To be a contractor is to be a big, scary guy who is going to talk to me about things I don’t know anything about. And quote me a price I’m not well-equipped to judge the reasonableness of.
This is the “story” contractors are up against before their estimator steps one foot inside a prospect’s home.
That’s what’s so great about referrals. A friend or neighbor used you and you did great work. So 90% of the risk is taken out of the decision to hire you for the homeowner.
What’s not so great is when a contractor wants to grow faster than his referrals will take him.
You’re forced to start with the big-scary-guy story with prospects instead of the my-friend-used-you-and-is-happy story. Big difference. And that was the story we had to overcome for this remodeling contractor. Nobody cared about their new nifty patented material until they got past the big-scary-guy story in their head.
I told the client I’ll build a marketing program that builds trust, and your salespeople can talk about your new nifty patented material. Because if we can’t build trust, there won’t be any prospects to talk to about your new nifty patented material.
So that’s a we did. We told their story in very traditional ways, but with a very non-traditional message. We let people know we understood how they felt about contractors. We told them that we would work hard to gain their trust. We told them exactly how the process would work; what they could expect. We told them that remodeling is major construction and major construction can be difficult sometimes. We told them we’re not perfect. And we told them if they’re not happy, if we make a mistake, we’ll fix it.
We did our best to bring up and head off all the things that every contractor knows are in the minds of their prospects. Except nobody else was talking to people this way.
We also gave them videos of happy customers and of the owners in the field checking jobs.
We. Built. Trust. In every piece of mail we sent, in every ad we placed, on every door hanger that was hung and on every page of their website.
Sure, quality is important. So is your knowledge and experience. Yet, I’ve never met a contractor who didn’t talk about how much they care about quality and how much they know about their profession.
So how do people if you didn’t come from a referral? They buy from trust and comfort level. Sure, some people buy price alone. But you don’t want them and I don’t want to attract them for you.
Do you want to grow faster than your referrals are taking? I’d be happy to explore how we can help you do that. Send me an email or call my cell at 602–369–1009.
