Business is Slow? Counting Cost & Cutting Costs

Summary

In this episode of the Off the Ladder podcast, Branden Sewell discusses strategies for home service business owners to navigate slow business periods. He emphasizes the importance of understanding financial metrics, maintaining marketing efforts, and creatively negotiating with vendors to cut costs without sacrificing lead generation. The conversation provides actionable insights for business owners to thrive even in challenging times.

Takeaways

It's crucial to know your numbers to respond effectively.
Track KPIs related to sales and production.
Don't cut marketing; it's essential for lead generation.
Negotiate with vendors to lower costs.
Be proactive in understanding sales patterns.
Double down on marketing during slow seasons.
Explore creative partnerships for cost savings.
Regularly review job costing to improve profitability.
Maintain relationships with past clients for future work.
Use data to make informed business decisions.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Business Slowdowns
01:57 Understanding Marketing Costs
04:50 Strategies for Cost Cutting
09:09 Final Thoughts on Marketing and Growth

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Transcript

Branden Sewell (00:01.486)
Hi everybody, Brennan Soule, owner of Seal Pro Painting, located in central Florida, host of the Off the Ladder podcast, and we exist to help home service business owners learn so that they can lead well and ultimately live life off of the ladder. Welcome back to another episode. This is part of a series of episodes that I'm doing based on what to do when business is slow. So if you find yourself in a season,

where things have slowed down and you're just kind of trying to figure out what can I do? How can I get through this season? And sometimes these are seasons that you know are going to come. This could be seasonal services that you offer that are affected by weather seasons. Maybe you're in the north and the snow and the cold effects, the services that you offer.

Or maybe you're just in a season where out of nowhere things just slow down and there's no real rhyme or reason to it. This series of episodes that I've put out have been just some tips and pointers that you can use to help build some momentum and get work in the door. Over the past few episodes, here are a few things just to go over and recap. We've talked about calling your past clients.

We've talked about doing a monthly newsletter that builds relationship, not sales. Sending out handwritten thank you cards. That could be to past customers or customers that you're trying to earn. Hitting the street and doing door to door.

and then doubling down on networking relationships and one-to-ones referrals, things like that. And that leads us to today, which is point number six out of 10. So again, I'm doing 10 things. I'm doing short to the point episodes for this, just to give you quick actionable advice. So for today, what we're gonna talk about is counting the cost of marketing.

Branden Sewell (02:16.338)
and cutting, knowing what to cut and when to cut and giving you some strategies. So this is the biggest thing that I will tell you. First off, you have to get into a habit of knowing your numbers. And I know that's such a cliche saying, but the more that you get into a habit of looking at your numbers and data that is

you know, basically being created in the background of your business. The more you look at that data, the more you're going to see how things are trending and be able to respond appropriately. Now I've had to learn this the hard way. There were seasons where like, yes, I was creating the data. The data was there, but I was not looking at it frequently. And I wasn't putting enough eyes on it. And so I wasn't able to respond.

to what was happening in the background in my business, which led to harder times. So what looking at your numbers will do is it's gonna help you pick up on what's happening before it's happening and before it's too late. And so there's a lot of things that you can look at, but...

I mean, you need to be just tracking some KPIs on both your sales side of things and on production. You know, with sales, you need to be tracking how many leads are you bringing in? How many are you converting? The ones that you are converting, what's your average job size? You know, you want to look at where your sales are at each month. Where are you trending?

you know, and kind of just look for

Branden Sewell (04:08.59)
patterns in that, you know, what is your average conversion rate each month for the year, whatever. What, how many leads are you aiming for for the year to hit your goals? And how are you stacking up with that? Are are leads slowing down? Do you need to try work on getting more leads? Or is, are you just not converting well? And then maybe you are converting well, but your average job size is too low and you need to get your average job size up. And so,

all of those things you need to be watching. And then on the production side of things, know, like how's job costing going? Are you looking at every job? Are you seeing like at the end of the job? How did we do? Did we lose money? Did we break even? Did we make a good profit margin? What does that look like? And if you're not looking at those things, you can't make adjustments, you can't correct, you can't improve. And trust me, I'm not telling you this because

I've always had that all together. That's something that I've worked on and I'm getting better at. Now we do a weekly meeting where my whole production team comes together and we look at production. We have a sales meeting, we go over sales, we look at the numbers, we look at everything in detail, and we're tracking all of these things that I'm telling you, and it helps. But just to get to the next point is...

count the costs, and what I mean by that is look at it, look at the numbers, and then cut. Now, first recommendation I'm gonna make is the last thing you wanna cut is marketing. So if you're marketing and you're bringing in leads and you have effective lead sources that are producing leads, don't cut those marketing costs. You don't wanna stop bringing in leads if it's bringing in leads and it's effective.

But something that I will say is there's other ways that you can cut costs and increase margin and kind of alleviate the pressures during times that are slow. So go to your vendors.

Branden Sewell (06:25.034)
Look at opportunities. Can you negotiate your costs down with your vendors? Can you negotiate your pricing? Can you talk to your vendors that you have really strong relationships with and ask how you can partner together to maybe co-brand marketing, working on co-branding, know, whatever, apparel, for example, these shirts.

I worked with Sharon Williams on, and they have our logos on the back, Sharon Williams on the front, and Sharon Williams helps with the cost of these shirts for myself and my team. So, you know, go to these vendors and you negotiate those things. And you can go to any vendor that you use for your business and negotiate partnering, partnering together.

in ways that are gonna bring value to them, but also to you. Another great example is like my partnership with Jobber. They bring incredible value to my business and in turn, I provide them value. You can create brand partnerships where maybe they pay you to do create content.

You can go to different vendors that you use, whether it's software or whatever, and say, hey, I'm going to create content for you on my social media channels, and in turn for creating this content, can we get XYZ? Maybe that's getting paid, maybe that's helping with apparel for your cruise, maybe that's tools.

Hey, I'll make these. We have this reach, you know, through our social media channels. And, you we have this influence. If we put out this content, can we get this tool? You know, there's just so much you can do and you don't know until you ask. So ask those questions to those vendors and partners that you're already working with them, right? You just...

Branden Sewell (08:36.136)
maybe not getting everything that you could out of that relationship because you haven't asked. So ask those questions. Hey, what would I need to do to get some to cut my cost on these materials? What would I need to do to potentially get, you know, this tool at a discounted price? We need this tool. What options do I have?

So anyway, be creative, get creative on how you can work with vendors and work with partners to cut your costs. You know, and then I'd go, I'd say again, any overhead costs that you have, whether it's your insurance, you know, whatever it is, negotiate that, see if you can cut costs on things like that, shop around, reshop insurance. There's

There's a lot of areas where we spend money as a business owner and we may not be getting the best price or the best return because we haven't asked. So that's my advice for today. Make the last thing that you cut marketing, if anything, double down on your marketing because the first thing that I learned this from Tommy Mello, listened to his podcast for years in times where

Things slow down one of the first things that companies will do is they'll cut costs on their marketing. It's not a very smart idea But that is that's one of the first things I'll do they'll cut their their marketing spend and One thing that I learned from Tommy Mello years ago was that in those times that's when you want to double down because that's when you can take up market share

when others are cutting, making decisions out of fear, cutting that marketing spend, cutting that advertising spend, you cut costs in others other ways and then double down on your marketing and ad spend and take up market share.

Branden Sewell (10:36.876)
So anyway, that's my advice for this video. I'm go ahead and end this podcast episode. If you need any other resources, check the show notes below. Again, please use my links. I do get credit if you use any of my resources using my affiliate links. Please like, comment, share this video with somebody else and help them share the series of these videos.

and help people who might need ideas for when business is slow. If you're listening on any major podcast platform, please rate and review the show and help us reach more people. Thank you so much for tuning into the Off the Ladder podcast and I will see you next time on the next episode.