Great British Biscuits

By Posted on 2 min read 934 views

If there’s something that we love in England, it’s a cup of tea and biscuits. Which is why, when the tree surgeons arrived this morning, that was the first thing I offered them.

To my amazement, they rejected my offer until they’d done a few hours of work.

Initially, I had a few people come to quote on trimming back our trees. They all came out and spent about an hour looking around our grounds, and then almost none got back in touch.

Now, I have a policy, if I’ve got someone round to quote and they don’t get back in touch, I never chase them. Clearly they don’t need the work. Or if they do, they’re too disorganised to remember they visited me, and I don’t want people like that working for me anyway.

Then I found Terry of Arb-Core.

When I say ‘found’, he was recommended by somebody local who’d used him a number of times.

Anyhoo… we got chatting, which is kinda something I like to do, and it turns out that a few times Terry had been shafted by prospective clients.

You see, he also takes care of getting permission from the local government to do the work to the trees. We live in a conservation area, so everything has to get approval before it can be done.

Well… some people would say they’d use him to do the work, he’d go and submit all the forms for approval, and… they’d then go and use someone else.

Which meant he’d completely wasted a few hours of his time.

There’s something lovely about local companies who work based on trust, and quite often you can do that locally. But when you start to scale, you’ll get people who take the piss.

Here’s what he should have done…

  1. Charged a fee for planning submission
  2. Refund the fee when you booked in for the work

Doing this, he’d almost certainly get more customers than he does now, aside from the fact that he wouldn’t lose some people after he’s done the planning permission for them.

Why?

Because you should always ask your prospects for a small commitment first, then when you get a small one, ask for a slightly bigger one. That’s how you go from selling a $7 ebook to $1997 consulting.

Michael

P.S. There’s more on this, and a whole step-by-step bizniss, for you to follow nestled within the pages of https://michaelwilding.com/business-ignition/

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