Keeping up on trends and best practices in your industry should be a top concern for any quality remodeling company—and what better way to improve your own business than by learning how others have done the same thing?

Recently, Remodeling Magazine released its annual report of the Top 550 remodeling companies in the United States. Of those companies, the “Big 50” is a select group of the top, most innovative remodelers in the industry. Since 1986, Remodeling Magazine has been selecting the best of the best – and at Spectrum Communications, we wanted to take a deeper look at exactly what set the Big 50 replacement contractors apart.

More, More, More

As it turns out, the Big 50 are not running larger jobs, on average – but they are running more of them. The average Big 50 remodeler is running 515 jobs a year, compared to the average Top 550 company, which completes around 380 jobs a year. Running 36% more jobs than such qualified competitors is tough! To get to the top of your game, you need to have a finely tuned lead generation system. After all, completing hundreds of additional jobs is impossible if you don’t have the lead numbers to match.

Reviews

So, how do you bring in the leads to make your company a job-completion machine? Reviews!

Looking at the Big 50 remodelers in comparison to the Top 550 remodelers, one of the biggest differences was in online reviews. It’s a given that everyone featured in Remodeling Magazine has excellent reviews, so we looked closer.

The Top 550 remodelers have, on average, 4.64 stars on Houzz. Big 50 remodelers narrowly edge them out with 4.75 stars on average. Essentially, to compete at this level, your service must be consistently excellent – the average review profile is close to a perfect 5 stars.

Reputation Management

So what do these ratings have to do with growing your business and taking on more jobs?

The answer is simple—it’s a numbers game. The Big 50 remodelers run more jobs in part because they have more reviews (consumers think more highly of these companies and are more likely to trust a Big 50 company with their business).

By no means are the Top 550 remodelers slacking, but what sets the Big 50 apart is their online presence. Your average Big 50 remodeler has 50% more reviews on Houzz than the rest of the field. Not only are the Big 50 winners doing great service, they have reputation management systems in place to convert that great work into a great reviews presence.

Putting it All Together

So, what separates the good remodelers from the great remodelers?

In a nutshell, striving to be one of the Big 50 requires a lot of hard work, excellent service and a powerful online presence. Requesting reviews from your happy customers is key because it establishes a key element of trust between your company and potential new customers. The most competitive companies nationwide are doing exactly that as part of their lead generation systems—don’t get left behind!