Greetings Flooring Dealers!
Years ago I owned a carpet cleaning company. About half of our new business (not including repeat and referral) was being generated by a single campaign. It was a 3-step sequence (as discussed in the last several installments) that we were delivering to carefully-selected upscale neighborhoods in our town. This strategy worked brilliantly.
For about 2 years.
Then suddenly it stopped working. It was like someone turned off the water faucet. It was that dramatic. I have a theory as to why it happened, but regardless of why, it caught us by surprise and we had to scramble to replace that revenue.
Fortunately, I was smart enough to have other systems in place for generating revenue, so we were able to recover. But two years of steady revenue from that strategy had made us a bit complacent. Never again.
If you have a strategy—or a source of business (i.e. new construction)—that’s working like gangbusters for you, be careful. Do not allow your business to be solely dependent upon that one source or strategy. You never know when it will dry up.
One of our Platinum members, Mark B. from Illinois, was 80% new construction in the summer of 2008, right in the middle of the housing melt-down. Uh oh. To make matters worse, his county put a moratorium on all new building permits. Double uh-oh. He joined Platinum (partly) out of sheer desperation. He used the program to develop new systems and new sources for business and within 8 months he was almost 100% residential remodel and booked out for 6 weeks. Mark learned the importance of diversifying his marketing and his sources for business and he’s doing very well now.
The key is to have 8-10 (or more) marketing funnels, all sending you business. Then if one quits working it won’t devastate your business.
To Tons Of Customers!
Jim Augustus Armstrong is The “Coach”
Jim Augustus Armstrong is the President of Flooring Success Systems, a program that equips dealers to double their profits, cut their work hours in half and beat the boxes! Many dealers have totally transformed their businesses and their lives for the better after joining Flooring Success Systems.
See what real, live dealers are saying!