Contractor Marketing Blog

You know what they say, “practice makes perfect.” This is the mantra you want to instill in your employees. In a perfect world, job protocol and etiquette would be so engrained that the company would always function without a hitch. Fortunately, with the right training and attitude, this can happen.

Whoever said time is money was certainly not joking.  Let’s say you manage a commercial HVAC company with 50 field technicians with a fleet of 30 vehicles.  For a fleet of this size it may take two or more people to coordinate logistics, scheduling and dispatching of crews for service, preventative maintenance and installs.  In my experience an average HVAC company this size will have 800 or more active customers.  Each customer will have a different service level agreement with varying contracted response times and obligations.  On a typical day a dispatcher in this organization will spend 6 or more hours opening and closing work orders and coordinating routing and scheduling of resources.  In peak season the day may be stretched to 10-12 hours and overtime kicks in for not only the dispatcher but also for the field technicians.

When entering into a sales situation it is important that you equip yourself or your sales team with the tools to be successful. The following are some of the most effective and proven tools direct from The Service Coach playbook that I’ve used personally and have built for our clients to help them close more deals faster:

You’ve probably heard of or even used one of the many group buying or social buying sites recently. Lately, these popular sites are taking over the way consumers think of a ‘deal’, by  offering huge discounts for large quantities of purchases at once.

For a service company a testimonial is the most power piece of marketing you could possibly get. At the Service Coach we talk a lot about social media marketing and lead generation for the service industry but if that is not coupled with great service and the end result a happy customer all is lost. The power of a customer testimonial can go a long way, however; it must be organized and marketed in a way that is easy to understand and gets the point across to the potential buyer.  The Service Coach has compiled 5 tips on developing a powerful customer testimonial and how to market them:  

I guest blogged on Teri Yanovitch's blog last week entitled How to deal with Generation Y Customers. I received some interesting questions about how the Service Industry can track and manage customer service & engagement using Twitter. In follow up from yesterdays blog about how to use twitter for the service industry I figured this was very fitting.

Many service companies will set up a well-equipped customer service call center spending substantial amount of funds on the physical location, the technological infrastructure and the procurement of skilled staff. If this is not coupled with a powerful customer service script, opportunities for the service company may be lost. The Service Coach has noticed a lot of questions on Linkedin Groups and organic traffic search for people searching for customer scripts and ideas. No service company is the same so we have developed 10 tips in developing a powerful and effective customer service script.

What message does your prospective customer hear when you or your staff are unable to answer the phone?  Does your message grab their attention?  Is it powerful enough to convert them to a customer?     You spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars every year in marketing your business and making your phone ring.  T

Customer complaints can be a tricky thing to deal with as a small business owner. You want to make sure your customers are always happy; however, you want to protect your employees from unscrupulous customers as well.