Hi {{first_name | there}},
In the last issue we looked at the referral network sitting on your job site. This one is about the other one, and it is the one everybody knows about and still does not work.
Every builder has a list. Names, addresses, completion dates, warranty dates. You pull it up when somebody calls about a stuck door, you fix the door, you close the ticket, and it goes back in the drawer.
A builder doing fifteen to twenty homes a year has sixty to eighty past clients in a four-year window. A remodeler doing thirty or forty projects a year has considerably more. Every one of them is a household in your market that can speak to your work with specifics, and the great majority of them have not heard your name since the final payment cleared.
Why this group is different from a lead list
They are not prospects. They are proof. A homeowner considering a $90,000 kitchen does not want a testimonial page, they want to know somebody like them who went through it. Your past clients are that, and they are also the most likely people in your market to talk about their remodel unprompted, because people talk about their houses constantly.
They are also, and this gets forgotten, repeat customers. The median American home is now 42 years old, and with rates where they are most people are staying put and working through the house room by room. The family whose bathroom you did in 2023 has a kitchen they are unhappy with. They are not going to call you, because they assume you have moved on to bigger work.
What to actually do with the list this month
Pull it and sort it by completion date. Anyone finished between one and four years ago is the live group.
Pick ten. Not the whole list, ten. Call or send a short personal note, not a mass email. Ask how the space is holding up. That is the entire message. No pitch, no newsletter signup, no offer.
Two things come out of those ten conversations. You find out what actually held up and what did not, which is information you cannot get anywhere else. And you remind ten households in your market that you exist and are taking work.
The takeaway
The most valuable marketing list you own is a spreadsheet of people who already paid you and already liked the result.
You have their phone numbers. You have not used them. Start today!
Timothy Dahl
[email protected]
Founder, Builder Playbook
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