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”.