All of these market forces can result in a very high degree of competition, which challenges businesses to find ways to stand out and differentiate themselves. At 缅北禁地, identifying and developing value around competitive differentiating factors is a multi-step process.

Know Your Customer

If you let them, your customers will 鈥渨ant鈥� your home improvement business to death. Oftentimes one home improvement project bleeds into another – a paint job becomes a drywall repair, which becomes installing new baseboards, which becomes installing the wall mounted TV, and so on. All of these projects sound simple, but each requires a different skillset, a different set of tools & materials, and will delay the completion of the project beyond its original date, pushing back the next customer in line. If you want to stand out in a competitive market, you have to accept that you must say 鈥渘o鈥� to a customer that鈥檚 asking for something so that you can say 鈥測es鈥� to the next one who鈥檚 waiting.

Getting granular on the type of customer you want to work for is the first step in the process because it allows you to hyper focus on developing a value proposition that makes sense for them. For example, service plumbers are hired for a variety of reasons by a variety of homeowners. The family who hires a plumber to come to their million dollar home to install a new tankless hot water heater has drastically different buying behaviors than the single mom who needs someone to come unclog a drain. These clients have different levels of urgency, will want to communicate with the company in entirely different ways, have different willingness to pay, different warranty expectations, and so on. You can鈥檛 begin to stand out in this hyper competitive industry until you decide which type of customer you primarily want to do work for.

Ask Your Customer

Once you鈥檝e identified your customer, building a great business becomes much simpler. If you want to know what your customer wants, and why they hire you, just ask. Surveying customers about why they hired you, what other companies they considered hiring, and how their experience was, is an incredibly powerful source of information that can inform future decisions. If you want more customers, simply look at your book of business, find your best customer, and ask them how they found you. Your marketing strategy lies entirely in what they tell you. Don鈥檛 be afraid to ask that customer for a referral at the same time – your A customers know other A customers!

Know Your Team

Once you鈥檝e identified exactly what kind of customer you鈥檇 like your business to focus on servicing, it鈥檚 time to assemble a team specially designed to service them. Again, getting granular is key.

For example, many people think that is easy – you need to drive a vehicle, climb a ladder, and use a squeegee. The reality is that oftentimes employers expect their team to complete a variety of tasks, and often they can鈥檛 be good at all of them.

Your window washer may need to wash the outside of a window, enter the customer’s home in a professional and courteous way, safely set up a ladder on their brand new hardwood, wash the interior of the window without spilling a drop of water, and leave the home as though they were never there. More often than not, on top of this set of skills, window washers need to climb on roofs, clear out gutters, run high powered pressure washers without causing property damage, manage a schedule, collect payment, generate invoices, knock on the neighbors door to try to sell the next job, and so on. It鈥檚 not as simple as 鈥渨ashing windows.鈥澛�

Understand exactly what your customer wants, then build a team with the specific skill sets required to provide that service. If your customer wants to have a seamless experience where they never see anyone, you need a simple window washer. If your customer wants to speak to the team, have them clean the interior, have the home power washed, and the gutters made spotless, you need a customer service expert, not a window washer.聽

Put simply, standing out in the hyper competitive home improvement market isn鈥檛 about spending the most money on TV commercials. Standing out requires you to get incredibly clear on who your service is built for, and ensuring every one of their wants & needs is fulfilled in a way that no one else can.

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Tomorrow, February 24th, we鈥檒l be celebrating our second Charity Day of the year by donating 5% of our daily sales to the Charity of the Month, The Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts.聽

The supports a collective of over 200 artists with developmental disabilities in their studio and gallery space on 118th Avenue in Edmonton, Alberta. The Nina (pronounced n-eye-na) believes in the importance of creation and exhibition of art by those who face barriers to artistic expression. Artists at the Nina work in a variety of mediums: drawing, painting, clay, fibre arts, printmaking, dance, and more. Their work is exhibited locally and across Canada, and has been included in international exhibitions.聽聽

The Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts describes their vision as the following:

鈥楢ll people have the right to achieve their highest potential, which includes the right to creative expression. Creativity lies within everyone and can be powerfully expressed through the arts. The Nina believes in the importance of creation and exhibition of art by those who face barriers to artistic expression.鈥櫬�

We encourage you, as our valued customers, to complete your purchases tomorrow on Charity Day so that we can provide The Nina with a generous donation, support their honorable purpose, and help artists with developmental disabilities to create and exhibit their art here in Edmonton. This centre helps to facilitate artistic expression which we truly believe is something that everyone should have the opportunity to do.聽

If you have any questions regarding our Charity of the Month program, feel free to reach out to our team at 780-910-6688 for more information. Additionally, if you have any charities that you鈥檇 like to see us choose as our Charity of the Month in the future, please let us know by filling out the form on our Community Investments page.

The post February 2022 – Charity of the Month: Nina Haggerty Centre for the Arts appeared first on 缅北禁地.