When your business phone is ringing and customers are requesting service, life is great! Oh, I remember those days. Where have they gone? Bring on the bitterly cold weather of winter, the sweltering heat of summer, the flash flood waters of spring—and bring it on quickly!
Contractors’ wishes are misguided. We don’t want beautiful weather like 70 degrees, no humidity, light wind, no rain. No, we want our weather to be below 30 degrees, above 90 degrees and add a heavy dose of rain and lightening. Is that too much to ask? Can the seasons just jump from one extreme to another?
If you’re nodding your head up and down as you’re reading this article so far, you’re a passive contractor. There is nothing wrong with that—I prefer to be passive, actually. It’s easier to make money when our businesses are operating in a passive mode. Heck, it’s an easy process to implement as well.
Here’s how my dictionary describes passive: produced or caused by an external agency. What are these external agencies?
For one, it’s your marketing. They include tactics like your marketing plan, yellow page ads, truck graphics, magnets, valve tags, customer referrals, radio and television spots, yard signs, inbound phone scripts, your list probably still goes on from there. The other major external agency is extreme weather conditions, forcing customers to find you. Who’s being proactive when the weather is nasty? It’s your customers! You’re passively just taking their calls. This is the old game of supply and demand. You have the supply, they have the demand. Times like these are when we’re making boatloads of money. Everything is going great; the passive side of my business is hitting on all cylinders.
Then it happens. You run into a series of go-golfing days. It’s beautiful outside, 70 degrees, no wind, no rain, and no humidity. The car windows are open, the clubs are in the back seat and my customers are heading to the same place I am—the golf course.
I love to play golf, but I hate go-golfing days. That’s when my customers stop being proactive and forget about me. They go to the golf course instead. Yes, I am replaced by clubs, balls and green grass, in their minds. The world revolves around contractors like you and me. My customers stopped calling me. The nerve of these people!
So the other side of the coin is a proactive condition. Proactive is defined as serving to prepare for, intervene in, or control an expected occurrence or situation.
Let’s face it, we can’t control the weather any more than when customers call us for service. If you are waiting for customers to call you, or waiting for extremes in weather, then you should seriously think about closing your business. Your passive business will stagnate and never make a consistent profit. The good news is everyone can be proactive. You don’t need money to be proactive—you need effort.
You need to “control an expected occurrence.” So, here’s how you make sure you get enough calls. It’s a simple matter of planning ahead and you don’t have to plan too far in advance. Nexstar has created a three-day call board so everyone in your company can graphically see what they’re up against and what effort is needed. Here’s how it works:
1st: Determine the number of technicians working the next three days.
2nd: What’s your weather forecast for the next three days? (I will explain this later.)
3rd: How many pre-booked service calls do you want per working technician?
Generally, I like to have at least three calls planned per technician per day (your company may vary). I like knowing by 5 p.m. today that I have at least three calls booked on my board per technician for tomorrow. I may need to be proactive to generate calls further down the week. By the end of today, I want to know I have two calls per technician two days out and one call per technician on the third day out, based on the factors I have in this example. Build a known base of calls everyday. Now you’re controlling more variables. Everyone’s stress level will fall and your company can grow.
The other proactive component is the weather. If I know it’s going to be -10 degrees for two days out. I will set my goal at zero calls for those two days. I know that my phone will ring on those frigid days. (I hope).
The goal is to have zero variances each day. Your CSR’s will update the above board with every call booked. By the end of the day, you should expect calls to be booked either by inbound calls or outbound calls.
The outbound phone calls are how you become proactive. Take control of your business. Drive opportunity through the door. Drive growth through the door.
You may have a different starting point but I would start calling any recently inactive proposals because they didn’t call you back. Next, open your recent Summary of Findings sheets from your technician’s Nexstar Service System paperwork. Start calling on tasks left on the table. From there, call customers who you haven’t heard from in 12 months and start working your way backwards. Lastly, call service maintenance customers (Service Partner Plans) because you know you’re going back to them.
Proven Script:
I recommend you use the following script for times when you don’t have any inbound calls. (Please do not change one word of this script, it works.)
“Hello Mrs. (customer name), this is (your name) with (your company name). It’s time to check your system. Would Monday or Tuesday work best for you?”
The reason this script works is because the customer is being asked to make a decision on whether Monday or Tuesday is more convenient—not whether they want service. It’s subtle, and it works.
Bottom line is you can passively wish you had calls, and see your profits eaten away by continuing overhead cost or, your CSRs can proactively make outbound calls to take control of profits and grow your business.
Jim (Bone) Hamilton is a business coach with Nexstar®. He has spent 36 years I the PHCE service industry and has purchased and transformed 28 underperforming companies into profitable businesses, each in less than a year. Nexstar members get rapid results, guided by experienced coaches, surefire systems and incredible peer connections. For more information on how you can get rapid results, go to www.nexstarnetwork.com or call 888.240.STAR.