What do you do to stay on track when work slows down and you’re, well, out in the cold? Congratulations to you if you have gotten to the point in which you stay busy all year long. Don’t skip this, though, as these include some best practices I’ve discovered, and you may still learn something.
Our business, Artistic Floors by Design, was probably in our fifth year before we had solid work year-round. Everything (from retail to construction) has a cycle, and if you’re smart, you save for the famine during feast times. As work stacked up for us prior to the holidays this year, I remembered what it was like to open our business and struggle those first few years. We incorporated our business during the worst economic downturn since the government started tracking spending during the 1960s. Here are some things that kept us going. I hope they inspire you, even if you are busy, to consider how you can reinvent and improve in the new year.
Machine maintenance. This one’s a no-brainer. For more on this, click here!
Request reviews from your past years’ clients. How many of your clients took the time, without your request, to review your work after you labored to make their home environment more beautiful? No one is going to make the effort to type a review if you don’t first make the request (unless, of course, the client was unhappy with the work, in which case you should expect to read a lengthy review, but that’s another article entirely!). Request reviews and ensure they are posted. I have a suggestion: Tell your client that, in exchange for an honest review, you will provide him or her with the finish manufacturer’s recommended mop kit for proper cleaning of their beautiful new floor. If they already own a cleaner, offer them an inexpensive hygrometer and explain to them the benefits of tracking their home’s relative humidity. When you do this, two things happen. First, you’re providing value, not selling, which establishes your credibility and expertise. Second, most clients are gifted with the benefits of a free estimate at the start of the transaction, but rarely are they gifted at the end of the transaction. You didn’t walk away with a check in your hand; you gave your client something useful, above and beyond their beautiful floor, which is a great way to complete your transaction and leave a lasting impression.
RELATED: How to Prevent Wood Floor Gaps in Winter
Provide discounted maintenance coats. During the contractor’s summit at last year’s NWFA Expo, I heard a great idea from another Denver-area contractor: They provide discounted maintenance coats during the January/February months to their clients. This provides them with the opportunity to demonstrate great customer service by checking in with their clients and keeps employees busy during slow times. You could do this two ways: scheduling the maintenance coat immediately following your initial transaction or hire temporary labor (or yourself) to call clients from the past year or two. If you don’t move furniture in or out, have a couple of reputable moving companies ready to hire for your clients’ convenience.
Create a checklist. If there is a procedure with which you or your best employees are challenged, write down everything (tools, materials, sundry items) you require and each step of the process that is necessary to complete the work. Refer to the checklist consistently until you or your employees consider it easy. The Checklist Manifesto is a great book that describes the efficiency and effectiveness of clarifying and standardizing procedures. At Artistic Floors by Design, we developed a checklist for all points of client communication, from sales to completion. It frees up our minds for higher thinking and problem-solving to script everything from our voicemail greeting to requests for our clients to review our business on Houzz.
Study and apply best practices, learn a new skill, or develop a new product. Use your network, particularly your membership in the NWFA, to research other contractors’ best practices, including Leave Home/Information packets, estimating/measuring applications, software programs that track days from estimate to contract to final payment. Find out if there are opportunities for your salespeople to attend local networking events or perhaps volunteer as a guest speaker or presenter at a local community college to teach sales skills or present about the workings of small business. On the technical side, build your skills. Learn a trade-related procedure from the NWFA during a regional training, or volunteer for the NWFA to teach a class and give back to someone else. This is a great opportunity to educate others and raise the bar for our industry. Invent! Create something (whether it’s a story about how you meet clients’ needs or a uniquely textured or colored product). WD Flooring does this very well: they always are inventing new ways to develop, color, and finish unique products, like driftwood and metallic finishes. They don’t stop there, though. They build narratives, from the origin of their name to the asymmetry in nature that they observe to inspire their concepts.
Use social media. Even if you only have time to work on one site, do it! Get on Houzz at the very least. In your slower times, update projects, add key words to photos, complete your professional site, make comments, answer user questions, and follow other professionals.
Those of you who read these articles/blogs already are invested in this industry and are busy, skilled professionals. This isn’t meant to be a comprehensive list, and my intention isn’t to push more busy work in your direction, but to challenge you to try new things to improve already good business practices. If these are things you already do, perhaps you could share these tips with someone who’s just starting out in this (or a related) industry. From chilly Colorado, stay warm!
