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Your Customers are Scared to Hire you – Prove you’re not a risk for them

Hey it’s Jon here.

I saw a piece of news that came up on Facebook last night. It a current affair about a builder called Kitchener Crispin. I don’t know if you saw it but, it was a terrible sorry tale of a builder who fell out with his clients. They sought legal advice, and he took a chainsaw to all the building work he’d done out of spite, and fury, and revenge, and stuff. It’s quite a sad little story.

Read the news here.

I’m Jon. I’m from Small Fish Business Coaching. I run the Tradies Toolbox Coaching Program and I help trades businesses grow and scale.

Part of growing and scaling is not being like that. I want to talk about how not to do that.

Specifically, I want to talk about:

  • How in your marketing and in your sales you can reassure your customers that you’re not like that and that they’re not going to have that kind of experience.
  • How you should and can prove to your customers that you’re not like that and that they’re not going to have the same kind of experience as those people on the current affair.

Note: This is not a discussion about how to stop jobs going bad.

I’ll talk about that another day perhaps. Everyone can have a job go bad and everyone can fall out with some customers. I don’t know many people who haven’t had one or two disappointing experiences, myself included. We could recover from those if they don’t happen all the time and if we sort things out in a mature and responsible way.

RELATED: Tell people what kind of trade you are. Know your value proposition.

What I want to talk about is what you can do in your marketing and what you can do in your selling to reassure the people you’re talking to that you’re a good guy or that your company is a good company and they’re not going to have that kind of experience because they’re scared.

They’re confronted with stories like this all the time and when we as punters (I consider myself as a punter), consider hiring the tradie, were a bit scared.

You know stuff we don’t know and this sort of stuff might go wrong. And this story illustrates what you’re up against in terms of that, doesn’t it?

They’re afraid and they’re thinking I hope this doesn’t go bad. “I hope I don’t have an experience like that one I saw on current affair.”

And the bigger the project, the more scared they are of course.

So think about this for a minute.

What are you doing in your marketing and in your sales to reassure people and to prove to people that you’re not like that? That you’re not one of those unfortunate or bad trades businesses.

If you just go in, and have a bit of a chat, and do some measuring up, and do a quote, and email it to them, you’re missing the opportunity to do all that reassuring and all that proving.

This is what I think you should do in brief:

You should brand yourself properly.

Trades people in uniforms who are neat and tidy, and clean vehicles are with the right sign writing and logos on the side are very reassuring. Don’t underestimate what a good signal and clean branding sends on your website, on your vehicles, on your signage on your chats.

You can show your credibility on your website:

  • You can explain how you operate.
  • You can explain what your values are in the business.
  • You can show testimonials.
  • You can show video testimonials of real customers and real people saying, what a lovely time they had.
  • You can show reviews from your Facebook page
  • You can share reviews on your Facebook page.
  • You can show your builder’s license or your professional license if you’re a plumber or an electrician.
  • You can show membership of your professional organization and if you’re not a member, you should probably go and join one.
  • You should explain your process, both your sales process and your process for doing the work of your jobs.

So you can do these. These are all reasonably easy stuff to do.

In your sales when you’re selling, when you’re talking to people you can do the same stuff. Tell them these things that they may or may not have read on your website.

Give them actual references to call and encourage them to actually go and call them, because you can bet your ass that people like Crispin didn’t (kitchenette whatever his name was).

Spend time getting to know your clients a bit, making them understand you and understanding them in return.

And here’s a little bit of protecting yourself….

Get to know them and see what they’re like because if they’re the sorts of people who regularly fall out with trades, then maybe you don’t want to do the deals anyway. So if they fail your dickhead filter, exit and don’t do the job.

So as I said I’m a coach. I work with trades business owners and surprise surprise, if you’re working with me, I’ll be helping you do this stuff:

  • Writing that stuff on your website.
  • Writing it into your proposals.
  • Scripting it into the conversations you have.

See you later!

There are four ways you can engage with me:

1. Subscribe to these emails and get them once a week in your inbox so you never miss a video from me.

2. Join the Trades Business Toolshed Facebook Group where you can watch these videos, ask me questions or talk to your peers.

3. Attend my next Tradie Profit Webinar.

4. Book yourself a 10-minute chat with me. We’ll talk about whether coaching is right for you now and if it is, we’ll go further into the process before you have to make your mind up.

See you later.

Click here to book a money maker call with Jon.