The Real Wealth in Contracting

Hallelujah. We now have a kitchen. Or most of one. At least I have a sink where I can wash my coffee cup without first having to remove some ladies' undergarment apparatus from Woolite. (Once it took me nearly two hours to untangle a halter top that had some origami kind of twisted front. I still don’t know if I got it right.)

We can now cook food in something other than a microwave. Since my teenagers eat roughly 11 meals per day, our home – when viewed from Google Earth – looks like a glow stick.

My refrigerator is no longer stylishly perched in the entrance hall, seemingly saying to guests, “Hi, welcome to our home. Please have some butter.”

And tracing my 12 weeks of family torment back to where it all began, we are once and for all…

Formica-less.

I hadn’t realized the kitchen design embarrassment my wife had endured all these years. The indestructible Formica had served us well, though it was potentially more suited to the Space Shuttle belly pan.

We now have quartz and marble countertops. Yet with manufacturing cleverness, they could be reconstituted Formica made to look like other materials, only priced 400 times higher. In fact many “hardwood floors” are really Formica with different names, same as many politicians.

Though my first home cost less than this renovation (I have no idea if that’s true, but you must make this type comment so others will do the “renovation gasp”) my wife is happy. And that counts for everything (unless you’re attracted to misery, punishment, weeping, gnashing of teeth, and sleeping in the yard).

You should be excellent at a) getting and creating “happy” customers, and b) committed to keeping those customers. Sure, you can have a “satisfied” customer and “hope” they call you back, but that’s so yesterday, so basic, so not you.

Though your job skills are important, no skill is more important than getting and keeping the customer. Why?

What value are your skills without customers? In this economy, not much. A fantastic plumber with no work is heading toward being broke. An “okay” plumber good at keeping customers and with a constant 2 week backlog is heading towards wealth.

You’ve got to be more than “just” skilled. Things have changed.

Here’s How The Contractors Fared, And Who Is Most Likely
To Take Their Business To The Next Level…

• The GC – Stayed in touch after he did a smallish bathroom job for our daughter’s room. He stayed busy while others moaned, and remembered to keep the pipeline full by treating ‘past’ jobs as ‘current’ customers. Smart. He scored this job and has a nice backlog of work. 2009 was his best year ever. Grade A

• The Plumber – Did fine work. However, he never said his name, never left a card, never asked to look at other plumbing issues in the house. We had to be reminded he was the plumber on the previous bathroom job. Guess he doesn’t care that we have plumbing in rooms other than the kitchen, or neighbors, all in 100 year old houses. He just does his work, disappears, hopes. Hard to call or refer a phantom. Grade D-

• Electrician – Did fine work. Uniforms, truck signage, left a card on every visit, we get his newsletter, postcards. Also called behind the work to check. Subsequently (and I’m no big customer) this company has done Hudson Ink’s 3 commercial properties, a warehouse, another house, and neighbors on both sides. Grade A

• Floor Dudes – Did ‘fair’ work. Has the people skills of a bruised turnip. Swept sawdust into our new floor vents, like we didn’t notice. Lucky they didn’t come on while the floor was wet. Fast, rushed, left zero company info, never called back to check or make good on the misstep. Our house and offices all have hardwood, as do all our neighbors. Oh well. Guess they don’t need more customers. Grade D

• Painters – Neatest painters I’ve ever seen. Cleaned up daily. Left swatches, mixed custom batches, really exceptional. To their discredit, never checked to see that we have other walls, or that I was planning to repaint our office façade, like I do every year. Even the company that did that job last year disappeared too. Never called, emailed, recontacted, nothing. I have no idea who it was. Guess I’ll just Google for painters. Grade C

• Countertop/Cabinet Contractors – Fabulous work. My wife’s birthday was during this time, asked if the marble could at least be ‘set’ while she was away as a surprise. They willingly complied, did an excellent job going “one step beyond”. I won’t forget that, nor them. They left company info and called after both jobs, Recontact works folks. Grade A

You may notice that the grades have little correlation to the quality of work. They have everything to do with getting called, referred, or remembered by a good “retained” customer. Recontacting customers means you’re keeping them by keeping yourself relevant.

A message from your customers to you: We’re paying customers. You paid to earn us. We want to remember you, call you, refer you, buy more from you, but need your help. Please don’t ignore us.

Once you’ve gotten a customer, your most important job is to keep that customer.

Getting Perpetual Traffic to Your Website: Google’s New Little Secret That Has Changed the Rules

Were these the good ol’ days? Back when Yellow Pages were the dominant marketing resource for contractors (around the Paleozoic era, just before Larry King’s birth) basically all you had to know is –

How big of an ad can I get for how much money?

After that, the Yellow Pages would design an ad that looked shockingly like every other ad in the book, and overcharge you mightily. If you paid more for more years, you got closer to the front of the section (whoopdee!). If you resisted, they would break your legs and call you names. It was a simpler time.

Though Yellow Page lookups have plummeted (down 24% in last 48 months, a precipitous decline – the online SuperPages not doing much better), they’re not dead. Yet a good bit of their viability has been drained by…

The internet. Okay, let’s call it Google. (You can suggest Yahoo, Bing, or Ask, but Google has 71.63% of the market according to Hitwise.com.) When you own the cards and the chips, you get to make the rules. Enter SEO.

Before the internet, we had to go based on “who was reading or watching what”. Now, we must get psycho-graphic and determine “What questions are prospects asking before they find me?”

In essence, this is Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

So, everyone began looking at keywords, search strings, relevance, and recency as methods to be “found” on the internet. Changes here are near constant. Case in point - -

There are 3 hugely popular SEO myths that DO NOT WORK anymore, and one ‘secret’ Google revision that has really changed rankings.

3 Popular Phrases that are Totally False today:

1. If you build it they will come. No they won’t. Let me rephrase this. “If you build it, you will be charged.” Basically, you can build the Taj Mahal of websites but if no one can find you, what was the point? Do not let your web designer “forget” to include SEO as one of the main reasons you’re investing.

2. Content is King. Content used to be King, but has now become a second Lieutenant. It is still very attractive, but can be overwhelming. Content per site is actually shrinking. The new “King” is activity (thanks Google!). More in a moment.

3. Being ranked first means you have the best site. No, it means you have the most “findable” site in that search string. I’d rather finish 3rd-5th in ranking (still top half of screen, first page) and have the most conversions. Even though I’m a lead junkie, I’d rather have closeable leads than window shoppers.

With that out of the way, what is working now?

Through Google Analytics, find how people are finding you. Easy to go to www.google.com/Analytics and see where you rank in your chosen words.

Keyword Check: Are your ‘best’ words used throughout your site? In your Title, Meta Tags and Head tags? Now check density of word usage. If “Plumbing in Sacramento” is a search string, then use that phrase early per page, and up to 3 times per 300 words.

Keyword tip everybody misses: DO NOT just post an image on your site with some undecipherable code. Place keywords in the ALT Tags for all your images. You’ll thank me later.

Video is more “active” than text. Label your videos, title it for relevance among hopeful viewers.

What are the top pages on your site now? Look for commonalities on those pages to see why they get more visits. Apply these tactics to your conversion pages.

Index Status: Check whether your website has been indexed by major search engines. If it is not indexed, all this SEO focus is pointless.

Are you socially acceptable? Put links to Twitter and FaceBook on your website, and cross link from them back to your site. Completely fill out your profiles, again using keywords as appropriate.

Blog your little fanny off. A weekly ‘editorial’ is really a blog, and that can be posted on Blogspot.com

Backlink check: When a link to you starts on another site and points to you, that’s a backlink. Getting quality backlinks is critical. So get listed in directories, post on related forums, get quoted in blogs and submit your articles to directories. Check backlinkbuilder.com. I do not recommend ‘buying’ backlinks. Dangerous territory.

Google’s Most Recent “Change” that will put money in your pocket. Get ready. Where you used to be able to get ‘found’ on static content, now Google ranks “activity” on your site. This means as you gain popularity… you gain findability. I know, it’s the chicken and the egg thing. Easiest thing to do is stay active. Add links, add articles, add posts, add customer reviews, update news, change dates, Tweet like an over-caffeinated canary, add video, post your printed newsletter on your website.