(Hint: You Already Own It)

Source: ACCA

An old saying states that people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care. Don’t let your familiarity with the saying make you numb to its far-reaching business power.

Like many of you, we’ve been involved in numerous contracting projects over the years. We’ve built a home, renovated six buildings, and hired for all sorts of projects from retiling to roofs to remodeling a kitchen. We’ve had some go wrong, such as the sheetrock job that looked like a drunken rhinoceros careened off every wall. We also had a tile setter mix boxes of tile mid-job, creating a really nice two-tone effect that he defended as stylish. Thankfully, these miscues are in the minority.

The majority of the contractors have been exceptional. Yet there’s one trait among even the good ones that causes their rehire rate to be barely higher than that of the rotten ones. This mistake totally short circuits future calls and referrals, and it’s costing you a fortune, even though the power to correct it exists in your company, right now, today.

The mistake is ignoring the relationship.

See, a bad contractor (whether he knows he’s bad or not) doesn’t get a callback or referrals due to poor work. And a good contractor most often doesn’t get a callback or referrals because of inattention to his customers. Same result, for entirely different reasons.

Out Of Sight, Out Of Mind
Think of your past friends and relationships. The most common reason they’re in the past and not the present is you fell out of touch. You might have even been a good friend with much in common, yet if not in touch, you’re not on the friend list. There are even figures to back this up. According to a Good Housekeeping survey of those who purchased from contractors:

• Thirty-seven percent said the relationship was the most important reason.
• Twenty-two percent said it was because you stayed in touch after a previous purchase.
• Fourteen percent were referred by a friend or family member.

Add those up, and 73 percent of your sales have some relationship tie-in.

Unfortunately, most contractors just service them, bill them, and hope for the best.

So, how do you rank in terms of customer relations and retention?

With minimum retention efforts, you get a call, and it’s answered by the nearest minimally trained receptionist. You schedule, show up, do the work, present the invoice, then go home. No follow-up is attempted. You assume, “If they need me, they know how to reach me.” Unless you live in a town with exactly one contractor, good luck.

With average retention efforts, your call handling quality is dependent upon who answers. You deliver what you consider fair — no more, no less. Techs are intermittently trained. Some customers get an agreement offer, some don’t. Your CSR may make a call-behind or send a thank you note, but this is not systemized. Newsletters and follow-up range from spotty to nonexistent. You dabble with improvement but with little lasting change. Customers feel the inconsistency and migrate away. Repeat calls and referrals suffer miserably.

With maximum retention efforts, you categorize poorly trained employees as unethical business. You answer the phones consistently and make consistent high-quality presentations. Follow-up is automatic, starting with happy calls and a thank you card that contains a referral request. Seasonal newsletters go out like clockwork. Your website, value-building ads, forms, and leave-behinds are not purely sales pieces (though they boost prices and closing ratios) but educational customer-awareness tools. Customers get outbound messages from you — online and offline — eight to 14 times per year.

If you’re in the maximum category, congratulations. You also probably dominate your market and not by coincidence. Yet for the others, don’t make this too hard. Start simply with two things:

1. The thank you note and call. Even the most basic thank you note (automatically generated and about 45 cents worth of effort) tells customers they’re valuable. It’s so easy to do and so easy not to do. Most choose the latter.
2. A newsletter. Since thank you notes are transaction based (and thus sporadic or potentially forgotten between visits), you must have at least one calendar-based item. A quality newsletter sent out two to four times a year will position your company branding as different from perhaps 90 percent of the other contractors in town. That’s an incredible advantage for not much money.

Start where you can. Your customers, company, and profits deserve the boost.