More Than I Bargained For: Geoff's Restoration Journey

I expected to spend some time in the field when I was hired on as a Sales and Marketing Manager, but I had no idea how frequently I would be working on a truck. I was not fond of it much at the time, but it has proven to be an invaluable experience that very few can claim to have. 

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Catch 22

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The Sales team was expected to bring in new jobs, but when they did, there was seldom a crew available to handle the work. So, if we wanted our commission, we had to get the job started (if not completed) to get our commission. Due to that fact, we saw it all and worked it all. However, we missed out on a lot of sales while we were working the truck.

 

It was evident that hiring crew members was easier said than done. Therefore, we needed to generate more margin without producing additional man-hours. 

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Change Of Perspective

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It was obvious that our plan had to change in order to generate more margin with the same resource. I asked about how much commercial work they typically do annually, and the percentage was less than 10% of revenue. Yikes! I was told not to target commercial work because their close ratio was so low.

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After hitting all of my KPIs for residential promotion, I started going after commercial work "below the radar." Once commercial work started pouring in, the profit margins were THROUGH THE ROOF, and the owners placed a new focus on commercial work.

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Bleeding Work

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Things were looking up for margin, and the team was growing. Now we needed to nail down more jobs, but we were losing business like crazy to our competition. I was tasked with finding out why. Our Sales team was hitting the pavement in force. We even got another sales rep. What I found was that we were losing the battle online. 

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My new objective was to improve our online presence and take traffic away from our competitors. My employer ignored their website and social media for several years, so the task was daunting.

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It took time to start seeing traction. However, that year we broke the franchise's record for revenue. We had the best numbers of any year since the franchise opened. The following year, we broke the record again. By the end of that second year, we had almost doubled what we had averaged in previous years. 

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Why Online Marketing Works

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Marketing does not replace sales. It works in tandem with your sales team. Google exists to refer people to products and businesses. When your company starts to gain traffic online, you are not only growing your business but also taking away from your competition. It is a double win! 

 

Another reason people trust search results is that a 3rd party (Google, Bing, etc.) is serving them up in a specific order. We can influence what position your company ranks for online. Once you have a good position in the search rankings, Your client already has a small measure of trust by the time they call you on the phone. All you need to do is empathize and speak intelligently; the job is yours.

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We Have Been There

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Other marketers claim to be experts because they want a piece of the restoration market. Geoff is an expert because he has done the work and produced results; both on the field and online. You can't go wrong with having a conversation with Geoff. It is free. 

 

You are the expert. Geoff can help your community know that fact.