Seminar Impacts Total Strangers Hundreds of Miles Away

 It seemed like a normal seminar. Dozens of PHCC contractors piled in to get a seat at Adams Hudson’s marketing seminar to gain a lesson. They got a bit more than that.

“Plumbing contractors may not think of themselves as heroes, but I do, and so do all who’ve ever had a water heater die on them,” said Hudson. “They can save the day with the twist of a wrench. Maybe this is a hero complex, but we wanted to have a positive impact too.”

That’s what led Hudson, Ink to donate proceeds for each PHCC member who accepted a marketing package to Habitat for Humanity, a foundation dedicated to eliminating substandard housing.

“Habitat helps less fortunate citizens, plus it puts local contractor volunteers to work,” said Hudson. “It’s a great way for plumbers and other contractors to get involved in the community. Aside from the charity, it’s feel-good marketing at its finest.”

From this seminar, 28 PHCC members helped push donations to nearly $300; over time, Hudson, Ink’s donations from seminars have exceeded $10,000.

“The experience has been great for everyone involved,” said Hudson. “We hope to continue our relationship with PHCC and Habitat for Humanity for a long time.”

For more information about Habitat for Humanity, and ways you can support the cause, go to www.Habitat.org.

Hudson, Ink, Corp. is a marketing firm that creates and distributes online and offline marketing and information programs for in-home service contractors, helping them market more effectively with turn-key marketing programs and strategy. For more information, call 1-800-489-9099, email info@hudsonink.com or check them out online at www.HudsonInk.com or on Facebook and LinkedIn.

Special thanks to the 28 contractors who helped support Habitat for Humanity at PHCC Connect 2014:

3rd Generation Johnson Plumbing	Mark Johnson
A. J. Lyne, Ltd.	Andy Lyne
Al Bourgeois Plumbing	Carl Bourgeois
Bell Mechanical	Keith Bell
Brian MacDonald Plumbing & Heating	Brian MacDonald
Central Plumbing & Heating	John Cersosimo
Dial One Sonshine Plbg, Htg & A/C	Dave Marquez
Doug Turner Plumbing Co.	Doug Turner
Earl's Plumbing	Greg de Veer
Enhanced HVAC	Joe Brooks
Esposito Plumbing & Heating	Al Esposito
Feddon Mechanical	Dave Feddon
Gino's Plumbing	Gino Burgio
Jack Dolan & Sons	Mike Dolan
Jeff's Plumbing & Repair, Inc.	Jeff Voss
Jiffy Plumbing, Heating & A/C	Allan Luke
John Stevenson Plumbing Heating & Air	John Stevenson
Long's Corporation	Michael Hurt
Milton Frank Plumbing Co. Inc.	Patty Frank
Modern Plumbing	Josh Hollub
Owen Geoghegan Plumbing & Heating	Owen Geoghegan
Powderhouse Plumbing	John Macone
R.E.C. Industries	Randy Hunter
Scott Harrison Plumbing & Heating	Scott Harrison
Silverado Rooter & Plumbing	Art Cake
Terry Plumbing Co.	Terry McCarthy
Tri-City Plumbing	Todd Billiot
Williston Plumbing	Ron Doughty

                              

Print vs. Online Newsletters: Five Factors to Consider in Your Customer Mailings

Contractors who want to keep their customers understand the importance of staying in touch. After all, that’s how customers remember you, appreciate you and know to call you the next time they have a need. The tried-and-true way to keep this connection strong is the customer newsletter.

By getting your name in front of customers two to four times a year with helpful tips for the home, you’re building your relationship and your image. There’s no question about that. But the question that does keep coming up is this one: “Should our newsletter be sent through the mail or by email?” Adams Hudson, president of Hudson, Ink, a marketing firm that designs lead-generating marketing programs for contractors, points to five factors to help you evaluate:

Yes, the costs are different. Both email and print versions have the same upfront costs in concept development, article writing and product design. “From there, email edges out print in this category, obviously, because it doesn’t require physical materials and you save on printing and mailing. But some people stop at that fact alone when there are others to consider,” Hudson said.

People have to physically handle your print newsletter. Your customers have to decide what to do with your print mailing rather than leaving that decision to their inbox filters. And because there’s a chance they’ll place it on a counter or coffee table, they’re more likely to hold onto your newsletter – especially if they’ve noticed the coupons and want to save them for later use.

People are more likely to remember what they read. University researchers a few years back determined that readers who read The New York Times in print form remembered significantly more news stories as well as more points from those news stories than those who read the paper online. You can make the same case for your print newsletter.

You need a list either way. “If you’re sending newsletters to current customers, your data collection may be so superior that you have both physical and email addresses for everyone in your database. More power to you. But if you’re buying lists for certain markets, the physical addresses – with demographic breakdowns and such – tend to be better for targeting certain markets than email addresses,” Hudson said. Also, he added, email is affected by CAN-SPAM legislation, which requires you to offer everyone on your list an opt-out option. Direct mail doesn’t have that restriction.

If you want the relationships, resales, referrals and recurring revenue that come from retention marketing, visit www.customerretentionprogram.com or call 1-800-489-9099 for a free sample newsletter packet. And be sure to ask about the one factor that matters most…

You can balance both. It doesn’t necessarily have to be one or the other. You can double your retention marketing by integrating your print newsletter with an online newsletter portal.

-END-

Do You Know Your Competitors?

We often refer to “your competitors,” or “the competition,” but who are these people exactly? 

Whether you’re in a small market or a large market – whether you’re the dominant company or the challenger – you probably have in mind the company most likely to be vying for your piece of the market share. So you might be thinking of specific names. That’s certainly one type of competitor. But there are also three other types who could be peeling off your potential.  

Direct Competitors

If you were thinking names, your direct competitors were probably the names that came to mind. A direct competitor is someone who offers the same products and services to the same market. They earn money from the same thing you do, from the same type of people. When providing quotes and estimates, who do you go head-to-head against? Who do you lose out to? Who do you win against?

Indirect Competitors

Indirect competitors are a variation of direct competitors. They offer some of the same stuff but have a different goal; they drive revenue differently. For service contractors in a residential market, the large home improvement retailers that provide products for do-it-yourselfers could be in this category. They don’t come up against you directly, but they make it possible for someone to circumvent you. Their marketing can compete with yours.

Replacement Competitors

This type of competitor is harder to pinpoint, but has the same effect: you don’t get the job. This “loss” happens when customers choose to spend somewhere else the resources they could have spent on your service/product. They could be thinking about a bathroom upgrade but decide instead to replace a garage door. Or they install a fence and opt out of security lighting. In other words, the same resources they could have committed to you went somewhere else – and so did their business with your company. 

To read more of the hottest marketing articles, go ahead and sign up for a no-cost subscription to the industry’s #1 training resource, the Sales&Marketing Insider e-Newsletter. Click here get your first copy.

Did Online and Offline Marketing Have a Shotgun Marriage?

If you create a less confusing, consistent marketing message across OFFline and ONline media, you will be miles ahead of the competition. How? Once again, let’s start simply.

5 Things You Can Do NOW for Integration, Simplification and Results:

1. Repurpose your best offline promotions into your online promotions. They should have the same theme, voice, message and offer, if any. No confusion for your CSRs, techs or customers.
2. Incorporate print promotions with online by using QR codes that become coupons or deeper offers. (These are simple to do and make you look instantly more relevant.)
3. Invite your website visitor to receive your offline newsletter, which is an instant lead-capture. And the inverse is also true…
4. Make your newsletter point to your website with continuation articles, more advice and valuable promotions.
5. The Right Balance: Let your Social page be 70% entertaining, 30% promotional. Social sites should have the same theme, messaging, look and voice of your main website.

Use the proven model from billion-dollar marketers. Rethink your marketing path from “ad to phone” to the entire world of integrated messages. This will drive traffic, calls and profits right past the competition straight to you.

You can get no-cost training that shows precise steps to eliminate inconsistency and confusion, and maximize your opportunity by getting on the Advanced Access List for the video training series; it’s packed with juicy dollars and cents case studies, content that actually worked and a neat list of bonuses rarely given away.

Adams Hudson will be conducting “The Ultimate HVAC Lead Generation Formula” video training series (his HOTTEST video training event to date) starting on August, 26^th, 2013. In it, you’ll hear AND see the richest Case Studies, techniques and red-hot marketing strategies ever compiled for ONline and OFFline contractor marketing. PLUS, he’s giving away a pile of bonus training, downloads and samples throughout. Learn more in this short video. Limited to the first 255 contractors who get in.

Clearly Unclear

Old cars are like young children. Highly dependent, often naggy, hard to predict. Okay in that light, they’re like older children, too. Yet, one of my strange old vehicles needed a windshield because it failed to avoid a 70 mph rock. Silly car. 

Since it was already having some other mechanical needs tended, I figured I’d get it all done at once. 

So, I did what any modern consumer does, I opened the Yellow Pages. HA! Good one. I went to Google, clicked the top couple of names, and actually found one that listed my glass and at a reasonable price. “Wow, I thought. This is so easy.” Any time you make a statement like that to yourself, you have doomed the outcome to sheer bedlam. There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth… 

Proceeding ignorantly – my favorite way – I place the order online. It totals my order, and even politely mentions, “This price includes the windshield, gasket, and all labor. If we find you don’t need a new gasket, this amount will be deducted.” Soooo easy, said the Titanic’s most oblivious passenger. 

Afterward, it asks me to pick a “convenient” time. I scan for the option that says, “Never” but then notice THEY can go to the car while it’s in the mechanical repair shop. “Now that IS convenient!” I say to myself, like getting a ride to a 

Vampire’s blood drive, with much the same outcome. 

So, I have the part, the installation price, the date, the place… it’s all set! Whoohoo. The internet makes things SO EASY. 

Soon after the “confirmation” email (translation: “a wild guess with legal language attached”) things went weird. Their CSR (translation: Customer Service Repellant) called. From there, all online promises were off, chuckled at in their dismissal. Just goes to show two things: a) Your marketing and your service had better be consistent, and b) The internet’s ‘ease’ of commerce is commensurate relative to the ‘ease’ of any customer’s communication with the world. 

Case in point…

Promises Made, Promises Spat Upon

Slip into my shoes for a moment, disregarding the Odor Eaters, and feel your ‘expectations’ dwindle along with company credibility at each step. Remember, too, that this was not, “Crazy Eddie’s House of Glass and Bail Bonds” we’re dealing with, but the ‘largest windshield retailer in the U.S.’…

• They said the windshield was ‘in stock’ awaiting delivery. Confirmation email said, “Not in stock; on order”.
• They said, “We expect the vehicle to be at
  at on for installation. If not, there will be a $50 trip surcharge.” (This atop the $20 charge already paid for the service.) On the date of giddy and expectant install, they call to say the windshield was “broken in transit” and gave me an “approximate” delivery of 2 weeks. Funny, I didn’t have the option to charge them for me telling the mechanics to clear the workspace around the car and stopping their work.
• Two weeks later when the glass arrived, they called to say they “couldn’t do an install with this glass anywhere but their facility”. They smirked when I asked for a $20 refund of their on-site fee.
• After delivering the car, they called to tell me that the gasket “would not fit the vehicle” so they ordered a new one. The original was $20. The new one? $177. They made no apology, no excuse, only said, “…and we’ll just put the upcharge on your card.”

Uh, this comment did not go as planned. When the poor stammering technician told the Customer Disservice Rep that I had an email with the “complete price, parts and all labor” at a price significantly under that, he was clearly untrained in the art of the ‘hold’ button.

I hear a rude female voice say, “Well I dang sure ain’t payin fer it. It’s his dern car, let him pay fer it.” This didn’t go as planned either. Sherry and I had a ‘nice’ chat.

The internet is a tool of communication. Each person with typing fingers who can also find the ‘send’ button is able to vent frustration, in a large and particularly damaging way, instantly – OR they can praise accordingly. I chose Option “A”. 

Yet with a modicum of restraint, I merely copied my intended “comment” and sent it to the Regional Manager first.

1. He responded quickly and couldn’t have been nicer.
2. He listened and understood my frustration.
3. He apologized for the multiple problems.
4. He explained the upcharge instead of demanding it, and negotiated amicably toward a solution.

Every underlined word and phrase should be written on the arms of all those who deal with customers. Some WILL have problems, but we’re people. If you’ll just level with us, take responsibility and behave civilly, we’ll accept that you’re people, too.

The glass is in. The world’s most overpriced gasket looks great. The installer did well. The regional manager got called into a problem he didn’t create, yet vowed to correct both the “promise congruency” and unappreciated upcharge. I believe him, especially since when I called to say that the job turned out well, Sherry in Customer Service was no longer there.

You cannot ‘fix’ every problem in your business, but if you’ll START with customer service, you’ll END up with more customers.

Adams Hudson

Questions for You:

• When was a time that the ATTITUDE of the personnel fouled up an otherwise good product or service experience? Click to share.
• When did someone’s great ATTITUDE reverse an otherwise rotten experience? Click to share.
• Do you ever call YOUR company to see how pleasant your CSRs are?
• Do you ever check BEHIND a service call to see how customers were treated?

(We published “Contractor’s Guide to Competitive Intelligence” to help contractors check their own company versus others.  Click for a FREE Sampling Form here.)

5 Things the Super Successful Do Not Do

The hyperactive, hyper-achievers seem to relish differentiating behavior. Why? Market leaders, by definition, don’t copy and can’t wait on the crowd. However, they often sensibly “reformulate” based on proven criteria. Those stories, new successes and “breakthroughs” carry them into the future. They tend to see a wave coming and prepare to ride it ahead, while others frantically splash about. Which way are YOU going next?

The 5 Behaviors and “New” Habits of Successful Contractors are revealed below. Do not read this if you are unwilling to read some harshness.

1.  Accept the Norm. 

A few examples: If “normal” contractors spend over half their budgets in the Yellow Pages and perennially complain about the sorry results, the leaders shun same. Our top clients spend about 20% in the Yellow Pages – less if we can make a business case for it.  Likewise, the “normal” ad is a stupid, puffed up, ego-driven and ridiculously ineffective ad designed for “Free!” (featuring sweating penguins, starbursts and “for all your heating and cooling needs”) by the staff whose design criteria is to “not stand out too much.”  (They succeed – the ads in the heating and cooling section all blend together in a sea of sameness. Guess what? That’s bad.) Leaders advertise with customer-focused direct response ads that DO stand out.

Likewise, if the “crowd” is not having success with Maintenance Agreements, the leaders find a way to pile them on.  If the “crowd” is not getting publicity, the leaders focus on it. If the “crowd” doesn’t want to invest in customer retention, the leaders quietly amass legions of devoted fans by using it.

2.  Resist Outside Advice from Qualified Experts. 

The “fear of change” aspect again. Leaders typically hire specialists in finance, estate/succession planning, insurance, legal, marketing, sales, personnel and technical training. They see these as “investments;” the crowd sees them as “unnecessary costs.”  In time, the gap between the investor and the fearful non-spender widens. The “crowd” calls them lucky. The leaders would call the crowd names, but they have bigger things to focus upon.

SIDE NOTE: Our Coaching Clients typically say things like “just having someone on my side, giving advice and urging me forward is worth several times the fee.”  That was NOT a plug to join OUR Coaching 

Program, but to find someone, someplace, where you get a regular “sense of mission.” Looking at the same walls, the same employees’ blank faces, generally will not do it.

3.  Refuse to Look at the "Hole in the Bucket." 

If the website visits are going down, there’s a reason. If the response to direct mail has sunk, there’s a reason. If your ‘old’ customers aren’t calling you back, there’s a reason.  If you regularly hear people ‘not’ requesting a certain tech of yours, there’s a reason.  All are costing you.  Turning the other way doesn’t make it go away or get better.

Self Admission Time: Though our ‘renewal’ rate for newsletter clients had gone up, I still wondered about those who did NOT renew. So we launched a 3 part mail/email/call campaign to all who – for any reason at any time – didn’t renew.  It’s amazing.  Many new phone calls, old clients feeling “appreciated” and new orders came in.  The hole in the bucket is now smaller.

There are negative habits, practices, trends in your company NOW that are reversible. Take a hard look at them. Be the leader who a) Admits b) Takes corrective action c) Measures and repeats accordingly.

4.  Get 'Hurt' by Criticism. 

Sorry, but we’ve become wimpy, politically-correct, crybaby-prone fence sitters concerned about everyone’s self-esteem.  This is, to me, the ‘fear’ behind change.  We fear resistance, reluctance, ‘making a wrong move’ (so we make NONE) or offending.  Respectful leaders forge ahead without bullying but also without regard to slings and arrows of sideliners. Most critics do little other than criticize. So, if you have something you’ve “been thinking about doing” for awhile, there’s a God-given reason it won’t leave you alone. Apologies to Nike^©, but just do it.

5.  Expect New Results from Old Habits. 

The “old” model has died. The economy rupture of last year just gave it a not-so-respectful funeral.  Those who change are going to manifest their destinies accordingly.  Yet following the same marketing pattern, sales presentations, going to the same discussion boards and same industry events with the same speakers, are NOT going to bring change.

Best thing you could do is buy a plane ticket to visit a business you want to become and find out what they did. Ask whose advice they sought, what ‘systems’ they have. You’ll find that they were never afraid to change. Emulate that.

Watch for these 5 nasty habits in your business, and pick one thing you can change now.