Secrets to Operating a Successful Gunsmithing Business was written by Gene Kelly, President of the American Gunsmithing Institute and the Gun Club of America. This is the third of a seven part blog series.
Secret #3:
Marketing & Selling your Gunsmithing Services
I hate to pop your bubble, but the truth is that when you open your doors as a Gunsmith (or any other business) the whole world will not suddenly come running to your door to have their guns repaired. How can they if they don’t know you are offering Gunsmithing Services??! It never fails to amaze me that some Gunsmiths think they don’t have to do any advertising at all to be successful. However, a big advantage for Gunsmiths is that you can spend a lot less on advertising than most other businesses because of the huge demand and the lack of qualified Gunsmiths. But you have to do it smart and let them KNOW you are there, open for business and qualified to repair or customize their firearms. Again I extensively cover marketing in the Business Success Course. But as a head start here are 4 simple and extremely low-cost ways to get a ton of business:
- Business Cards: hand them out everywhere and post them letting people know you are an AGI Certified Gunsmith.
- Post and Mail a Simple Brochure (AGI can help you, by providing you with a standardized Brochure) to Gun Shops, Pawn Shops, Ranges, Gun Clubs and take them to hand out at Gun Shows. Everybody needs a good Gunsmith–people share news about them like hot stock tips.
- Create a proper yellow page ad (don’t buy an Ad without listening to the AGI CD on how to create effective yellow page Ads and certainly don’t listen to the ad sales rep!!)
- Have a simple, but effective, website presence with the 5 key components covered. (AGI has a turn-key system that can help with that too).
Just these four simple things can get you a lot of work. There are even more powerful tricks that I reveal in our success courses. You also need to know how to “Sell” your work & services. Whoa! You may be thinking “I hate selling!” But wait a minute, “selling” is not a dirty word! It just means knowing how to best help your customers make a good decision. If you are honest and want to actually help your customers, then you need to know how to do real selling.
Check back for tomorrow’s blog where we’ll discuss knowing how to rapidly do repairs and customizing work.
