What’s an expert? Depending on the area of study in question, coining someone as an expert can be open to interpretation.
The dictionary gives the definition of an expert as “a person who has a special skill or knowledge in some particular field; specialist; authority.”
With the trash valet industry still in its youth, there are only a few valet trash experts around. As any expert in any field can tell you, years of hands-on experience and trial and error got them to where they are today.
More than likely, if you’re reading this blog post, you aren’t an expert. Yet.
Until you do become a valet trash expert, we are more than happy to divulge some secrets of valet trash experts! Read on!
Secret One: Stay Ahead of the Game
One secret that many valet trash experts don’t want you to know is when to put yourself in place to grab that multi-family complex you’ve been eyeing for a while. If the complex is already under contract with a competitor on the other side of town and you’d love to show the property managers what a real valet trash company can do!
First, do your leg-work and find out when that contract expires. There is nothing wrong with digging around for some information- this is standard business practice. Go to the complex prepared with your amazing sales strategy and all of the marketing materials we’ve covered in other posts. Talk to the managers and find out when the contract with the other guy expires.
The secret is, you want to begin negotiations with a complex about six months before their current contract expires.
This gives you ample time to prepare your contract, determine what the complex’s needs are, negotiate add-on services, budget, order valet trash bins, and prepare your valet scheduling and decide if you need to hire more valets.
Secret Two: Efficiency is Your Friend
To be efficient is to be successful. Period. Just don’t cross the line of being hasty when you think you are being efficient. Any valet trash expert will tell you that when it comes to sourcing leads, you should be nothing but efficient.
What does it mean to source leads?
Well, a lead is a potential customer. This maybe your best friend’s cousin who works maintenance at an apartment complex. Granted, he won’t be the guy to make decisions about hiring your company, but he is a lead. Metaphorically, he can lead you down the path to information that the apartment complex he works for could benefit from a valet trash service.
A source is where the lead came from. In this case, the maintenance cousin’s lead came from word-of-mouth.
To be efficient in sourcing leads, you need to keep records of who each lead is and where they came from. An example would be the townhome complex owner you met at a trade show. If your website has an email subscription sign-up for multi-family property personnel, these would be leads and the source would be email marketing or marketing automation.
A simple Excel or Google Sheets workbook would do the trick to successful efficiency. Be sure to maintain tracking of the lead throughout the relationship, even if they never sign-on with you. You will be able to calculate ROIs if they do sign a contract and this will help you streamline your marketing tactics. Even though Salesforce is an online marketing automation tool used by large companies to track those that visit and purchase through websites, their short article on effective lead management gives a great example of how to be efficient with a lead source. After reading it, you may be inspired to come up with a system that works for you.
Secret Three: Pick a Specialty
Just like any valet trash expert, it may take some time and experience to comfortably find your niche market. For others, selecting the market they want to service may be written into their business plan. It may be that you need to perform your valet trash services at apartment complexes, townhome communities, resorts, or retirement communities before knowing what area you will become a valet trash expert in.
When your valet trash business begins to take on a specialized area, you will be referred to as an expert more frequently as your years of industry focus increase. Also, providing valet trash service to just one type of complex will eliminate the extra time or money spent trying to be a service provider to all kinds of multi-family housing instead of just one.
Once you do decide which type of complex or customer fits best with your business interests, you may need to rewrite sections or paragraphs of your service model. Revisiting your trash valet service model or business plan is something you should do periodically anyway, but make sure to streamline it as you determine the type of client you prefer to service.
Becoming a valet trash expert will take some time, but it will happen? The secrets divulged here will help you focus on growing your valet trash business while eliminating the unnecessary energy you may have spent trying to get ahead without the benefit of this knowledge. Performing analyses of your strengths and weaknesses and reevaluating your business processes may very well provide you with your own industry secrets to valet trash success!
