Choose the Right Turf

Making a sales presentation in a prospect's house allows the homeowner to be at ease and to envision the remodel on site. Getting the homeowner into your office might be a harder task, but once in the office, the prospect has fewer distractions and can see more products in person. Both approaches have advantages; Jud Motsenbocker asks remodelers John Murphy, Robert Frazier and Ph...

Culture of Success

Perfect Strangers

My wife loves to entertain; the more the merrier. She can make fettuccine Alfredo with one hand while preparing flan with the other. An intimate dinner at our house may mean 10 people in the dining room or 20 on the deck. My wife is always as cool as the ceviche, even when the event is spontaneous or the guests have never been to our home before.

Selling in the Showroom

With a walk-in showroom, we may not always have the advantage of qualifying prospects before meeting them.

Mentoring Salespeople

Of all the people who help form the public's opinion of a remodeling company, perhaps the single most important is the salesperson. The salesperson creates the agreement under which everyone — the bricklayer, the plumber, the installer, the office manager, the production manager — performs.

Hiring a Salesperson

Help wanted. Familiarity with residential remodeling required. Excellent compensation. Successful candidates must: In remodeling, you might expect a new salesperson to produce $600,000 dollars in volume in the first year. Ultimately this salesperson could sell $1.5 million annually, depending on the type of products and services offered.

Marketing

Target Practice To get the best results from your marketing efforts, begin by setting goals for your business's future. Your marketing plan can then be targeted at helping you meet those goals by reaching the right types of customers. During this process, ask yourself these two important questions: Who is my best current customer? Who else do I want to reach? Web Site 101 If your company still ...

The Merits of Marketing

ROI: Return on investment. It's an important metric when gauging what to spend on advertising and marketing your business. It can be measured in sales and margin; it can also be measured — though not easily — in brand awareness. Some remodelers do primarily repeat and referral business and avoid advertising.

Selling the Difference

Why me? What did I do to deserve this? Sometimes, as with accident or illness, these questions have no answers. But they're still worth asking after each business success or failure: Although life delivers unavoidable situations, luck is not a viable business strategy. Creating a steady stream of qualified leads and closing profitable jobs requires two things: providing products and services wo...

Selling the Interior Design Difference

In each new episode of HGTV's "Designers' Challenge," three designers picked by the producers present their concepts for the same remodeling project to the homeowners. Though the scenario resembles the three-bid sales process that many remodelers prefer to avoid, Construction Concepts Corp., a full-service remodeling firm in Stamford, Conn.