Your product is valuable. You know it. You hope your customers know it. But how can you be sure? How can you ensure that your product benefits your customers and, in so doing, benefits your company?
Tag: Business Management
Disorganization Is Hurting Your Contracting Business
When you put in years perfecting your decorative concrete craft , you start to consider yourself an expert in your field. Past customers appreciate your skill, courtesy and professionalism, and they refer friends and relatives to your services. But recently you have noticed something is changing, and this change makes you uneasy.
Three Ways to Drum Up New Concrete Work
Eight times per year I look at this magazine from cover to cover, amazed at how our industry has been hijacked by true artists. This level of skill, along with a few creative marketing ideas, should keep fresh money coming into your bank account.
Don’t Get Pushed Around by Clients – Get Paid
We all wish that we could tell our customers, “Screw you! I did the work. Pay me!” I know that in my career I have gotten just about every excuse in the book as to why I wasn’t getting paid for my work. By its very nature, the decorative concrete industry that we love so much allows customers to play with our money.
Your Next Client Is Shopping Online
Your business may have the upper hand in finding new projects, at least if you’re willing to step up to online marketing.
The way this decorative concrete contractor sees it, the only way to land more projects is to increase your number of strong leads. Let’s take a look at exactly how you can add more solid leads immediately.
Why Narrow Margins Plague Polished Concrete Contractors
As time has gone along, polished concrete has picked up market share and damaged contracting companies at the same time. If the profit margins of this industry do not rebound soon the fear is that polished concrete will become an extremely rare and specialized process.
How to Find the Right Salesperson
A few in the decorative concrete industry are good at the trade and great salespeople as well, but not many. If sales are not your thing, then now is the time to push ahead of the competition and find the right person.
The Importance of Managing Expectations in Polished Concrete
Possibly one of the most-discussed topics in the concrete polishing industry today is managing the customer’s expectations. Many an instance has occurred in which the floor has been ground, honed and polished within a hair’s thickness of perfection in the contractor’s eyes, only for him to be informed at collection time that it isn’t what the customer had in mind.
How to Keep Up in the Ever-Changing Polished Concrete Industry
The polished concrete industry has seen growth, especially during the past three years, that is both encouraging and depressing. Whenever one has been part of an industry since its birth, he tends to be a little territorial. So, when change occurs, especially if it’s not in one’s own best interest, one often gets protective and possibly a little jaded. This doesn’t have to happen.
Greening Your Decorative Concrete Business
Concrete contractors often tell me that they don’t have any input in the green aspects of the jobs they work on. By the time the concrete sub is hired, those decisions have been made, so what’s the use of even bothering?