5 Tips to Prepare for the Slow Season (While You're Still Busy)

In this week's episode of the MegaMarketer Coachcast, hosts Justin Jacob and China Morissette talk about preparing for the slow season instead of reacting to it once it's already here. Find out why being proactive can pay off for your business. Right now is the time to get a game plan for the fall. Key Lessons Learned: Make Sure You're Offering Maintenance Agreements Servicing maintenance agreements during the off season is the only way a lot of business owners keep their techs busy. With any new customers you serve you should be doing your best to make sure you sell them a maintenance agreement. You can access of pair of scripts to help you with the maintenance agreement conversation with your customers within your Hudsons Ink coaching resources. So many contractors lack a compelling maintenance agreement to offer their customer and that's a big problem. Maintenance agreements are a great way to keep your techs busy and avoid laying people off during slow seasons. You Need To Focus On Customer Retention Leads and customers are hard to come by, so once you have them make sure they stick around. Get all the customer's information that you can when you're in their home so that you can follow up with them and market to them more effectively. Don't get so busy during the busy season that you forget about marketing. You should always be on top of mind for your market so that when someone searches for your service in an emergency your business is the one on the top of the list. What You Should Be Focusing On Social Media Email addresses are extremely valuable to your business, don't forget to ask the customer when you visit them at their home. People often wonder what to post on social media or doubt that you can generate business with it but in some ways it's possible. As long as you're saying something interesting, people will be okay with you talking to them. Social media can be a great tool to keep people engaged with your brand, but it's important to keep it professional. One day you will want to communicate with them regarding a sale, as long as you are adding value to the relationship most of the time people will be happy to see what you have to offer. Being active on social media is a great way to foster a sense of community but it can also help you recruit new employees as well. Be careful about what you are sharing. As much of the content that you share as possible should go to your website. Reputation Management Lots of business owners get a lot of sales through word of mouth but technology has moved that process online. Reviews are the new word of mouth. You should have a process in place for gathering as many positive reviews from your customers as possible. If you do get a negative review, having a plan to gather positive reviews is a way to protect yourself from the impact by diluting the negativity. Feedback in reviews is an opportunity to grow, positive or negative. Negative reviews may reveal areas of your business that actually need to be improved. Techs should be looking to prevent issues before they leave the home. Beware of companies that gather reviews for you and make sure you are the owner of them. Also be wary of paying people for reviews. Focus On Getting Referrals Take get so busy trying to fill up the schedule that you forget to ask for a referral. Make sure you leave a lawn sign and cloverleafing the surrounding homes so that you can get those referrals. Don't get so busy that you forget about the simple things that are going to help your marketing. Build a list of people that you can follow up with and generate business once your phone starts to slow down. Thank you for listening! If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a 5-star rating and review in iTunes! Links to Resources Mentioned [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] 800-489-9099