Resource Center - Industry Articles
The Telephone is Your Livelihood
by Jas Jackson, March 31 2010
The telephone is the most important tool you have when trying to sell an HVAC system. Let’s face it, if the phone doesn’t ring, your call handlers won’t have an opportunity to set an appointment. If no appointment is set, your team has nothing to install or service. If you don’t install or service a system, you won’t make any money at the end of the month. The sales process begins with Mr. or Mrs. Customer calling your company and telling you their system needs to be serviced or replaced. As a contractor there are three little things that can make a BIG difference:
- Know where your leads are calling from
- Ensure that all calls are being answered
- Listen to what is being said over the phone
It’s About YOU Not Them
The first thing you can do to improve your business is track your advertising. More often than most contractors like to admit, they have been convinced from marketers that their advertising campaigns will return a great response rate. You’ve heard big promises from direct mail companies, the Yellow Pages, and other media companies alike:
“You’ll get more calls if you just spend $300 per month!”
“Our typical contractor response rates are 10%!”
“Act now, so I can get you the discount you deserve!”
“Hurry before the price goes up!”
You’ve heard them all. They have you scrambling all over the place because you don’t know what to do. I’ll be frank, what they are trying to do is meet THEIR quota. They’re sales people too. They have to sell a certain amount of ad space per month, otherwise they don’t make money. After they sell you ad space they move on to the next unsuspecting contractor and repeat the routine.
The marketing company should be filling YOUR quota. By tracking your advertising, you’ll know exactly how many leads were sent your way from each specific ad source. If they didn’t send you the leads you required, you can go back to them to negotiate a better deal:
“Why should I pay you when I didn’t receive any calls?”
“The calls that came in weren’t even leads. They tried to sell me something.”
“We need to renegotiate the price of the ad because you didn’t deliver what you
promised.”
By tracking your advertising, you can begin to gauge which ad sources work best for you. You can cut unnecessary spending on ads that aren’t performing and shift marketing dollars into ads that are. By making your marketing more efficient, you’ll get:
- More calls for the same (or less) ad spend.
- Higher qualified leads at a lower cost per acquisition.
- More opportunities to set an appointment.
Ultimately, you’ll find the right marketing blend that works best for you. This isn’t magic. It’s just a lot of hard work if you don’t have a call tracking company to do this for you.
Julie Howard of Howard Air, an ACCA member, has already begun to track their advertising and it has proved to be quite beneficial. If you’d like, contact Julie Howard at jhoward@howardair.com to find out how they do it.
Stay tuned next month, when we talk about how to ensure that all calls are answered and marketing dollars aren’t being wasted.
Jas Jackson, Director of HVAC for CallSource, (888) 988-HVAC
