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~~ Contractor Best Practices Newsletter ~~

by Ron Roberts
The Contractor's Business Coach

http://www.FilthyRichContractor.com

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Volume 2 - issue 23

June 6, 2007

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Tip of the Week:

Force your employees to bring you solutions whenever they bring you problems. Slowly, but surely, they will start solving their own problems. You’ll have more time to focus on wealth building activities.
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Today's Article:

Growing Your Business Through Angie's List
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Residential contractors finally have the weapon they need to PROVE their services are worth paying more for - Angie's List. Angie's List (www.angieslist.com)
tracks customer feedback on residential contractors and makes the feedback available to home owners for a small price.

A residential contractor no longer has to say "trust me". He can now point to Angie's List and show his prospects how well he performs. If you serve the
residential market, perform high quality work, and are willing to deliver superior customer service, build your business strategy around Angie's List.

Your first step should be to aggressively promote the use of Angie's List.

Home owners must pay a membership fee to see the contractor grades/reports. The fee is affordable, about $50 a year in most cities. Encourage them to
sign up.

Angie’s List can provide you with free brochures that you can hand out to your customers. If your customer is already an Angie’s List member, it is
a great way to remind them to fill out a report on their experience, and if they are not a member, but decide to join because of your brochure, Angie’s List will pay you $25!

Your second step should be to focus your communication and customer service efforts on issues that will thrill your customer and earn you a glowing report.

Bring Angie's List up during your original sales call. Help your client understand that you will do everything reasonable to earn high grades. The best
way to ensure you have a happy customer at the end of a job is to completely manage expectations before you begin the work.

» Are there any possible hidden costs that you have not discussed and put in writing?

» Does the completion date depend on good weather every day?

» What damage will be done to the yard / landscape because of materials and/or equipment?

» When is payment expected?

» Are there any other details you need to know about to ensure that they will be happy with both the process and the results?

Your third step should be to proactively manage/update your Angie’s List account.

Angie's List knows there are two sides to every story. Their staff facilitates issues between contractors and consumers. Don't leave yourself at the mercy of a
troublesome client. Actively monitor and manage your Angie's List feedback. When you receive an unfair customer report, don't just sit back and take it.

Respond to it! After all, it is free to do (http://company.angieslist.com).

Your fourth step should be giving serious thought to advertising with Angie's List. Angie's List has made this very easy to do.

You can choose from a wide array of advertising opportunities. Their rates are quite reasonable, if not down right cheap.

When all ratings are equal, advertisers are placed higher in the listings. Home owners can request the list to bring up coupon offerers first...and that moves advertisers to the top of the search list. Angie's List also inserts advertisements in their mailed monthly magazine.

You get quite a bit of great exposure for a fairly low price. Certainly far more bang for the buck than with Yellow Pages.

Whether you like it or not, your services are going to be rated.

Is there a dark side to Angie's List? Yes!

Angie’s List members can rate any residential contractor they've used. Contractors can't prevent that. You can't prevent that. If you have failed to maintain goodwill with one or more of your customers, they have probably already slammed you on Angie's List. If not, a future displeased customer will.

Angie's List looks like its going to become a highly successful service used by millions of home owners. It is The Better Business Bureau on steroids. It solves
a major problem faced by home owners - "how can I find a contractor I can trust?" This thing isn't going away. Residential contractors who take their customers for
granted are going to see their sales opportunities shrink. If you aren't familiar with how the service works, a brief overview is in order. Home owners grade residential
contractors on six categories:

» Price
» Quality
» Responsiveness
» Punctuality
» Professionalism
» Overall (This is the grade that is averaged with their other reports to determine their GPA)

Performance on each category is scored from A to F.

Angie's List is a true performance based ranking system. Companies are initially ranked by Overall Score, with the A's first and the B's second and so on. The home owner can adjust the sort to rank by any of the six categories. The more reports a company has received, the higher it is ranked among companies with the same score.

The only way you can stack the deck in your favor is to consistently exceed your customers' expectations. Each contractor's report card can be viewed as can the individual feedbacks that make up the report card. Each feedback report
includes a description of the work, individual scores for each category, and member comments.

Angie's List is becoming a forced to be reckoned with. Embrace it or be broken by it. It’s your choice.

Until next week, good luck with your business.

Ron Roberts,
The Contractor's Business Coach

P.S. Share this with your contractor friends. They will thank you for it.
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SERVICE PROVIDERS THAT MAKE YOU MONEY

Independent Lease Review, Inc.

http://www.ReviewYourLease.com
Experts in equipment lease negotiation and contracts.

 

Synthesis, Inc.

http://www.Synthesis-inc.com
Construction accounting, lead generation, and customer relationship management software consultants and trainers.

 

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WEBSITES TO FREQUENT

http://www.WorldSweeper.com
World Sweeper.com contains several articles written
to help contractors run profitable businesses.
http://www.WorldSweeper.com

http://www.ForConstructionPros.com
For Construction Pros.com is the online presence of
Cygnus Media. Cygnus publishes several construction
magazines. Bookmark their site and check it monthly
to find helpful articles.

http://www.ConstructionBusinessOwner.com
This website contains an abundance of great articles
and helpful tools to help owners improve their business
results.

http://www.FilthyRichContractor.com
Shouldn't I pimp my own site? :-)

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