Being the Cheapest in your Market

We’ve all thought about it. Unless you have prior business experience it is likely going to be your strategy when you first start your junk removal business. I remember when we first started our junk removal business thinking how ridiculous it was the 1-800-Got-Junk charged $450 for a full load. Preposterous! Who would every pay that?

One of the things you have to know is to have the proper perspective. At the time I was 20 years old and working at a skating rink making about $15,000 a year. My take home pay wasn’t much more than $450 for two weeks of work. Of course it wasn’t worth it to me. I’d do it on my own. Also, I didn’t have a whole lot of stuff to haul off. So I figured if it wasn’t worth it to me it really can’t be worth it to someone else. Disregard the fact that Got Junk at the time already did over $100 Million a year in revenue and had close to 200 locations at that point. I just figured there was no way anyone really wanted to spend that much money on Got Junk. They were the main game in town and we figured we could slip right in there and take away the business just by being cheap.

So we started placing ads on Craigslist. Keep in mind Craigslist was a lot better back then than it is now. Much more widely used. And free. The calls started rolling in and we thought we were making money hand over fist by charging $200 for a pickup truck and trailer load. However, Craigslist customers were a pain to deal with. The jobs were difficult and they customers were so freaking cheap. Some of them were good but most of them were rough and cheap. Also, though we were making good money it still wasn’t enough to really field another crew full time. I was making great money when I was on the truck. Once I got off though the returns were much lower. And work wasn’t consistent enough to have a full time crew either. Jobs could be sporadic from time to time. I needed another way to get more jobs.

At that point I got in touch with a former junk removal company operator who had sold his business. He helped me get set up on Google AdWords. That is when our business really took off. AdWords was simple at that point and much cheaper. However, with our current pricing we weren’t making as much money on AdWords jobs, even though the work was easier and the sales higher. But we had that AdWords expense. We needed to raise prices. But we were scared to do so.

So we were faced with a decision. Do we stop doing AdWords or raise our prices. We raised our prices and… the calls kept coming! We raised prices again and… the calls kept coming! Before we knew it we were making more money and not working nearly as hard. A win-win!

We were incorrect in thinking that the main thing everyone was looking for was price. Yes, some people were looking for price. But many people simply wanted the service to get done and get done fast. Even then we promised same day service. They liked the fact we were locally owned. And we were spending enough on AdWords we were the first person they found. Not being first doesn’t mean you won’t get work from AdWords. You still might get as much business being second or third. But we happened to be first. And people called us. And we were great on the phone so we locked the appointment down.

So, your wondering is there a time you should be the cheapest person in the market? Yes, there are  couple of instances. The first one is if you simply don’t have as professional an image. You have an older truck, your site isn’t flashy, and you are very new with little reviews. You might want to be the cheapest in your market at that point. But you must give a reason for you being so cheap! What’s a good reason? “We are the cheapest of the professional junk haulers in this area because the owner is on all the jobs. We are a new company, though our owner, John Doe, has been working for a moving company for years and knows how to move as good as anyone. Since he is on the truck we’ve got much lower overhead than our competitors. That’s why we can be so cheap.” Give them a reason. Otherwise they might come up with their own which is: They don’t offer as good of service.

Another good reason to be the cheapest is you are the most sophisticated junk removal company in your area, and one of the largest. By that I mean you are extremely busy and have a large volume of items that you pick up. You have so much that you are able to open a store. Because you have so much volume your store stays very busy from selling the stuff you get from your junk removal jobs. You also can take advantage of economies of scale and make great money by separating your metals and recycling as much as possible. So you are getting income on the back end as well as the front. Because of this you are able to charge customers less because you will make up the difference when you re-sell or recycle the items you pick up. Be up front and honest about this. Market the hell out of it on your website. This is a major competitive advantage.

Of these two scenarios one is temporary. That one be scenario 1. The second one is permanent. The key with the second one though is the fact you have to have a huge volume of business to do this. Otherwise you will never sell enough for it to be worth your time on a consistent basis. I think you need at minimum $1 Million a year in sales to do this and probably closer to 1.5.

What are the other negatives to going the cheap route with your junk removal franchise? The problem is there is no way to reach enough people. You could have the cheapest and best junk removal business on the planet. But if nobody knows about you then what’s the point? When you have minuscule margins you can’t afford to do AdWords, SEO, Customer Acquisition Management (CAM), or other advertising services to get the word out.

Another issue with going cheap is the fact that the customers that hire the cheapest in the market simply because they are the cheapest generally are not good repeat business. It’s hard to build a thriving business when you are constantly having to get new customers. Customers that hire you because you can get to them fast or are the most professional are much more likely to review, refer, and re-use you. These are the people you want to go after.

Yet another reason is the fact that it is tough for you to pay someone else to work on the truck. To pay a full crew would really make it tough to profit much money. That means that you are going to struggle to answer the phone which means missed appointments. That means that if you want to take off work you likely won’t be able to run another truck. Do this long term and it will be a huge strain on your life and your relationships.

One thing you must remember is you are a businessman. You are not a garbage man. By being a business man one of your primary goals should be to create a business that runs without you. Without profit margins from charging a high enough price you will be unable to do this. You will be unable to hire people to answer your phones (or the JRA call center), to manage your books, to dispatch your crews, etc. Your business will never be one that you could sell for a huge payoff. It isn’t as good of a business as it could be to pass down to your kids. You, at that point, mainly have a job. And a job with no benefits and no paid time off. You are a slave to your work. If you are going to do that you might as well work for someone else with 90 percent less stress.

The alternative to this is to charge enough for you to make a healthy profit on each job you do. You will then be able to advertise to reach a bunch of people, who will re-use and tell others about your business. Before you know it you will have people in all the different departments of your business. You will then have the freedom to do what you want to do when you want to do it. At that point you will begin having a life where you can fully focus on excelling with your business, with your relationship with kids/spouse, your physical body, and your spirituality. You will have flexibility and freedom. That should be one of your primary reasons for getting in business. But to achieve that you must charge enough for your services for sure.

We here at JRA are here to help you achieve financial and life freedom with your junk removal business. We built Junk Doctors to a $2 Million a year business by year 5 and are ready to do our best to get you to that same level. Junk Removal is a great business to be in if it is ran right. If it isn’t you will enjoy it for a while before you get burnt out. Let JRA show you and manage your advertising, sales, job booking, bookkeeping, or get your new business open. Simply call us at 919-466-9322 or visit junkremovalauthority.com.

-Lee Godbold

junkremovalauthority.com

919-466-9322

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How to start your junk removal business cheap

The best way to start a junk removal business is when you have money. You can make all the big investments up front and that will really help propel you to success much quicker than when you have to actually live off the income from your junk removal business. So how do you get started cheap?

DON’T UNLESS YOU HAVE TOO!

The easiest way to start cheap is don’t! If you have a job making around $50,000 a year plus keep working that job until you have enough money to do a downpayment on your truck and have another $10,000 in the bank to help cover some operating losses when you get started. Or, see if you can raise the money from friends or family.

When you first start your business don’t quit that job. Keep working your number one income while you build up your business. Only when your business is really taking off do you quit. And even then often times it is better to hire truck team members and continue working your main job. It took me three years before I made $50,000 in a year off of junk removal. You can really grow the fastest if you are able to live off other income and just break even or even lose some money the first year or so of your junk removal business. That will really set you up for massive future success. I’d consider quitting your job once you were making close to what you are making at your current job. And even then I’d think long and hard about it.

Remember, you aren’t getting into the junk removal business because you just love going around and hauling peoples trash. Your getting into the business to fricken make some Guala! Don’t cut your income by starting your new business. Work both at the same time!

If you have too, here is how

Step 1: Live cheap

In order to live off the income of your junk removal business while simultaneously growing your company you need to start out by living cheap. Have a roomate or two and keep your rent low. Then be ready to live off ramen noodles for at least the first year. Sell your car. Your main transportation is going to be your truck. Tell your girlfriend it’s gonna be netflix and chill for the next year. And let her know if she wants to spend time with you she better ride around with you in the truck and help you out on the job. You are serious about your success and are willing to do whatever it takes to make this business work.

Step 2: Get a truck

So if you don’t make around $50,000 a year and don’t have friends and family willing to lend the money, you will need to get started the way Junk Doctors did… cheap! The first thing you will need to do is get a truck. And you are doing this cheap so don’t go too crazy! Find a pickup truck and get a 6×12 trailer with 5 foot sides. That whole rig should be able to be gotten for around $5,000. The pickup around $4,000 and the trailer around $1,000. You could be a bit over that depending on your market but you should be able to find something for around $5,000.

Step 3: Build a basic site

Go to Wix.com to build a basic site. You can do this using a basic template and a few hours of your time. All of this can be done for a few hundred dollars. Do a cheap logo. Nothing fancy. Put your face on the site and tell a little bit about you. Try and get the people who want to use the real small time operator and help give a guy his start. This strategy will be abandoned and changed as you get larger. Also, make sure to add your site to Google places.

Step 4: Order Yard Signs

Go to kustomprintz.com to order some yard signs cheap. Place them in prominent intersections and ask you customers at the end of the job if you can place them in their yard.

Step 5: Do the free/cheap advertising

Post Craigslist ads daily. Get set up on nextdoor.com and post periodically talking about your service. Monitor any neighbors on nextdoor.com asking about junk removal services.

Step 6: Sell baby, sell

Pick up the phone and call professional organizers. Stop by real estate offices to introduce yourself and drop off your business card. Go to Home Service Trade Shows and introduce yourself to the remodelers in your area. Let them know you haul junk and would love to haul off their debris. Give everyone you know a business card. And get involved in social media. Make sure all of your Facebook friends know you are in the junk hauling business.

Step 7: Answer the phone

Make grabbing the phone before it goes to voicemail a priority. If you miss a call then call back immediately. And you need to answer that phone no matter what you are doing. Sleeping, in the shower, having sex. Doesn’t matter. You need to grab the phone. And you better prepare. If your gonna have sex have that phone where you can grab it and a water nearby. Don’t be answering the phone out of breath.

Step 8: Save that money so you can invest it soon

Keep living cheap once you are actually making some money. Put that money into an account and leave it alone. Remember, you bought a $4,000 pickup. That think isn’t gonna last long. You need to stack up some money to invest in your business. Get $5,000 saved up first so you can get JRA to build you a website. Your next objective needs to get another $5,000 or so saved up to get started on Customer Acquisition Management (CAM). Following that you would then look at upgrading or adding another truck, this time a dump.

The order can vary some for sure. And yes, I’m plugging JRA services. That is because I 100 percent believe that is the best route for you to take. We built our business up to a $2 Million a year business by year 5 from doing much of what I talked about here. Except we wasted a bunch of money too learning. With JRA you get all that experience and expertise. So much cheaper than having to learn what works and doesn’t work on your own.

Step 9: Grow, grow, grow

Your number one objective needs to be to grow the business. Put off short term profits for long term gains. Remember, your goal should be to build a business that runs without you. That means you will have to put off several years of profits in order to keep re-investing in equipment and people to get your business where it can run without you. At that point you will be making more money and have more freedom than you’ve ever had in your whole life. And you also have a business that is worth some Muuulah! And that, my friend, is why you got into business for yourself. Freedom and money. And, oh how sweet it is.

Other Notes

Don’t be afraid to get a second part time job while you are building your business. Work at night, offer landscaping or delivery of items. Do whatever you have to do to make money. Remember, you aren’t simply building a junk removal business. You are wanting to make yourself successful. That’s the overall objective. That means hustle as hard as you can and get that income up. Then invest in the growth of your business.

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Don’t retire and don’t settle.

Good morning guys. Just waiting on. I’m a little bit early to a meeting I’ve got here, so I got a little bit of time. Just recorded a Junk Removal Made Simple episode on the worst mistakes we ever made running our junk removal business. That’s a really great. My hope on it and my goal is that when you all watch that, you’ll avoid making those same mistakes we made. I’d love to know where our business could be if we had avoided those mistakes early on. So, a personal mistake that I’ve made from time to time and I’ve always gotten over it. I found that that’s been the most depressed because I wasn’t really depressed, but my spirits were the lowest when I settled.

So, there’s been a couple times where I’ve reached a certain level of in business where I didn’t have to be on the truck all the time. I had some freedom to do what I wanted to do. I was making a decent amount of money. I started to settle. I started not to improve the business. I started not to push as hard. It only lasted for a month or so, but over just that one month I noticed a decline in business. I noticed I was sleeping in later and I really wasn’t as happy. We went to the beach more and I did a few other things and all of that, but I wasn’t as happy as when I was pushing hard and I had clear goals and all that sort of stuff.

So, settling is one of the things that you’ve got to avoid. I remember my grandfather, and I’ve seen several older people do this. I’ve had the privilege of being friends with a lot of older people. Growing up, I was in aviation through my dad. That was typically an older, most people were older that were in it because are people that could afford it. So, I was around with a lot of it at that time, 50 to 60-year-old that became 70 and 80-year-old. Many of which have passed on at this point. I’ve seen a lot of those guys, a lot of them had a lot of money being involved in aviation and a bunch of money. Those people, they always had goals. They always had a project they were working on, always improving. Always chasing something. I’ve seen others and my grandfather was the same way.

My grandfather had goals and ambitions at one point, but then he gave up on. I saw it as soon as he started watching TV and he wasn’t working anymore. He wasn’t striving for something. He was retired. I mean, you could just see him go down the hill and it started at that exact point. Some people may say “Maybe he’s health went down.” He quit engaging his mind. He quit engaging his body. He quit striving for something and that’s ultimately what people live for. I believe the human race lives for constant improvement. Somebody people are like, idea of improvement might be different than mine, but you’ve always got to be working on. As soon as you lose that ambition, you start sleeping in a lot more. You start getting too much sleep. You start getting sick more, you won’t have as much energy. You won’t be as happy and people will say that’s incorrect. Generally, the druggies, what are they? Most of the heavy drug users are lazy. They lay around a lot, so they get themselves into trouble. They get themselves into drugs and all that kind of stuff. Then they just deteriorate from them own.

Don’t settle on your income when you hit an income level that you were targeting, raise up your next income level and give it a big bump. Give it five times or 10 times the amount you’re currently make. Make it a goal that you have to work for and write that goal down once or twice a day beginning. I write my goals down the beginning of the day. I wrote my goals down at the end of the day and that keeps me pushing. If you’ve gotten a home, you’re really happy. Happy with guys and it’s your dream home or whatever. Well, start aiming for something else. If you’ve got a 3000 square foot home, aim for 5,000 or 6,000 homes or a big garage or something. Always look to improve your home. Your vehicle, look to improving your vehicle. When I get one vehicle and when I get a vehicle, I’m thinking already thinking about my next one. What’s my next one going to be? What am I going to get next? What’s it going to have than my current one that it doesn’t?  Your physical body I’m not the shape I want to be in. I push hard every day trying to get there. I was actually thinking about today, I wonder if I’ve gotten it about as far as I on my own. I wonder if I need to start investing the money in a personal trainer every single day just to really whip me into the shape that I want to be in. Your relationship, that’s the hard one. We got everything else going on. You got to make sure you’re not being content in your relationship. You’re not taking that particular person for granted. That you’re really pushing hard and that you’re trying to keep the heat in that relationship going. You’re putting time towards that relationship on purpose. I plan my day out. I plan with the time that I’m going to spend with my wife. All of that was planned out. My entire day is planned out from start to finish.

Your business, I enjoy growing a business more than anything else. I enjoy flying. I enjoyed cars. But growing the business, seeing a business grow. Expand and just seeing all the people I can help, that’s what gives me the most pleasure in life. I’m going to bang it as hard as I can every single chance I get to try and grow that business. I’ve got to go right now when I hit that goal. I got a couple different levels of goals. I got a one year ago and I got about a 10-year goal where I want to be in 10 years. We hit that goal in the next year. We might hit that 10-year goal by year 5 and when we hit that, I will be setting another goal. I’m going to be doing 5 or 10 times. what I was anticipating before Any dream and aspiration you have, you got to go after. You settle, the only reason you’re going to settle, it’s because you convince yourself that your dreams and ambitions are unattainable. In reality, all of it is because you’ve gotten sick and tired of the disappointments along the way and you can’t handle them. That’s tough. We go through disappointments all the time. Sometimes the other thing you’ll do is you’ll think about that 10-year goal. There’s so much that happens that has to happen in between that you’ll psych yourself out and you’ll say that is impossible. The thing is you’ve got envisioned. You’ve got to almost think that you already have that 10-year goal. This hadn’t been delivered yet, but you’ve got it. Then you set micro goals in between. You set milestones you have to accomplish all the way up to that 10-year goal. You got to be happy all the way along the way, but you’re going to be a lot happier when you’re going after it. You’re going to have hurt. You’re going to have disappointments that will last for a couple of days or a day. Maybe a couple of days. If it’s really bad, maybe a few weeks. You got to get over them. You got to keep pounding away on your bad days. You’ve got to be pounded on your good days. You got to be pounded every single day. You got to bang it as hard as you can and just chase after those goals. Chase after those ambitions, do not settle. You’re going to be your happiest.

You’re going to have the most energy when you’re working towards a goal. I guarantee it. Everybody, have a wonderful day. We’ll talk to you real soon. Let’s not settle today. If you got a schedule you’re pretty happy with it. You get 3 or 4 jobs on the schedule and making a good amount of money. Somebody calls you up and call you up last second. They call you up at 4:30. “Yeah, I’m going to take your business. I’ll be there. I’ll be there in an hour.” Take that job. Don’t settle for a good day. Chase after it. Chase after your goals. Chase after your ambitions and make all your dreams and aspirations come true and when they do come through, set more dreams and aspirations. Talk everybody real soon.

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Creating a Results Oriented Organization

Manage your people with kid gloves. Don’t create a high pressure environment. Make sure people leave on time. Pull people up, don’t push them! All of these previous sentences are littered throughout business books. Books written by college professors and managers of large corporations. It’s a bunch of bologna. No if, and, butts about it. It’s crap. You’ve done a great job building your junk removal business by the sweat of your brow. You are now at the point where you got to kick it into the next gear. The only way to do that is to start hiring more people. But it is imperative that you get the same or better results from them as you got from yourself. And, always remember one thing. The reason you hire anybody is for profits. It is to make you or your business partners more money. That is it. Get rid of any pie in the sky mentality that you want to hire people in order to provide needed jobs to people and better your community. Don’t kid yourself. You need people to make your company more money. That’s it.

Here are the keys to managing your people to get them to make you the most Guala Guala.

1. Understand that you hired them to make you more money: Don’t ever hire someone because you feel sorry for them. That will never turn out well. Instead you will start feeling sorry for yourself that you ever hired them in the first place. You hire people to save you time and make you more money.
2. Train them to properly do their job: Make sure you have documented training manuals and a well thought out training program complete with checklists to ensure no training is missed. You are setting your team members up for failure if you don’t properly train them. Train them to meet or exceed your well documented work standards.
3. Monitor them to make sure they are doing their job correctly through meeting and occasional supervision: Once a week have them meet with you or their manager/team and have them outline tasks and deadlines for the week ahead. When they are new check in with them daily to monitor progress. Once they are more established you won’t have to check over them as closely. If they still require close supervision after months of working with your company they might want to find another position or another job. You should have people that can complete tasks and meet deadlines without direct supervision. In the case of truck team members you should ensure they are placing courtesy calls, do customer follow up calls, check over truck cleanliness, make sure they are getting review requests out, etc. Everyone should have firing orders on what they are expected to do and you should be ensuring they are carrying out those tasks completely.
4. Call them out on anything they are doing wrong: Let them know if anything is not being done correctly. Make sure they know how to do the job properly. Meet with them a time or two. If they can’t fix it then you might want to get rid of them or find them a different position they would be better suited for. Remember, all tasks are important. If you let them slip on one task they could very well slip on another.
5. Hold regular performance evaluations: Make it clear to them that they know how they are doing and what they need to do to improve. If you aren’t meeting with them they don’t think you care. If they think you don’t care then they won’t care. Not a good thing.
6. Expect your people to meet deadlines and stay however long it takes: By making it clear that your people are expected to meet deadlines and complete their days tasks no matter how long it takes you will find that people will become more efficient. They will cut out the extra long lunches, the water cooler talks, the extra coffee break, etc. They will still focused on achieving their task. If they have to stay way late all the time you need to look into their efficiency and try to help them get things done quicker so they don’t have to stay late all the time. That isn’t good for their family life. And if their family life suffers. And if they suffer and get depressed their work will suffer. Not good. Also, if they are hourly you are paying them for the extra time. Also, not good. Expect your people to complete their tasks every day no matter what.
7. Turnover is a good thing: Nothing kicks people into high gear and puts them on their toes than a constant round of hiring. Treat your organization like a college basketball team. Be constantly bringing in the best people you can. Train them up and see how they perform relative to others in your organization. The ones that perform the best get the playing time. The ones that don’t ride the bench or get cut. Management books caution against turnover. I like it. I like constantly bringing people in and kicking people that can’t perform out. Bring em’ in. Kick em’ out. This has been the greatest change we’ve ever made to managing our people. We had guys that just did as little as possible to get a pay check become kick ass team members from this one change. They saw new people coming in and passing them. They didn’t like it and got motivated to perform. Turnover is a good thing. Always be hiring!
8. Longevity doesn’t matter: Experience matters. Longevity doesn’t. Experience can make you make better decisions. A motivated and experienced team member is worth more than a motivated and inexperienced team member. However, longevity doesn’t matter. The present is all that matters. If you have a two month guy who is outperforming a five year guy then the two month guy should get the PT or the spot. The five year guy needs to pickup his game or leave the organization. If you have a five or ten year guy in your sites and they tell you or act like they deserve it because they have been with you for ten years. Because they have been so good for ten years. Make sure they understand that you appreciate what they did int he past but presents results matter. Either pickup your game or leave.
9. Everyone, including you, goes lame: All race horses go lame. All employees, including you go lame as well. It is important that when anyone goes lame you try to figure out why. Is it something that can be corrected? Are they simply bored? Can you move them to a different position to get them re-enthused? You will lose interest in doing certain things within your business as well. It is important at that point to hire someone to do the task you aren’t interested in doing anymore. Otherwise your whole organization will suffer.
10. Don’t allow anyone to get to comfortable: This applies to yourself probably more than anyone else. It is easy for the business owner to get comfortable. He has to self motivate himself. He doesn’t have someone threatening to cut his job if his performance slacks. The only way to not get comfortable is to constantly be setting and achieving goals. Every time a goal is achieved you should be ready to have another go back in its place. Always have something you are working towards or your performance will suffer. And as far as your team members make sure they feel the pressure to perform. If they don’t have the pressure they will start to slack off.
11. Consider tying peoples pay into performance: I do believe in some types of pull management. Try to motivate your people by allowing them to share a piece of the pie. When they perform better they make more money. Come up with a structure where people are rewarded for the success of the company. DO NOT CAP THEIR PAY. If you set up this structure do not cap their pay once they reach a certain level. The only reason this is done is because of selfishness. You don’t want them to make more than a certain amount. Maybe you don’t want them to make more than you. Do not do this. You want your people super motivated. Once they hit their cap they are going to start being resentful. And the late business is just as good as the early business.
12. Recognize and reward performance that exceeds expectations: Anytime you get someone who is constantly exceeding expectations recognize and reward them. These people are few and far between. Make sure to take care of the few ones you find. Try to promote them into positions if possible.
13. Always remember you owe it to yourself to have the most profitable business possible: You’ve taken on risk and devoted your entire life on your business. You are always thinking about your business and working a ton on it. Even with your family you are often thinking about your business. Don’t get caught in the trap of cutting team members slack all the time because you “don’t need the money”. That is a bunch of malarkey. You owe it to yourself and your family to make as much money as possible. And you aren’t doing your team members any favors. Expect them to perform and they will enjoy their job much more. And if they don’t you need to get rid of them.

This whole article is pretty ruthless. Your environment should not always be ruthless. It should be filled with a culture that rewards people who are doing well. You should wish people happy birthday and celebrate their work or life successes. But everyone must know that you expect results in your organization. By expecting and enforcing deadlines and results and by constantly bringing in new people, you will find that an organization will form with a crazy good culture that makes a bunch of money. Every business owners dream.

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The importance of customer reviews and how to get them

The three big factors that JRA focuses on improving for our customer’s are their AdWords results, their organic placement, and customer reviews. Improving AdWords and SEO is expensive. To do a good job you would spend at minimum $2,000 a month to improve AdWords and SEO. However, simply getting good reviews and more reviews on Google, Yelp, Facebook, Angie’s List, Home Advisor, Thumb Tack and more can increase your business tremendously. The best part, it’s free! Almost nothing in this business works well when it is free. Getting lots of good reviews is free (or darn near close to it) and can have a huge impact for your business.

So, how exactly do you get better reviews? It’s a multi step process.

     > Get lots of customers

        > Obviously if you don’t have the jobs then you won’t have the opportunity to get lots of reviews. You need to be on AdWords and doing SEO. However, Adwords will run you out of house and home if you try to self manage. You will get lots of clicks for things you don’t do. Just kiss that money good bye. You also need to be getting exposure through every avenue you can.

     > Do great work

       > Show up when you say you are coming. Give them a firm price up front. Work quickly and carefully. Sweep up when done. Do all the little things and the big things right. You won’t get good reviews if you don’t do good work, obviously. And customers are really much more likely to post a review if you do an excellent job.

     > Ask for the review

                      

        > Studies have shown you get over 80 percent more reviews when you ask the customer to leave a review. Some providers are hesitant to do this as they feel they are coming off pushy. Nonsense. You have just done this customer a huge favor, something they are glad they didn’t have to do. You have done a great job. Many customers want to do whatever they can do to help you. So after you accept payment ask the customer something like this: “John, thank you so much for your business today. If you wouldn’t mind, I’d love to be able to send you an email with links to leave us a review. Would you be willing to let us know and other potential customers know how we did today? Would that be OK?” If they say yes then respond back and say, “Excellent, John. I look forward to reading what you have to say.” That last little bit is very subtle. But that last line is huge. You have thanked them for a service they have not yet completed. They will be much more likely to follow up and actually post the review now.

     > Have a standard email and follow the rules

       

      > You need to have a standard email you send to your customers that thanks them for the business and asks them to click on a link of their choice below to post a review. Yelp doesn’t allow you to ask a customer for a review or send a link so don’t. Google used to allow you to only send links to customers that ranked you highly. They no longer do that now. You must send a link to all customers once you have asked them to rate your service. There used to be some services you could use that would send customers who give a negative star rating to a feedback page and send customers who are happy to Google, Yelp, Facebook, etc. Google no longer allows that.

     > Reward team members for getting reviews

       > Once you are off the truck one of the hardest things is getting your team members to ask the customer to leave a review. You might need to reward them for getting reviews otherwise they will quit asking for them.

Once you have great reviews the chances of a customer booking goes way up. It is a great way to increase the results you are getting from AdWords and SEO. Many customers will click on your ad, view your site, go back to Google to then look at reviews, and look at your organic placement as well. If you have a good website, a good Ad, and good organic placement you still might miss out on a lot of customers who want to see proof that you do good work. Testimonials on your website won’t cut it. You need Google reviews, Yelp reviews, and reviews on other advertising platforms that you use. Just because you have a great site doesn’t mean you will get the business if you don’t have the great reviews. However, if you have great reviews but your site isn’t as good you could still very well get the job. I don’t recommend that route but it is used as an example of how important reviews are. 

Close those deals guys and let’s blow up your business in 2018.

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What is Customer Acquisition Management (CAM)?

Customer Acquisition Management (CAM) is a service that we provide to existing business owners and is included for the first three months for businesses that buy our complete business package. It is the most comprehensive marketing product available for junk removal customers.  CAM is basically a complete audit of your website, PPC advertising (if you are doing), SEO, booking operations, referral programs, and all other advertising methods. We review anything related to you earning new customers as well as getting your past customer to schedule again and to get them to refer business your way. The initial steps in CAM, which are all preferred by JRA, are as follows.

> Review your Website: JRA will review your site to ensure that it should convert customers that visit your site. We will likely make some recommendations at this point for either changes to be made on your site, or potentially to move forward with a new website.

> Review AdWords (if applicable): If you are currently or have ever done AdWords we will look at past results, study your ad copy, study your landing pages, and determine the success and failure of your different ads.

> Study your market: A survey will be completed on your market to determine which overall strategy JRA believes you should take to acquire more customers and earn the highest profits.  Many competitors websites will be visited, AdWords will be studied, SEO will be studied on them, they will be called, and much info will be gained on your competition. Some strategies JRA has that are used depending on a customer’s unique situation are best rated, locally owned, lowest price,  most environmentally friendly, and more. JRA will be looking for an opportunity for any other type of campaign that we believe would benefit you as well.

> Ensure you are listed on Google, Yelp, Angie’s List, Facebook, and other major sites as well as databases. If you aren’t JRA will add you.

> Study your sites current performance on SEO.

> Study all other advertising that is being used.

> Study how your company handles operations. How do you answer the phone? Are you getting same day bookings? And so forth.

> Once JRA has a thorough picture of your current environment we will then make a recommendation for what we believe your overall strategy should be in order to have a significant gain in customers.

Though JRA can provide just AdWords or just SEO we strongly recommend against this move. Success with advertising is a multi faceted approach. This is one of the largest mistakes we see businesses make. They do a little of this and a little of that. They might not find the success they were hoping for. So then they abandon most advertising all together. They then doom their business to being average or mediocre. JRA can assist you with using proven advertising strategies to help you reach a level of success beyond what you ever thought possible with your junk removal business.

CAM is NOT an instantaneous influx of new customers. It is very much an investment that likely will take several months before significant gains are seen in the number of customers and job profitability. All of JRA’s services are a flat rate. And we also understand the junk removal business like no one else. What that means is we understand the type of customer that will use our service. We also understand which type of customer will NOT use our service. We also are looking at the profitability of certain jobs. For jobs with lower profit we attempt to severely lower the cost to acquire that particular customer. Unlike other AdWords management or SEO companies that do work on a lot of different businesses you have one company that focuses exclusively on junk removal and making sure your business not only gains more customers, but gains more profitable customers.

CAM is not cheap. This is a major project that for JRA to undertake and we charge accordingly. Though there are many packages for CAM on average pricing will generally run around $3,000 for Month 1,  $2,000 for months 2-5, and around $1,250 for month 6 on out. However, this pricing could vary either direction depending on your current setup and your goals with the campaign. However, like many investments, if you try to go cheap on CAM and just “dabble” you could very well be throwing money away and missing out on a great opportunity to gain a lot of business.

Should you be interested or have questions about CAM please call our office at 919-466-9322 or email lee@junkremovalauthority.com. Also, remember to check out our Youtube channel for lots of great information.

The post What is Customer Acquisition Management (CAM)? appeared first on Junk Removal Authority.

What to do with your “Junk”?

What do I do with the stuff once I pick it up? That is a common question that is posed to me from current and prospective junk removal business owners.  They want to be able to get all their jobs done but they really want to sell stuff too. They feel like by donating and recycling the stuff they are missing out on income from item sales. That is partly true. But one of the keys to growing a business is to make sure you spend your time where it is best spent. Remember, you are in the junk REMOVAL business not the junk RESELLING business.

So, we will start right off where everybody wants to. When should I sell it? There are a few factors that play into that:

• What does your customer want done with the item: If they expected it to be donated then you should try to donate it. If they expect the donation receipt get them the receipt.
• Will selling the items get you off schedule: You never want to be late to a customer. Remember, you are in the REMOVAL business and not the RESELL business. Don’t let resell take away from the removal which is the bread and butter of your business.
• Have a value threshold: Remember, selling items isn’t all profit. You have to take pictures, list it for sell, respond to buyers, possibly clean it, and meet the buyer. There is a lot of time that can be taken up. It probably isn’t worth your time to sell a $20 item. And, it might not be worth you or your team members time to bring a load back to your facility if it is under, say $300-$400 of value. And if you are busy that threshold would be even higher. When we first started we had a value threshold of $700 because we were so busy. The fact we said no to selling most of the items at the start allowed us to do more junk removal jobs than anybody. It made sure that we were able to accommodate same day service which is 20 percent of our business. And it allowed us to be able to get out and sell our removal service. We got flap all the time from friends and people we know that owned estate sale companies that were like, “Dude, you need to sell the stuff. You are donating or junking thousands and thousands of dollars of stuff.” They weren’t lying. I bet we’ve passed on over a half million worth of stuff since we started. But I guarantee you that we’ve gotten at least three times the amount of business. Steve Jobs once said that your success is not made with the things you say yes too, but instead the things you say no too. Remember that. Saying no is one of the reasons JD is at $2 Million a year in sales where some of our competitors, in business just as long, are at about $300,000 or less.
• Space available: Remember, you need storage space. Storage space costs money. Is it worth paying $1500 a month for warehouse space to sell $2000-$3000 worth of stuff? Probably not.
• Focus more on sales when you hit a gross sales threshold: For us it was $1 Million for our Raleigh location. That was when it was worth the space. That was when we were able to take a dispatch guy and have him also do sales. So it helped us to have one guy other than Christian or myself do dispatch. Sales helped pay for him. It was worth it then.

When should items be recycled?

• If you have a majority load of general scrap steel type items I would take it straight to a scrap yard normally.
• If you have just a few scrap pieces it probably isn’t worth holding onto it unless you were already heading back to your shop. At that point it could be worth having a trailer or a dumpster that you put general scrap in.
• Always retain copper, car batteries, brass, and other metals that don’t take up a lot of space but pay a lot. Build up a good amount at your shop and make a metal run every so often. HAVE CAMERAS ON THIS STUFF AND LOCK IT UP. Thieves love copper and batteries and will steal it in a heart beat. It doesn’t take much copper to have $300 or $400 worth.
• Balance your time: Again, before you go through items to separate the metals determine if it is actually worth it.

When should items be donated?

• Pretty much anytime you aren’t selling or recycling the stuff and it is easy to get too or enough volume to drastically decrease your disposal fees.
• If your customer expects you to attempt to donate it.
• If a donation center is closer than a drop off facility and by donating an item or two you might able to combine your next job.

What donation or recycling percentages should you have?

• I don’t think there is a number. And for these companies out here that claim they recycle or donate 80 percent of what they bring in I call that a big pile of stinky bull shit. There is no way. On our website we tell our customers we will attempt to donate and recycle stuff, but we are not sorting through bags and boxes. If they want small stuff to be donated then they need to have it pre-sorted or pay us a labor rate to do so. If we have a load of nice stuff we will make sure to drop it off at a donation center or sell it. It is the right thing to do and it works out for us financially. But we aren’t going to spend hours more time sorting through stuff to discover a few odds and ends to donate.

There is not a hard and fast rule on what you should do with your stuff. I wish there was. We love standardization. But so much of this is subjective. However, I will tell you, generally with selling items less is more. You will definitely get rid of some valuable stuff but I have seen the proof that you will get several times that back with your primary business. And the REMOVAL is scaleable. The RESELL is much harder to scale. Remember, you are in the junk REMOVAL business not the junk RESELL business.

Good luck building your business this week!

-Lee Godbold

919-466-9322

The post What to do with your “Junk”? appeared first on Junk Removal Authority.