Your best home show marketing solution

PCPlumber, owner of Bestline Plumbing in Los Angeles, has become an outspoken voice on the contractortalk.com forum. This is how he thinks your home show booth should look.

Last week, one of this blog's readers asked this question: "We have a home show coming up . . . any tips on maximizing this?"

A simple enough question, but one I thought others would be far more qualified to answer (we've done many business-to-business shows, but not consumer-oriented shows over the years). So I posted the question on the contractortalk.com sales and marketing forum, and the resulting postings show the value of heading to relevant Internet forums for advice on critical issues.

If you are hoping for a unified perspective, without any personality, argument, or back-biting, if you are looking for the one-size-fits-all solution, you won't find it in the several postings within the thread. Some advocate a conventional, courteous, and image-building approach, but one poster, pcplumber, owner of Bestline Plumbing in Los Angeles, has stirred up a hornets nest with his strong opinions. (Probably because he speaks his mind so vividly, he rubs others the wrong way, sometimes.)

You can see how he thinks you should present yourself at a consumer show in the above image. His opinion of what works best is a minority opinion, of course, others think the approach tacky. But it works, and he isn't afraid to say so, so what should you do with that information?

Meanwhile, Michael Stone in his blog reports that Qualified Remodeler magazine's survey says that seven per cent of remodelers find their sales leads at home shows. Stone, in advocating aggressive (but well planned) advertising and show participation, observes:

Several of our clients have said they rely on home shows for almost 1/3 of the leads they receive in any given year, far more than 7%.

All of our clients who are busy tell us the same thing and that is they all have at least six different means of advertising in place and working right now. They have all increased their advertising budget and all who have been actively advertising for the last year or more are as busy as they want to be.

Interesting.

So, what should you do here? Listen to the majority opinion, or go with PCplumber's style? I'd suggest your show style, as for everything in your business, should reflect your real personality and values (and ideally these should correlate with your clients) and be consistent with your actual business practices outside the show. If you are comfortable going over to the wild side and letting it all out (and your clients are 'ordinary' people,) Pcplumber may be on to something interesting here. And if you are not doing shows and want to find business for your contracting and renovation company, you should look at Michael Stone's numbers.

What lead sources are working? (3) -- The power of focus

Further email exchange with Marc Sylvain of Sylvain Contracting in Salem, NH.

Me: Marc, thanks for these observations. I will post the remarks. An interesting question is whether you can add strategic product lines compatible with your core business, which can then be effectively sold to your existing client base. It seems if you could maintain your overall volume AND bring the referral/repeat business more in line with the industry norms your business would be beyond incredible!

Marc: We are actually doing the opposite of that. In the last 10 years we have slowly phased out remodeling, additions, garages, roofing, etc.

After reading a book by Jim Collins called "Good to Great" (Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't) he says to ask a couple of questions to yourself.......What can I be the best in the world at? And what drives your economic engine?

That is why we now specialize in Replacement Windows (Not new construction windows) Vinyl Siding (Not wood siding or fiber cement) and pre-fab sunrooms (Not stick build rooms or additions).

We have added decks back in our mix because if you build a sunroom you probably want a deck off of it. We also do about 5- 10 roofs per year for past customers. We only do easy, straight forward roofs.

Jim Collins also talks about having a Hedge Hog concept. A Hedge Hog worries only about the essentials and ignores the rest.

Marc Sylvain
Sylvain Contracting
http://www.sylvaincontracting.com/

I am not going to argue with Marc's success. With a clear focus, well-defined business operating systems, and a business that sells largely once-in-a-lifetime services, the marketing and sales systems he uses with a diversity of lead sources but relying far less on repeat/referral business than the industry norms obviously makes sense for him. His depth of analytical understanding of what works and what doesn't and his willingness to share his numbers with others shows that he understands what is important in business to succeed. And of course lead development from home shows is certainly a lot less offensive to me than the intrusive yet in many cases highly effective canvassing business model common in his industry niches.

I will stretch myself on a limb, however, to suggest that with his very well defined measuring resources and Key Performance Indicators tools that if he set his priorities to increase the ratio of repeat/referral business while also increasing his overall sales volume, his profitability and business satisfaction could skyrocket. Strategically implementing communications/client service measures to improve his overall client experience (which I'm sure is generally quite satisfactory now) may yield results far in excess of the actual costs. Maybe, for example, instead of pouring money into home shows, he can set up project completion parties with his recent clients, with food and refreshments for the neighbours. I sense that actively engaging his current and former clients in the marketing process -- beyond the obvious use of street signs and conventional proximity marketing resources -- might produce some surprisingly rewarding results.

He may of course have tried these client involvement suggestions and found they don't work nearly as well as the home shows and other resources (or he is using them effectively and this explains his level of repeat/referral business.) Regardless, he is far ahead of most contractors in knowing his numbers, and sticking to his principals, and accordingly his business methodologies are worthy of respect and recognition.

What lead sources are working?

An image from the Sylvain Contracting website. Marc Sylvain says he gets 7.7 per cent of his business from the website -- but why is his referral/repeat business so much lower than industry norms?

Marc Sylvain of Sylvain Contracting in Salem, New Hampshire, has started a Contractortalk.com thread, "What lead sources are working?" with a frank report on his six month stats.

Home Shows $290,569 (38.1%)
Referrals $111,257 (14.6%)
Internet Lead providers $97,861 (12.8%)
Direct Mail $88,714 (11.6%)
Past Customers $59,813 (7.8%)
Our Website $58,920 (7.7%)
Site Signs $28,376 (3.7%)
Newspapers $23,717 (3.1%)

Sylvain's business focuses on vinyl siding, replacement windows and three and four season sun rooms.

Several other contractors responded; some surprised how much his business depends on home shows. Others may be surprised by the extremely open disclosure of business information -- you can quickly calculate, for example, his total business volume over the past six months from these numbers (something some business owners would prefer to keep under wraps). As well, notably this open posting in a contractors' forum on the surface has little 'value' in reaching the end user/home consumer market in New England.

Of course, the numbers show other things -- Sylvain knows his business and has solid measuring and tracking systems; he truly can calculate where his leads are originating and (significantly, though it doesn't show up here) his true cost per lead. With his numbers, he can manage his marketing a whole lot more effectively than others. And of course, he doesn't lose any business by sharing with others in the industry -- even if his direct competitors read and analyzed the numbers, they would be several steps behind him in business development and strategies.

You may also notice a couple of other interesting points here:

• One contributor expressed surprise that referrals and repeat clients generate surprisingly low lead volume.

"Marc, how can you increase your referrals and past clients? I would think this could be easy for you with a special program. Do you have a newsletter? e-mail address?

Home shows are a lot of work and time yes you do show they work but I think with a little polish you could come up with some boost on the other 2.
Just some thoughts. Good luck."

• Another thread contributor explained how he is reaching beyond networking to find business:

"OK, I did only networking to date. Starting two weeks ago I installed a kitchen display in a local bank.

Friday I am buying a 14' cube van and will put a nice kitchen in it, with an espresso maker built in. All the choices I can fit will be in the van, catalogues, quartz, fixture books plus cabinet doors ect.The van will be my billboard and will be parked at busy intersections all over the Twin Cities.

I will bring many choices to the homeowner for kitchen and bath remodeling. I am partnered with a bank for loans, an interior designer, a local appliance dealer and an architect and painter. I have my own line of cabinets for semi-custom and I'm a dealer for the same cabinets.

Either I'm a genius, or I'm an idiot, time will tell. What do you think of that?"

My sense is that Marc is having to work awfully hard to feed the dragon; he has systems and processes in place which result in a steady volume of business and he knows his stuff, so he can maintain a reliable and effective business in hard times as well as good. But I'll share my concern of the other successful contractor puzzled by the relatively low ratio of repeat and referral business. My own ongoing poll (admittedly it isn't scientific, but it certainly 'feels right' from the subjective measuring I do every day), says that contractors overall receive a whopping 77 per cent of their business from repeat and referral sources, compared to Marc's 22.4 per cent.

Could it be the cultural 'push' of selling aggressively at home shows and the like is actually turning off clients; or they aren't 100 per cent satisfied with the value they are receiving? Is Sylvain's product line suited to one-time clients who don't network or communicate with their peers and neighbours? Are there process improvements he can make to achieve more "Wow, this is great" responses among his current clients to attract more referrals and repeat orders? And, finally, is he working on the alliances and unconventional/creative marketing approaches to transcend the obvious and expand/build on relationships, like the other contractor with his fit-up van and banker's relationship?