Hey there! It’s Jon’s Journey Episode 6.

If you recall Jon’s journey is me going through some of my experiences as a customer of trades businesses and seeing what we learned. I thought it might be fun, which it is. And thought we might learn some interesting things, which we are.

So if you recall, I’m Jon from Small Fish Business Coaching. I run the Tradies Toolbox Coaching Program. And that’s about helping you grow and scale your trades business, and use the right framework, and the right systems so it’s easy and pleasant and profitable, which is important.

Now, if you may recall I had a disappointing experience at a tyre place. I was lied to by one of their staff members who made a mistake and then lied to cover up because he couldn’t be bothered to fix it. And I felt like a chump. And they left a nasty taste in my mouth.

And the moral of the story was how easy it is to lose a customer, and how perhaps it’s important to invest in fixing things up when you make mistakes. Mistakes are inevitable, right? But we can fix them.

The other day though, I got an email from them and I’m going to show it to you on the screen. We’ve scratched out their name to protect the guilty (sort off). And I want to talk about how effective that marketing is. They’re doing a great job with their email marketing even though I hate them, I was kind of tempted. It’s quite a strong effect. So here’s what they’ve done. “Hey Jon, It’s time for your 5,000 km or 3-month tyre maintenance service.”

How the f**k some tyre maintenance service? Who does that? I can go, they’ll check my tyres, they’ll give me a wheel balance if I need one. And of course, they’ll check my brakes for free which is their opportunity to say, “Hey, you need new brake pads?” “Would you like to book in?”

So it’s real clever! It’s a free thing that might well lead to a paid thing. We all like a free thing. I think that’s why I was quite tempted.

What’s the lesson?
The lesson is that it was really effective despite me hating them and despite the nasty experience I had. It was still effective. I want to think about what you should be doing. It was soon enough after the last experience for me to remember it, for it to be relevant, so for me to read the email that didn’t just hide in promotional emails. It was related to the job, so it kind of made sense for me. It gave me something for free. It didn’t feel like a pitch for me to respond to. It felt like a free thing for me to have.

So even though, as a business coach, I knew it was marketing, I knew they’d be trying to sell me something, I didn’t  feel like that. It felt like a free thing. That’s quite powerful and there was some discount boxes attached for other things like oil services and things like that. So it was timely, it was relevant, it was generous, and it was a bit tempting. And your marketing should be doing something similar. And I want to think of what we might do with a follow up and all related offer to people for your business, for your trade business.

I’m not a big fan of email marketing for a trades business. It’s quite expensive to set it up properly or it’s quite time-consuming if you do it manually. And I think you’d be better off spending your money being found when people go, “Oh we need a plumber,” and hitting their phone if that’s the kind of trades business you’re in. So I’m not a big fan but I think there’s a place for this kind of follow-up marketing that’s soon after and relevant. They do say the best time to sell something to somebody is quite soon after they bought something before because they’ve already liked you, and trusted you, and had a good experience. So we’re capitalizing on that.

Recommended Reading: Search Marketing – Are You Being Found?

Now, I don’t really want to talk about relationship marketing here. There’s no time. This is a short video. But, I do want to have you have a think about what kind of follow-up offers you could send to people, either by email or by text, which you can do quite easily, (I can show you  how to do it of course), that might be relevant for your customers.

Here’s an example.
An aircon installer. You install an air conditioning system and often that’s the end of it. They might ring you up and say,  “It’s broken.” And they might ring you up and say, “It needs a service.” I see no reason why you wouldn’t offer a three-month clean and check over and blast all the dust out of it with some compressed air and do a fairly basic maintenance job on it, and then book in the next one, which of course, they have to pay for. And once people see and understand that why you do it, and why it’s effective, and how it makes it more efficient, and how it stops it breaking down, stops it wearing out, they might consider that a couple of hundred bucks every year is a worthwhile investment. That’s the kind of thing I’m going for.

A gift to get an upsell or additional sell later and maintenance is the thing we should be focusing on here.

So have a think about what kinds of offers you could have in your business. If you would like to talk to me about what kinds of offers you could put in your business, get in touch. Drop me a comment, drop me an email, phone me up if you can find my phone number, I’ll respond and I’ll spend 10 minutes with you brainstorming what kinds of offers you could make and how you could make them. I’d be delighted to do that.

If you want to find out more about business coaching, also get in touch, you can book a 10 minute chat with me, and we’ll have a quick talk about whether it’s the right time or the right thing for you to be doing right now.

And if you’re interested in my workshop, it’s in March. Smallfish.com.au/tools-down

Happy days! See you.