Many people think it is best to ignore the competition and focus only on their personal business and roof sales? I?m calling BS!

Knowing your competition improves all parts of your business - especially your roof sales! My gut tells me that these people are just too lazy to do the hard work it takes to make selling easy!

Selling is like a chess match ? strategy and positioning are extremely important. How can you successfully position yourself if you Don't know who else is involved?

Finding your competitor?s marketing literature is very easy and gives you insight into their product focus, brand positioning, call to action, and much more. Visit your competitors websit's and look for free downloads, call and request literature, or get literature directly from your customers (they probably have tons sitting around).

Getting your customer?s proposals can be tricky. The easiest way to get a copy of the proposals is AFTER you have been award a project. Customers typically throw away the ?losing? proposals after the job is awarded, so offer to take them off their hands. Study the proposals for scope of work, wording, layout, price, warranty and references.

The most powerful thing you can understand about your competition is HOW they are selling against you. Just like getting the proposals, it is easiest to do AFTER you have been awarded a job. However, if you are a good listener you'll be able to spot a customer who has been ?sold? by one of your competitors. If the customer shows you product demonstrations or mentions a certain manufacturer by name? you know they have a ?bird in their ear.?

*

Despite popular belief, most roofing jobs are not lost because of PRICE! They are lost because of failure to establish value. Value is established when you properly position yourself, your company and your message in the mind of the customer? all of which involve knowing who else is battling you for the same spot!

Do you know your competition? Take a moment to share you thoughts and experiences with me!

Stay Dry,

-Eric

P.S. ? You won't always have the customer?s full cooperation. The next blog will breakdown a few ?tips & tricks? to finding out who you are competing against!

The simpliest way to waste money on advertising, marketing, or your website, is to let your gut intuition guide your decisions. I Don't care whether you're selecting a direct mail message or re-designing your website, when it comes to virtually all things advertising and marketing, your gut intuition stinks.

For example, you probably think that print yellow page advertising is a complete waste of money. Without the data I have, I'd tend to agree with you. After all, who uses the yellow pages any more? Shockingly, more people than you might think.

A number of residential plumbing contractors continue to get close to 20 percent of their leads from the print yellow pages - at a fairly attractive cost per lead, I might add. That's a lot of lost leads for those that let the anecdotal, "who the heck uses the print yellow pages these days?" guide their advertising decisions.

Another great example is a tracking client of ours that recently had their website re-built to be more "professional looking" (note: we didn't build their first site or the new one - we just track and quantify all their advertising and marketing - including their website). I'll give them credit - the new website looks fantastic.

The problem is that looks are subjective. By all measurable standards their new website is a total flop. Their organic rankings have declined (considerably) and their visit-to-lead conversion rates have gone from 7 percent with the old site to less than 4 percent with the new site. That's a 43 percent drop - so much for the connection between "professional looking" and lead generation!

As we head into the fall and you start thinking about how to make next year better than this year, Don't forget to investigate systems and services to measure, track, and quantify your advertising and marketing strategies (this includes your website). Take your advertising idea and think about what would constitute success. Put in place systems to track your results. Implement your test and then let the data guide your decisions.

If you need to hear this advice from someone other than me, go read the book Super Crunchers.

Over the past five or six years, I've met with hundreds (more like thousands) of contractors. I always ask the question, "What's your top source of leads and new business?" What do you think the most popular answer is? If you guessed referrals and word of mouth, you hit the nail on the head (and I'm sure many of you'reading this would probably answer the same way).

there's nothing wrong with word of mouth being your top source of new business. However, it does indicate a major untapped opportunity because your top source of new business should be your website.

Unless you're in an industry where you do thousands of small jobs for thousands of different people (each month), there's just no way that word of mouth and referrals can outpace your website when it comes to generating qualified leads. Your website is like a sales rep that can see thousands of people each day.

If you've read any of my previous blogs, you know that I think search engine optimization ("SEO") provides the best long-term return on investment of any advertising and marketing strategy available to contractors (and I can quantify this if you're interested in learning more). But, this isn't another blog post about SEO (per se). If you want to understand the basics of SEO, read this or this.

Your long-term strategy for improving your website's organic rankings is very straightforward: Create content that establishes your company as THE authority for what you do in the markets you do it.

Put simply:

Don't focus on SEO, focus on adding more value.

That's right - stop worrying about SEO. If you want to get more leads and jobs from your website, you should focus on providing your website visitors with more value. This means using your expertise to help your visitors accomplish their goals better, faster, more cost-effectively, etc. Go back and read the classic book, "How to Win Friends and Influence People." If every page of your website is a keyword stuffed regurgitaiton of the content that every other contractor has already created, you're not adding value. "Spinning articles" is not adding value - it's a race to the bottom and it's not going to help you build a lasting business.

Ways to Add More Value

There are a million ways to add more value to your website visitors, but for the purposes of this blog, I'll use one example. Let's say you're a local window replacement company. Windows, in most cases, represent a pretty big-ticket item to most homeowners. At the same time, I'll venture to say that very few homeowners really understand the differences between and best applications of the various types of windows - wood, aluminum clad wood, vinyl, fiberglass, etc. When insufficient information exists, people resort to what they understand - price.

So, you create a two ebooks: The Homeowner's Guide to Choosing the Right Type of Window" and a Windows Buyer's Guide to help ensure that your prospective customers are considering the right products and asking the right questions of potential contractors.

Quality Window & Door (the company referenced above) has created the buyer's guide, but they also have a "Wall of Windows" in their showroom. This magnificent idea has about ~20 windows from a variety of manufacturers - including windows from manufacturers they Don't work with! The idea is simple - educate the consumer and help them pick the best product for their home (even if that product isn't one that Quality Window & Door sells).

Of course, you should angle the contents fo these pieces (whether They are web pages, ebooks, etc.) to the benefits provided by your company. I Don't believe that overseas companies should be writing YOUR website content, so when I create an SEO guide to educate our prospective clients, I try to emphasis quality over quantity. Someone looking for the cheapest SEO service shouldn't hire me or my company. If I meet someone looking for a cheap provider, I'll happily point them in a different direction. there's no trick. I think my way is superior and I'm proud to talk about it. You should do the same for your company.

So, the next time you're about to write a page of content for your website (or oversee someone doing it on your behalf), ask yourself, "how is this piece of content adding value - is this the same crap found on every other website?" If the answer is yes, pause and re-think how you might do things differently moving forward. The more value you add with your content, the higher your website will rank organically and the more inbound links, inbound leads and jobs you'll get.

Do this consistently for 12-18 months and word of mouth will never again be your top source of new business (which is a good thing, I think).

When I released my book on Lead Generation, I decided to give a 100%, no hassle, money back guarantee to people who didn?t feel the content was worth their investment. No small print, no loopholes, no exclusions? you Don't like the book, you get your money back.

As you can imagine, an offer like this opens the door for people to take advantage of me? People who buy the book and, almost instantly, ask for their money back (for whatever reason).

You know, it is what it is? There will always be be people trying to ?beat the system? and I?m fine with that. If you're one of them, I wish you nothing but the best?

But I recently received an email that struck a nerve with me. It went as follows:

Initially I thought it was just a scammer trying to get something for nothing, but on second glance I think it might be something MUCH worse? A person who lives in a World of [BLANKS].

Do you know a person who lives in a World of [BLANKS]? See if you can complete any of these sentences:

• I didn?t make the sale because of _______.
• That really doesn?t apply to me because of _______.
• I would have more _______ if it wasn?t for _______.
• If it wasn?t for _______ , I would have _______.

• Shifting of blame
• Lack of accountability
• Excuses
• And any other thing except taking accountability!

The [BLANKS] are deadly to your success. If you spot someone using them, GET THE HELL AWAY! This is especially true if you are in sales.

Not where you want to be?where you'reALLY want to be? See the difference?

When you'reALLY want to be somewhere, you:

• Stop blaming everything/everybody else and you Start taking control of your life.
• Stop being defensive and you Start thinking of ways to move forward.
• Stop looking for shortcuts and you Start doing the hard work (or smart work) it takes to make your life easy!

To the sender of the email? I really hope I?m over-analyzing the situation and you simply wanted my book for ?free.? I can live with that because there is still a chance you will read the book and benefit from the contents. If you are a person who lives with [BLANKS]? I hope my $9.95 refund fills one in for you?

Stay Dry,

-Eric