Our favourite Plumbing marketing expert, John Nelson, interviewed Mitch Kenney of Colepepper Services in San Diego, USA.

Mitch has grown his revenue from zero to $2.5m in just two years. Watch the full interview here to learn how he did it.

Highlights:

Here are the highlights of the interview.

Ideal Customer & USP

• Defining the ideal customer and unique selling point.
• Mitch is testing “better warranties” as his unique selling point.

Profitable Customers

• Proactive selling to convert more leads into jobs.
• Lifetime value of a client. Not focusing on the marketing cost per job, but per customer. May lose money on the first job for a customer but focus on repeat business and make profit over the lifetime of the customer relationship.
• Uses outbound calls to stay in contact with customers. Sends thank you cards after a job.
• Talks about three cycles in the customer experience – Before, During and After – a job. Important to put budget into “After” to secure te repeat business.

Google Home Services

• Note, Google Home Services not in Australia at time of writing but likely to be rolled out here at some stage.
• “Home Advisor” in the US is equivalent of lead-generation businesses like HiPages, OneFlare and Service Seeking in Australia
• “Speed is the new currency” – fast to answer calls, fast to get to a job.

Online Reviews

• “Reviews are the new word of mouth”
• Tradies request reviews from all customers, in the home
• Dealing with bad reviews on Yelp

Hiring Plumbers

• 0 to 15 trucks in two years – how do you find good people?
• New hire shows up late on first day – what do you do?
• Need guys who can do plumbing and selling. Not easy though.
• “Always be hiring”
• Run ads in many places. $500 bonus for successful employee referrals.
• Develop a Unique Selling Proposition for hiring and use it in job ads. Mitch uses “No On-Call” to attract plumbers – “guys love that”.