LinkedIn.
