Networking

Yesterday evening, I attended a casino “boat cruise” (at a lakefront pavilion bar) for a local construction association where we have many relationships and have done much business.  Perhaps 100 people showed up for the evening, most crowed around the bar; a smaller number in groups around booths, at the outside patio, and so on.

I sat alone, fiddling with my IPhone and IPad, reading messages, notes and reviewing the consequences of the Greek (and European) financial crisis.

A few people greeted me, including on of our company’s sales representatives, who wisely focused his time during the evening with people other than me.  I captured a few photos in the room for the association newsletter, and decide to leave early (after losing my fake money ‘fortune’ with some deftly-bad blackjack hands), knowing the sales rep had his own camera and could capture any appropriate late images.

Just as I packed up, the association’s president approached and greeted me, and we discussed some of his charitable projects and he updated me on some news.

A networking fail?

In some respects, yes.  Obviously I didn’t meet anyone new, didn’t create any business opportunities, and must have seen like someone who would have been better off at home, alone.  (I left early in part because it seemed foolish to sit by myself in the crowded bar, when I could be with my family instead.)

However, there is another side to this story.  These observations may be a cop-out, but something can be said about being true to yourself.  That is, while it is certainly possible for anyone to contort their personality, values and approach to relationships into the “right” one for business and personal success, if the contorting goes too far and too long, it can burn at your soul and destroy your spirit and create incredible, unwelcome stress.

Of course, sometimes you have habits that need to change and maybe some “contorting” for a while is healthy until the old ways end.

This post describes a similar situation a couple of years ago.

The site of the Strandherd-Armstrong Bridge in Ottawa

Michael Jeffries has posted on his Closing Success Systems Quick Tips site some worthy ideas about photos or images provided by Tess Wittler.  Tess advocates that marketers need a decent digital camera, to remember to take “before” photos, and to index and label the images — vital for search engine marketing.  She also advocates putting some care and time into the effort, especially the “after” images where you are showcasing your work.

AFTER photos – take your time. If sunlight is pouring through the windows, you may need to come back to take photos on a cloudy day. Clear out all equipment and stage the shot to be attractive. If this is an outside shot make sure your truck is not in the photo. Know when to use a flash, and when not to, and take time to set up the camera position (more tips here). I know, I know! You aren’t a photographer; you are a contractor, but these photos will SELL a prospect on hiring you in the future, so you need to understand some photography basics – or hire someone who does.

By the way, hiring a photographer doesn’t have to be an expensive venture. There are plenty of hobby photographers that would love to get a few bucks to take project photos. You may also check with the vo-tech or college in your area. Often times, students need to have practical experience to meet program requirements.

Finally, no matter where you place your photos – on your website, on Facebook or Flickr, make sure you describe the photos. There is nothing worse than viewing a portfolio and not knowing what the heck you are looking at. Remember, these photos will SELL future projects for you. Google now indexes your photos so proper titling will help your SEO.

The observation that an image is worth a thousand words rings true here.

(I take most of my own photos for our publications; most aren’t that good, but if I take enough of them, our professional designer can usually achieve the desired results.  Sometimes we use stock images.  Be very careful if you are lifting anything from the web and be sure you own the copyright or have explicit permission.  If you are using stock images, I recommend istockphoto.com because the images aren’t too expensive and the rights are not too restrictive.  Finally, we’ll contract with professional photographers where the image is important and technically difficult to achieve.  This image is of Ottawa’s Strandherd-Armstrong bridge, currently caught in a $215 million contractor’s receivership.)

Undoubtedly Mango has a unique business — but his story, told in today’s Construction Marketing Ideas newsletter — is a reminder of how creativity, marketing and a sense of excitement can result in much more profitable results than the day-to-day mundane stuff.

Yet we don’t need to be aspiring reality television show stars to achieve success.  If any of us take our natural talents and interests, and combine them with appropriate aspects of the marketing disciplines, we can succeed without contorting ourselves into emotional pretzels.

After all, I’m a writer and journalist by trade (and passion).  I’ll develop my business a whole lot more by writing and blogging than making cold calls.  My sense is that if you enjoy fishing, music, or (yes, it can happen) really working at your trade or profession, you can find ways to integrate these activities with your marketing and sales processes — and have a whole lot more fun in the process.

In the meantime, my social media book is taking shape.  If you wish to be on the preview list (no cost or obligation), this link will lead you to a simple and easy-to-complete form.

If you are not 100% satisfied with the service we have provided, we will refund all of your money.  If our plumbers smoke or swear in your home, are not drug-free, do not wear shoe covers or leave your home without cleaning up, you do not pay for the service.  If a repair fails within two (2) years, we will repair it again absolutely free.”

You certainly don’t need to pay franchise or service fees to emulate the concepts in this guarantee (though you should word it in your own language).  Consider these elements:

• By tying the guarantee to employee behaviour (the clean-up and swearing and drug stuff) you build in the employee controls without having to lay a heavy hand on your staff.  Employees will know that your clients will exercise their guarantee rights if they don’t behave, and of course, if they fail to follow clearly outlined policies that cause client dissatisfaction, you’ll be able to ask the trouble-makers to leave;
• The two-year guarantee is brilliantly simple.  Yes, it is longer than many consumers might expect, but this induces confidence and security, and the number of calls for simple follow-up repairs won’t be great.
• The 100 per cent unconditional nature of this guarantee is also impressive.  Again, few will exercise it, but it adds to security.

Here is the best part (to me) from this marketing.  We only observed this guarantee AFTER receiving and paying for the service.  It arrived in a package of goodies including a gift of 25 “air miles, some business cards, a newsletter and an invitation to sign up for a monthly maintenance program — just a day after we received the service.  In other words the package is automated to be sent right after the service has been provided.

Simple, eh.  Could you replicate any of this stuff in your own residential contracting business?

Me at Google headquarters in Mountain View, CA

Last night, we had a few minutes to spare and were near the now-old big box bookstore connected to a coffee shop (I think you can interchange the brands on this), so we  browsed racks of printed media.  It seemed like a time warp to another era — though that era is about a decade old, at most. I gravitated to the business books section, and saw a few books on social media marketing.  Some, I’ve reviewed.

One book caught my eye.  I didn’t have time to check the author’s name or even the copyright date, but quickly scanned at the advice the writer had for bloggers.  He sought to write for larger corporations planning marketing strategies.  All blog posts should have a “call to action” and everything should be connected and correlated with metrics to assess the relationship between marketing initiatives and the true revenue, the writer advocated.

There’s nothing wrong with measuring your efforts, of course.  Not having a “call to action” and some way of directing the initial readership of your blog (or other social media activity) to the larger business goals of course defeats the purpose of real measurement and time/energy/results assessments.  However, this stuff can become somewhat problematic when the “marketing message” appears to override the content message; when it seems you are being pushed into action rather than naturally interested and inclined to take the next step.

Regardless, I’ll try an experiment.  The “Call to Action” below is rather loud and clear — it is an invitation to request your name to be added to the free weekly Construction Marketing Ideas newsletter.  Will you respond, if you haven’t already?

I’ll share the numbers with you tomorrow — and the challenges of turning these initial inquiries into true and meaningful business.

Sign up for our Email Newsletter

Maybe I will.  Maybe I won’t.  Nevertheless, I paid a price for trying to “take” — not a huge one, of course, but nevertheless, I gave up some of that incredibly important trust and respect I should have for readers here, because this action did not reflect your interests more than it did mine.

“Wait!” you may say.  If the sales course is truly worth every cent, and those who subscribe to the program are now able to close massive deals because they listened to my advice and followed the program, what’s wrong with that?  As well, hey, most of us are in business of one kind or another, so is it wrong to do something that adds value yet allows us to profit from our initiative?

The answer to that rationalization is, sure, I may not have done anything wrong, but was the motivation right?  If the “I, me” come first and your rewards and benefits come second, we’ve lost the basis of trust and, as you know, trust is the foundation of your healthy brand, and the respect and repeat and referral business you can hope to achieve.

Sneak preview: Social media book chapter about ROI

I spent some time this morning editing the second chapter of my upcoming book on applying social media in the AEC community.  This chapter focuses on “Return on Investment” and suggests that you should allow your clients to take the lead.  If they are applying social media in their practices and lives, use it; if not, be careful about how much time and energy you spend in this space.

You may or may not agree with these thoughts, and accordingly I invite your feedback before setting this chapter down in “print” (the book will primarily be an e-book, if only because it will need rather frequent updates.)  The argument can be made that if you dive in deeply in the social media space, you will be ahead of the competition when the CEOs and business-to-business (or government) purchasers of AEC services see the light.  Then again, as I suggest, I don’t think many really important decisions will be made about your business or practice if you Tweet more or less right now — unless your clients are already doing this sort of stuff.

In any case, I’ve (for now) posted this chapter as a live word doc, which you can download here.  Note this is copyrighted material — please don’t post it in public or redistribute without permission.  Also, I expect to take this content offline in three days — I’ll replace this posting with something different.

chapter 2 social media

High school co-op student Conor McLean with plumber Geoff Compton

My wife’s bathroom sink was blocked.  Mine was, well, slow.  We tried the usual home remedies, but none were working.  Time to call a plumber.

This is a basic service but, for me, proved to be a good opportunity to test out marketing and business best practices first hand.  Vivian took responsibility to solve the problem — she had the blocked sink, after all.

She remembered the last plumbers in our house. The last one, who worked as a sub-contractor for the general contractor handling our kitchen renovation, didn’t leave her either negatively or positively impressed.  In any case, this guy didn’t seem to think much about marketeting or building any sort of direct relationship to the consumer.  (This may have been rational; he may have been fully booked as a sub on larger projects.)

The previous contractor, who unclogged my sink, left Vivian with a decidedly negative perception.  The guy fixed the problem okay, but left a mess behind.  She didn’t much like his attitude or appearance, though, in fairness, he did the job properly.

So, now it is clean sailing for someone new to arrive on the scene and win our business.  (This is important) — Vivian, thinking about the need for plumbing contractors, started “noticing” trucks out there offering plumbing services.  She saw one that “looked good” but when she called, the contractor seemed uncertain about the time of appointment and something just didn’t ring right in his attitude.  Then she saw one of DS Plumbing‘s trucks.

Now, I stood back from the selection process.  I’m not sure exactly how she checked the company out, but imagine she went to the website.  After the work had been completed, she remarked that the initial phone conversation was friendly, effective and trust-inducing.

Plumber Geoff Compton with the StraightForward Pricing (TM) booklet

Plumber Geoff Compton showed up at our house, a bit early (this can be a minus, in some circumstances) with high school co-op student Conor McLean.  Some powerful first impressions.  They were neatly dressed in not-to-overwhelming “uniforms”.  Then Compton, on entering the house, put his hand to our dog’s nose and gave her a warm greeting.  Both McLean and Compton quickly removed their shoes and put on slippers they had brought from the truck.  No risk of messing the upstairs carpet with dirty work boots, here.

Within minutes, Compton had assessed the problem, inviting questions and observations about possible additional work (planned future renovations, leaking water in the toilets, etc.) form my wife, showing her the fixed prices for various services with a prepared booklet (which is backed up by the invoice and the trademarked StraightForward Pricing system.)

I took a few pictures, identifying myself as a publisher and blogger, as the work proceeded.  Compton said DS Plumbing is a member of PSI (Plumbers Success International) and he has been to St. Louis for training.

Hmm.  What can we learn about PSI?  The PSI website includes a diversity of intriguing resources and marketing materials, but doesn’t go into the service’s costs.  Instead, plumbers are invited to register to attend a free Success Day (also trademarked).  PSI is part of  Success Group International, which offers similar support resources for a diversity of other residential trades.

Fair enough.  I checked on the internet for PSI and quickly arrived at PlumbingZone.com, where I could read a 15-page long thread about PSI.  Reviews are definitely mixed.  Some plumbers who use the service say, indeed, it saved their business and allowed them to grow and thrive.  Others describe less-than-warm experiences, suggesting that PSI trains plumbing contractors in selling techniques that verge on the unethical and the program costs are so high that plumbers need to set unreasonably high retail prices to stay in business.  (I saw none of that sort of behaviour when the Ottawa DS Plumbing representatives were in our home.)  The biggest (and potentially most valid) complaint:  For the start-up costs, monthly fees and add-on costs, you are really increasing your business overhead, for systems you could introduce yourself at much lower cost.

In the end, any business training or management system is only as “good” as three key elements: The system owner’s management, the competence and character of the people implementing the system and the willingness of particpants to suspend disbelief and go with the flow — in other words, to follow the system and not change things unilaterally.

I’m sure the “best practices” for appearance and in-home behaviour provided by PSI could easily be emulated by reading relevant forums and resources here.  You might be able to obtain the training and support for various aspects of your business.  If you are interested in some free marketing and business management resources, you can read my earlier blog posting about Leonard Meglolia’s Bestline Plumbing in Los Angeles — and download his operating manual from my website at no charge.

Right now, however, I’d say that PSI and DS Plumbing have scored quite well from our own family’s experience.  When the plumbers left, we felt we had been treated fairly, paid the appropriate price and would consider using the business for more substantial projects.  And our family isn’t typical, after all.  We’re skeptics about BS and, while I enjoy traveling first or business class, I never actually pay anywhere more than the basic economy fare for the travel.  My sense is that PSI may be especially useful if you are struggling, and you feel the cost is high.  If you decide to go for the program, because you’ll be sensitive to the actual investment, you’ll follow the guidelines and do what you are told to do — and you will probably succeed as a result.  At some point, you might elect to break free and leave the system.

This treasure hunt is intended to give you a taste of the possibilities of social media and, as well, create something of a challenge for you.

I’ll post a new chapter every two or three days as I move towards completing the book by month’s end.

Here’s the link to the relevant page (but you’ll have to find the password elsewhere!)

Canvassing in Columbus, Ohio

One challenge I have always appreciated in staying in business over two decades is the purported dichotomy between sales and non-sales-oriented people.  Many people shun sales careers in part because they associate the work with the plaid-jacket used car sales rep, the irritating and intrustive door-to-door canvasser, or the “call you when you least want it” telemarketer.  And quite a few of us at some point in our lives have tried or felt a need to take one or more of these really crappy sales jobs, only to fail, miserably, under the weight of real rejection.

Conversely, I see plenty of people failing in business — and even in basic economic survival — because they lack even the rudiments of effective selling abilities.  They wonder why they can’t find enough business.  In the AEC space, they chase RFPs and “bidding opportunities” like lemmings, only to discover that “fair and open” means, virtually always, that either someone with an inside track has already set things up to win, or the job will be so unprofitable that the only way to “win” it is to work for free, or even at a loss.

I’m one of the few lucky exceptions to this rule.  After some African adventures and real-life journalistic training, I ended up in a job for which I truly was qualified — but also truly hated:  A public relations writer for a federal (Canadian) government department.  Undoubtedly, this work offered great pay, benefits and job security, but I knew after a few years I would need to leave — nothing stifles entrepreneurial creativity more than a federal government bureaucratic environment.

So, I quit to sell real estate — cold turkey.  Family members and friends (including the woman who a few years later would become my wife), thought this to be a really strange choice — I’m a writer, not a sales rep, after all.

But I “knew” I needed to make this change, and I’m glad I did.

I can’t say I was the best Realtor in the city, but I soaked up all of the sales training courses I could join, and I ended up at the level where I could make a living at the sales craft.  I quickly learned that you could combine some routine practices with a focus on marketing rather than hard sales, but you still needed to make the calls if you wanted to discover the business.

Two years later, I was ready to make the switch back to journalism, but in a totally different light  I would write a publication for Realtors — filled with real news, not just puffy advertising.  I went out to sell advertising in the then-never-published newspaper, without even a prototype to show.

I sold a few ads and encouraged pre-payment of the full amount by setting up a “net rate” discount for prepayment (which has evolved to our current practice of offering a 25 per cent Net rate savings for prompt payment to current advertisers, but we deliver the services first.)  The business had a rocky start — sales leadership is only one part of operating a viable business — but it still proved to be the key that allowed me create the enterprise.

Today, of course, I help out in the selling process, but spend most of my time writing.  (Writing, indeed, can help out in sales, especially when you create enough authority and reputation about your abilities.)  The sales knowledge however, also helps me oversee the business which employs three sales reps, and contracts with at least one other.

I’ve grown to appreciate these key elements:

• Non-salespeople can learn how to sell, and need this ability if they wish to lead and prosper in business;
• You certainly need to understand the crappy part of sales work, but you really don’t need to do the stuff you really hate to succeed.

This leads me to one of the most blatantly promotional things I’ve done in years.  I accepted an “affiliate marketing proposal” from the RAIN Group, offering a special interactive sales training program for non-sales architectural engineering and construction professionals.

The program isn’t free, but isn’t too expensive — at $147 a month (charter rate, that price may be higher by the time you read this posting), you’ll probably need about four months to complete it, so that would suggest a total cost of about $600.00.  RAIN Group is paying me a commission for each sale, so, yes, I have some financial motivation to promote the thing.

However, I wouldn’t promote it if I didn’t think lots of people in this industry really need this type of training and, I certainly wouldn’t have promoted it if the RAIN Group representative “selling” me on the service hadn’t followed sales best practices himself.

After all, as a “decision maker” I am at the receiving end of lots of really crappy sales initiatives — people trying to break through to me.  Some actually reach my direct phone line, email box, or (gulp, at home, the door) and, well, I can be quite an irritating “prospect”.  I simply don’t have time for crappy and intrusive sales practices, so am abrupt and cold.  The RAIN Group representative, however, made sure he had made connection with two people in my centre of influence who I respect before he called me.  And that worked.  I listened, evaluated the program, and realized that, yes, this is a pretty good deal.

I won’t burden anyone with blatant sales messages unless they are ready to receive them.  I hate finding myself at Internet pages filled with hype and promotional language, so I’ve put all of that stuff over on a special page within this site, which you can read if you wish.