101 Tips To Improve Your Business – Tips 11 to 15

101 Tips continued:

Note: Just a reminder that this list of tips I found in a big cleanup in my office has been collecting dust for years. Some of these tips are sort of not related to us, nevertheless, we can get some mileage out of them…hence I will see how they can relate to us anyway!

11. Concentrate on your voice control & volume to improve your professional impact– another mmmm! Look, I do agree with this, however, the sort of presentation you will be doing in front of your lawn mowing and gardening customers will be in the form of asking questions and taking notes. If you have had any experience with acting (as I have, and here is the proof – look for my name, Gerry Faehrmann, at the bottom of the linked page) you will understand the importance of voice control and volume. However, I think we can relax a bit on this point for now.

12. Buy a nice suit, spend the extra money. It is worth it– this is quite comical…well, we are contractors / tradies after all. Okay, we are not going to buy an Armani suit, but it is really important, that if you want to project a professional image, then you need to have a uniform that looks the part

13. Be professional in your customers’ eyes at all times. As soon as you relax you lose the sale and their respect – one thing I have learnt from Business Coaches and from my own experience is as soon as you have given your quote (and told the customer that if they decide to go ahead you will have the job completed within 7 days) you say your courteous goodbye and leave immediately. Contractors that hang around for a chat do not project a “I am very busy” attitude.

14. Work backwards. Start off with how much you want to earn, and then work backwards to the amount of activity that you need to implement to generate the desired revenue – this is standard when you are writing your business plan…always start with what you want to earn for 52 weeks (be adventurous as well!), and break this down to weekly and monthly figures. Then you can work out how you go about getting the weekly targets with the different marketing tactics etc.

15. Think profit, not sales – this is so true…your business plan needs to take into account the dollar quality of jobs you take on. Please don’t sell yourself short. The “Zero To A Hundred K in 30 Days” Blueprint demonstrates this with the Fixed Price quoting system.

What do you think of my commentary? All I am trying to achieve here is to add my take (that is, my experience and knowledge) to the different tips that somebody else wrote years ago.