I got a magazine in the post this week , it had an interesting article in it by Charlie Mullins, who I have followed for several years, He owns pimlico Plumbers and has 155 staff turning over 15 million in London.
If you replace the word "plumber" with carpet cleaner ,, a lot of what he says translates,, and I know a lot of us do not have employees, or so we think, but how many of us employ ,, machine and chemical suppliers, vehicle supply and repair ,, printers, web designers , accountants, phone suppliers, helpers etc ,, even a one man band often has 10 or so part time employees without realizing it, and making plans for how to deal with them.
Some of his points are very relevent to CC ,and it might help some of us, I will type out some of it , as it is not copyrighted...........................
Nothing is too basic . Look at your company name. Does your name say anything about you? It might be easy to just call it after your initials, but on a card or a sign, who will bother to look furthur or investigate so they can find out what you do?
Pimlico plumbers is everywhere- on our uniforms, vans ,, pens- because our name is the most effective form of advertising we will ever get. So we spend time spreading it.
Make sure you mark any vehicles and buildings with your brand and your number. People become aware of your presence, and remember you. Be in thier mind as a name to call on or to recommend. Its crucial.
Its all about making it easy for customers to do business with you . And that should apply to things like pricing too. When we started, I introduced a ratecard- the same for everyone, with it all there in black and white,how much w'ed charge for time , call out , and so on, with no surprises, other plumbers were up in arms- they said we were making it harder to add that little discreet "extra" bit on here and there. But we didnt want to do that.
What we found was that customers were really grateful and relieved that they could deal with someone up front- maybe it wouldnt be the cheapest, but it would be the nicest to deal with, because there would be no surprises.
That, really, is where you start to sense a vision for the company, and then apply it to other things. So once you know you want to be the best for the customers and really stress-free for them, it affects the people you recruit. You bring in people who are not justgreat plumbers, but are good at dealing with people in thier homes, and repay the trust.
I hope this helps someone