John Carmichael realised that he needed to do something dramatically different if his Edinburgh-based business was to remain strong.

The recession was taking its toll on the building trades, people he had known for years were hinting at closure, and news headlines offered a continuous diatribe of doom and gloom.

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John Carmichael, the managing director of Superwarm Services, caught the business growth wave when sales doubled inside 6 months.

Doing his best to fight back, John followed the traditional tactics he could see his competitors using – putting more funds towards bigger and more frequent adverts, and updating his website.

He had minor success with Google’s Adwords pay-per-click service.  When leads came, he fought hard to win work by offering aggressive discounts.

The problem with discounting, especially aggressive discounting, is that your costs stay the same.  In effect, you are just slicing profits off the top of the job, so you end up working for next to nothing.  And if the job goes at all wrong, or over-runs, you can even be making a loss.

On top of this, he simply needed far more enquiries.

His diary pretty empty where there should have been bookings.  All the enjoyment of being in business was replaced with the anxiety of what would happen if things got any worse.

After laying off staff, he sat tight and hoped for a while that the economy would become easier again.  Eventually, he came to the decision to get some help.

John had already built really strong customer service approach, which we strengthened through introducing what he called his 10 Commandments of Super Service.  One part of his promise what that his business would leave the client’s home cleaner than when they arrived.

He was generating a few enquiries, although when we measured we discovered that less than 1 in 3 were converting into sales.

Introducing a methodical sales process and completely revamping his approach to written quotations very quickly turned this up to 50% conversion, making it a very quick win indeed.

Next, we developed some far better marketing, using a combination of offline and Internet strategies.

Simultaneously, we did a detailed review of John’s prices. His quality of service was undeniably “premium”, and so – despite a recession – we increased his prices accordingly, moving his business into the premium level.

The result was a 98% increase in sales in just 6 months, the diary booked 6 weeks ahead and a very positive outlook for the future.

The business expanded, new vehicles were purchased and additional engineers recruited to handle the extra business and he’s continued to go from strength to strength.

*Disclaimer and Contact Information

Not all businesses will achieve results of this nature or with this speed.  Superwarm Services’ results are not typical for every client; John worked extraordinarily hard to implement the advice, strategies and actions from the coaching programme.  Your results may vary depending upon your industry, your specific situation and the effort you put into your business.

John Carmichael will be happy to confirm these results and can be contacted via his website Superwarm Services Limited, Edinburgh.