What Is Loyalty?

In the contracting world loyalty used to mean a lot. But in today’s world it has changed a lot. Let’s look at some of the changes and see where things have gone wrong as far as your business is concerned.

Now for me I need to go back to working with my dad and the life lessons he tried to instill in me. Let’s see if I find those lessons to be true today.

Let’s take something easy such as the truck I drive. Now, my father was always a Chrysler/Dodge man - yes, all the way until he passed on he was a loyal to them. I must say as long as I was under dad’s roof I was loyal to them also.

But once on my own I moved to Ford trucks and have been loyal to Ford since. I grew up in the business and was always taught that you build strong supplier relationships and you stay loyal through the good times and bad no matter what.

I must say that I have done this too, and still today believe this is very important to do. Yes, I have to say that there is a fine line when it comes to suppliers because the larger the supplier ,the worse it can be. This becomes about the old mighty dollar and not so much about relationships.

We did find out when the hurricanes hit Florida that being loyal to one supplier hurt us on getting material. Because of the way we were treated we now do business with several suppliers. Look, when it hurts your bottom line and when you see that long standing supplier relationship go south on you when you need it the most, then hey, you need to wake up to the fact you need to be in bed with more than one supplier.

Now let’s look at your clients and see how to keep loyalty in place. This is very hard to do because it is all about price most of the time. This all depends on how old your client base is, because the older they are, the better chance you have to keep them loyal to your company.

In our current business we have a large retirement client base and for the most part they are loyal to our company. Providing we service our client and continue to do quality work at a fair price, we can expect to keep them.

But think now about the restaurant that you go to. How many times a week do you go to the same place each week? Man, when I was a kid we went to the same place all the time. Yes today I have my favorites but I must say I have 3-4 favorites that I go to often.

So I will leave you with this question on your brand loyalty and when contractorblab.com goes live soon they will have some great advice on this topic. Check back soon.

Happy Selling

Glen