Entries by Shawn Mims

,

Modern Tools for Service Contractors, Part 3: Outbound Sales and Marketing

Unlike residential field service companies, commercial service contractors rely heavily on new sales for growth.  For the residential contractors reading this post, please skip to the section below about MailChimp as it contains insights that apply to contractors on both ends of the spectrum.  For commercial contractors, this post lays out a handful of sales tools that are not […]

, , ,

Modern Tools for Service Contractors, Part 1: Operational Efficiency

Over the last couple years, we’ve compiled a list of free to low cost, easy-to-use applications and products that we often recommend to service contractors. These products range in benefits from operational efficiency to lead generation and fit into a modern ecosystem of tools necessary for service contractors to adapt to the business challenges (and opportunities) […]

, , ,

Don’t bring an operations knife to a customer service gunfight: Customer engagement must be the first priority in a connected world

“Why yes, I regularly purchase products from mail order catalogs” said no one in the last 20 years.  Yet 20 years ago, most catalog retailers were thinking to themselves “If only we could improve our operations and reduce our cost of delivery, print, and call centers, we will outprice the competition and really rake it […]

Don’t Get Gigged by Software – Measure the GIG

Lots of companies get “stuck” (or gigged) with bad software because they do not know how to measure the quality of the vendor during the sales cycle. One of the best ways to measure a software company prior to buying the application (aside from the advice in the The Practical Guide to Buying Software for […]