Have I started the wrong business?

[periosehperi]

I have been working on my business now for about 6 months, officially went live with it a couple months ago. Since going live in about 2 months I've only had about 4/5 leads. Literally averaging about 2 leads per month. Those leads, haven't necessarily gone cold, I'm still speaking with them.

My business is home gyms and saunas. We would do everything from design, supply, building works and installs.

I feel I'm competing with all the big dogs in the industry and there is simply not enough work to go around?

Am I throwing in the towel too early? I am committed to making this work, I'm just worried I'm wasting my time.

UK based. 23 years old.

Anyone been in a similar situation?

Thanks guys

 

[peppapixl]

@periosehperi Take this with a grain of salt because I've never done a business like the one you're describing so I don't know timelines between lead generation and completion of project or even the market for you.

That sounds like a pretty niche business with a high ticket price. I think if you're getting a couple leads a month and you can see it becoming profitable, then I'd stick with it for a little longer. Even more so if this is a side business that you're hoping to turn into full-time.

 

[periosehperi]

@peppapixl Thanks for the advice. Yep it's just a side hustle at the moment.

The time scale between lead to sale, is a long process.

 

[angie4777]

@periosehperi target the higher income areas, go knock some doors, leave some flyers out

 

[peppapixl]

@periosehperi If it’s a long process then I think you should stick with it if you believe it has potential to what you want to do.

Maybe reach out to the competition in the area as a prospective client to see what they do differently?

 

[georgewaini]

@peppapixl This right here, I worked in roofing sales and once a month we’d get a quote from a random company in the area to see their prices/sales process.

You learn a lot.

 

[anmarcos]

@periosehperi The main question that needs to be looked at is how are you getting leads?

I can tell you that those big companies are probably doing paid ads and cold outreach

 

[inchrist1]

@periosehperi I would think in sub segment out of your target audience. For example, women in rural areas even you could go further to women working in white collar job in rural areas. Focus on pain points and marketing messaging for them. Utilize Chat GPT to write such tasks. Good luck.

 

[nunon101]

@periosehperi You best be praying for another pandemic with lock downs lol.

 

[periosehperi]

@nunon101 hahahah I know. Im hearing some crazy stories lol

 

[ayeensavedbygrace]

@periosehperi What did your market research tell you?

 

[periosehperi]

@ayeensavedbygrace That there are a lot of companies doing exactly what I want to do and make a lot of money

 

[rls]

@periosehperi That's a good thing. That means there are a lot of potential customers out there for you. How many of the leads have you converted? How are you getting leads?

 

[periosehperi]

@rls yeah, like mentioned above - I'm struggling on getting leads. These companies seem to always have new projects hiring big teams ect and I can't seem to generate any leads. In the 2 months since starting ive only had a handful of leads. These leads are still warm, just the time scale from lead to conversion takes a long time.

 

[handpercussive]

@periosehperi How are you actually getting leads? Do you have a good website (even something simple) with some photos of your work and booking links for a free consultation?

Paying for some FB / Instagram ads are a great way to generate some traffic to your site.. you can use a tool like Swipe Pages to generate some A/B testing with a couple different landing page designs.

If you don't have a budget for a site, a tool like Book Like a Boss will give you a basic information site along with your scheduling tool.. then if/when you have more of a budget you can keep using the same scheduling tool and embed the booking widget on your page.

You might also look at finding companies in your area that do renovations for client homes that use contractors for some speciality requirements: this will let you white label your skills to companies that you can prove yourself to .. once they see what sort of work you do, that can lead to repeat business that's reliable, plus give you plenty of opportunities to take photos of your work for your own site/leads.

Another question: how are you processing your leads? You said they're taking time to scale: you should look at a streamlined process of something like:

• Free in house visit
• Send detailed estimate with a link for them to book a followup call so you can present your plans (don't send them anything digitally other than a general breakdown of ballpark cost and some details you'll use as "hooks" to generate FOMO
• Arrive on site for detailed presentation with construction drawings (also printed)
• Ask for a deposit to get started (usually cost of materials), sign contract, once you have this you can leave them a copy of the plans
• Set a start date on the signed contract
• Get materials delivered to their location
• Call them a few days before start date to confirm start time
• Show up with professional attire (this goes a long way - having rolled mats you can lay down between front door and target room, booties for your boots, vaccuming and cleaning up, re-rolling up mats at the end of the day, getting them to sign off on daily checkup to confirm they are satisfied with cleanliness etc, all goes a LONG way to making a name for yourself.

 

[periosehperi]

@handpercussive Yes, we have a website. We built it ourselves. We have invested a lot into the SEO of it and it's a work in progress.

All the above is already in process. My issue I have at the minuet is lead generation. How are these other companies getting so much work and I'm not.. I think its something I need to take time and work on, perfecting our advertisement and built trust in the consumer

 

[handpercussive]

@periosehperi Major companies have spent years building up traditional clientbase using things like Yellow Pages, but also drop serious coin on Google Adwords.. if you create a google adwords account it will help you see how much various keywords in your business are currently listing for... if it's a high competition area, you might easily see 50c or more per click.

When I was helping a client with their renovation business their competition was spending 500 a week in adwords -- when people are looking for a service, they google it and look at the first few from the results. If you're not on the first page, you won't see any business from searches -- SEO takes lots of time (6-12 months) to have any effect, and you have to be continually creating lots of backlinks through all sorts of adjacent content like blog posts to get your keywords to start raising your SEO.

Have you looked into subcontracting for the time being? I didn't see you reply to that question

 

[periosehperi]

@handpercussive yeah, I have spoken to almost envy single competitor. Some have been very helpful and asked me to quote on jobs. Im waiting to hear back from them. Some have basically told me to f*** off! Im doing google ads, but I can only spend about £20 per day. Im not sure how much my Competion is paying

 

[handpercussive]

@periosehperi You can tell by how quickly your ads are turned off each day - if they're still at the top they have a bigger daily spend.

 

[periosehperi]

@handpercussive Can you explain this a bit more please?