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Secrets to Success John-Paul Micek |
The 3 ways to grow
Joseph had reached the end of his rope. It had been 10 months since he launched his residential construction business when he was referred to me. As we completed his "New Player Benchmark" (all clients are considered "players" in the game of business), Joseph was frustrated and questioning whether he'd make it to the one-year anniversary for his company. When Joseph started to list the methods of marketing he had applied, I immediately saw why he was so frustrated.
Joseph had fallen into a trap common to business owners.
There are hundreds of ways to market your business and create streams of new clients and prospects. But those methods boil down to three specific impacts -- the only three ways to grow your business. Each and every marketing method you will ever employ will either:
1. Increase the number of clients you serve.
2. Increase the number of times you serve them in a week/month/year.
3. Increase the dollar amount of each sale.
Choose a marketing method that doesn't match the type of growth your business needs and your success will be uncertain at best. Joseph knew what his goals were, but he didn't understand how each marketing method he chose would grow his business in a different way.
Joseph put quite a bit of energy into a customer referral program. He promoted it to everyone he met, provided excellent incentives to his few current clients and placed ads touting the benefits of working with a contractor who grew his business through referrals vs. pure marketing. While these efforts were rooted in a proven marketing principle, investing nearly 50 percent of his marketing resources in the method was not having the impact Joseph had intended.
Joseph had matched a great marketing method (incentive-based referral) with the wrong goal (bringing in a significant volume of new prospects.) While this method would have been excellent to complement other methods, it should not have been the primary way for Joseph to quickly grow his business from scratch. As a new business owner, Joseph's job was first to focus on increasing the number of clients so he could build a critical mass of satisfied people who would help him achieve the type of growth he was looking for.
To correct this, what Joseph and I did (and what you will need to do yourself) was to clarify exactly what his current growth was and what his immediate goals were. Joseph and I developed a simple strategic plan that would attract a significant number of pre-qualified prospects while building up his back end. Armed with this strategy, Joseph and I were able to look at a number of ways he could achieve this specific goal.
The choice he made was to partner with a new window manufacturer that would feed him plenty of "basic" installation jobs. It turns out that more than 60 percent of those window replacement clients added on at least $5,000 in additional work -- plus they were now Joseph's clients, not the manufacturers. Within nine months, Joseph had the critical mass of clients he needed to attract more business than he could handle, without one dollar spent on advertising.
John-Paul Micek is a small-business strategist
and chief operating officer at RPM Success Group.
Reach him at JPM@RPMsuccess.com
or toll-free at (888) 334-8151.