It may take a little time to find a handyman service or blacktop contractor that you feel comfortable referring your clients to, but you’ll soon be reaping the benefits. If you’re their one-stop shop for remodeling services, they’ll continue to call you. Sooner or later, one of those calls will be about a project your company does do, and you’ll be in a great position to win the contract.
Turnage says he completes a lot of smaller jobs for his past clients, including things like putting up Christmas trees. “They don’t know who else to call,” Turnage says of these clients. Turnage has an hourly rate for these jobs, and bills them on a time and materials basis every two weeks. Much of the time, he won’t even know about them: His production assistant and job supers schedule them around the company’s larger projects.
These jobs aren’t big moneymakers, but their benefit goes beyond the modest profits made on them. First and foremost, says Turnage, “it puts our trucks in their front yards, where the neighbors can see them.” And, he continues, “with things slowing down, we’re glad to have that kind of work. It keeps us going until the economy turns around.”
A lot of it boils down to Business 101, the basics of customer service. “You have to continually remind your employees that you exist to serve your customers,” Poulin says. When you don’t make their problems your priority, he continues, “you aren’t earning that customer’s future business.”
MARKETING TECHNIQUES Michael Strong, of Brothers Strong in Houston, recently noticed a competitor’s job sign in the front yard of one of his previous clients. Curious, he called the homeowner. The conversation went something like this: “I thought you were happy with the kitchen we did for you.”
“We are,” came the reply.
Strong pressed further. “So why is there another company’s job sign in your yard?”
“We didn’t know you did bathrooms, too.”
To keep this sort of thing from happening to him, Poulin’s marketing pieces — which go out to his past clients three times a year — mention additions, decks, cabinets, window replacements, etc. The same is true of his Web site. “We remind people about all the projects that we do,” he says.
The “news and events” section of Brothers Strong’s Web site details awards given to the company, and also lists publications in which the company has been mentioned — both the popular media and the trade press. The message this sends, Strong says, is: “The experts call us and ask for our opinion. Shouldn’t you, too?”