This Free Tool Allows Me to Stay in Touch With Customers

I failed… I really failed big this time. Hi, I am Ron Ramsden, I am a DYB coach, also a painting contractor up here in New England.

I want to tell you a quick story of how I failed. I have been working for a client for about 4 years, painting a beautiful interior of a house whenever he calls us.

Usually, the jobs are a couple of 3 rooms each, things like that. We work for him probably once a year and he just recently called me.

I went over to his house, about 3 weeks ago and I am driving up his long beautiful driveway and noticed the house is now red, whereas it used to be yellow, and it has a nice shine on it, I said wow!

They vinyl-sided it, it’s a big house to vinyl-side. And as I parked my vehicle, I got up to the front door and realized it is painted, and I shine on it.

He greeted me at the door with his wife and I said wow! This house looks beautiful, it looks great with this new color, and he says yes, he says we are very happy with it.

But unfortunately, the crew that they hired isn’t as picky or neat as we are on the interior and he only wishes we painted outside.

Well, we do paint outside, but I failed to let them know we did. You know, we painted inside for them, and the interior, all winter long, even in the summer, but I never mentioned that we paint outside straight to his face, that is.

We send emails, we send Facebook posts, social media, this guy runs his own business, the last thing he is doing is reading an email from me.

I can guarantee you it does right into his spam. And social media, I doubt he is even on social media.

So, where I failed is to keep in front of my customers who aren’t doing those kinds of things, and letting them know.

What we did was we just instituted a text messaging program where they actually can opt out.

But, these customers read their texts, a lot of times, this is how I am interacting with a lot of my customers now, and my crew leaders also is via text.

It’s not for everybody, but it’s something they can read and read really quick. So, we can let them know, hey it is… they got to see it in time, scheduling and out scheduling exterior paint projects for next year.

This was they know, one line, they get it, they can either read it, or they can delete it.

We are still going to continue with the rest of our social media, emails and also the newsletters that we are sending out, do our charity things and things like that to stay in front of everybody.
But by not sending different types of media to these clients, if they are not reading the one or two that we are on, we are actually failing them, and we are actually failing ourselves because that exterior was probably a $12,000 to $14,000 of the exterior with a 20% net profit.

We looked that we lost about $2,500 to $3,000 in net profit on that one job, by not telling him we do exteriors.

And the reason why we are doing texts, and I will give you a quick story of another one.

While I was at this gentleman’s house, he just happens to have an Audi RWS, if you don’t know what that is, I didn’t know what it was until I Googled it, it is the coolest little sports car, 4-wheel drive Audi, pretty pricey.

But I know one of my other customers who is in the same financial situation as this gentleman is, also collects Audi’s little sports car, so I asked him if I could take a picture of it, and I texted it to the other client of mine and said hey, check this out, I was thinking of you.

I never text customers, I texted it to him, a couple of texts back and forth and he says, oh, by the way, put us on your list for next year.

So, if you don’t think text works with all your customers, try it, all they can say is, please do not text me or they could opt out.

If you use some other kind of means of getting in touch with your customers, please share it underneath here, I’d love for you to share that, other people can see it, I’d like to see it, and maybe we will try something new.

I am Ron Ramsden, and I am a DYB coach, also a painting contractor up here in Massachusetts.

If you’d like to get in touch with me, you can get me at ron@dybcoach.com, or find me on Facebook, send me a message, I’d love to chat with you.

Anyways, we are here at the exterior of home finishing up, and I got to get going, so I would talk to you later. Bye…