The Contractor Fight with Tom Reber

On this episode, Tom welcomes Mark Buckshon of Construction Marketing Ideas to discuss powerful marketing strategies for all contracting business. Learn the ins and outs of contracting marketing, find better ways to share your stories, and understand the data you need to keep growing your business. Mark’s Top Three Discussion Points for Marketing  Look at the way you are treating clients personally and throughout their experience. Make sure that you are delivering value to each one of them. Understand how you can get your clients excited. Work on getting these enthusiastic clients to buy more and offer referrals for you in the future. Happy clients will also typically agree to giving you glowing reviews and testimonials that you can implement into your marketing strategy. Really look at you web marketing and social media. Retaining clients is one of the easiest and fastest ways to boost your overall revenue. Retaining clients is about keeping the connection with them, during and after a job and building a positive relationship with them through their customer experience with your company.  Even as brand new contracting company, you still have friends, family and have contacts that you can use to build your business. Find where you can contribute value to your community and get your name/face out there. When you do spend money on external advertising, social media or print media, you need to look back at it afterwards and figure out how much business did you gain from it. Of the business you did get, how many of those customers are going to turn into repeat clients? Bringing you lifetime value from the ad.  For social media, you should focus on strategies that build direct relationships with people.  Watch your social media carefully so you can respond quickly to any type of situation, positive or negative. Induce as much positive interaction or responses for your business as you can by providing an excellent customer journey.  Make sure that your website and social media pages are relevant and maintained. You want them to be a lively place for discussion and content driven. This is your place to encourage communication with current and former clients. You can also show off your skills by highlighting cool new jobs or fantastic past projects. Social media is building client relationships and referrals but on hyper drive. It will be one of your most powerful and inexpensive ways to build your reputation. Consistency is key, you have to reasonably reliable with it.  Make sure your website is responsive and has great mobile accessibility to it. More and more people will be using their phones to look at your website or social media pages and you want to be able to accommodate that. If you don’t look professional on your website and social media then you’ll be missing out on phone calls of potential clients right from the start. It’s so important to have a professional feel to your website and make sure it’s responsive. Your main focus should be on making your customers experience top notch. They’ll remember the experience and it’s your greatest investment to your business. If you provide positive and outstanding experiences, then you’ll not only have repeat clients but those clients will happily share about their positive experience with others and you can use that to help market and build your brand to others. Be sure to visit Construction Marketing Ideas for a more in-depth look at marketing for your contracting business. You’ll find relevant tips and valuable strategies that you can start applying today to boost your marketing plan and seeing tangible results. Mark has also written a book Construction Marketing Ideas that Tom highly recommends. Want to level up your business IQ? Visit  The Contractor Fight Accelerate Group run by Tom! Don’t miss out, make sure to claim your seat at the must attend contractor event of the year, Revolution 2018. Podcast Editing and Show Notes via Podcast Buddy

In this episode, The No BS Performance Coach for Contractors, Tom Reber shares 3 ways to teach you how to make more money in your contracting business. 1. Take Control of Your Sales Process 2. Know What Your Costs Are 3. Raise Up Leaders Tom Reber is a business coach for contractors and co-founder of the Contractor Sales Academy. www.contractorsalesacademy.com Are you ready to take the next step for your contracting business? Everything you need to educate yourself to take your business to the next level of success can be found in The Contractor Fight Accelerate Group.  

Today Tom sits down with Laura Reale of Aquareale and Pondtent to discuss how she uses strategic marketing in her own business and how she helps others in this industry to reach their full marketing potential. Laura majored in journalism and continued her education with a Masters degree in Marketing. She is a seasoned marketing professional who understands the landscaping and contractor industry and now helps other companies in the pond world. You will learn from Laura how a potential Aquareale customer goes from an initial contact to a returning customer. How she gathers and retains their information and begins to build that client relationship. After re-branding and becoming Aquareale, their business did over $100,000 more in business than the first year. The first thing Laura suggests you look at is addressing your brand and the way you present yourself. You should have logo, updated website, business card and represent your brand well. Laura lives and works in this industry with Aquareale and really gets how marketing should look in this industry. Marketing is all about building customer relationships with clients both past and future. Staying top of mind shouldn’t just be pushing sales. Her weekly tips and monthly newsletter provide useful information, a give and take to build a nurturing relationship with your clients. This not only keeps you top of mind for your own clients but also helps to keep you top of mind for referral sources too. To see how Laura and Pondtent can help take your marketing to the next level, check out the Pondtent List of Services or Contact her directly. Are you ready to take the next step for your contracting business? Everything you need to educate yourself to take your business to the next level of success can be found in The Contractor Fight Accelerate Group.

In this episode Tom breaks down the real reason your contracting business isn't growing. Hint: It's not the work you are doing. You might be making one of these terrible mistakes. Do not miss this episode! Contractor Business Tips: Are You Ready to Accelerate www.tomreber.com/accelerate We're relaunching our Accelerate Program with more interaction, more content and more relevant topics to help you grow your contracting business. Tom Reber is Leader of The Contractor Fight. Live Unafraid. Pick a Fight with Mediocrity. Let's kick your contracting business in the ass: www.tomreber.com/accelerate Some Of The Other Topics We Train On: -How to start a company... -How to grow your social media channels... -How to estimate projects properly... -How to grow your business... -How to grow your contracting company... -How to get more customers... -Painting -Water Features -Landscaping -Flooring -Remodeling Let's Kick Your Contracting Business in the Ass! SUBSCRIBE NOW! Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/theco... Twitter: https://twitter.com/contractorfight Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecontract... Google+: https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TomReber

In this episode Tom sits down with Nick Schiffer owner of NS Builders and co-host of the Modern Craftsman Podcast. They discuss how he built his social media presence, NS Builders, and why sharing trade secrets can actually get you more jobs.  Nick's Instagram Modern Craftsman Podcast Are you ready to commit to making a change? If you’re sick and tired of being sick and tired. And you’re ready to be honest and humble about where you are, then it’s time to… ACCELERATE <------

In this episode Tom shares 21 Ideas to Instantly Grow Your Contracting Business!  Members of The Contractor Fight Facebook Group share how they grow their contracting business. You wont want to miss these 21 ideas that might spark the fire under your business! Are you ready to KICK YOUR CONTRACTING BUSINESS IN THE ASS? Join ACCELERATE - To make big changes in your business (and life) you need support. It’s almost impossible to gather the information, see the vision, and change your mindset without getting some fresh input. If you’ve been pounding the rocks for months, years, or even decades without seeing progress then it’s time to get a fresh perspective! Motor Hard!  

On this episode, Tom sits down with Phil Sarros of Sarros Landscaping and Dirt Monkey University, to talk about what, why, and how putting systems or processes into place is important for any business. Starting off in 2002, Phil started his company as a cleaning business for pools and apartments. That job allowed Phil to save enough money to start his landscaping business. His landscaping business grew extremely fast, so he had to figure out how to create and implement successful systems to keep his business running smoothly. Many systems are important throughout any contracting business, but if you can only focus on just one, Phil thinks that having a bookkeeping system is the most important. You need to have a solid plan (system) in place for keeping track of the money coming into your business and where the outgoing money is being spent. You need a bookkeeping “dashboard” that will give you all the information on how to make the best decisions for your business. For contractors Phil also suggesting the “Job Jacket” system, which is having a folder with all the critical documents that you’ll need for that job. Everything your crew could need will be in there: material list, special instructions, signed contract from the client, work permits. A copy of the client invoice and their method of payment once the job is completed. After the job that whole folder comes back to the office to be filed with the other completed jobs. This makes it very easy to review with your crew where each project could use improvement and where things went well. It also allows for you to easily track the bookkeeping aspect of each job with what was spent where and how much overall came in.  When implementing a new process, if you don’t truly make it a priority to follow up with your staff after it’s in place, then they aren’t going to work. Take one system at a time, set it up and let it run for a couple of weeks. Constantly be getting feedback from your staff and  be available to answer any questions they have. Be there to carry them through working out the kinks during a new process introduction and then next one will go even that much smoother. But you can’t introduce a bunch of new processes all at once, because that will absolutely fail. Focus on implementing one new process at a time until it’s running smoothly with your team  You can also include your staff in the process building task. Decide which process you want to change and in a meeting talk about it with your staff and ask how they think the perfect process for that particular part of the business would look. Giving your staff the time to voice what their ideas are on what a perfect process would look like also gives them all a feeling of ownership of that process, which makes transitions easier. Their input is valuable because they see things on the job daily that you might not notice. Another benefit of having a good process in place is that it’s so much easier to see where things maybe didn’t go well on a job.  If you have a job didn’t do as well it’s much easier to pinpoint  exactly where something went wrong if you have clear standards for your processes across the board.  But you have to be committed to seeing these processes through, otherwise it’s not going to work. Don’t give up right when you’re about to turn the corner to do something extremely successful for yourself. Keep going forward and be honest with yourself when you feel you want to stop. Recommended reading 212: The Extra Degree - Extraordinary Results Begin With One Small Change Have a question for Phil, reach out to him directly at Phil@DirtMonkeyUniversity.com and visit the Dirt Monkey University Website for more information.

In this episode Tom addresses 7 money mindsets that will help your contacting business grow. If you’re ready to take the next step in The Contractor Fight, join Accelerate. What You Get: – Monthly focus topics – Weekly group coaching calls – Access to the Accelerate Membership site with videos, worksheets and more! Learn More

YouTube sensation Chis Berry joins host Tom Reber on The Contractor Fight this week. Berry, known on YouTube as The Idaho Painter, shares how he got his start as a painter and how he worked to make a name for himself (and eventually a full-time living) on YouTube by creating videos on topics he wanted to learn more about. Berry has plenty to share for contractors on getting started on YouTube, the importance of consistently posting unique content, and more. Want to learn more about Chris, or learn from his tutorials? Visit his YouTube channel and his website.  Nuggets of Wisdom:  “Everything I learned about painting was from trial and error.” – Chris  “I can take two things that I really love, [painting and technology] put them together and teach people what I love to do.” - Chris  “The number one thing you have to do is you have to produce content on a regular basis.” - Chris  “Find something about you that’s unique and different.” – Chris “I believe that the more we let people behind the curtain in our trades, the more expertise is shown. One good byproduct of that is that people will understand a lot more of what goes into a trade.” – Tom  “I’m trying to put more thought into my videos so they just make more sense, flow better, look more professional.”  - Chris

In this episode Tom defines the most important brick to lay your leadership foundation. Looking for expert advice to grow your contractor business? Sign up for TCF's Accelerate program and you'll be connected to a weekly video group call every Friday with Tom and other like-minded business owners. Each week offers a different discussion topic for you to learn from.