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Get Busy Growing

“It comes down to a simple choice, really . . .  Get busy living or get busy dying.”               --  Tim Robbins as Andy Dufresne in The Shawshank Redemption Growing your business is a simple choice.  And if you are not…
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Are your services significant?

Significant objects are worth more than regular objects.  At least that is the conclusion arrived upon by the significant objects project and its team of researchers.  Joshua Glenn and Rob Walker, a writer and a journalist respectively, set…
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Amazon Prime Lessons for Service Contractors

Everyone knows Amazon has been on a tear lately.  Here is their stock performance over the last 5 years as compared to the broader S&P 500.  Wow!  A big part of that success has been the Prime subscription program.   Amazon customers…
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Service Repair Funnel

    As a commercial/industrial service contractor, what is your ratio of repair to recurring service revenue? 1 to 1? 2 to 1? 5 to 1? If you don’t know, you could be missing out on a gold mine of high-margin work. If you do, you probably…

Your Best Sales Rep: Data

When you’re selling to a new customer, can you predict their future? You probably try and you don’t even realize it. Like a palm reader, you survey their equipment and try to divine what failures are likely to occur, how much ongoing maintenance…

Money for Nothing

In 1985, Marc Knopfler, the front man for the band Dire Straits, overheard a guy in an appliance store grudgingly admiring the MTV rockers performing on the store display TVs. Knopfler memorialized the reflections he overheard in the grammy…
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Say “yes” to the quote

Are you worried that customers are going to “shop” your repair or upgrade quote around to other service contractors? If so, you failed earlier than you may realize. Getting customers to a “yes” on quoted work starts well before you ever…
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Write your Vows to your Premium Program Customers

We’ve mentioned (here and here) how much more profitable it is to sell a premium program that gives the customer better outcomes than it is to negotiate on labor rates.  You’ll need a few things to sell a premium program: Technology-enabled…
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Bust Customer Service Data Out of the Silo

Integration is a popular topic at ServiceTrade. More people are coming up with ways to integrate their customer service data with other operational programs - their website, CRM, accounting, or marketing programs. Once shared across applications,…