by Jim Mastin Sr
Well, I guess that is somewhat dependent on the nature of the business. If you are selling marbles for five cents, you better go for quantity. But this article will primarily be read by contractors and people dealing with home improvement needs. So, with that in mind, I’ll have to go with quality every time.
When I was doing contracting many years ago, we took pains to make sure we did the job just right. Often times, it cut into our profits to do that, especially when a job was not going well. But, in the long run, a satisfied customer was more valuable than a few extra dollars at the end of the job.
With that in mind, we have always tried to maintain that same level of service in the other companies we have started. Then, when we decided to enter the contractor lead generating arena, we were slammed in the face with quantity over quality. The name of the game was quickly made apparent to me as I studied our potential competition. Crank out as many leads as possible, sell them as fast as possible, and go to the bank and make a deposit before contractors found out most of the leads weren’t all that great.
So, pretty quick on our journey we had some hard decisions to make. Would we change our long time philosophy of quality over quantity so we could compete in this venture? After studying the competition, we began putting together our business plan. Those of you that have been following us from the start, a year ago, know some of the journey we have been on. We decided early on not to charge contractors for leads, but rather for actual jobs they got. We felt that was a step of quality. But, then we felt we did not have a way to assure the customer they were getting a good contractor – no quality there. So, we rolled out the Pre-Certification program for the contractors.
We felt good about that, but then, we felt we were not giving the contractor as much quality as we could because some of the customers would not be profitable leads, as many would be just shoppers or people not really interested in doing a project anytime soon, or had no idea what it might cost. Again, back to the drawing table.
We then introduced a program that would provide only legitimate leads. We did that by partnering with a “lead qualifying” company to screen every potential customer before the contractor was bothered with a poor lead. The company that came with us agreed to a really great price for offering such a great product. Fortunately, they have the same mindset as us, that QUALITY is better than quantity. Will our profit margin be less than our competition? You bet! Will our partnering company make less per job than usual? Of course! So why do it?
Because we truly believe QUALITY IS BETTER THAN QUANTITY in this kind of business. And, you know, life will end one day and we really don’t want to look back and be ashamed at a product we asked good people to pay for. We hope you feel the same way about your business.
If you, as a contractor, want to be a part of what we are trying to do, feel free to jump on the website and register anytime.
If you as a customer like what we are trying to do, visit our website the next time you have a home improvement need and give us a try. There is no charge for customers for any of our services.
Best wishes!
Contractor Link 
Quality gives birth to quantity in just the right amounts!
Well said, Ray, seen that many times. Keep up the good work.
That is so true in the contracting business. Quality will get you referrals and customers will always use you again. Today we finished a house for a customer that we’ve painted four houses for and these are all repaints and while living in them and they sent a review to Preferred Contractor and reviews on some other pages. We didn’t do anything except our job, but it was done right as they all are. Not only is word of mouth great advertising, its free.
Well said and right on target!
Balancing quality/quantity=value is the art, isn’t it? For those entering the profession, they may have been trained in the quality aspects, but continue to take on more jobs than they can handle because they don’t know the correct quantity that they can manage, making the overall value suffer.