Contractor Selling

Does Your Life Ever Feel Like The Main Plot of a Movie?

In the 1989 film classic Field of Dreams, an Iowa farmer by the name of Ray Kinsella, hears a ghostly voice that whispers, “If you build it, he will come,” and sees a baseball diamond in the middle of his cornfield.  Although his wife is skeptical and his family thinks he’s a bit off-centered, he plows under his corn to build a baseball diamond, only to find himself on the verge of bankruptcy and having to sell the family farm.

We All Identify With Taking Chances

I suppose most of us reading this can identify with this movie.  We all hear that little voice inside of us at one time or another telling us to take a chance. Take a chance in starting a business or starting a family. Take a chance in purchasing our first home.  Take chances with our future.  And we do it because something deep down inside tells us we “have to.”

Ray could have decided not to build that baseball diamond.  He could have chosen to continue on the same path that he had been on for years growing corn, making a little money to support his family, just barely surviving.

Listen To That Little Voice

Instead he decided to listen to that little voice inside his head because he began to understand the meaning. It’s not about the overpaid ball players or fancy ball parks with trains and waterslides. It’s about the experience and connections that we tie to those memories of the game.

For anyone who has ever thrown a ball in their backyard with their dad the experience is what recalls the strong emotional connection.

Your memories of this year’s Service Super Summit should be as if you were out there playing a game of catch.  A place you will go to hear great speakers, learn new information, and make new connections with people you will hold dear throughout your life.

We Need Your Help

That is why we need your help.  Although we have a good group of people signed up to attend this event, we could still use more and are asking your help to bring those connections together.

If you know of anyone who could use help with their business or is good at helping others, please send them our way.  We would like them to attend so we can make this year’s event the one you remember.

This year’s Service Super Summit will focus not only improving your sales, marketing and profit, but also an emphasis on a “Turn-Key” approach that will sustain your success month-after-month.

Join us in Long Beach, CA, March 13-15, 2013 to learn how to…

• Automate Marketing To Work Every Time
• Convert Callers Into Buyers
• Recruit, Compensate & Manage Premium Technicians
• Create An In-House Performance Coach
• Rocket Your Sales
• Manage Rapid Growth
• And many more speakers and subjects that will inspire you and your employees to lay down the ground work to create a business that will achieve your vision.

Here is what you’ll get at the Service Super Summit 2013:

• Early check in and Social Meet and Greet on Wednesday evening
• Breakfast and Lunch on Thursday and Friday
• Access to video replays of all speakers after the event included
• MP3 downloads of all session included
• A 30-60-90 day action plan from each speaker
• Follow up access to all speakers included
• Investment to Attend $497 – Buy Tickets Now!
• Contractorselling.com Members – $397 Bonus Price Click Here

It is important to call and make reservations as early as you can. Ask for Julie or Colette to help with your arrangements 9 a.m.-5p.m. PST.

With warm regards,

Joe Crisara

Contractorselling.com

877-764-6304

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Should We Get Paid To Refer?

I recently wrote an article that was very popular about the 7 Things That Customers Never Want To Hear. In the article it stressed that clients never want to hear, “We don’t do that kind of work.” My suggestion was that we refer someone or find someone to do work for our client that we ourselves are not qualified to do.  Recently a client asked a question about whether we should get paid for referrals or just provide them at no cost to our clients.

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Uncommon Thoughts

I want you as a service professional to think about some of the situations where you said things to clients when you really weren’t thinking.  Thinking before talking is one of the most uncommon skills that people possess in this new era of tweets, likes and post.  Unfortunately, chances are pretty good that if you actually put thought into what you said you would regret it. You may have even unknowingly driven customers into frustration to the point where they silently decided to not do business with you again.

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A Non-Litigious Holiday Party

By Elizabeth R. Ison, Esq.

With another holiday season approaching, companies nationwide are busy planning parties. Holiday socials are longstanding company traditions to thank employees and celebrate annual accomplishments. They can also be a breeding ground for employer liability — especially when alcohol is served.

A 2000 survey conducted by Vault.com found that 44% of employers had to reprimand an employee for behavior at a company holiday party. A 2010 poll by HR firm Adecco corroborate these findings: 40% of people surveyed saw or suffered a major indiscretion at a work-sponsored holiday event and 14% knew someone who was fired for bad behavior at a company holiday party.

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It’s Just Around The Corner

It’s already that time of year again.  You can hear the music playing when you’re out shopping.  Neighbors are starting to decorate their homes before it gets too cold to get up on their ladder. It seems like it gets earlier and earlier every year.  The last thing anybody wants to be accused of is being called a Scrooge. Keeping that in mind, the top question we get asked every year at this time is, “What should I give my employees for a Christmas bonus?”

It is very hard for me to answer this question because the truth is…I love Christmas!  Or at least I love the idea of Christmas and the feeling you get when giving to someone else.  So it’s even harder for me to say that the days of giving Christmas bonuses are over.  You shouldn’t be giving your employees a Christmas bonus.

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Multi-tasking Friend or Foe?

It really bothers me when I hear people say that they are good multitaskers.  I hear this all the time, especially when I am interviewing perspective employees.  How could everyone be good at multitasking?  I’m not, and I consider myself to be an intelligent person. So needless to say, I was quite thrilled when I found out that new research had shown that our brains were not meant to do more than two things at a time — and certainly not with any real efficiency.  This past week, I did a little research on the productivity of multitasking and found I was not alone in my beliefs. I discovered several interesting studies that backed up what I had already suspected.

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Talk About Procrastinating

Two weeks until my sister’s wedding, and I hadn’t had my bridesmaid dress altered yet.  I admit that I am a procrastinator, but this was ridiculous even for me.

To be honest, I was not looking forward to wearing the dress. Don’t get me wrong, it was a beautiful dress.  It was long, a flowing, raspberry-colored gown with a strapless bodice and a few rhinestones adorning the middle that connected two ends to a sheer piece of material that bustled around the back of the dress.  It was gorgeous on the model wearing it online.  Once I tried it on, though, I quickly realized that a strapless dress was not meant for my body type and thus the reason I was not looking forward to wearing the dress.  And now we were only two weeks away from the wedding day, and I needed a miracle worker.

I decided to ask a friend for a referral. She had lived in the area all her life and quickly recommended a woman on 12^th street in Paso Robles.  Joe and I drove over to the shop first thing in the morning only to be greeted by a sign saying they were not open until 11am.  “OK,” I said. “We’ll come back at lunch.”

At lunch time, Joe drove me to the shop again and dropped me off in front of the store while he went to find a parking space.  I quickly walked inside with my dress hanging from my arms to find a young woman at her sewing machine while an elderly woman appeared from behind a curtain and greeted me with a coarse and irritated, “Can I help you?”

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Last month, from my home in Templeton, Calif., I planned a wedding shower for my sister and future brother-in-law, who live in the Chicagoland area. As I started to make all the necessary phone calls to find a venue, caterer, flowers and so on, I quickly realized that even in a down economy, some companies just never get it when it comes to providing good service.  Had the word service become generic like Kleenex or Jell-O?

I called various  companies and explained  this was the first wedding shower I had ever planned for my one and only baby sister, that I wanted it to be very special and, well, perfect.

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Addition by Subtraction

I recently spent a rainy Saturday afternoon watching a show called “Hoarding: Buried Alive.”  I really didn’t have time to sit and watch TV but I couldn’t stop watching.  Once I was able to get a peak into what looked like your everyday average person’s home I found I needed to see more, like watching a train wreck. 

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