First impressions are a key factor in gaining more business, and the easiest way to make a great first impression is to make sure your business looks and works like a professional outfit.
Make sure the first impression your trades business gives is a good one.
Online marketing expert, Peep Laja says a positive visual appearance is 94% design related. He’s talking about websites, of course, but think about what this means for the documents that represent your business – your quotes, invoices, purchase orders, or even your emails to clients.
It takes 50 milliseconds for users to make a first impression about your business
Investing in some professional design for your layouts pays dividends well into the future. So it does pay to take some time to look at ways to make sure your business inspires confidence in your clients.
1. Create Professional Looking Quotes
Your potential clients are going to be comparing the quotes you send out with those of your competitors, so make sure they look good. There are a few things you can do, visually, to improve your chances of landing the job.
Here is a list of suggestions that will improve the appearance of your quotes:
- Have your business logo at the top right or left of the page, and include the location and contact details of your business
- Provide a description of the scope of works
- Include a quote reference number
- Add any Terms & Conditions that apply.
Create Professional Looking Quotes
2. Use a Business Email Address
A simple, cheap, yet effective tool to make your business look professional and give a good first impression is to use a custom email domain. Let’s face it – getting an email from sparki.electrics@yahoo.com, or Gmail or any other generic provider doesn’t look the best. What’s more, your emails are more likely to be treated as junk mail or spam in your customer’s inbox, in fact, over 20% of emails actually won’t land in the inbox.
It’s also a good idea to set up email tracking so that you’ll know whether an email has been sent, and when the recipient opened it. This can be handy if you’re sending a client an invoice. You can see right away if their email system has marked it as spam, or if it wasn’t delivered at all.
3. Stay Organised
Organisation not only helps your business look professional, but it also improves your client retention rates.
If you’re still using paper-based systems, you’ll know that keeping paperwork organised is an on-going challenge and a huge time commitment. As your business grows, staying organised gets that much harder.
You only have one chance to make a first impression, so spend the time on making a few small adjustments to make sure the first impression your business gives is a good one.
Author – Tom Arrowsmith
Business Marketing Analyst
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