5-10+ jobs with deposits paid a month
There are too many cowboys out there. Everyone wants to sign as many clients as they can. Almost nobody cares about the results they generate.
Everything you need to know about picking a partner who actually delivers
We send this conversation to owners who have already been burned once. With Brian we covered the part most people never say out loud: what it feels like to have paid several marketing companies and got nothing back.
If you have hired an agency and quietly got rid of them, if you have tried buying referrals, or if your work still arrives in waves with nothing in between, this one is worth your time.
- Brian went through many marketing companies before us
- He tried buying referrals. It didn't work.
- He got rid of the ones that weren't performing
- Twenty years in the trade, twelve men, six vans, and still growing
If You're Too Busy To Take This On
Before any of it, the objection we hear most: I couldn't handle more work anyway.
Being booked out looks like the luxury position. It usually isn't. It's a trap, and nearly always it means you are underpriced.
Follow it through. You can't hire, because the margin isn't there to carry another wage. You can't raise your prices, because almost every job came through word of mouth — the customer's friends, their relatives, half the estate — and they all know roughly what you charge. And you can't even test a higher price, because the work arrives in waves and you daren't lose the one job in front of you.
So you stay exactly where you are. Flat out, unable to buy yourself time, and quietly carrying the cheapest prices in your area.
Brian was in that position, and he says so on camera. He stopped working with us once — not because the campaign failed, but because he couldn't do the sales himself. Three years in, he's now at twelve men and six vans with turnover expected at 1.5 this year, and when we asked how far he can push it on residential alone, he answered two.
That is what breaks the cycle. Not working harder — a consistent enough flow of work that hiring stops being a gamble and your price stops being set by the last person who recommended you.
Uri went through the same door: "It's enabled us to grow the business… in the last couple of months I hired another person, because I have the confidence the leads are there."
Feast and Famine
Brian built Óg Engineering on word of mouth. Twenty years in the industry meant contacts, and contacts meant projects. But referrals arrive in clumps.
"You could be up to 10, 15 referrals one week and then zero the next week. So there was no consistency."
That inconsistency costs more than most owners realise. In his words: "There's no point in paying someone a salary to go and chase leads and there's no leads coming in because the referrals have been slow one week."
Referrals are a great first channel. They are a poor only channel.
Here is what another one of our clients told us about the companies he worked with, until he found us.
“"We worked with several lead generation companies and other marketing companies. The results were poorly. We didn't get any result, or we got very unsatisfactory result. We didn't get support."
That is the standard most owners have been trained to expect. Big names, small effort, nobody answering when something goes wrong. We built the opposite deliberately. You speak to us every two weeks, the numbers stay open, and when something isn't working we are the ones who say it first.
He Left. Then He Came Back.
This is the part we did not expect him to say on camera.
"I used you, and it was through no fault of your own that we stopped using you. It was because I had labour issues my side of things and I just couldn't do the sales myself. But as soon as I restructured and I got guys in, I gave you the call straight away to pick up where we left off, and it's been great ever since."
Brian stopped working with us because his own capacity ran out, not because the campaign did. The moment he had the team to handle the work, he came back. That is worth more than any number we could put in a headline.
This is what James said about why he picked us in the first place.
“"It said what it was going to do. It said what it wasn't going to do, which everybody else omits from their presentations."
It is why we make the same offer to everyone. Brian's version of it: "Just as you said to me initially, you said give us six weeks. Let's see what happens after six weeks. You don't like it, stop. It's your call."
The System Underneath
Leads are only half of it. The other half is what happens after the phone rings.
"You do need to have a solid CRM in place. You need someone who's tracking. You don't let the calls go amiss. That initial 'we're still thinking about it' turns into a sale, whether it be eight weeks later, twelve weeks later."
Brian does not want to live in the detail, and he shouldn't have to. "I need to be able to log on wherever I am and see what's going on. And not just for me as the owner. The sales guys, they're the ones who are looking at the portal more than me."
Deposits, Not Promises
"This month alone, and we're halfway through the month, I think we've done five projects turnaround. When I say turnaround, that's deposits paid. So that's not someone saying yeah, we're signing up. This is someone who signed up. Deposits in the bank account."
Halfway through a month. Money in, not intentions logged.
WHAT IS IMPORTANT FOR YOU
- Referrals are a channel, not a plan. If your week can swing from fifteen to zero, the problem isn't effort. It's consistency.
- Judge an agency by what it refuses to promise. The ones who tell you what won't happen are the ones telling the truth about what will.
- The CRM isn't admin, it's revenue. Most of Brian's sales were "still thinking about it" first.
- Measure in deposits. Leads, appointments and quotes are progress. Deposits are the only number that pays wages.
Satisfied Contracting and Trades Businesses