My dad was a general contractor in VA before he passed away in February.  During the last few months of discontinuing/canceling things, some interesting items have come in the mail, which my husband has confiscated to read.  This was in a magazine called "Power Outlet" for electrical contractors.  While it was conveniently left behind in the bathroom--if you get my drift--I found this article and thought you'd all be interested.  I'm not quoting it verbatim since it was kind of lengthy, but I have paraphrased it for our industry.

Four Keys to Becoming the "Choice" Contractor (Abstractor)

1).  Appearance Counts.  The article of course talked about the contractor who shows up in stained, ripped clothes.  I started thinking about OUR appearance as abstractors.  Sure, we are seen at the courthouse and should take care with our appearance, but MOST of our clients don't actually SEE us at the courthouse, they are a faceless person on the other end of a fax or email.  So how would appearance count for us?  In our reports!  Hand-written, sloppy, faxed reports aren't going to cut it any more.  Remember, as the market slows, that means less orders as a whole in the industry, so you MUST set yourself apart.  Neatly typed or computerized reporting is the answer.  Also, emailing instead of faxing shows how efficient your company is.  So, yes, even for us--appearance counts!

2).  The Web is the New Yellow Pages.  EVERYONE should have a one page web site at minimum.  I've got the one page now, I'm working on the other pages to provide more info.  You should also have a domain name (i.e. www.nameofyourcompany.com).  They're very inexpensive and provide a professional face to your company.  In the old days, we used to pay exorbitant fees for fancy letterhead.  We don't need that in the 21st century--we email far more than we snail-mail.  Your email address IS your letterhead in today's market.  And having your email be myname@nameofmycompany.com is a whole lot more professional than mycutenickname@ThisIsAFreeEmailAddress.com

3).  Communication Matters.  We all know that we must communicate with our customers, so this point--at first--went flying past my head as I skimmed the paragraph to move on to the next point, but then I stopped.  For those of us lucky enough NOT to be a one-man/woman operation, do the people who answer our phones communicate well?  Not exactly a pleasant question to pose, given the grammar and enunciation abilities of today's generation.  Does the "front office" staff sound as educated and professional as YOU do?  Do they make spelling errors on emails to clients?  For those of you who are still running the whole show--do you have a separate business number, do your children answer your phone?

4).  Got a niche?  I thought this was actually pretty helpful.  In the article, the author noted a particular type of electrical wiring that is a real pain to install.  Only one contractor liked working with it so that's all he did.  Pretty soon, he was doing ALL the work for everyone when that type of wiring was needed.  It works for us too.  LCTE's specialty is heirs property.  Just this calendar year, I have been contracted to do several enormous heirs property searches.  Searches that take weeks and are so complicated I sometimes have to spread out butcher paper and draw it to see the chain.  Searches that require frequent trips to the hair dresser to cover the gray.  Point?  The last three calls were new clients.  All three balked at my fee.  I told each of them the same thing--you are more than welcome to call around and get other quotes.  All three said virtually the same thing, paraphrased--I've already done that and everybody said to call Lowcountry.  Our colleague Lynn Hammett ONLY does commercial searches. What's your niche? 

My thoughts on sharing this are--it would be FANTASTIC if we were all already masters of these four areas.  But we're often busy and things slip to the side.  Now, during the slower time, take stock of your business and where you might need improvement--it just MIGHT pay off in the long run as the wheat starts to fall from the chaff.