Robert's First Town Hall Meeting

[Gino]

Robert........ Ya gotta know what your credentials are, such as being brutally honest with yourself. Are ya any good ?? Are you a business person or just a mechanic ?? Are you willing to invest ANYTHING in yourself besides cheap talk and free gimmicks ?? What is your hurry to make business transactions, if you don't know your capabilities.

You loosley use the term 'sign maker'. What entails a sign maker, needs to be defined, first. You are assuming the people here are all tradesmen/ladies and know their goods inside-out. Not the case with this crowd. Let's be honest here. Who or what is your target audience ?? Just people who wanna attend robert's first town hall meeting ??

If that's the case, not many people showed up and even less have participated in your time allowance. What's up with that ?? People don't understand you or no one has any interest ??

I've only seen one truly good post here and it was late to the game.​

 

[Robert Armerding]

telling me joe blow said you do work for him

Notarealsignguy Let's keep digging into this. It is important to me. Let's focus on the client, "joe blow" who gave you the referral. Do you see any value in deliberately and thoughtfully encouraging that client to know that you appreciated the referral and that it means a lot to you?

 

[Ray Miller]

I just waited almost a minute for this to come up for me. I almost forgot what I was about to say. This slowdown on the site must be affecting some people in this thread.
For me I'm still trying to figure out what's going on? I see an opening statement and a need for others to interact but I'm not seeing that. Most of the town hall meetings I've seen recently the people ask questions and the people running it or the candidates answer the questions as clearly as possible. I don't see that happening. No one seems to be running the show. It's not even a bitch and gripe session type of crowd. I have a question, but don't know how to get it out there. Makes no sense for me to ask a question only to be followed up by more questions.

 

[Robert Armerding]

Robert........ Ya gotta know what your credentials are, such as being brutally honest with yourself. Are ya any good ?? Are you a business person or just a mechanic ?? Are you willing to invest ANYTHING in yourself besides cheap talk and free gimmicks ?? What is your hurry to make business transactions, if you don't know your capabilities.

You loosley use the term 'sign maker'. What entails a sign maker, needs to be defined, first. You are assuming the people here are all tradesmen/ladies and know their goods inside-out. Not the case with this crowd. Let's be honest here. Who or what is your target audience ?? Just people who wanna attend robert's first town hall meeting ??

If that's the case, not many people showed up and even less have participated in your time allowance. What's up with that ?? People don't understand you or no one has any interest ??

I've only seen one truly good post here and it was late to the game.​

That's how you see it. That is your right. No problem.
I am here for sign makers who want to improve their business management practices. And, I have had more than enough connect with me to let me know that they have found my Threads helpful.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

I just waited almost a minute for this to come up for me. I almost forgot what I was about to say. This slowdown on the site must be affecting some people in this thread.
For me I'm still trying to figure out what's going on? I see an opening statement and a need for others to interact but I'm not seeing that. Most of the town hall meetings I've seen recently the people ask questions and the people running it or the candidates answer the questions as clearly as possible. I don't see that happening. No one seems to be running the show. It's not even a ***** and gripe session type of crowd. I have a question, but don't know how to get it out there. Makes no sense for me to ask a question only to be followed up by more questions.

Try clearing your cache, it only takes about 20 secs a page to load from here

 

[Robert Armerding]

I just waited almost a minute for this to come up for me. I almost forgot what I was about to say. This slowdown on the site must be affecting some people in this thread.
For me I'm still trying to figure out what's going on? I see an opening statement and a need for others to interact but I'm not seeing that. Most of the town hall meetings I've seen recently the people ask questions and the people running it or the candidates answer the questions as clearly as possible. I don't see that happening. No one seems to be running the show. It's not even a ***** and gripe session type of crowd. I have a question, but don't know how to get it out there. Makes no sense for me to ask a question only to be followed up by more questions.

Ray Miller I invite you to ask a direct question about "Zero Cost Marketing." I will attempt to answer as clearly as I can.

 

[Notarealsignguy]

Notarealsignguy Let's keep digging into this. It is important to me. Let's focus on the client, "joe blow" who gave you the referral. Do you see any value in deliberately and thoughtfully encouraging that client to know that you appreciated the referral and that it means a lot to you?

I guess? I'm not gonna send them flowers. Referrals are normal behavior in my eyes, I don't fall all over it nor do I expect a thanks for giving them out either. It's networking. When you get down to it, I give referrals to benefit me. It's handy to be the go-to guy when possible and maintain a good line of communication even when they don't need your services

 

[Robert Armerding]

maintain a good line of communication

Notarealsignguy Your phrase, "maintain a good line of communication" is exactly one of the main tactics that I am attempting to make clearly understood. The effort to do that "maintaining" can be either just hope or it can be carefully thought out with deliberate reasons. You can either say, who cares, or you can decide it is important. If you decide it is important, then that is the tactic I am seeking to encourage.

 

[ikarasu]

I've been around S101 to "understand" how most people in here think.

I think what you're overlooking is that the kind of marketing you're suggesting is the kind most people on here don't want.

Google reviews don't bring in the kind of accounts most people want... A lot of us are busy on big projects and contracts, city work... Corporate stuff, etc.

A Google review brings in people wanting a couple stickers, graduation signs.... Birthday banners, etc. The kind of people who bawk when you tell them your cost and tell you they can get it on Vista print for half the price.

Do you want to do 30 24x24 graduation signs for $10-20 each.. Spending time with 30 customers, doing 30 different setups, or do you want to do 1 4x8 that you charge $2-300 for and takes 1/30 of the time?

For some people Google reviews are great. For others like us...99% of our work comes from bids and contracts. We get more work from bids.... From referrals from people we already worked with and loved our quality.

If someone walks into our door wanting one sign because they read that their neice was ecstatic over their graduation sign.... As soon as they heard we had a $50 shop minimum they'd walk out the door.


The one thing I see repeated the most on S101 is people are glad they shut their front doors and stopped dealing with walk ins, or people complaining because 90% of walk ins are a waste of time.

What does Google reviews bring to you? Walk ins!

 

[Johnny Best]

Thanks for coming today guys and girl...

 

[Texas_Signmaker]

I just spent 30 minutes reading this thread and not to my surprise it's a complete waste of time. Other than Stacy's post, everything on here is a bunch of nonsense. Robert, you are just quoting other people's posts and responding with another question... at some point, actual useful information has to come out. As is always the case... it's just a smoke and mirrors show here.

 

[CanuckSigns]

I've been around S101 to "understand" how most people in here think.

I think what you're overlooking is that the kind of marketing you're suggesting is the kind most people on here don't want.

Google reviews don't bring in the kind of accounts most people want... A lot of us are busy on big projects and contracts, city work... Corporate stuff, etc.

A Google review brings in people wanting a couple stickers, graduation signs.... Birthday banners, etc. The kind of people who bawk when you tell them your cost and tell you they can get it on Vista print for half the price.

Do you want to do 30 24x24 graduation signs for $10-20 each.. Spending time with 30 customers, doing 30 different setups, or do you want to do 1 4x8 that you charge $2-300 for and takes 1/30 of the time?

For some people Google reviews are great. For others like us...99% of our work comes from bids and contracts. We get more work from bids.... From referrals from people we already worked with and loved our quality.

If someone walks into our door wanting one sign because they read that their neice was ecstatic over their graduation sign.... As soon as they heard we had a $50 shop minimum they'd walk out the door.


The one thing I see repeated the most on S101 is people are glad they shut their front doors and stopped dealing with walk ins, or people complaining because 90% of walk ins are a waste of time.

What does Google reviews bring to you? Walk ins!

I agree, since we've locked the door due to covid I'm much more efficient! No more chatty Cathy's coming in to tell me the story behind the 1 yard sign they want.

I can leave when I want, no more angry voice-mails in the morning " I came by at 4:59 and the door was locked!" Clients email their orders in, UPS pickes them up, we get a cheque in the mail.

 

[Stacey K]

That is interesting! I don't get much from

I've been around S101 to "understand" how most people in here think.

I think what you're overlooking is that the kind of marketing you're suggesting is the kind most people on here don't want.

Google reviews don't bring in the kind of accounts most people want... A lot of us are busy on big projects and contracts, city work... Corporate stuff, etc.

A Google review brings in people wanting a couple stickers, graduation signs.... Birthday banners, etc. The kind of people who bawk when you tell them your cost and tell you they can get it on Vista print for half the price.

Do you want to do 30 24x24 graduation signs for $10-20 each.. Spending time with 30 customers, doing 30 different setups, or do you want to do 1 4x8 that you charge $2-300 for and takes 1/30 of the time?

For some people Google reviews are great. For others like us...99% of our work comes from bids and contracts. We get more work from bids.... From referrals from people we already worked with and loved our quality.

If someone walks into our door wanting one sign because they read that their neice was ecstatic over their graduation sign.... As soon as they heard we had a $50 shop minimum they'd walk out the door.


The one thing I see repeated the most on S101 is people are glad they shut their front doors and stopped dealing with walk ins, or people complaining because 90% of walk ins are a waste of time.

What does Google reviews bring to you? Walk ins!

That is interesting. I am curious what type of location you are in? Are you in a big city or a small city? My experience with google reviews are about half are these walk-ins but most recently I had some large companies looking to switch sign companies for their vehicle installation. I'm in a small town and 2 were in larger towns and 1 in a small town which is closer to other sign shops than myself. I landed 2/3 large jobs which I was very happy about. The walk-ins are definitely annoying and often not worth the time.

 

[Gino]

So, we had a town hall meeting, but I didn't see ANYTHING being accomplished from anyone's view, except maybe the OP. I didn't see or read any kinda debates. I didn't see any answers. I didn't see any involvement by the person holding this thing, other than answering a question with more questions.

The job of the crew, or in this case, the person...... purposely trying to bring the others (in this case members) up t speed with things going on. All involved are supposed to understand the content and the goals. I don't see any understanding whatsoever happening.

Sure, robert says he has interest, but the rest of us are left out to rot.
​

I only saw one person involved with good information...... Stacey. That's all. A one or two hour meeting, which went on and on and on and on and nothing accomplished.... anyway for the membership. Someone said a while back that robert is gathering information to write a book. I'm starting to believe that. The only person ever satisfied is robert. Deny it all ya want, but it's true. I still don't know what it is you can do for anyone ?? It's all hocus-pocus and I know I'm entitled to my opinions and thoughts, but why don't you ever answer ANYBODY's questions ?????

 

[ikarasu]

Were Vancouver area based, second largest city in Canada.

We've been in business for 30ish years though...so we're well established. We also have 4 sales reps, so we go after the work we Wanft rather than let it come to us. Most of our clients are long term, ongoing repeat customers... Some who have been with us for 20 years....so we have good word of mouth and reffferences to get the big guys.

All the door people are usually people wanting a sign here or there and it ends up costing us more than we make on the job. We've never had a customer tell us they found us on Google. We do the whole Facebook / Twitter / Instagram thong with AL our wraps just so we can forward it to new clients as examples.

 

[sardocs]

"We're Vancouver area based, second largest city in Canada." I'm pretty sure Vancouver is Canada's Third largest city, after Toronto and then Montreal. Just sayin'....

 

[ikarasu]

"We're Vancouver area based, second largest city in Canada." I'm pretty sure Vancouver is Canada's Third largest city, after Toronto and then Montreal. Just sayin'....

Montreal is their own wannabe country, so we don't include them.

 

[sardocs]

I grew up there so I know how you feel. But they did invent Poutine.

 

[ikarasu]

Haha. Geography isn't my strong suite I thought the top 4 were close enough it didn't make a difference. I didn't realize Toronto has 3x what bc has and Quebec is 30-40% higher.

Nothing against Quebec, I was just joking to save face! I do love poutine... Although I hear what we get out west is crap compared to what's available in Quebec

 

[sardocs]

No Worries! I haven't been back there since 1972, so I imagine a few things have changed.