42 | AUGUST 2020
Business
Read online at www.proinstaller.co.uk
WINNING BUSINESS
How to make the most of opportunities that come your way
It’s a perennial struggle to
grow a business and here Benjamin
Dyer of Powered Now looks
at the key attribute for winning
new business. With the current
pandemic and likely difficulties to
come, this is even more important
than usual.
It’s easy to think that the currency
of business is money. But it
isn’t. It’s trust.
The number of huge scammy
businesses in the world is
relatively small. Usually if a large
business starts behaving badly, it
is because they have gone astray.
That’s more likely than that they
were always bad. Bad companies
don’t usually get big in the first
place.
The truth is that most businesses
grow large because they found
a way of delivering a decent
product at a reasonable price.
And their customers came to trust
them as a result. Because once
customers trust a business, the
whole process of selling becomes
easier. People buy Nike trainers
because, among other reasons,
they know that it’s unlikely they
will fall apart after a couple of
weeks. That’s trust.
I recently commissioned some
major work on my garden. I only
went to one company for the
quote and I accepted it without
quibbling. Why? Because I had
used them several times before
and experienced good work from
this company. They had even
saved me money when I needed
it. They had also helped to
fix problems that resulted from
others work.
As a result, I trust them. That
meant that their sales process
was much easier. It means that
they are almost certainly going
to get more wins. Plus, they
get a higher margin than they
would if they were always in
competition. They have grown
from three people when I met
them to 37 today. That’s pretty
good.
The trust factor also applies
to the installer that I use. I came
to trust them after they sorted
out a problem that had stumped
other gas engineers.
Existing customers
With customers you already
have, keeping and growing trust
is crucial. It’s not just that they
will use you, they will recommend
you to friends too.
When we had a Ford Galaxy,
we had it maintained by the local
main dealer. We had an intermittent
fault and took it in to be
fixed. He couldn’t find anything
wrong. A few months later we
tried again with the same result.
Finally, on the third occasion they
managed to reproduce and fix
the problem. What did they do?
They didn’t charge us because
we had the hassle of bringing the
Galaxy in three times.
This meant that we came to
totally trust them. We not only
continued to use them, we also
bought a couple of cars off them
too. All as a result of trust.
Here’s the application to your
installation business. Going the
second mile, sometimes being
prepared to admit when you
made a mistake, if appropriate
doing some work for free – all
these have the potential to provide
more paydays further down
the line. Once they trust you,
they will never want to use the
competition.
However, you should remember
that trust can be lost overnight.
It just takes one unfortunate
incident with a customer.
New customers
It stands to reason that the
most important thing to do with
new prospects is to establish the
same level of trust. But this can
be hard, and you need to deploy
every possible means to achieve
it.
There’s a saying that you never
get a second chance to make a
first impression and it’s true.
This means that you have to
put yourself into your customers
shoes when you first meet them.
You must consciously think about
what the most sensitive and shy
person wants from you, then act
accordingly. That’s unless you are
naturally empathetic and always
know what level to pitch your
friendliness.
Building trust in
your quotation
After arranging at least one site
visit, meeting the customer and
impressing them with your expertise
and credibility, you finally get
to actually produce a quote.
This can be a pain. But one
of several key points is that you
need to get it to the prospect
quickly. You have made a great
first impression, but as each day
ticks by and your quote doesn’t
arrive, it eats into the trust bank
that you have established.
What you don’t want is for
all your hard work to fail, just
because the customer has already
gone with a competitor who
was quicker off the mark. So,
my advice is, if you’re going to
produce the quote at all, do it
straight away. Marcelle Stoughton
of fast-growing company Fencing
Services puts it this way “Turn
around quotes the same day”.