Referrals are a major aspect to any remodeling company’s business. Satisfied homeowners are always happy to spread the word of great craftsmanship. Are you doing the best you can to maximize this marketing channel? Passive, incentive and subtle referrals are all beneficial to your company. We’ll deep dive into how you can effectively manage the referral process, be proactive with leads and gain strategic partners.
Kyle Hunt is a business coach for remodelers and the owner of Remodel Your Marketing. He offers 1on1 coaching on the topics of marketing, your sales process, and helping you understand and improve your business financials. He leads professional mastermind groups of non-compete remodelers through his Remodelers Circle program and offers courses/training all focused on helping you achieve your business goals and the work/life balance you desire. Kyle resides in Michigan with his wife, Sarah, and their four children. You can learn more about Kyle here or listen to his podcast, Remodelers On The Rise, here.
Alex, I just uploaded the presentation there. Is that what's showing live now?
Or do you want me to Yep.
Yeah. Everything is great on my end. Yeah. I can see the start of the presentation.
Alright.
Yeah. Again, good morning, everyone. Looks like we're continuing to gather in the room here.
I will wait a few more minutes.
And if you haven't seen already, there's a chat feature on the right side of your, your screen rather. Ask any questions there. We'll get to them, throughout the presentation.
Cool. And if you guys as you're, getting familiar with the chat box, if you find it, just type a, a little name, business name, location, if you would. We're not able to see exact we see the number of people that are joined, but we can't see your name. So I'd be curious just to catch some of your names and where you're from.
Hello, Brad. Hello, Jared. Amanda. Paul.
Welcome. Welcome.
I thought that Alex or John were gonna have, like, either some maybe they brought their guitars in and would play us some music while we were waiting, but instead it's silence. What's up with that?
It is snowing outside here. You getting any weather up there?
It's just chilly here in Michigan.
Okay. Yeah. I should have brought out the ukulele this morning.
There you go. Do you have one? I do. Wow.
Yeah. Don't play it very often. Not very good. But, yeah, definitely like some ukulele music.
Hello, Rob. Hello, Juan, Carlos. Welcome.
Awesome. Well, welcome in, everybody. I'll just go ahead and and start with some administrative stuff right now.
Oh, Amanda getting some snow up there in in, your neck of the woods. That's awesome.
Yeah. We're getting some flurries right right now down in Denver. If you guys don't know, we relocated from Ann Arbor, Michigan to Denver, Colorado about six months ago. So that's where our headquarters is now.
But a little bit about the webinar series here. So this is, you know, our first of four webinars. We've got another one coming up with Kyle in three weeks about the sales process. A couple weeks after that, we're gonna be talking about markup, with Michael Stone. And a couple weeks after that, we're gonna be getting into accounting best practices, just in time for tax season with Karen Mitchell who all are specific, to the remodeling industry here.
So, you know, this is just our way of providing some some better content for our customers specific to remodeling.
You know, Kyle, we've had a relationship with him for a couple years now. We've done past webinars with him. He's been featured in Remodeling Magazine, in Nari, but he focuses on helping remodelers market their business. And that's something that we, you know, want to help out our customers with. We want to focus on, you know, better marketing practices, advertising, especially referrals. That's such a big aspect of the industry.
So, yeah, we want to provide you with some information. All of this content is totally free. Kyle's been doing this, you know, his entire professional career and is definitely very, very knowledgeable on the subject.
But, yeah, so this webinar series, all of them are gonna be free. You can always find information just by going to our website clearestimates.com and clicking the webinars tab. And since you guys already signed up, you know, we'll continue to send you information about the upcoming webinars. And, again, we've got one with Kyle. So if you like this webinar, we'll have it again, on a separate topic specific to the sales process in just a few weeks.
And, like, Alex, you're assuming that's that's only if this goes well. I mean, if it's if it's miserable and it goes poorly, you may not invite me back.
That's true. That's true. We'll let, you know, let our audience here decide.
Alright.
It's, you know, absolutely terrible.
You know, maybe I'll just end the webinar halfway through. We're just not feeling it.
We'll have a vote we'll have a vote at the end.
Yes. We do have a poll option here. So if the audience would like to take a poll halfway through, we can definitely make that happen.
Yeah. We'll just wait a few more minutes here. It looks like we're getting a lot of people in here, which is fantastic. Again, thanks for everybody for joining us.
Oh, wow. Mark, sixty five degrees tomorrow. That's fantastic.
Actually, it's it's rude, Mark, to share that it's gonna be sixty five where you are when it's, like, ten here.
I'm happy for you, though.
Cool. I'm glad everybody's using the chat box. I like some interaction as we go, and there'll be some, some questions and some requests for some takeaways, as we go. So keep that handy.
Yeah. And, again, everybody just feel free to drop a chat in there, a question, and I'll keep track of those. So when Kyle's, you know, at a comfortable place, we can answer some questions and I'll be sure to keep track of all of them.
Good morning, Jeff.
Anything I have to do on my end to make the recording work there, Alex?
No. You are all set. Yeah. We're gonna be automatically recorded. And a note about that, guys, at the end of the presentation, we'll automatically have a recording uploaded to YouTube. You're welcome to watch that, share it with your friends, any colleagues, any competitors.
And, we'll also have a webinar write up on our blog, clearestimates.com, just by going to our blog. Yes. We'll have all of this information recorded, and it's always available again for free.
Yeah, Mark. That is a roller coaster there. Well, it should be pretty nice working on Saturday, I assume.
Not so much right now.
And we'll just wait a couple more minutes here, then we'll get started. But, again, just one more tidbit about our webinar series. This is the first installment with Kyle Hunt. We'll have another one in just a few weeks on a sales process, And then we'll be talking about the markup after that a couple weeks later, and then we'll be finishing everything out with some accounting best practices.
So kind of a four part series encompassing the most sought after questions that we are asked here at Clear Estimates.
You know, referral marketing, the sales process, the markup. Markup's always been kind of the, you know, the hidden question in the industry. What do I mark up my jobs? And then obviously accounting practices, you know, especially when tax season rolls around. So, you know, everybody got back to us about these webinar topics. These are our most popular topics, and we're definitely excited to share some some insight about them.
Awesome.
Yeah, Kyle. Whenever, you know, whenever you're comfortable That's right. Getting ready here. Yeah. Yeah. I think we're ready to get going.
And, again, one one last thing, you know, for the for the few people that just joined us in the last few seconds, we have a chat feature on the right side. You should see it. It's a big white box. If you wouldn't mind, just leave us your name and where you're at.
You know, just a little more interaction. We like to see, you know, who's in the room here with us. And feel free to ask any questions. You know, we're totally fine with, you know, answering any questions throughout the presentation and, definitely want you guys to get the most out of this webinar as possible.
Awesome. So I I kinda tweak the title. What you guys signed up for was was related to referrals, and I, I tweaked it to five surefire ways to attract more referrals. The phrase surefire, it means to that it's certain to be successful or expected results.
So, you know, if you do these things as far as attracting more referrals, those are, some very clear results that you should be able to achieve, and that's just based on best business practices and and experience in it over time. Alright. So kinda quickly about me.
We won't spend a lot of time on it, but, my name is Kyle Hunt. I'm the owner of Remodel Your Marketing.
Started it back in two thousand eight into year eleven already. And I work exclusively with remodelers around the country. And there's three main areas that I do the majority of my work, which is, one, marketing plan development. There's a lot of different ways that you can market your modeling business.
What are the ones that you're going to choose and implement, and what is the budget attached to that. So just delivering a clear marketing plan and budget. Number two, which is what I'll be talking about in a couple weeks, which is related to the sales process, and that goes from right when we pick up the phone with that brand new lead all the way through to the completion of the job. And then three, which Michael's actually Michael Stone's gonna be touching on in at the third webinar of this series is related to the financials.
That's the other area I do, a good amount of work in is helping you understand, yes, your markup, your job cost reporting, understand your profit and loss statement, how to get a nice solid net profit, at the end of the year, and that type of work. So I live in Michigan with my wife and four kids and, really love what I do.
So we are going to dig into one of the items that should be in all of your marketing plans, which is referral generation. And it it was it was actually very interesting because Alex, Alex kinda came up with this topic, and I think it was based on some of the feedback from various Clear Estimates clients. And it's a topic that I've I've spoken on and and certainly when I'm working with my remodeling clients, it comes up, but it's not something I've presented on very often.
I was dusting off some old slides from from several years back, but I don't care if it's two thousand nineteen, two thousand twenty nine, nineteen ninety nine, two thousand forty nine.
Generating referrals is gonna be important in any of those time frames. It always has been and always will be. So I'm I'm excited to kinda dig into to this topic in a little more depth. You may or may not know this, but the reason you are here is to implement is to implement. When it comes to marketing your remodeling business, you don't lack marketing ideas. You have access to webinars, trade shows, various experts in their email lists, industry publications, friends and colleagues in the industry, books, podcasts, which by the way, I have a podcast called Remodelers on the Rise.
Just a little side note. That's all the selling I'm gonna do is just let you know that.
So you don't lack ideas. What I believe you lack is, if you do lack anything, is taking all those ideas and prioritizing them. Which ones are the most important? There's a thousand different ways that you could market your business. What are the most important?
And then probably the biggest part of it is implementing those ideas. So much of my work in the eleven years I've been doing this is not necessarily sharing with remodelers these, amazing, I've never heard that before, marketing ideas. So often what I teach and what I'm working with my clients on is very simple, proven, practical, effective marketing. So I just want to emphasize that because the reason you're investing time in this webinar is so that you can perhaps be reminded of something. Maybe you do learn a little nugget or two of something brand new, but the biggest reason I want you here is to implement. A successful webinar today for me is if you're able to leave this webinar with with even if it's just one specific thing that you heard that you're gonna take back into your business and implement.
K? So I wanted to just make that really clear. What I don't want to do is just overwhelm me with information. What I want to do is present good solid information. And what I'll be asking for as we go and especially at the end of this webinar is share a takeaway. Share something that you're gonna implement.
Alright. Enough of that.
So when you look at the projects that you did last year, when you look at, in particular, how those people originally found you and let me just pause there and do a little side note. Are you tracking your leads? And every time you're talking to a new prospect or a new opportunity, are you asking them, how did you hear about us?
If not, that might be your that might be your one takeaway from this this webinar. If you are kinda being lazy with that or just not doing it consistently or you would not be able to say, hey, Kyle. In two thousand eighteen, I generated x number of leads, and here were the the sources of those leads, website, referrals, strategic partners, social media, whatever it might be. If you're not doing that, make sure you write that down, circle it, put some stars next to it. We have to measure it. What gets measured gets improved.
And if we start to track where leads are coming from and actually have some data to look at, it will help us invest our precious and limited marketing dollars better. Alright. So I'm gonna end that little rant. Where I was going with that is when you look at the projects you did last year, if you're like most all of the remodelers I work with, chances are one of your top lead sources are referrals from previous clients and or referrals from strategic partners.
So the first one of those is pretty self explanatory. Previous clients, people who you have worked with referring you to others, family, neighbors, colleagues, friends. The second group, strategic partners, is something we're gonna get into in greater detail in point number four and a little later on. But chances are one of your top lead sources are are referrals. And most likely, you're receiving them not because you're proactively asking for them or because you have a referral system to produce more of them, but probably more naturally and organically.
You you did work for them. They ran into somebody that needs a kitchen remodel, and they and they thought of you, which is not a bad thing. It's definitely not a bad thing at all. But we're gonna talk about how to be a little bit more proactive, professional, not slimy or anything like that, but a little bit more professional in how we approach generating referrals.
Let me ask you. This is this is partially to get you guys involved in the chat box because the answer should be pretty straightforward, but I'm driving at a point here. There's two options. This is option number one.
And in the chat box, you're gonna either put number one or number two depending on what you would prefer. I have two leads for you, two remodeling leads. Option number one is coming to you and saying, hey, Kyle, or they put your name in there. My name is, fill in the blank, and I was referred to you by one of your happy clients.
A lead that's coming to you that says, hey. I was referred to you by one of your happy clients.
And then option number two would be a lead that says, I found you online when searching kitchen searching kitchen remodeling. Can you come out and look at our project?
Which of those two leads would you prefer to come into your business today?
Toss it over into the chat box.
Who's gonna be first?
There we go. They're they're flowing in. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom. Oh, some okay.
Once a person said both. Right? I both is an acceptable answer. It's not a terrible thing to have either one of these.
Amanda, you said number two, which I'm gonna ask for you to explain that in in another reply unless you're just trying to cause a little trouble and keep me on my toes. Everybody else is tossing in there to put number one. And why and, Amanda, I want you to I want you to put it in there because I'm intrigued now. K? Why do all of you pretty much put option number one?
I would argue that the reason for that is because referrals are powerful. So there's a definition of marketing that I like to use that is that goes like this. Getting someone who has a need. Marketing is getting someone who has a need to know, like, and trust you.
Everything we do to market our remodeling business is kinda revolved around that. Getting someone as a kitchen remodeled to know, like, and trust you. As an example, when we get a a glowing testimonial or Google review, that's playing into certainly the trust aspect, kind of a third party endorsement of who we are. So know, like, and trust.
When you get a referral, there's already some solid know, like, and trust embedded into that referral. They have talked to one of your clients who has shared about your business, who has talked about their experience, perhaps even in a very, very glowing way.
Referrals are powerful because of that. They come with some know, like, and trust built in. Couple of the reasons why referrals are so powerful, people like like to give referrals.
When when I've had a great experience with somebody and I have the opportunity, somebody comes up, to me and says, man, do you know a good, say, car repair place? And I had a wonderful experience with Bryton Automotive. I'm excited to share that. It feels good to share that.
I enjoy being able to help that business. I enjoy being able to help my friend. I'm confident because of my great experience with them that I know that they're gonna have a good experience. People like to give referrals.
There is a wonderful return on investment with referrals. When you start tracking what I was talking about earlier, how people find out about you, and the next step in that, if you got that down, would be to look at, how much you invested in each of those areas. So for example I don't want to lose you too much, but we'll get a little number y. For example, if I had generated ten website leads last year and I spent five thousand dollars on my website.
That means my cost per lead for every lead that I generated from my website was five hundred dollars.
Referrals have an amazing ROI.
There may be some investment that we're making in our referral program and perhaps staying in touch with our previous clients, which we'll get into as we go through here. But chances are one of your best cost per leads is gonna be referrals.
Right? Word-of-mouth.
And and I hit on this a little bit, but referrals come a lot better qualified a lot of times, and they usually have a shorter sales cycle. That second one, that second option that most of you, you know, didn't didn't pick, it comes with not a lot of know, like, and trust. They've been to your website, but there's a lot more that you're gonna need to do to differentiate your remodeling business to explain why they need to choose you over others versus number one, they're already coming a lot of times much further down the road that know, like, and trust has been built in in a lot of different ways. So a lot of times what we see with referrals is a shorter sales cycle and a more qualified lead.
Alright. Cool. So with that, wanted to give just a little background on that, why referral's important, talk talk about a few other little lessons like, you know, tracking how where our leads are coming from. Let's get into kind of the meat of it, these five different ways to attract more referrals.
So this first one, and I'm gonna pause here just to read a man. Actually, I'll Maynard, we'll get back to your, your item in a little bit. But, Brad, you're kind of echoing what I was saying there. The job is already half sold. Right? I mean, as Brad knows, sixty two percent of all statistics are made up.
Just pausing there. If you guys were all live right now, there'd be roaring laughter because that's one of my best jokes. So he says the job is already half sold. I don't know if exactly half sold, but pretty much, right, pretty much, they're coming with with a lot of know, like, and trust built.
Oh, I got a to some people. Good. Just making sure you guys are alive and paying attention. So number one way to generate more referrals is to be remarkable.
And I actually considered making the entire presentation solely and only about this, but I decided that I should probably add a lot more to it. But the reason I emphasize it is because it is by far the most important part of attracting more referrals.
To be remarkable or said another way to be excellent or said another way to deliver an exceptional remodeling experience.
K? We're talking about how to generate more referrals, and and I'm adamantly and clearly starting with this, and then I'm kinda repeating it. Be remarkable.
If you want more referrals, be excellent. If you want more referrals, deliver an exceptional remodeling experience.
I just want that to sink in.
We generate more referrals when we give our clients an exceptional experience.
K? Our goal is not to have satisfied clients. We want thrilled clients.
And there's a big difference between, yeah, they did okay. They got the job done. We're we were pleased with, you know, we were pleased with the finished product. Communication, you know, took longer than we thought, but we're okay, versus a thrilled client.
So a a big exercise, and this may be your takeaway. Again, right, I'm looking for maybe one takeaway that you can that you can look for and you can implement as your business. This might be your takeaway, and it's to to step back and take a hard look at your business and how remarkable or not remarkable you are right now. And some things to and this is this is where going back to the recording, will probably be helpful.
Let me just go through some of these questions that that should kinda come to your mind here. Is are we delivering our project on time?
Right? We do a kitchen remodeling project. These people are washing dishes in the in the bathroom or the laundry room. Right?
They're eating out more often. We said this project was gonna get done in five weeks. Do we deliver it on time? It's a huge thing.
Are we delivering the project on budgets? Have we had a strong, you know, project development process? If we get all the selections made upfront so the project happens more smoothly with less change orders and less allowances, are we delivering the project on budgets?
How's your communication?
Do you respond quickly? Do you respond professionally? I'm not saying you have to answer the phone every second of every hour, but are we being excellent with our communication?
By the way, I'm going through things that your clients really care about on time, on budget. How's the communication?
This one was an interesting one when I was thinking about it is, would you love working with your company?
Would you enjoy the process of working with your company? It's an interesting thing to just step back and think about. If not, what what wouldn't you enjoy about working with you?
Quality levels. The quality there. Are you delivering excellent on the quality side of things and the actual product that you're delivering? Are you a company that is enjoyable to work with and be around, or are we stressed? Are we spread thin?
Are we making excuses on why certain things aren't getting done? Something to consider. What about job site cleanliness? This is a huge thing that homeowners care about.
Right? Are we doing everything we can to put up dust barriers? Do we have a bill clean system? Are we sweeping, you know, each night?
Are we taking care of our tools? Are we making sure everything the job site is clean? And how's the end of your projects? Are you finishing strong?
Do you have a really solid walk through at the end? Or are you kinda sputtering across the finish line? So those are some things to get you guys thinking about, are we remarkable or not? And it's again, we're talking about referrals.
We're talking about generating more referrals. And this is where I'm starting, and this is where I'm just hammered in here. Another thing you can consider when you're thinking about these different questions is to get your team involved in this in these questions. Something I've been I'm sharing with my, remodeler circle mastermind groups and with a lot of my one on one clients lately is this little exercise called steep keep, start, stop.
Keep, start, stop. So when we think of the top line question of, are we remarkable?
You know? Or how can we be more remarkable? What should we keep doing? What should we start doing? What should we stop doing? It's a very interesting little exercise that makes it easy for you to get involved get all of your team involved. What should we keep doing to be remarkable, start doing, or stop doing?
K?
Alright. Excellent.
Alright.
So being remarkable, the other thing on here, it just takes work. By the way, in in case you're wondering why this remodeling business is hard, it's because it's stinking hard.
You can line up any other small business next to home remodeler. And I'm a little I'm a little bit on the home remodeling side of things. These are my people. This is who I work with. This is where all of my focus is. But you line up a chiropractor, a CPA, a lawyer, you know, the the restaurant down the street, the, little boutique shop downtown. Line up all of these small businesses and tell me a business that's harder than remodeling.
Dealing with rules, regulations, permitting, breaking it you know, breaking open walls in people's homes, disrupting their normal day in and day out lives. Oh, by the way, we still need to market and sell, and we've got employee issues. We got suppliers. We've got job costing, understanding our p and l's. It's a hard business.
So I'm I'm empathetic when I when I say being remarkable takes hard work. Remodeling is hard. It is hard. But, again, there's no better way to attract more referrals than to be truly remarkable, to give an exceptional experience.
No. I didn't say perfect experience. That that that shouldn't be what we're after, but but, yes, an exceptional experience. It is far and away the biggest key to study referrals.
So I wanted to hammer away at that, and I think the the goal with the takeaway there is and even just through the different bullet points of items I went through of thinking about, aren't we remarkable with this or that? There hopefully is maybe one thing that floats up to the top of the list saying, you know what? We have got to improve, fill in the blank. Because if you improve that, the experience is gonna be better and referrals are gonna come better.
K?
Alright. Very good. I don't know if I could more passionately share that. I did have I did have a next slide that says, let's cover number one again.
But I think I hammered it pretty hard. I will share this phrase that that I've liked over the years, which is, advertising is the price you pay for not being remarkable.
Advertising is the price you pay for not being remarkable. And that's not to say that your advertising budget should be zero, but it is an interesting thought where advertising starts to go a little further into the back burner if you're being remarkable. And through that, you're generating a solid number of referrals of qualified leads.
Alright? I'm seeing a little bit of, couple people saying that the slide is a little slow. Hopefully, the audio is good. I don't have a ton of slides. So even if there's a little delay, it should be okay.
Alright. Cool. We good, Alex?
Yeah. Yeah. So, Ryan, I I believe, you know, Ryan maybe thought that we were on a different slide. But I think we were just on that, you know, still the number one slide.
Is that correct, Kyle? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Perfect. Yeah. So there's just a, you know, there's a six second delay between the presenter and the audience.
So that's, you know, probably where the, you know, the small delay comes in there.
Do do you have do you have, like is it like TV where if I said something just totally offensive or if I cussed a bunch, you could you could block it?
Yeah. We could absolutely do that. You know, hopefully, hopefully, we don't have to do that.
I I highly doubt you will need to.
But, yeah, Ryan, I think everything's all set for you. Alright. And and I believe we just moved over to number two.
Yep. Alright. So keep so I I, again, I emphasize number one, and, let's get through number two, maybe even scoot through number three before I I pause and just ask for some takeaways. But, if you have even a takeaway so far from what we've covered, I would love to see it over in the chat box, something that you heard, something that you're gonna want to implement.
Alright. So number two, it says educate referral sources. Educate referral sources. So there's a little tool that that, I have called the perfect introduction.
If we want to attract more referrals, one way is to make it easy to refer us. Have you ever been frustrated by getting referrals for projects that you don't even want referrals for. It's very kind of them to send you that friend of theirs that needs that that window repaired, and they kinda just thought, well, they do remodeling, home repair, etcetera, when in reality, that's just not a good referral for you. So one tool that I like to implement with my Roanoke clients and that I would emphasize or encourage you to to, implement into your kind of more referral program to generate more referrals is something called the perfect introduction.
So there's four parts to it. One is just answering the question, how would you spot our ideal clients?
Just give it a good description of of who they are. Maybe it's location.
Maybe it's the type of project.
K. Number two, how to best communicate what we do. I was going through earlier and going through the on time, on budget, prompts and remarkable communication, job site cleanliness. All of those items, a lot of times end up being some key things that you do that differentiates you from others.
Maybe other people might claim they do it, but when you put that in writing and say how to best communicate what we do and or this is how we're different. This is who we are.
That is a very strong thing to put as part of this perfect introduction. The third thing is our client referral offer, which we're gonna talk about in number three. And then number four is our referral process. You know, do you have a specific page that you want them to go to? Is there a specific way that you'd like them to refer you? Are you perfectly fine if you just, if they share your cell phone number, or would you prefer it to go to the office?
Just kinda sharing with them just step by step what your preference is there. So this perfect introduction, sheet, if you want a copy of it, you'll see my email address, or my cell phone. You can text me or send an email. Or I would assume if you do if you don't write this down, but you say, man, Kyle had a few resources.
Even if you respond maybe to one of Alex's emails, you can forward that on to me, and I can send you the resource. But I've got a nice outline for you that I'd be happy to send over that would be the template for this perfect introduction.
Alright. Cool.
So number three, as far as ways to surefire ways to attract more referrals is to reward those who refer you.
Reward those for who refer you. So there's a, there's an author named John Jansz, and he wrote this book called The Referral Engine. I like to kinda share this example when I talk about this particular topic. He wrote a book on small business referral programs.
So he studied hundreds, probably thousands of small business referral programs. And if he was on this line and you asked him the question, when somebody refers you and that person ends up becoming a paid project, should you give or do something for the person who originally referred them?
He would resoundedly say yes.
And there's I think there's a lot of different reasons for that. People appreciate being recognized.
People appreciate maybe getting rewarded a little bit, not over the top, but a little bit for it. I've even found in my own kind of referral behavior, whether I think I realized it after the fact that, you know, when that little bouquet of I should I shouldn't say bouquet, but a little box of cookies came when I referred so and so, that was a really nice little thing.
People are more apt to refer you more in the future when you recognize and appreciate the referral that they, that they sent you. So there's there's two things here that I want you guys to think about. One is when somebody refers you, what do you do? And then number two, when somebody refers you and they become a pain project, what do you do? Hopefully, you can see those two differences there. So one is just when somebody refers you.
If you get a referral today from Sally, who you did a kitchen remodeling project with you with last year, what do you do? Do you have a process? It could be as simple as, you know what I do? I pick up the phone and I call them and I thank them and also just say, oh, and can you tell me a little bit more about Joe who you referred?
Or, you know, if it if I've texted with him a lot in the past, I shoot him a quick text, or I pull out a thank you card that I have I have these thank you cards just sitting on my desk in my office. And when somebody refers us, I just write out a little thank you card, and I make it really easy where I've written, you know, kinda written out the script for that of two or three sentences. I personalized it in, but I make it really simple, and get that out the door. Whatever the whatever it is, the answer should not be somebody refers me and if I remember it, maybe sometimes I do thank them or reach out.
That might be your takeaway. If the last ten referrals you've received, you have not thanked the person that referred you, that should be maybe one of your key takeaways here. Again, it doesn't have to be doesn't have to be fancy. It could be maybe you buy ten dollar Starbucks cards, and you have your little thank you card there.
And you put a little Starbucks card in there that just says, thanks a latte.
Get it? Alex, you're the only one that can audio everybody can hear. That's funny. Right?
Should I should I laugh here?
Yes. Correct. Thank you. Just like we rehearse. Thank you. Thank you. Right. So some it could be something simple, but we should be doing something.
You want to attract more referrals? Thank them.
Be kind to them. Show their appreciation because you do. You do appreciate it. It is amazing when somebody puts your name out there, when they put their kind of reputation on the line.
On behalf of you, it says call Kyle. He'd he'd be great. I know that he can help you with this. And then the second part of when somebody refers you and they become a pain project, that might be a little bit different.
Right? And that's what getting at what I was talking about earlier of what do we do for them? Is it something a little bit better, a little bit fancier? So let me actually pause real quick before I slide to that screen.
Although with a six second delay, it may have slid back and forth. One of my clients the other day said, you know, hey. Remember that that client that referred me? I think it actually was an architect that referred me.
I was thinking about getting them an over I know they like skiing. I was thinking about getting them an overnight stay at Boyne, which is up in Northern Michigan, and just some ski passes. I think they would love that.
And he had referred him a pretty large, full addition project. It was a several hundred thousand dollar project. Not two about a two hundred thousand dollar project. And my response to him was, I think it might be a little too much.
Like, it that would you know, that's gonna cost you probably a thousand bucks, eight hundred bucks to to put them up for a night, ski, etcetera, etcetera.
You know, they might look at that and say, you know, maybe you you just shouldn't have sent me that and bought that and just given my buddy a little bit of a, you know, discount on this project. So there's times where it might be too much. K? But there's other times where, there's just kind of a sweet spot on some things that you could do.
So here's some ideas for when you get a referral that turns into a new client. I have a lot of clients that start that do number one and two. And sometimes they combine it where they'll send a little note out that says, thank you so much for the referral of mister, mister and missus Smith. We've been working on their project.
They signed with us last week. And as a thank you, part of our referral program is we'd like you to just select one of the two options you see below. Either we'll donate a hundred dollars to the local charity of your choice as a thank you, or we'll do a seventy five dollar dinner gift certificate to, you know, Brighton Bar and Grill or whatever, maybe restaurant that you already have some cards to. It's always interesting to actually a lot of my clients do this where they put it a little bit higher, a hundred dollars for a local charity donation and seventy five for the gift certificate.
And it is always a little humorous when somebody chooses the lesser amounts, but the one that will fill their belly. So it's always kinda interesting. But a lot of times, it's kinda like fifty fifty.
The local charity of choice has been just a nice thing. Like, there may be a local band boosters. There may be a rotary club they're involved in. There might be a, you know, humane society they're involved in.
It is really nice for them to take a hundred dollar check into a cause that they support and, do that as a thank you. You know, seventy five dollar dinner gift certificate. When you're out when when they're out eating that nice meal on your dime, they're gonna remember you, and they're gonna be more apt to refer you in the future. I've seen it and experienced it.
So it's just a nice way to thank them. Maybe you have, several carpenters, and maybe you do something like two hours of handyman work from one of our carpenters. Everybody's got little jobs and, loose ends and honey do lists around their home. I've had several clients that do that.
Could be some type of rewards program or something related to some a local vendor relationship you have. A nice bouquet of flowers or cookies is a very simple and practical thing you could do. There's just a lot of different things you could do. Don't go over the top with it, but also don't do nothing. Right? The key thought here is to do something in both cases if they refer you and even if it doesn't turn into anything and especially if they refer you and it turns into something.
Alright? Cool.
So let me pause here. Any, any questions that you're seeing flow through, Alex? Or, also, as you as we're going through here, what are some takeaways you've had so far? Always driving at that. What's something that you're gonna grab and implement?
Yeah. I think Mark had a good note there, you know, talking about small repairs leading to, you know, full size referral jobs.
Yeah. So even a small yeah. Even a small repair leads to future remodel. Keep a minimum service call cost and reduce your remarkable oh, I like I like how he's emphasizing remarkable. He's obviously hearing it in my voice. Man, if your guys' takeaway is I can generate more referrals if we're more remarkable. It's a wonderful thing to have humming in your head.
But, yeah, Mark. Right? So sometimes and that's that's a strategy decision. I have certain clients that, unless it's a previous clients, they turn down anything under a certain dollar amount.
But other times, it can be it can be a great lead source. It really and that's really a strategy decision. Brad, send gifts to their work. Now everyone sees it.
Nice little wrinkle.
Oh, that's interesting.
Yeah. That Brad that Brad I think let me confirm that who this is.
Yeah. No. That's a different Brad. There's a Brad Brad, down in Ohio. I don't know, Brad with Team Handy, but both Brads are geniuses.
Alright. Cool. Also a good idea, Brad. Alright. Nice. Alright. Number four. Let's kinda keep humming through these last two, so we'll do a little open q and a in the end.
Keep posting some, some takeaways. Post some questions as well. Alright. So develop strategic partners. So if you remember earlier when I was talking about generating referrals, I said one comes from homeowners, people that you've done work with.
Another way that I see a lot of referrals come into your remodeling business is through strategic partners. And this is often an overlooked underutilized area of things. So let me let me kinda define, what this is and who this is. A definition of a strategic partner is anyone who shares the same ideal client as you do.
Anyone who shares the same ideal client as you do. So think of other businesses. It could be an architect. It could be a designer.
Could be, you know, high end, landscape or it could be something like that around, you know, around the kind of the building trade side of things. Or maybe you you work with high end clients and you've got a relationship going with the local Tesla dealer or Lexus dealer or, you know, your CPA that you use works with a lot of business owners and some of your ideal clients are business owners. Alright? So it doesn't have to be just within the remodeling realm of things or the building trades.
But what we end up doing is, I think if you went back and looked at your two thousand, and eighteen leads, I think what you would see are some referrals from strategic partners. It could be from your suppliers. It could be from other professional service providers, architects, realtors. It could be from your trade partners. That's the phrase that I use instead of your subcontractors.
Trade partners is a nicer way of kinda putting that especially when you're talking to, to clients and prospects.
I'm guessing that if you went through that, you would see some referrals from those sources. And what I want you to do is kinda lean into that a little bit. Those things happen, but we may not be proactively looking to strengthen those relationships. So this little quote is a quote from a kind of a business guru named Jay Abraham.
The more people you talk with, network with, develop a relationship with, the more opportunities and insights you will have. Opening one door leads to dozens of other doors. Opening dozens of doors leads to hundreds of others. So it's that thought of continually expanding the network of people who know what you do.
So a couple steps related to this. Step number one, and this could be a key takeaway, is just to make a list. When I do this with my remodeling clients and I say, okay. Strategic partners, this should be part of your overall marketing plan.
And I say make a list. Usually, they're able to kinda come up with five, six, seven, eight pretty quickly. You know what? So and so used to refer me.
I haven't talked to them. Man, I haven't talked to them in a while. Or, you know, this this person refers me consistently.
And with a little bit of pushing, usually the list gets up to ten or twelve or fourteen companies or people.
Now that you have the list, do a BLB.
And I'm not gonna define what a BLB is because that's gonna be at least one question we have at the q and a here in a minute. Somebody asked me what a BLB is.
K? Another thing you do here is just refer other people. There's there's this rule of actually, I do need to define BLB so I can hammer home that point. BLB is breakfast, lunch, or beer.
So the thought is is part of your marketing plan, if you just did one BLB a month, if you went to one of these strategic partners that you made a list of and just say, hey. You know, hey, Alex. Would you like to do a BLB with me? You'd probably say, what the heck is a BLB?
And I would say it's a breakfast, lunch, or beer. What would you prefer? It's a clever acronym that I came up with years ago just to hammer home this point that it's just smart marketing, and you're gonna generate more referrals if you do some BLBs, even one a month. That's twelve for the year.
That's going to generate know, like, and trust and some opportunities for you. And the other thing you do related to strategic partners is refer others. If you have the opportunity to refer your trade partner or refer, an architect or refer a designer, there's there's a rule of reciprocity. Reciprocity means the more that you that you give to somebody, the more that you help somebody, the more they feel, necessary to to pay you back, you know, to give back to you.
So be somebody that and BNI has that that phrase, that catchphrase. Right? Givers gain. And it's very true.
The more you give, the more you're gonna see in return, which is a which is a very nice thing and cool thing. Alright? So that's number four is developing more strategic partners and being a little bit more proactive with that. Alright?
Number five is just some other little things.
Some other little things that I wanted to toss in related to attracting more referrals.
This phrase little things is it is a it's kind of a phrase that I've used for years and years. And and the truth of it is is that running a successful business in general, but in particular, a Romali business is not about finding, like, this one magic bullet. Oh, man. If I was just doing this, everything would be going smoothly and wonderfully.
It's actually a combination of a lot of little things. That's how you run a successful remodeling business. When you look at the top ten percent of remodeling out there, they're not just doing one thing differently than everybody else. It's a combination of a lot of little things that make them remarkable.
So I wanted you kinda keep that keep that in mind is focus on the little things, the communication, the delivering the project on time, on budget, etcetera, etcetera.
Alright. So those some of the little things I wanted to share with you. One is make referrals a little bit of an expectation.
This is something you can be talking about during the sales process that you can kinda share with them or even right right when they sign with you. It's another thing. Another good time to share this. Is that our goal is that you're gonna be so thrilled with the work we do for you that whether it's at the end of the project, three months later, three years later, you're gonna happily refer us to your family and friends. Referrals are vitally important to our business over the years, and our whole goal in this process is to give you a a remarkable experience. Put it out there. Make it an expectation.
Talk about referrals being important. Or maybe you check-in with them halfway through the job and you say, you know, one of our goals is to secure a five star review from you at the end of the project. Is there anything that would prevent you from doing that right now? Right?
That would get right to the right to the chase. Is there something that you can improve? Is there a place that they're not feeling the love that you could fix? Alright?
So that's that one. Another one is just asking for referrals.
This was a couple years ago. I was sharing this with a client, and it struck me and said, when was the last time I asked for referrals? I've got a good solid list of clients, and they know other remodelers whether across the state through their HBA groups or through different networking groups. And wouldn't you know it, when I was just a little more proactive with just simply asking for referrals, I generated more referrals.
And I've seen this happen with my clients as well. What if you just shot a text message to your ten best clients and said, hey. I was I was thinking about your day, and one of the things that I was I was learning during a webinar today is to ask for referrals. So I thought I'd shoot you a quick note and just see if you had anybody that might be looking to remodel their home.
Is that pushy? That's slimy? Are you gonna say, you know, sign here and you gotta give me three names before, you know, we move before I leave your house? None of that.
But on the flip side of that, not doing anything or never asking for referrals is also not a good approach. So just asking for referrals. During the sales process, you know, on your invoice or your surveys that you send out, which I mentioned, in your website, your email signature, and your social media, asking for referrals. What I have there on a quote is the bottom of a lot of my clients' email newsletter.
I have a done for you email newsletter program. At the bottom of that, we we write this which says, we believe that the best way to make new friends is through our old friends. That's why referrals are so important to us. Please keep us in mind as you are talking to your family, friends, colleagues.
Have that message out there. Copy and paste that. Put that in your email signature. Put that in your communications at the bottom of your invoice.
Make it apparent that referrals are important to you.
Couple other items. I was talking to my wife last night about, about this topic. I said, yeah. I got a webinar tomorrow, and so I shouldn't I should mention it to her more often because she always has these little brilliant nuggets. And, she said, well, as far as referrals go, you know, make sure that they have your number in their cell phone. And she's like, I was I referred so and so the other day, and the reason I did or what made it easy is I could just share the contact with with Jenny.
Simple. Right? But making sure that your phone number's in their phone makes it easy for you to refer them. Make sure we're staying in touch.
If you did a project with me two years ago, you remodeled my kitchen, and I haven't heard from you since then, that's not good. We should be staying in touch whether it's via phone, whether it's via email, whether it's with a email newsletter once a month, whether it's periodically with a print newsletter or postcard in the mail. We've gotta stay in touch with our previous clients. How do we attract more referrals?
We stay top of mind. You send out an email newsletter, and they just talk to their coworker down the hall, and they can just forward that email to them. Hey. This is who I was talking about.
Their contact information is below. That's smart marketing. That's smart business.
Give referrals. The more referrals you give, that rule of reciprocity kicks in and the more you get back. And, again, on your invoices, surveys, on your website, etcetera.
Alright. Cool. Oh, this one just starts with a hey you right in your face. What's one thing you're going to implement?
So we're at the eleven forty six Eastern Standard Time. We've got a short fourteen minutes left, and just wanted to kinda open up for some q and a and also for you maybe to answer this question in the chat box. What's one thing you're gonna implement out of what you've heard? And then also just toss these two things out there.
So q and a time, let's get into that. You can reach out to me via text message or email. And then also where is that? There it is.
Also, here's just a link to my podcast.
There's a private Facebook group that I have for remodelers that is active and, just ton of great people in there. If you go to remodelers community dot com or if you just search remodelers community on Facebook, you can request to join that. Or if you want a complimentary strategy session, feel free to call or text or email.
But more anything else, I hope you have a takeaway or two from what we covered.
Cool.
So, Alex, some some questions or some topics?
Yeah. Well, thanks everyone for joining us. Yeah. Please feel free to ask us any questions over here on the right side in the chat feature.
One thing that I'll mention here is back to what Kyle was just talking about a couple of minutes ago, staying in touch with your previous customers. So, you know, with this in mind, Clear Estimates just implemented a feature for you to download all of your customer information. So that's first name, last name, email, phone number for this particular case. So you can reach out to them because we should be staying in touch with all of our previous customers.
We should never, you know, that should never go cold. Those, those are our main referral resources. Those are our easiest resources. And it's very easy to, you know, connect with a CRM or an email marketing tool. And I know a lot of our customers don't use those and they're fantastic resources where basically we can upload a list of emails. Yeah. Go ahead, Scott.
Super practical. Download it out of Clear Estimates. Go to Mailchimp, m a I l, chimp dot com. Set up a free account under two thousand names.
It's gonna be free. Import that spreadsheet in. It'll it's very easy. Now all of a sudden, you've got a database and and a tool at at your disposal that you can send a note out.
Maybe you just finished up a a project. You can post a picture of that.
There's just a lot of different ways to do it, but we've gotta be staying in touch with our previous clients. You guys are making it easy by exporting it out.
Yeah. Then Carlos said something interesting there, Kyle.
He provides a free change order if he, receives a referral during the process there.
Very cool. Very cool. Carlos is playing with fire because they're like, well, can we change we can do a little change order for this full bathroom remodel over here. I'm sure I'm sure he presents it in a way that it makes it kinda clear that, you you know but that that's excellent, Carlos.
It could be, you know, upgrading the, you know, the mantle on the fireplace. It could be maybe a little nicer trim in a certain area. There's a lot of different things to to do there. That's great.
Nice work, man.
I see Amanda kinda talking about a takeaway. So put toss in here a few other takeaways. What's something that you maybe heard during the presentation that, you're gonna implement? Amanda mentioned, I I know Amanda. So she's newish, been there for a little while as an office manager for one of my clients.
She is saying, I don't know if we're doing anything for people that refer others to us. So she's gonna dig in and look at that and see if we're doing it or not. It's great.
Brad, add to my sales process that we want them to be so thrilled with our work. They will want to refer us. That's excellent. Right?
I mean, it's it's just saying that, and you you mean that. I know that that's what you guys are after. You know, our goal is that you're gonna be so thrilled with the work that we do for you is that and and hear hear the way that I phrase it is whether at the end of the project, three months later, or three years later, you're gonna happily refer us to your family and friends. Right?
There's no no pressure there of, like, when we're done with this project, you're gonna refer us. No. If if the opportunity arises, sure. But we're talking just years later, you're still gonna be thrilled with the work we do for us.
That's our goal. You know, put it out there. It it forces you to step your game up to be more remarkable, to set that expectation.
Good. Give me a few more takeaways, people. Let's finish strong.
Any others you can think of, Alex, or things that you, takeaways that you had even?
No. I think everything was fantastic. I think, you know, the presentation was awesome. I really enjoyed the, you know, the points especially about just reaching out to our customers.
You know, referrals are gonna be the least amount of work. They're gonna be the most beneficial. I thought it was pretty interesting. You know, the incentives that we were providing to our customers, you know, maybe it's not a, you know, a ski trip like you mentioned, because that might be a little bit too much, but I really like the charity donations. You know, a couple hours of handyman work from one of our carpenters. You know, these are things that continue our relationship with the customer rather than just, you know, saying here's a, you know, here's a dollar amount. You know, thank you for the referral.
You know, let's keep in touch with our handyman. Let's keep doing work for this customer.
Yep. Excellent.
And we know it's true. Right? If we've ever ex if we ever received a gift card and, let's say, to a restaurant, you know, when when we pull that out, the person that got us that gift card is gonna be mentioned or we're gonna remember it. And, you know, that that experience, man, they really they they appreciated that.
That was great. It's you're gonna find other, you know, referrals for them. You're gonna be more apt. Just the studies have shown.
And, frankly, my own my own experience, good, bad, or different, has shown that, that that's the case for me the more I the more I refer.
Thank you for this presentation. So interesting. Definitely send thank yous for all referrals. Yes, Dave.
Simple, practical, effective.
If you don't have thank you cards, here's here's a a quick kinda side note related to thank you cards. I think sometimes we we overanalyze or we make things more complicated. I have a lot of people that's that immediately say, you know what? I don't have any thank you cards.
And they say, well, I'm gonna get to with my designer. We're gonna put the logo on there. We're gonna design these. And some during that process, the the air gets out of the balloon, and a lot of times, I don't even see that finished thank you card.
What I would urge you, if you don't have any thank you cards, go to Amazon dot com, type in thank you cards. In about three seconds, you can buy some generic simple thank you cards that look decent and buy a ten pack. Send out those ten and then go out if you want and get some custom designed ones. But don't put these kind of roadblocks in front of you that says, oh, I gotta get the design done.
I've gotta print it, and I've gotta I'm gonna print five hundred copies because I gotta print it. No. Like, literally two days from now or if you're out and about, go to Office Depot. Do the same thing.
Implement. Don't don't overcomplicate it. It's a smart idea to send thank you cards. Make sure you have some.
Step one is just to have some on your desk.
Absolutely.
Alright. Thanks for the feedback, Jill.
Another thing I thought was interesting, Kyle, was, you know, how you talked about making referrals and expectation.
You know, when when the customer comes into the process, you have the confidence in the in your work, especially that, you know, we're going to expect that you give us a referral down the road, you know, because we're going to do such a good job for you. This process is going to be so pleasant and so different from, you know, others that, you know, you're going to want to give us in the referral down the road.
And and it's and you gotta word it. Right? But what you just said is is solid and it's just that's our goal. You know, our goal is not to make you okay with the process or satisfied. Our goal is to make you thrilled with it. You're gonna you're gonna want to tell others about us.
Right. I think it's a great it's a great perspective. And and sometimes that backfires. Sometimes you get called out on a little bit of, like, man, like, I'm I'm struggling to refer you in the future. Or, you know, and I'm struggling to give you that five star Google review. Here's why. You know, I'd rather know that in the mid in in the middle, you know, where I can fix it and I can work at it.
Right. Well, fantastic. Any other questions for us?
No. I think I think, we had some good good engagement, and I, closing oh, Mark, closing gifts. Always a small gift that goes with the remodel. Cups for the kitchen, movie pack for the basement, soaps for the bathroom, little things. Right? Little things.
Yeah. The big the big thing with closing gifts is make it simple on yourself. It is wonderful to kinda customize a nice gift at the end of the project. But, you know, if you're if you don't have a lot of staff, they can just turn cumbersome.
And what I what I what I see often is, you know, of the last ten jobs you did because you're trying to make these custom packages, you only did it three times out of ten. When you buy something that kinda works for everybody, it's it's easy to kinda grab it and go and implement it. You're much more apt to do it consistently. So just a little thought related to that idea Mark shared.
And I would just emphasize those two, those bullets on the screen again. I've got this podcast going, remodelers on the rise. You can search for that on your on your, however you're listening to podcasts. And then the private Facebook group is, it's got about I think it's we're almost up to five hundred people in there and just excellent communication, idea sharing.
Just a really good group of, of remodelers. And then if you're, if you're interested at all in setting up a complimentary strategy session with me, feel free to reach out or go to my website, remodeling marketing dot com, and click on contact.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah. Thanks again, Kyle. We really appreciate it. That was a, you know, that was a fantastic presentation. I think really useful inform and from the engagement in the chat box, you know, again, we really appreciate the engagement first off, but, you know, it really makes for a great presentation. You know, we like the interaction.
And that's good to see, you know, what you guys are implementing. You know, everything from Carlos and the change orders to Amanda, and looking to implement some sort of, you know, gift idea. And then Mark telling us about, you know, the little things that he does at the end of each job. I think all of this is is absolutely fantastic, but again, yeah.
Thank you, Kyle. This has been awesome. And again, Kyle will be with us in just a few weeks here talking specifically about the sales process. And obviously, we're gonna send out some more information about that.
And then everyone that attended here is gonna get ten percent off their next bill with Clear Estimates.
And we'll take care of that on the back end. So nothing you have to do. So Clear Estimates will take care of that. And then the webinar will be available, the recording on YouTube. We'll get that out within the next twenty four hours, as well as a blog post just kind of, you know, outlining some some bullet points, just a general recap. So you'll have both video and text to share, and those will both be available on our website, and we'll let you know.
But, yeah, thanks again, everyone. Any any other notes, Kyle?
No. Sounds good.
Look forward to talking to you guys again soon.
Yeah. Absolutely. Well, thanks everyone. And we'll have Kyle's information on our blog. It's obviously in the video here as well, and you can always get a hold of him.
Just remodel your marketing dot com and then kyle at remodel your marketing dot com. And, yeah, if you guys enjoyed this, you know, we definitely welcome you again to another free webinar, just a few weeks about the sales process. But thanks again, everyone. We appreciate it!