We all remember the days when we would send out invoices and estimates to our customers via ‘snail mail.’ Some of us are still living in them! I know I have sent and received them as well. If you are like me, you are probably a little resistant to change and adapting to the future. As business owners, we often can get comfortable with the way we do things and are hesitant to change or upgrade. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it applies everywhere!
You may come to a point in your business where you hit a snag or a wall and want to break through but are not sure how. I know we sure did. As owners of a moving company, the leads started to vanish and our revenue numbers were going the wrong way! For a while we blamed Yelp. We thought it was their fault that we could not get the right leads. We tried all kinds of ways to get new leads but we were just throwing money down the drain.
It took a year to realize that the leads, or lack of them, were not the problem. It was our systems and processes. We were not following up as much as we should, our estimates did not look all that professional, our pricing could have been clearer, and our operations could have been smoother. We just did not have the time to focus on things like marketing and training. That was where the real growth and money turned out to be!
But we had no insight into any of this. We started to analyze some numbers and noticed that we could do better! We took the long route and revamped our day to day procedures for sales, marketing and operations. We learned what techniques worked and what didn’t. It was a long and hard process, but it was worth it.
But was that enough? Still, the answer was no. We were not stuck in the dark ages of technology but we were not in 2020 either. Gmail was great, but customers expect more!
So we started to develop a CRM that integrated everything from marketing to sales to operations. We needed a software program that could do it all. The more we could streamline, the more efficient we could be. With the right tool to keep us on track, we could book jobs at a higher rate, earn more revenue, quicken our sales cycle and focus on training our crews.
We also wanted to make sure our customer experience was top of the line. We wanted to get them an estimate fast and make sure it looked clean and professional. Instantly, our conversion rate soared! We were booking jobs minutes after sending out a quote! We could process a lead in no time and the results showed how powerful that was!
On the operations side, we needed a tool for our crews too. We all want each job to be the best possible job right? Well to do that, we thought we would have to be on every job. That clearly isn’t possible right? With a well-built field app, we could be on each job virtually. Our routes were streamlined and optimized instantly. We could tell where each crew was at all times and would even be alerted if they went off schedule. We also wanted the customer to know how the job was going too so we added before and after pictures and easy rescheduling if the weather was bad. All of a sudden our payroll costs went down and our customer reviews went up.
So we thought we figured it all out! We had more time to spend with our families and working ON our business instead of in it. Yes I know that is a buzzword for business ownership, but IT’S TRUE! We didn’t start a business to work like a dog every day, we wanted some freedom. Don’t we all want that? Now we were starting to get there. You can read more on this in my post about time management.
We still were lacking in one key part of our business. Understanding the numbers. What good was revenue if we were not yet turning a healthy profit? So we got back to work to develop tools to analyze and easily understand our numbers. Read more about why understanding the numbers of your business is so important!
Does a tool like this seem like it can help you get a grip on your business? Give Perennial a shot today! With our 30-day no risk, no credit card trial, you can see for yourself how technology can assist all of us!
