Hi!
I was wondering if you have any good ideas who or how I could reach out to get my first client. So far I have cold emailed interior designers, architects and realtors. I did get a couple responses, but still no client.
Thank you in advance!:)
Our Yelp page is dominated by negative reviews. Meanwhile, the “Not Currently Recommended” section is full of 5-star reviews. We don’t solicit reviews, yet Yelp’s algorithm treats legitimate positive feedback from real customers as fake or solicited.
No business escapes negative reviews. But Yelp’s algorithm is actively hurting ours.
Here’s a clear example:
Someone left a 1-star review that wasn’t for our company. It immediately went front and center. We couldn’t prove it wasn’t ours, and Yelp (like Google) rarely sides with the business. We responded politely and asked the user to remove it. Months—or years—passed with no action.
Finally the reviewer replied, “Sorry, wrong company,” and changed the rating from 1 star to 5 stars. The moment it became a positive review, Yelp’s algorithm moved it into “Not Currently Recommended.”
We’re at the end of our rope. We have no control over how our positive reviews are suppressed or how the overall mix of feedback is presented. The health of our business is being dictated by a flawed algorithm, and that’s unacceptable.
Has anyone discussed a class action against Yelp over this? At the very least, they need to eliminate the “Currently Recommended / Not Currently Recommended” system
Hello everyone, I wanted to share the story if everybody remembers, I posted about losing money in follow ups because customer was waiting for an in-person meeting first. We were trying to reach them online through email or phone calls, and someone from this community suggested why not set an in-person appointment for all big jobs.
That’s what I did, I set a standard in the team: any estimate more than $3000 will have an in-person appointment.
Here is the stat I wanted to share: we were able to book 20 jobs this week so far out of that, 10 of the jobs were able to write more than $3000, and out of that four jobs were able to close just by setting an in-person appointment. I don’t know if it’s coincidence or the customer could have anyway went with us even if we followed up remotely. No matter the approach, but the results are inspiring.
That’s my new standard now and we’re going to stick with it, and one of the biggest estimates that we were able to sell following this method, it was today, it’s $23,000.
There’s been a couple of posts in here about this company. Some from potential employees, some from customers/clients. I felt the need to open up about what it’s like working for this company.
Direct Fairways sells advertising spaces on scorecards, course guidebooks, and yardage cards. They partner with about 3,000 golf courses across the U.S. and Canada. The company offers a great deal for business owners to gain advertisement—only $399 for a full year, single spot which includes your artwork and tax for the ad. It’s a pretty good way for smaller business owners to gain brand recognition at an affordable cost. Seems fine and dandy right?
Well, not so fast. You see, a sales rep will tell you “we only have a few spots left and we actually don’t have anybody in your industry featured yet.” Bullshit. This is just a tactic to make you think you’re going to be the ONLY handyman, HVAC, landscaper, etc on whatever they’re selling you. Sometimes they don’t even know how many “spots” they have left or what industries they even have featured. I struggled with saying this over and over to people knowing that there was probably another mobile mechanic on the scorecard I was attempting to sell to someone who was a mobile mechanic.
Now, do I think the advertisement is legit? Yeah probably. But also these guys work this job year round. How can they possibly NOT have a landscaper on the scorecard that’s going out FOR A FULL YEAR? If they’re calling you, let’s say in November… do you not think they’ve probably signed up someone who does the same thing as you back in July/August? That’s a huge problem I had with the company. I think your ad will probably be out there, but it’s gonna be a headache for the process to take place.
Also, the company has an entirely separate “upsells” team whose entire job is to trap you into thinking you’re getting featured on more courses. People fall for it all the time. They’ll call you a few days later asking if you want to upgrade to a bigger sized ad, better placement, etc. and of course it sounds great to everyone. In reality they’re swiping the same card you gave them for another $399 or maybe even $798 depending on what you “upgraded” to. It sounds fair, but trust me, the upsales team is cunning and that’s how they make their money.
Just take a look at their BBB complaints. All of their employees will say “well if you look at the complaints, most have been resolved” “oh it’s only a handful of complaints compared to the 100K+ sponsors we’ve signed up” etc. Okay, well, your way of “resolving” said issues is by giving another year of advertisement “for free” or an upgraded spot “for free.” It’s not free. You charged them more money without their consent.
Bottom line, if you’re a small business owner, PLEASE do your research and DO NOT let them pressure you into it on the phone. If it sounds “too good to be true” it probably is. There is nowhere you will find a full year of advertising PLUS artwork included for less than $400. Save your time and hang up the phone on these people.
When you first start out, you do everything yourself: client calls, admin work, fixing mistakes, tracking hours. It is exhausting, but at least you know it gets done right.
Right now I am hitting a wall because I keep holding onto every single choice. We put our project setup into Flowii so the team could just manage their own deadlines directly, but I still catch myself opening up completed cards just to re-verify work that was already approved.
For anyone who broke this habit: how did you actually stop hovering? Did you put hard limits on what you review, or did you just let a few small things break until the team got the hang of it?
My guys and I do plumbing and heating, its mostly remodels with a bit of light commercial. I track my job costing really badly as it ends up being just materials receipts thrown in a pile and me guessing at the end which job they belonged to.
So when i quote the next one im pricing it off a feeling about the last one. The ugly jobs, old house, joists in the way, i underquote every time, and the easy new construction stuff i paid and lose the bid on. Whats everyone doing to code material spend to a job at the time its bought instead of a month later?
I am a party planner who met up with a couple of other event managers who told me that they felt it was actually cheaper to buy supplies in bulk for one-time large events rather than purchasing ongoing supply needs all the time. They insisted I crunch the numbers and figure in shipping costs and I will find that it actually comes out cheaper to just purchase supplies in large amounts instead of replenishing. I was wondering if anyone actually worked this out and what their experience was when it comes to this.
I know that there are some sites like amazon business, walmart, and alibaba where you can actually order quite a large amount at one time. In fact it becomes cheaper the more you order and sometimes they even have a minimum order quantity in order to be able to order. Any thoughts on this? I mean considering the rising costs of customs, shipping, and tariff's , a one time large order might be worth it. I am mostly thinking for disposables like cutlery, plates, napkins etc.
we are 4 people, we do inbound and, mostly, outbound calls. as far as I can tell, mightycall has a better configured dialing system, openphone has a more understandable interface. we do not need many integrations, just something that works without big setup costs. I have been thinking about this for 2 weeks and probably thought too much. did anyone switch from one to the other? what caught you by surprise?
Built a cold outreach tool for lead gen. It warms up every new sending domain before letting it go full volume, slow on purpose for the first stretch.
The reason: a brand new domain has zero track record with any mail provider. Gmail, Outlook, whoever, they watch how a domain behaves before they'll trust its mail enough to land in an inbox instead of junk. Blast a big batch out of a fresh domain and you fail that trust test in one shot. Once that happens the whole domain is tainted, not just that one send, every email after it pays for the same mistake.
Paced sending looks like the slow option. It's actually the only one that still works a month in. If you're running your own cold outreach, don't judge it by the volume you can push this week. Ramp it up slow and let your reply rate tell you when it's safe to send more.
Where are other small business owners ordering their uniforms for staff? I just need t-shirts and sweatshirts, nothing fancy. Haven’t been impressed with POD quality. Anyone good out there that doesn’t charge a premium?
i order 200-300 postcards a quarter for warm leads and my old printer bumped the minimum on my size so i went comparison shopping. ran both these back to back, honest notes.
gotprint: my baseline for bulk. per-unit at 500 is low, stock is decent if a little plain, turnaround was about a week. email signup usually gets you a code. proofing tool is fiddly though.
4over4: comparable to gotprint on price, the draw for me was a free sample pack so i could feel the stock before committing 500. checkout for the odd sizes was a bit clunky and the site looks dated. print came out consistent.
anyone got a sleeper bulk option im missing? not looking to overthink a postcard.