fed up

[dgreenberr]

hi all,
this is very tough times at the moment i have been trading for 25years and have now tried to go down the pv route, after thousands of cost i have done three installs but there is tough competion out there with companies offering it free, i have now emailed various companies trying to do the installation only ,not much joy from this, the market seems to say that there is the work out there but i cant seem to find it any advice on generating more bussiness,

thanks

 

[northernsun]

Mate, its a bugger out there. I've been doing this (solar pv) for about 10 years now and decided to start up my own company late last year.
I started on a very small budget and have tried to grow things without going to the bank- not that they would be much help anyway!
Its bloody tough, in my area I see bigger companies who know sod all but have lots of brass scooping up work. I know I'm better than them and given half a chance I can show potential customers that too. But what do you do when nobody knows you're around?
I have basically done everything I can do that costs bugger all- facebook, website etc.. as my marketing and I make sure every customer gets the best- its just coming together now, just like it did the last time I worked for myself when I was a sparky. Word of mouth and recommendations. Its been a real learning curve for me because I don't consider myself a businessman and I have an aversion to sales talk.
I dont have any easy tips- for me its just been every spare minute doing the things I could pay for myself and learing on the way.
As far as the free panels thing, I have found this to be a good thing sometimes, I have a had a number of interested customers and jobs from people initially interested in them after seeing an advert. When they see the figures, many of them quickly start looking in to doing it themselves- if they are able to obviously.

Dont get too down about it, the last few months I have had customers who really seemed to appreciate what I do and chose me over the competition who had the advantage of money,shiny sales material etc.. but not too long ago I felt like I was bagning my head against a wall!

 

[Worcester]

Anyone interested in a half - full day training course in marketing? if so PM me.

One of my other companies runs a workshops for small, owner managed businesses. (deleted link coz I didn;t want to get a rap on the knuckles for advertising )

We don't advertise (we do market ourselves though) and, like SRE are looking pretty full up 'til December. (Always room for more tho )

 

[SRE]

Just booked our first job in for January - can you believe it! If you'd asked me 6 months ago I'd never have said we would hve been this busy. I don't think we do anything special - it just takes time to build a reputation and get customer recommendations. You'll find once you start to build this you will come up against less competition from the big guys because recommended customers are less likely to look elsewhere for quotes.

We're on the 5th page of google when you search for installers in our area but we get about 70 hits a week, most of the pages viewed relate to case studies and testimonials so it seems important to our customers that they can see other installations like theirs in their area.

We also send out the figures for our own system - real figures from a real system in their area and we have an open door policy so our customers are welcome to come and look at our own installation - we've converted 3 jobs this way in the last fortnight.

No sales patter needed - just honesty and do what you say you're going to do.

 

[Eco Deal]

whats your website SRE ?

 

[SRE]

If I told you I'd have to kill you - and that wouldn't be nice.

I'm not looking for more work, but I'll keep my website secrets to myself thanks, you never know when you might need it

 

[dgreenberr]

Anyone interested in a half - full day training course in marketing? if so PM me.

One of my other companies runs a workshops for small, owner managed businesses. (deleted link coz I didn;t want to get a rap on the knuckles for advertising )

We don't advertise (we do market ourselves though) and, like SRE are looking pretty full up 'til December. (Always room for more tho )

hi ,

thanks for the reply i would be interested could you get in touch my email is [email protected]

 

[Eco Deal]

If I told you I'd have to kill you - and that wouldn't be nice.

I'm not looking for more work, but I'll keep my website secrets to myself thanks, you never know when you might need it

haaa arrr Im getting 200 hits per day

 

[Worcester]

haaa arrr Im getting 200 hits per day

It's not hits that count it's converted leads

So what's you hit / enquiry ratio and your enquiry / conversion ratio? They are the ones that count

 

[SRE]

and .... we're not trying to get stuff from the Internet -our website is really just there for reassurance. We'd have no chance at all of coping with demand if I made a concentrated effort on marketing. I'm sad though I just love marketing and understand my client base well