Many people are familiar with “Pareto’s Principle” or the “80/20” rule.  In starting a new business, this rule is sometimes the make or break factor for whether a new business will stick around for years to come.

To refresh your memory, the 80/20 rule, as applied to starting a new business, states you’ll get 80% of your results from 20% of your activity. 

Those activities in this business are:

• Implementing, measuring and refining the marketing, advertising and referral generation within your business.  The goal is for your business to be able to establish the ideal balance between the quality of the response your marketing efforts generate with the cost associated.
• Educating your customers and creating new sales from the interest generated from your marketing efforts.  This is a combination of not only sitting with enough people to generate the sales your business needs, but also honing your skills in this area so you can educate your customer and build value in the solutions you generate for them.
• Order fulfillment or operational effectiveness – this means applying the product cost effectively when it comes to running a CTi Dealership.  What you charged your customer for the project, less what you spent for materials and the labor needed to install the project makes up the “Gross Profit” within the Dealership. 
  
  As you become more skilled in not only using the product more cost effectively, getting the project finished more time effectively but also building more value in your solutions and thus generating sales at a higher price with your customer all lead to greater profitability within the business.

Your first duty as a business owner is to figure out what activities make up the 20% that generate 80% of your results.  Once you’ve figured this out, make sure you’re devoting your energies to these activities daily and minimizing the 80% of the activities that only produce 20% of the results.

Pool decks can pose a challenge to homeowners. You need a surface that is slip resistant and will stay cool when the sun is beating down on it. CTi’s products offer a solution that can provide a safe, cool solution while also dressing up your pool area. CTi’s coatings are slip resistant as well as cooler than concrete and many other industry standard products. This amazing transformation was done by Concrete Designs of Tampa Bay.

One of the greatest benefits the CTi product line offers a homeowner is the amazing transformation we offer their home’s curb appeal. Concrete Designs of Tampa Bay posted this work yesterday to make this point.

While many of our Dealers start their businesses with CTi on a part-time basis to create a secondary income, let’s not forget the secondary income that can be had by anyone running a business.

Business owners have the ability to take products and services used both in their business and personal lives as a tax write off in many cases. Cell phones, auto payments and other types of expenses that are used both for personal and business use can be written off fully or partially depending on the circumstances.

To give you an example of how this provides a secondary income, consider the truck payment of $400 monthly for a business owner who uses the truck 75% for business and 25% personally. Over a year’s period of time, he will pay $4,800 of which $3,600 will be considered a business expense. If the business owner is at a 25% tax bracket and can write off the $3,600 in truck payments through his business, he has saved himself $900 in taxes.

Add this up across any number of expenses that can be considered for a business and you can see where the secondary income can add up.

CTi offers its Dealers as much (or as little) assistance as they need in order to represent and install our products successfully.  Dealer assistance is available in every aspect of the business operation starting with the initial organizing of your Dealership to installing the product successfully and getting referrals.  To give you an idea of the different types of support:

* CTi’s Quick Start program is a combination online and phone coaching program that will get your business organized, get you ready to interact with your first customers and better enable you to make sales.

* CTi’s advertising program can create and implement a full line of social media advertising to provide your Dealership with homeowners who are interested in learning more about the CTi products and having them installed.

* CTi provides its Dealers with a full line of marketing and advertising tools such as back drops to provide the proper look at Home and Garden shows, a professionally designed website to give your Dealership a terrific online presence, brochures and ad slicks for offline type advertising and national contracts with organizations such as Home Advisor, Val Pak and many others.

* Weekly phone conference calls via “Talk with the Pros” to learn more about installation techniques.

* Dealer rallies held across the country to introduce you to new products and application techniques.

* Personalized training with our technicians at our training facility as needed.

* CTi’s technical staff is available 24/7 to insure you have answers when you need them.

We are with you every step of the way, your success is our success!

As you can see below, our Dealers take ordinary concrete and transform it into something spectacular. This patio received its makeover by CTi Northeastern Contractors.

In the last few months, we’ve seen changes in the ways we do business. Our current CTi Dealers are keeping their social distance with their customers both when meeting with them to discuss their needs as well as when they show up to do the work.

Fortunately the CTi Dealership model offers built in ways to keep the customer and the Dealer safe throughout the transaction and this has been one of the reasons while our Dealers have seen minimal disruptions in their day to day business.

We at CTi Corporate have had to make some modifications however since people are wanting options to getting on a plane and coming to Florida for the initial as well as ongoing training.

Two months ago we introduced remote training via our training website which includes video and written training as well as via Zoom and traditional calls. This training has allowed new CTi Dealers to get the training they need to start their businesses as well as allow us to work with our current Dealers in new ways to enhance their knowledge as well as help them overcome challenges on the job site should they occur.

Tips for Effective Lead Follow Up

• The advertising you do for your business can be one of the best investments you make. When advertising is done correctly, it leads to people showing interest and wanting more information. Use the tips below to follow up on the folks who express interest in your products; they will lead to more sales and more revenue for your business.
• Contact the lead as soon as possible.
• Contact the lead in different ways (phone call, email, text).  Different people like communicating in different ways so don’t leave a resource at your disposal unused.
• Refer to the reason you’re contacting the lead when speaking with the prospect or when leaving a message, email or text.  (I’m responding to your inquiry through Facebook regarding having the Concrete Technology System installed).
• Continue trying to contact the lead until you get a final answer from the customer, either a firm no or an appointment to come see the job site and provide an estimate.
• Don’t try to sell the product over the phone, email or text.  Your goal in following up on a lead is to set an appointment where you can examine the job site and determine the best solution for the customer. Only then can you provide a realistic estimate.
• Set a firm time to meet with the prospect at their home.  Make sure anyone who will be involved with the final decision will be available for the meeting.  Be on time and prepared for the meeting once it comes around.
• A “Drip Marketing” campaign can increase appointments set as well as number of sales made.  A drip marketing campaign is simply a way of methodically putting a message and your company’s name in front of the prospect on a regular basis.  These type campaigns have proven to increase the number of sales made from the current lead flow by 15% to 20%.

CTi Dealers around the world create amazing transformations of existing concrete from an eye sore to a focal point around the home. Below is a project recently completed by Concrete Designs of Tampa Bay.

CTi has been in operation since 1991, those years have brought a number of trials from the marketplace such as recessions and other challenges. The market changes as people purchase products like concrete resurfacing for different reasons.

In good times, people have discretionary income and purchase these type products to improve the looks of their homes. Times when things are tighter however, homeowners still purchase these type products as a way of increasing the value of their home and view a product that provides an easier to maintain, longer lasting finish that has a warranty as a good financial move.

When you keep in mind the “3 M’s” of marketing, Message/Market/Media, you can see as the market changes, your message and how it’s delivered may need to change as well. The main thing to keep in mind is the history of the product shows there is a market for it during any economic time.