Footbridge Media is pleased to announce the launch of Zaprala Romano Remodelers, Remodeling contractors who provide kitchen, bathroom, basement and sunroom construction and renovation for homeowners in camden, burlington and gloucester counties in New Jersey

I really do not like the word “estimate”, or even worse bid. Estimate implies inexactness. It may be higher, it may be lower. A project consultation, energy audit or design analysis implies much more detail and precision. Bid implies that you are competing for the project.

Instead of offering a “free estimate” offer an in-home consultation. Explain that this is much more than a bid or free estimate. They receive a detailed evaluation of their project that includes:

1. Detailed discussion of project goals and ideas. What are the three most important concerns or objectives for this project?

2. Evaluation of home. Is site suitable for the proposed project? Evaluate feasibility, design considerations.

3. Exact material lists and job proposal. (optional: plans or designs)

4. Offer exact written quote for project, including scheduling, materials, products, etc.

If you are an HVAC contractor, or sell replacement windows, offer a “Energy Audit”, instead of a “Free Estimate”. You can show the homeowner all the energy wasting areas in their home, including the uninsulated window openings, door cracks, etc. Many of these areas are small, simple and inexpensive to fix.

You can roll your job into a whole home insulating theme for close to the same cost.

Here are some things that you can include into your consultation, thus eliminating the word “estimate.”

1) Look at air conditioning unit and furnace. How old are they? Efficient? How often do they change their air filter? What type do they use?

2) Look at bathrooms. How long do they typically shower? Standard showerhead uses 6 gallons of water per minute (60 gallons for a 10 minute shower). Low flow showerhead uses 2 gallons of water per minute. A 10-minute shower with a standard showerhead costs about 68 cents. With a low flow showerhead your 10-minute shower costs only 23 cents, a savings of 45 cents per shower. Multiply that savings by 1460 showers (a years worth of daily showers for a family of four) and you may save as much as $657 a year.

There are hundreds of ways to create your own consultation and project evaluation. All I ask, is stop using the term “estimates” or “bids”….. This way the homeowner can go out and get “three estimates”, but they will only get one consultation from you…..

Maybe you saw it on the news, or maybe your teenager mentioned it in passing, but Google has recently purchased an online video website which increases the online domination of the internet and search marketing. So how does this effect a contractor?

In the near future, what will be occuring, as when you begin searching on the internet for things, like “how to unclog a drain”, or “types of vinyl siding”, Google will be launching a video that may be relevant to the keywords searched.

Since Youtube is mainly an entertainment site for teenagers and geeks(pardon my language), it still can be a powerful marketing tool for the contractor.

Get The Video Camera Out

The next time you are on a job, take the video camera and shoot some of your work. The video does have to be in par of Scorsese or even be feature length. You can do a two minute video on something and then upload it to youtube.com.

By next year, when someone is searching for services, your video will appear. This is going to be new form of online marketing for contractros. Do it now, because in a few years, some of the major companies will begin utilizing that tool.

If you have any questions or need assistance with making the video, or using youtube.com, please contact your marketing consultant.

I want to take a moment to share with you some important updates about our company, as well as the deadline for our Referral Program. As of January 1, 2007, Footbridge Media will be changing the price structure of our Complete Marketing Program.

What does this mean to you? Nothing, really, since you are a current client and are under our “No Price Increase For 3 Years” Guarantee. But it does affect any new clients who plan on joining after the December 2006 deadline.

If you know of any contractor who would benefit from our marketing program, and want to refer them before the December 2006 deadline, that would be appreciated.

You should be recieving some business cards in the mail that you can use to refer, or simply complete our referral form by clicking here.

Since, almost all of our clients are referring new members; we thought we would up the reward. Besides the FREE MONTH for each referral, the client who provides the most referrals by December 31, 2006 will receive 2 years of free service. So far, that is over $1500 in service.

Good luck and thank you for your continued business!

From Joe Crisara of ContractorSelling.com

I thought Roy Rodgers was the most famous Roy I ever knew. That was until I witnessed sales people trying to sell customers based soley on return on investment or ROI.

Let me try to clear up some misconceptions about attempting to get customers excited about this dry subject…

1. Ask The Customer What They Think Is Important. – I hope for all of our sakes we are asking the customers what they think is important when purchasing a new system before we select one for them.

I have always pointed out, that customers will buy for their reasons not yours. One reason I have found they will buy is the fear of shopping for an A/C guy on the hottest day of the year. (Imagine shopping for snow blowers on the same day that a huge blizzard hit town.)

The feature or benefit you start telling a customer without asking them if they wanted it first, is the very thing that will bury you. Let’s say you have the system all but sold and then you start doing a ROI worksheet. Then imagine the customer saying “Oh, Is there a unit that would be cheaper if it wasn’t so efficient?” Before you spill your guts on efficiency, ask if it will be a determining factor.

2. Let Your Customer’s Tell the ROI Story, Not You. – I have personally sold over $600,000 in home energy mitigation repairs in a year using the blower door or my knowledge derived from it. I never actually calculated the saving the customer would get from doing these repairs, the customer just knew by seeing the problems that they would save money.

What I did was ask all customers if I could call them in the next year to ask how much they thought they were saving. From this came some amazing testimonials which I then used in my advertising. Also, I would bring these amazing stories of money saved on my sales calls to help illustrate the potential of my services.

Let your past successful customer’s tell your story. Customers are unlikely to believe a salesman’s claims of energy savings anyway. In fact just writing that statement makes me laugh.

3. The timing as to when ROI is introduced is critical. – The time to get this ROI discussion over with is early in the discovery stage of the sale. The last thing you want to do is to start using it at the end of you sales call as a way to justify your position (That this is the best system for them) or your higher price.

If it is important to the customer, ask why they think it is important? What would they do with the extra money they would save? (This helps to turn something as oblique as energy savings into something real like a new swimming pool or a yearly vacation they could take)

4. Use ROI as a great tool to help uncover the customer’s budget. – You will undoubtedly need to talk about their expectations about the investment they are going to make.

Knowing the budget helps you to find a selling point for whatever products you hope to present. Without uncovering the customer’s expectation for how much they thought this would cost, you cannot work to raise the amount in their minds, (If they are think it’s going to be $1500 and you think it’s going to be $5000) or conversely, without knowing, you may be pricing too cheap. (They thought this would cost $10,000 and you come in at $5,000)

One thing I have found is that they will not tell you if you are too cheap. They may not buy because they figure that your promises of warrantee and service are too good to be true for that low price. You need to find this out before your presentation.

If the customer doesn’t think that saving money on energy bills is important, don’t worry. You will probably still sell, by coincidence, the most efficient product you have as a result of finding out what their biggest concern was.