I spoke to a friend of mine the other day about how to better promote his business. Now, he is not a contractor, he is in the financial services sector and he has a lot of rules and regulations as to how he can promote his name, his products and his business.
Part of his job, in fact a big part of his job, is going door to door (yes, door to door people) and asking people what they are doing with their money and why they should invest with him.
Think your job is hard?
Imagine waking up in the morning and knowing, at 50, that no matter how successful you were, you had to go and get 25 people’s names on a list, that’s names, so that is what, about 100 doors a day? I would shoot myself.
But my man does it…every day, and he is rich for his efforts.
So during our conversation, I asked him what he did with all the emails he was getting from the conversations he has been having and he looked at me like a cow through a new fence. (I love that expression) He said he wasn’t asking for email addresses and I nearly fell off my chair.
I immediately thought about the dude from the Bible who for eternity is tasked with pushing the boulder up the hill, because that is exactly what my friend is doing.
Now, imagine if he had a list of a couple thousand people who he sat across the table from, who he shook hands with, pet their dogs, shared some personal information with, and then asked them for their email address so that he could follow up with them in the future when opportunities specific to their needs came up so he could get in touch with them right away.
Pretty powerful right?
And you should be doing the same thing. If you are not asking for email addresses during your sales call process or estimates, then you are losing business.
Here’s one example why
Mrs. Jones asks you for a bid for her kitchen, you come in thousands higher than the next guy and lose the job. Tough break.
If you had her email and you put her on a drip campaign of how-to’s and DIY stuff throughout the year, then you might have a shot at getting to bid on her next project. But unless you maintained top of mind status with something like I don’t know…an email campaign, you had no shot at getting that work, and you too would be destined to push the boulder up the hill next to my friend.
Photo courtesy of Simon Doggett