I Didn’t Know You Did Stairs

Last week I was having coffee with a client and he told me a story about one of his former clients. She was reading his newsletter, which goes out every month, and was surprised to learn that his company did stairs (that particular newsletter featured a stair remodel his company had done for someone else). This former client was looking for someone to do stair work for her, yet it never occurred to her to call him for that type of job.

My client was surprised by this. First, he’d worked with her before on a home renovation project and thought she understood the extent of his company’s services. Second, he’s a General Contractor, and it was easy for him to assume that she knew all the different types of things General Contractors can do.

When you’re working with a client, they hire you for a specific purpose. You provide the service they’re looking for and that’s that; unless you let them know that you offer other services, they are not likely to ask or extrapolate. This happens to me all the time – I’m often hired for small business coaching, yet I’m also trained as a life coach as well as have years of experience doing career direction and work clarification coaching. If you hired me for one of those things, you wouldn’t know I did the others unless I spelled it out.

For marketing purposes it makes sense to keep what you offer streamlined, mentioning just a few of the things you do — this keeps your message specific and easy to understand. You may be missing the boat, however, by not in some way letting your clients know what other services you offer. In the case of my General Contracting client, he does stairs and much more, and will be letting his clients know!