The trade business flywheel.
What are you talking about Jon?
I was reading an article recently by the CEO of hotspot which is a digital marketing company
and he was talking about this analogy they have of a flywheel in your business, here's a wheel.
It's not particularly a flywheel but
a flywheel (as you probably know being a mechanically minded like you are more so than me) stores momentum
in a machine, in an engine and it keeps spinning after you turn the gas off
and it's got mass and it keeps turning. And he talked about momentum
in your business and how you could have a flywheel, all of the momentum
in your business. He uses the analogy.
Your engine or your business keeps going, keeps spinning after you've stopped applying force.
Perhaps if you've stopped paying for ads,
you'll keep getting customers calling and doing and looking for work even if you're not paying for ads-
that kind of idea about momentum.
We're mostly talking here about about word-of-mouth
or goodwill - the things that build up when you've been working in an area for some time.
You've got relationships, people go to your site anyway, you've got presence in your local marketplace.
You know word of mouth.
That stuff
gives your business a momentum. You don't need to always be pushing by paying for your ads or whatever
to get business coming in.
I'm talking about marketing of course.
I don't want to focus analogy to death.
If we can agree that a bit of momentum in your business is a good thing then I'll go back to to the analogy
and talk about how you can get more momentum
on the flywheel of your business particularly a trades business.
There are two ways to get more momentum in your flywheel or to push it faster and to apply force
and the other way is to reduce the friction in it and oil it some so it keeps spinning for longer.
Happy so far?
Good.
Well in a business context and in a trade business context,
the momentum, the force you can apply to your fire wheel is around marketing
and is around delighting your customers.
If you're not actively trying to do great work and delight your customers, you're probably in
quite bad shape for this discussion so let's assume we do a good job and you try hard to do job.
You could apply force to your flywheel by asking a customers to put reviews on Facebook
or on that Google Plus page or on the Google my business site or on your website.
You can ask people to hand your cards out to other people or a referral program and pass it on.
You can do things like that. You can actively encourage
the word-of-mouth part of your business and the like.
You can go those extra steps to put things in place so that people
not just get a good job but realise and understand enough knowledge that you've done a great job.
The follow up calls, the customer service course, "Is everything still okay?" in a few days later -
those cheap things to implement into your business
that change it from ordinary trade to excellent or amazing more different and noticeable and notable.
Do those things, apply some force, actively delighting customers.
The next thing is about friction.
How do we reduce friction in a trades business? Frictions are the things that make it a bit difficult
to do business with you that take some of the joy out of it.
And he talked a lot about how we all as consumers
like things, like uber where you don't have to talk to a cab driver, you don't have to call
a cab company to order your cab and talk to a person and seeing the queue,
how we like to order things online because you don't have to mess about talking to a salesperson.
He's bought a mattress online, he just jumped online, you could pay a price as you place your order,
no one's pressuring you or making you haggling with you over your mattress.
And it's true. We do like that stuff, don't we?
In a trade context there's a lot of friction. There's a lot of uncertainty about price.
There's a lot of uncertainty about when you'll show up.
There's a lot of uncertainty about booking appointments. There's a fair big leap of discomfort
for your customers between looking at your website and making an inquiry
so wouldn't it be nice if you could reduce some of that friction. Wouldn't it be nice for example
if you could book a time online for a trade person to come out and do your quote.
If you could no because you could see on your phone where it was how much longer he was going to be before he got to you?
Like with Uber. You can see that it's 2 minutes away.
That would be quite compelling technology to use I think in a trade business
perhaps for the smaller jobs.
Imagine if your price list was published online and your customers could come to your website and see
that replacing an extractor fan in the bathroom was gonna cost him $400 and they could book the job in now
and book time so you would come tomorrow, all that uncertainty gone.
And I could hear all your objections now.
Let's just understand that those are two examples I've given and I understand they're difficult
but imagine if you had that competitive advantage, if you remove some of that friction from your business,
how many more inquiries and bookings you might get if you could solve the problems
that make them difficult, I understand.
Think about how you can reduce the friction
in your business. How can you make it easier for your people to put work, get prices, get quotes and all that?
Think about the booking process. Think about the level of human interaction. We would have
much more self-service stuff at the initial part of a sales interaction I think as consumers.
There you go. Remove uncertainty about price.
Remove uncertainty about time.
This is whether you're a project trade or a maintenance trade. Clearly it's more difficult
to remove uncertainty about price if you're quoting for a kitchen or house, so many variables.
But let's think. You don't need to have no uncertainty, you could reduce the uncertainty
and make people's experience working with you that much nicer.
I've been mostly talking here and giving examples
about working with consumers - somebody buying a kitchen, somebody getting their toilet fixed or whatever
but it works equally well for businesses. Business people or people working in a business
also like to not have to do with uncertainty about time or about money.
They also have like to not have to integrate with a person and have that kind of personal challenge
while they're still thinking about things. I'm going to think harder on this and think what I suggest to you
and think about how we might overcome some of those problems in having
Uber type delivery of watching where your trades people are, that kind of thing.
I'll have a bit of a hard to think but for now soak up those ideas. How could you reduce friction in your business
and how could you increase some of that force on your flow.
It's the new year. See you later.
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