You should do some more research into this avenue because…for the vast majority…your flat wrong.
AL members pay for the service because they are concerned about trust and quality. Most I speak with subscribed because they are tired of being screwed, delayed, getting sub par service and not getting everything they paid for. Everyone likes a good deal, but that’s usually not the reason they originally signed up.
Ryan is absolutely right about this. I’m still finishing up the big deal customers, and I’ve gotten some great customers out of it, gotten into some great neighborhoods and picked up some great reviews. Long term this is great if done right, and I stress that last part. During non-peak season it makes a ton of sense.
yeah, you’re probably right. during non-peak season it may be worthwhile. i feel like I’m getting most of the calls anyway because of my placement and reviews, so why pay more money for customers that I probably would get a call from anyway.
How can you tell that those customers found you on AL? Do you ask every customer where they found you?
Do you not ask every customer? That information seems to valuable to overlook!
yes; I [B]absolutely[/B] ask every person who calls where they got our phone number from.
I received my FIRST customer call today from Angie’s List!
Woooo Whooooooooo, happy days.
Squeak if your not asking where they found you, you need too…
More importantly when you do, keep a record list going i.e. Ange’s List, Referral, Flyer, Door Hanger yada yada
That way, you can follow where it is that you need to expand inside your company.
Meaning either more advertising or personal customer relations.
It works really well for us.
I got a call from an AL rep who told me if I didn’t start paying $ XX.00 monthly, they were going to “shuffle” me down the list.
He’s talking about becoming an advertiser. Their default sorting is “with coupons”
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Responsibid tracks that info for you
Oh no, The “account manager” definitely threatened that they would shuffle me off the list if I didn’t pay up…
The only companies that pay anything are the advertisers. If you were told that it was because the rep was not following procedure.
I hate that. When I was in the Phone Book they had a different rep every year even if the old rep still worked there.
thanku gabe–AL called last week. wants to put me up in major areas i work it-a lot of coverage-$225 month-9 mo. contract-i think its a steal… every window guy is different-i’m learning from the forum. i live off living social. just joined groupon. love it. gotta work it right–upsell…works excellent. Angies list-soon. looks like a sweet deal. they have fish w/c but only in some tiny towns.
Go with Thumbtack. Way better.
Thumbtack sucks…
Tested it out…started giving out my original quotes…no replies…then dropped the price a bit…no response…dropped the price even lower…was just trying to find out what are the “going rates” on there…one lady messaged me back saying she might use me. Lame!
It’s a bidding war, people looking for the lowest price out of 5 bids…turns out $5 per window including screens and tracks is the going rate…probably lower. Don’t want customers like that, that will jump at the chance of a lower price somewhere else.
Thumbtack, Groupon, and the like are all the folks looking to spend the least they possibly can. Might work okay for close out sales, restaurants, or to fill stadium seats - but unless you can dictate YOUR discount price, I see little value in it. The shoppers are not the kind of folks that keep this industry in business.
I understand how you feel about thumbtack but for us it’s become a big money maker. Our greatest success in using it has been returning to a customer’s house to do more work and the referrals we’ve gotten out of it.
Just this week we did $1,650 in work from previous customers who hired us through thumbtack, a referral from a previous hire and two new customers. One job was worth one credit to quote and we made $675, our biggest job to date. We’re going back Tuesday to do shower glass restoration, clean light fixtures and remove hard water from 2-3 windows in the garage.
My suggestion is to NOT list a price, pay attention to requests that includes a phone number, don’t quote jobs that already have 3-4 quotes on them and be patient and smart with how you quote jobs. We’ve spent $70 on quotes between April and May. I don’t have figures but I’m guessing we’ve made $3k+ these two months off thumbtack. Not bad for a $70 investment. Beats the eddm I spent $375 on this month that was sent to the wrong zip code and got me nothing so far(not giving up on EDDM, simply won’t use that particular provider ever again).
I don’t like the vague descriptions given by the customers or that you never hear from most of them after you do your best to sell yourself but it’s working for us. I appreciate the referrals we’ve received from customers who hired us on thumbtack. It’s made our initial trial and error with it ultimately worth it.
But if it hasn’t worked for you, trust me when I say I understand your frustration. Just my two (long) cents!
My wife did a house cleaning job yesterday. Carpet cleaner shows up, tells her he’s crazy busy thanks to Angies list and groupon but that he doesn’t make any money (!!!). I don’t see the point in being busy if you’re not profitable. I do believe what you say, that most are looking for a deal on groupon or thumbtack etc etc but in our case, thumbtack has become better for us when we became more selective in what and how we quote. We’ve ate some jobs and others we’ve done really good. More and more we quote jobs better than a few months ago. It’s our first year so as for getting our foot in the door it’s been helpful but my goal is to get more work through other means of advertising we’re trying.
Now I sound like a thumbtack apologist (i don’t mean to!) but the numbers for us don’t lie. I see both sides of the argument, though. Just trying to be helpful as @Garry and several others of you have been really helpful to us!
