Self-assurance may be a good contractor’s most commonly held trait. Unsure contractors have unsure customers. They depend on your certainty. This trait likely governs your management style, occasionally to your detriment.

Being the boss should never mean you ignore advice, opinions, or suggestions of your staff. Do so at your peril. Imposing your “will” at any cost creates an ineffective environment that can be seen in low morale, high turnover, and poor sales. The man who must be right all the time eventually only has one person voting on that status.

You often hear us discuss headlines, benefits and how ineffective certain ads or methods are in the context of how they appeal to the customer. That’s because the “true” boss is right there: a paying customer’s response trumps all others.

Your customers don’t care what’s in it for you; they want to know what’s in it for them. You may believe this, but do you reinforce this throughout your company?

The CSR who says, “I can’t do that,” or “That’s not our policy,” or “You need to call back for that,” is not thinking “customer service.”. Quite the contrary.

The tech who can check for carbon monoxide with a slightly more expensive tune up, or suggest it to each customer on a repair call, or offer a detector but doesn’t is not thinking about the true “boss” here… but he may be thinking his office “boss” never brought it up either.

Same goes if you can offer a program of drain cleanliness, or avert a fire hazard, or clean a dryer vent or any number of customer-centered programs, products and services. These are not “pushy sales techniques” unless you have labeled them that way; they’re offering solutions customers want, need and deserve.

Generally, customers respond due to their emotions, with over 80% of the buying process governed thereby. The in-home contractor has a natural emotional inroad: protecting property and those who inhabit it!

The emotional desire to protect triggers a response. The customer’s emotion triggered the response. Their mindset governs their actions. Your emotion – “Let’s promote this service/product to generate sales” – is a business mindset. Fine. I understand. But why you promote it must be heightened to the customer’s mindset of “because it is valuable to me, my family, and my property.”

Promoting that philosophy throughout your company with your natural self-assurance will pay you well beyond the sales.