Every holiday season, companies send out hundreds of greeting cards and small gifts of appreciation to their customers. I remember one year, our construction company received one bottle of champagne, two baseball caps with subcontractor logos on them, three large fruit and cheese baskets, four wall calendars, five logo shirts, six boxes of chocolates, seven tins of popcorn, eight cans of nuts, nine plates of cookies, 10 bottles of wine, and 187 greeting cards from suppliers and contractors. These were warm, nice, and delightful gestures, but was it worth the effort?
Customers want to know you care
Chances are, your company received a similar number of gifts over the past holiday seasons, but did any of them matter or make you want to give them more work? Were they unique, special, or personalized? Three weeks later, can you honestly remember who gave you what? The number one reason customers stop doing business with a company is an attitude of indifference. They don’t think you care about them as a valued customer or person. They feel you treat them like a number or the same as every other customer. Many contractors spend plenty of time estimating and bidding on projects trying to get customers to hire them. When awarded contracts, the contractor performs quality work, finishes on time, sends an invoice, gets paid, and never calls the customer again. They typically hope customers call them to bid on the next job. Most contractors don’t spend much time building customer relationships, will not follow up on bids or proposals, and do nothing to market and convince customers they are the best choice to win the work.
Do you show you care about your customers?
How do you show your customers you care and appreciate their business on an ongoing personalized basis? How do you stay in touch? What do you do to help them be successful regularly? In today’s world, performing quality, on-time work is expected and doesn’t set a company apart from other bidders. To develop great customers who want to give you more work than the competition, you must show you want to help them achieve their goals and needs. You should also spend time getting to know them, offering solutions to make business easier for them, and investing time to care for them in a customized manner.
You must set yourself apart in this competitive marketplace and do more than your competition. Impersonal holiday cards or standardized customer gifts are a waste of time and money if that’s all you do to build loyal customer relationships. Customers want to know you care about them, both as a company and individuals, and their business and challenges. Building trusted relationships—like the ones with friends—takes time and constant contact. Whether with spouses, friends, or clients, once a year is not enough to keep things alive. The best way to develop loyal customer connections is “face-to-face” in relationship-building sessions. To stay best friends or keep customers loyal, you must spend quality time together consistently. Most construction companies only have 10 to 20 loyal customers making up most of their profitable sales. As your important customer list is relatively small, it doesn’t take much to keep in touch and build lasting relationships with them regularly.
Take care of your “Top 20”
Make a chart of your Top 20 customers, then keep track of your meetings, contacts, and relationship-building sessions with them. To maintain these relationships, commit to having customer care meetings every week. This will ensure you see each of your Top 10 or 20 every three months. These settings must be face-to-face, including breakfast or lunch, ballgames, dinner meetings at local industry associations, golfing, fishing, hunting, or just after-work refreshments. Get together in a fun setting where you can really get to know each other, let your hair down, and have some fun mixing business and pleasure. Remember that job meetings, negotiating contracts, changing orders, or normal project emails or phone calls don’t qualify as relationship-building settings.
One-on-one time will allow you to discuss what really matters to your customers: their likes, dislikes, family, friends, and future. Find out how you can do more, provide better service, or improve quality for them. Build trust and confidence and laugh, learn, and grow closer. Advise them how to grow their business, improve productivity, do a better job, or make more money. The key is to show them you care about their future success in every way possible.
One-a-day vitamins
Make it a habit to thank clients on a regular and unexpected basis. Send a handwritten thank-you note or email to a valued or potential customer daily. Tell them you appreciate the opportunity to do business with them or thank them for letting your company be on their team. Occasionally send out small gifts of appreciation as well—it only takes a minute. These notes, cards, and gifts work like “one-a-day” vitamins, keeping your bottom line healthy. Your notes need only be one or two lines long, as short notes make big statements. Also, look for top-quality, unique, interesting, fun, or motivational cards to send; the more unique, the better.
Make it personal
When you see a good business article or book about areas your customers are working on, send them a copy to show you care about their future. If you know they like golf, get them a picture book on the world’s best golf courses. If they like to fish, get the latest lure to catch the most fish. If they like fine wine, get them a bottle of the best you’ve ever tasted. If their son plays Little League baseball, get a ball cap from their favorite team. Get the point? Make it personal.
Remember, time is money. Meaningful time and constant contact with customers is big money. Doing a good job, quality workmanship, proposals, faxes, emails, job meetings, correspondence, and phone calls don’t count compared to having consistent, meaningful relationship-building sessions and constant contact. Make it a priority to invest in your future by investing time in your customers. Email me to get a copy of Winning Ways To Win More Work!
Customer care will consistently return big cash and create loyal customers who only want to do business with you.
George Hedley is a certified professional construction business BIZCOACH, consultant, and popular speaker. He helps contractors build better businesses, grow, profit, develop leaders, improve estimating, field production, and get their companies to work. He is the best-selling author of Get Your Construction Business To Always Make A Profit!, available on Amazon.com. To schedule a free introductory coaching session, get his monthly Hardhat Hedlines BIZ-TIPS e-newsletter, download his templates and tools, or watch his webinars or online video courses at Hardhat BIZSCHOOL online university for contractors, Visit HardhatBizcoach.com or e-mail GH@HardhatBizcoach.com.
