Sam Sales owns a painting company. When Sam first opened the company, because of all the business early on, he never thought he'd have a problem. Today there are times when business is great where he has three or four jobs lined up. Most of the time however, business is slow. When business is good, the work consists of jobs he's really had to work to get, typically dropping his price to get them. And many times the work he gets isn't ideal. He goes out, paints, then goes about trying to drum up work. Every day seems like a do-or-die situation.
The leads he gets are from a friend or perhaps a customer. His marketing effort is weak. During the slow times, he hands out flyers in neighborhoods. When that doesn't work very well, he moves to a different neighborhood. He's never overly discouraged to change though because there's always someone around the corner who needs their house painted.
Matt Marketing owns a lawn service. When he put the company together and developed a business and marketing plan, he decided to focus on commercial business in a specific geography. He spent the time early on to establish a website, a direct mail campaign, and an organized referral system.
Sales were slow at first. In fact, for the first couple of months, it was scary. He followed through though with his marketing plan, taking the kind of work that he'd targeted for the company and passing on the other.
Today, he has a two crews with 10 people. His customers love him and consider his work to be excellent. He has dropped the direct mail campaign and gets work solely through referrals now. He still says 'no' from time to time on work that's out of the geographic area. Business is so good that he can choose to grow further if he likes.
I come across the first type every day. I'm sure you know some as well. Is a sales mentality bad though? I don't think so. In fact, I think the most effective approach is a mix of the two...a planned approach to the market with messages being sent out along with the ability to convert leads into work.
What are your thoughts? What is the best mix?
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