ArticleBlaster You Killed Your Competition! Now What?

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You Killed Your Competition! Now What?

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When your competition goes out of business they will obviously
lose the relationship that they have with their existing
customers. When this happens it will create what I like to call a
"customer vacuum." All of their customers will be set free and
they will start searching for another company that can service
their particular needs. At the same time you and your existing
competition will start grabbing for control of these customers.
What you need to do is fill that vacuum and there is one very
good way I use to maximize the chance of these unaccounted for
customers coming right to your door.

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1312 Words; formatted to 65 Characters per Line
Distribution Date and Time: 2006-07-19 11:00:00

Written By: Robert Short
Copyright: 2006, All Rights Reserved
Contact Email: mailto:info@affordableconcretecutting.com

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You Killed Your Competition! Now What?
Copyright � 2006 New Hampshire Concrete Cutting and Core Drilling, All Rights Reserved
Written by: Robert Short
New Hampshire Concrete Cutting and Core Drilling
http://www.affordableconcretecutting.net

When your competition goes out of business they will obviously
lose the relationship that they have with their existing
customers. When this happens it will create what I like to call a
"customer vacuum." All of their customers will be set free and
they will start searching for another company that can service
their particular needs. At the same time you and your existing
competition will start grabbing for control of these customers.
What you need to do is fill that vacuum and there is one very
good way I use to maximize the chance of these unaccounted for
customers coming right to your door.

The most effective way that I have discovered is to assume
control, of a dead business' customers is to take over their
phone number when their company dies. This can be very difficult
and confusing at first but it gets very simple. You see most
phone companies use what is called a "cooling off" period for
recently disconnected phone lines. This period usually lasts for
one year. This means that you can't just call your phone company
and take over a phone line the day it is disconnected. The
reasons for this, I assume are because the company may have just
forgot to pay its phone bill or it has encountered some difficult
times financially and it has to wait a week before getting it
reconnected. It would be very unfair for a phone company to allow
this type of outright squatting. Other reasons could be that the
company may be restructuring and will resurface in six months or
so. Whatever the reason this "fail safe" was put in place to
protect the existing phone number's owner.

I will discuss with you in the next few paragraphs on how to
acquire the phone lines without waiting on the "cooling off"
period but for now let's discuss waiting a year. "A year?" You
ask. "That's an eternity!" We'll it may seem like it but I
actually waited a year for a phone line once and it produced more
business than I could handle. I had to put on three more trucks
because my business literally exploded. The company that had gone
under was an established arm of a major franchise in my industry
and they had already signed contracts for massive amounts of
yellow page advertising, both online and print. They simply
packed up and vanished into thin air one day leaving a foundation
that could make your average business owner rich beyond their
wildest dreams. Well, I called the phone company and explained to
them what my intentions were and they told me the exact day the
"cooling off" period would end. I waited my time and I got
their phone number and I had it remotely forwarded to my
company's main phone line. I saw an instantaneous increase in
business and I bled that phone number white for years. To top all
that off, the main company's web site kept that locations
address and the phone number on its home page for two years after
I took over the phone line. My existing competitors were baffled
and probably still haven't figured out how my company grew so
big so fast during those years. The fact is I got massive amounts
of their existing customers, yellow page advertising and web site
exposure for the cost of a remote phone line that cost a mere
$16.95 per month. Man, I am still amazed!

Now, let's face it, in most cases there is a real good reason
why a company goes belly up and most business owners will say
something stupid like "if they had any customers in the first
place they wouldn't have gone down, I don't want that phone
line!" A company can have more than enough customers and still
die for a number of reasons. My theory is this, when I spend less
than $20 a month for a dead business' phone number, that company
had to have at least five good customers. Acquiring one customer
with a lifetime value of, let's say, $10,000 is worth far more
than the measly 17 bucks you spent acquiring them and based on my
experience you will get at least ten new customers even if the
company was mismanaged beyond belief and has been gone for over a
year. Your new phone bill actually tells you how many calls were
remotely forwarded to your main number from your new phone line
each month. With this information you can easily decide if it is
worth it or not within a couple of months.

If you want the phone line right away there are several
techniques I use. The phone company will allow you to take over
the dead company's phone line if you can get a letter from the
previous owner on that expired companies letterhead. Also, you
must satisfy any debt that that company still owes on that
number. So basically you need to approach your former adversary
and let them know that you want the number, find out how much
they owe, and if they are willing to give it to you. If they are
not interested you need to spark some interest by pulling a
couple of crisp hundred dollar bills out of your pocket.
Remember, this person just lost it all along with several years
of their life, a couple hundred bucks really matters now. Never
act arrogant or give them any indication that you will get the
phone line anyway if you just wait a year because they can easily
derail your intentions by reinstating the phone line for a
while.

I approached an "old timer" that was no longer in business and
explained to him what I had in mind. He said he had just got sick
of it and that it was a young man's game and he simply decided
to retire. He asked how much I was willing to pay for the phone
line and I jokingly said $100. He said that was fine but I had to
pay $272 to the phone company in order to release the phone line.
I excitedly agreed and I literally took over his business that
had been established for thirty years and to top that off he went
and dug out his customer list (all handwritten) and gave that to
me too. I had planned on giving him as much as $5000, if I had
to, for the phone line and I was willing to pay an additional
$500 a month for two years. I walked away with several hundred
thousand dollars a year for $372. It really doesn't get any
better than that.

I had one of my competitors approach me and offer to sell me his
existing customers for $100,000. I wanted to acquire his
customers end the situation immediately but I was not willing to
spend $100,000 on customers that were going to be mine in a year
anyway. I counter offered at $35,000 and he balked and acted all
insulted. Needless to say my competitors couldn't afford or
wouldn't pay the $100,000 and his company laid down, put its
legs in the air and died. A year later I took over his phone line
and many of his long time customers at the same time.

Each customer that you acquire using this method is highly
targeted and if cultivated properly will have a substantial
lifetime value plus they will continually refer new customers to
you. The best part of all of this is that over the years as my
competition has died, none of my existing competitors got any of
the customers once I took over the phone line. As each of my
competitors dies, I take, starving the competition that remains.
I will continue to take until I fulfill my ultimate goal, which
is to be the last man standing!

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(c) 2006 New Hampshire Concrete Cutting and Core Drilling,
All Rights Reserved

Written by: Robert Short
New Hampshire Concrete Cutting and Core Drilling provides
concrete cutting and core drilling services to the contractor
and homeowner in New Hampshire or NH. Visit our website at
http://www.affordableconcretecutting.net for more information
on concrete cutting and core drilling.

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