Kitchen Nightmares

As some of you may know, we’re redoing our kitchen. Someone forgot to tell me that when contractors remove your kitchen, the upheaval is only slightly less than if you sold your vital organs.

Rethinking that, since I’ve now consumed more than 300 of each variety of microwave dinners (said appliance on a piano bench in my living room), I would gladly trade my spleen for a completed kitchen.

Since we’ve no provision for doing dishes, which I’d initially thought was a huge benefit, we invested in plastic utensils. One package contains enough flatware to satisfy all the spitball shooting fourth graders in America until 2012.

Note to the plastic utensil manufacturing industry: they don’t work. A photograph of a knife and fork actually outperforms this stuff. The spoons work on room temperature items only. They snap attempting to move one shaving of ice cream and melt in soup like Uri Geller stared at them. The fourth graders have discovered the only true use for your products.

So, as a family, we now eat scalding microwave synthesized food with our hands. This means we scream and growl during dinner. This renovation has erased millions of years of evolution in eight weeks.

Also realize that this “no dishwashing provision” means that plates, glasses, and the occasional serving dish must now be cleaned in our laundry sink. I have now actually seen some type of ladies undergarment apparatus soaking with a piece of pasta and ricotta floating nearby. I almost gave up Italian food on the spot, but regained my senses. Further, I could easily gross you out with the little fudge ripple incident, but I won’t.

Now, onto the contractors.

The General Contractor has been great. I keep wanting to say something small-minded and bitterly satirical (my specialty) but – darn the luck – he keeps doing good work. Yet some subs have had slip ups. In no order, here you go - -

Electrical – As mentioned earlier, this is the ONLY company that landed on all three “lists”. (See the SMI, May 12, 2010 editorial). I also shared how they did it (See the SMI, May 24, 2010 issue.) These people’s prices make most jewelry stores look like thrift shops, but they’re good, reliable, fair and – here’s the kicker – highly professional. Quite unlike the…

Floor People – Far as I can tell, our hardwood floors needed sanding, staining, and clearing. Not exactly nuclear fusion. The only real skill test was matching the color to the other floors in the house. When they arrived at 8:02 one morning, bucket and brushes in hand for this step, I asked one question, “Is that the same color as the rest of the house?” This person, who appeared to have been tossed out of a Wolf Mother concert, never looked up and said, “I think its close.” That’s a quote. By 8:12, he’d left and I’d yet to reattach my jaw. The floor didn’t match. They promised their next coat would. We’ll see.

HVAC guys – They had to move a couple floor registers and build some new ductwork. They came on time, were orderly, but flubbed up one hole. Instead of making excuses, they fixed the problem. They did outstanding work, and impressed me mightily with this: they quoted me on an equipment upgrade using the tax credit, plus have re-contacted me twice to pursue once the kitchen was complete. Excellent selling by these guys. This professional upsell is worth about $6 grand of pure genius. In contrast to the…

Plumbers – Great technicians, but their business manner makes me wonder if they were raised with bi-polar jackals. They’d measure and cut perfect holes for their feed and waste lines… then ream them beyond recognition to fit the pipes. They put gorgeous copper piping behind the walls… then put a USED PVC as the trap line we’d see under the sink. (Honestly, it looked like scrap that washed here from Katrina.) They watched as the contractor gingerly slid a 650 pound oven over protective plywood as not to scratch the floor. Yet they dragged the new dishwasher over the same floor like a reluctant pit bull. The parallel grooves in our ‘new’ floor resemble the tri-oval at Darlington.

So they get to pay to redo the floors. In so doing, they’ll “throw away” half their net profit because they failed to put down a piece of plywood. Ridiculous. My wife was fairly sick about this.

If you’ll read closely, you’ll see that the “problems” were often not the craft; nor were the “solutions”. Neatness matters. Professionalism matters. Showing up on time counts. Accepting a mistake is remembered. The bare minimum is for you to do your craft well. What sets you apart is crafting yourself well.

To paraphrase long-time sage consultant Ron Smith: You don’t just fix the problem; you fix the customer.

Stay tuned.

Questions for you:

What can you do, starting today, that proves to a homeowner that you are different? (Think neatness, clarity, protecting property, cleanliness and proving it.)

What do other professionals in your town do – in any trade – that demonstrates true professionalism? What can you model?

Sales Meets Marketing

Marketing is a method by which sales opportunities are created. Marketing can bring you the leads, but if you can’t close ‘em, what’s the point?

I interviewed a young man for a marketing job the other day. He contended that his sales experience translated into marketing prowess. Not so fast…

I told him, without attaching superiority to either skill, it was like comparing a tournament fisherman to a commercial fisherman. One is more event focused; the other more process focused; both generate fish, or in this young man’s case, sales.

For the best salespeople, their skills are not natural. They’re trained – and train others – to sense when a buyer is in suspended disbelief (a good state by the way) or when they’re eager for you to get to the price. They’re trained to recognize when they’ve pushed internal ‘buy’ buttons, and need to bring out the proposal that second. The transition to the proposal should look as natural as breathing. Yet it’s ordered, intentional, and studied.

You can’t get this good by “winging it.” Training is the only way. It helps improve our marketing to homeowners and it’ll help you close more sales, at higher prices. Here’s how:

 Share your Summer marketing promotions with the entire staff at a weekly meeting. For July it could be your Summer Postcard Retention campaign. August can be an end-of-season Replacement Lead Generation. A simple plan is better than no plan.

 During the meeting, all must know where the ads are running. Make sure to “offer” details and deadlines (if you don’t use deadlines or limits, you’re losing lots of leads). Nothing is worse than a customer service representative (CSR) getting a call from an excited homeowner grasping a hot letter and responding, “I don’t have a clue what you’re referring to.” Buzz kill.

 All techs, salespeople, and CSRs must know your intended upsell for each offer. For example, water filtration from a leaking pipe, or an IAQ inspection that’s included with any service, or the maintenance agreement package included with an equipment upgrade. The logic is that if they enter the home with no upsell then they’ll either leave with either a standard or no sale. If given an upsell, they get one more level to raise average transaction size.

 Whether these sales close or not, you must follow up. Your CSRs and eager salespeople will follow up with a planned script to make sure needs are met, more information given, and referrals requested. The credibility gained by doing this – sale or no sale – guarantees your differentiation and future calls.

 Extra Sales Bump: The last sales follow-up comes back to marketing. This is where you send what I call the “unclosed prospect letter” to all fitting the description. We’ve offered this to clients for the past few years – though you can create your own – and their average sales rate from sending it is 4%.

See, it’s an intentional system. Whatever you’re offering this Summer, marketing and sales must work like a team. When they’re unified, the effect compounds to maximize leads, closing ratios, transaction sizes, and referral rates.

As you go through this Summer, you’ve got some economic jitters to contend with, and those are more easily overcome with planned sales responses. Likewise, your marketing can allay those fears, and as discussed here before, your marketing – not your retreat – will be more important this Summer than ever.

Let your sales and marketing combine its muscle to bring you more leads, richer sales, and happier customers. It’d be our pleasure to help you do that, now it’s up to you to do the rest.