Would you like more customers in your electrical contracting business? When I say customers I’m not talking about residential “I need a new light switch” customers I’m talking about high paying commercial and industrial customers who will keep using you for years to come.
If this is what you are looking for you can have them if you are willing to follow a few steps that lead to them to deciding they want your service. People forgo their needs every day to purchase something they want.
There are two basic reasons that people will purchase from you.
- If you can solve their problem.
- If you can make their life better.
The electrical industry, like many other trades, is full of contractors who chase low bid work. I feel this is the demise of most companies that fail. There is value in being the lowest price and if you can do that on a consistent basis and make money doing it you can be successful. But there is absolutely ZERO value in being the second lowest price. This makes you an also ran which puts you in the spot which I refer to as begging for work. I’m not trying to hurt your feelings I am being honest about your situation and if you are going to improve it you need to be honest with yourself also. It would be far better for you to focus on getting customers who can pay you top dollar for your products and services without ever having to bid.
So now that we know the problem and what makes the customer buy from you and how to you get the right customers make a purchase, then you want to focus on how to get your customers to keep purchasing from you.
I can help you with the first part and some of the second but the only way to keep customers long term is you must take great care of your customers. This means showing up on time, when you say you are going to be there, be there. Have a great attitude when you are there and do good work. Those 3 are 100% up to you.
The final piece of that puzzle is you to have put a system in place to talk to your customers on a regular basis. The easiest most cost effective way to do this is through e-mail and to automate it. I know you are busy so automation is the key here. My preference is once per week or more to be successful if you did the first 3 correctly. You can set this up very easily by getting an account with GetResponse, Aweber, Constant Contact or Mailchimp and have your assistant (if you have one) or hire a VA to manage your account. You can very easily hire someone to do this at Upwork and usually for $5 to $15 per hour and you will only have to have them do a few hours per week.
Now that you have a customer communication system in place now you need a way to bring new customers. When you go fishing you need bait. You need bait to attract customers to your business. I like to use bait that attracts customers through a return on investment or some sore of internal fear.
You want to create a piece of bait, which is referred to as a lead magnet.
People are terrified of fires and everyone knows that even a small electrical fire can cause massive damage in a commercial building because it typically activates the sprinkler systems. Water and electronics don’t mix very well so you can use this as an inspiration for creating a lead magnet.
In 2003 there were a ton of scams going around in the electrical business. One of these scammers pissed me off so I decided to retaliate by destroying their scam business online. They were selling power factor correction for homes and promising massive energy savings which sounded great for the end user except it didn’t work and frankly it was a major scam. If you have been in the industry a while you have heard of these guys. I was tired of the scammers so I wrote an ebook, Energy Savings Without Getting Scammed. This book got downloaded over 30,000 times in just a few short years. I was generating over 400 leads a month in my business. What would you do with over 100 new leads each and every week? Do you think you could be a little selective on the type of customer you would target? I know I was. We had more business than we could possibly do and I turned customers away regularly and I only took customers who I knew would be compatible with our values and who I would personally like to work with. My policy at that time was NO JERKS. It’s still my policy today.
Most contractors are not prolific writers so if writing is not your thing, don’t let that stop you. If you own a smart phone you can do everything you need to create something that will work just fine or you could hire someone on Upwork to create it for you. You might consider a headline like
The Top 5 Causes Of Fires In Businesses And How To Prevent One From Destroying Your Business.
Then you pull out your smart phone and talk about that subject. If you can’t come up with 5, change your title to three or however many you can come up with. Once you create the video or series of videos, have it transcribed to text. You can use a service called Temi which is cheap but there are others as well. Just note, no matter what you use it will take some editing. Once edited I send it to someone to make it look nice, once again using Upwork.
The whole idea behind this piece is to get the person reading it to take an action which might be to call you or schedule an appointment or to have you come out and inspect, correct or repair whatever it is you spoke about in the lead magnet. The call to action is important. Not everyone who reads it will call you today but they will know you are an expert and that is what is important.
Don’t make this process too complex. Simply put something together that answers the fear they might have or show them a way to get a good return on investment. Don’t let creating something perfect stop you from creating something. You are an expert in your industry and anything you create will contain more expertise than your average customer will know. You are an expert and people just need to know that and they will hire you.
Take a step in the right direction. Plan this out and you can have something in the next week that you can use to attract customers to your business on a regular basis.
If you need help, schedule a free business assessment call with me. Click here to schedule now.
To your lifelong prosperity,
David Mulvaney