When it comes to selling to homeowners, salespeople are working with new prospects or existing customers.
New prospects offer the opportunity to serve a new home that is full of potential. This can lead to increased market share and a new referral resource.
Existing customers offer the opportunity to elevate your level of service, expand your relationships, sell additional products, plus solve longstanding problems. Existing customers often cross-pollinate with other services you offer, with a higher probability of buying and spending more money. In other words, existing customers should never be taken for granted in favor of new prospects.
While new prospects may offer new revenue potential and the allure of a large purchase, there are no guarantees they will buy anything. And don’t be surprised if your current customers leave you. Why? They may feel indifferent toward your company, or another company may poach them since you were not paying attention and by offering to solve problems you miss or didn’t care to discover.
Consider also that new prospects require more marketing dollars to convert into a customer. Home services contractors report the average marketing costs to create a prospect can average $400. That cost increases to an average of $600 to convert the prospect to a buying customer.
Existing customers, on the other hand, cost very little to resell. Most companies can flip an opportunity to sell products and services from an email, text, phone call, postcard, letter, tech handout, newsletter, service visit, etc., each of which costs only pennies to a few dollars.
Existing customers also offer low-cost opportunities to create new prospects and customers through yard signs, branded homes (decals, grocery bags, and other in-home branded materials), referral rewards, mailbox/door hangers, as well as trucks (rolling billboards) in neighborhoods.
Many contractors are rely on promotions to drive business if market conditions are not doing so. Top-performing contractors realize that while promotions can work when the market conditions don’t cooperate, it is far better to be special and stand out, rather than fit in. They allow the lore of their service, reviews, social media, and referrals drive business. They are COMPELLING, not selling.
Complelling contractors promote their unique people, protocols, products, and processes to pinpoint and correct problems. You do this by pointing out that you are the ONLY contractor in your area qualified and certified with the proper tools, training, technology, and technicians to diagnose and correct these annoying issues that plague customers’ lives.
In this economy, people are staying in their existing homes and investing in making them the way they want. These homeowners wish to be catered to with unique, innovative, problem-solving remedies and extraordinary service with a caring attitude.
My mandate to you: Be a premium provider for the discerning homeowner with distinctive tastes who desires better quality, peace of mind, and a higher standard of living. Provide more value and less risk by guaranteeing your work and customer happiness 100% in writing and provide a full refund if you fall short and can’t make it right.
Be a premium service provider for the discerning homeowner with distinctive tastes who desires better quality, peace of mind, and a higher standard of living.
Drew Cameron is North America’s most sought-after sales and marketing strategy and success advisor to home services contractors through his work as the founder and CEO of Flow Odyssey and board member, Foundation board trustee, Contractor University Founder and Faculty member, and Resident Expert of Contractor Connect for Electric & Gas Industries Association (EGIA). Contact [email protected] 610-745-7020.