Lead Prospecting Guide for Tech-Savvy Contractors
For commercial service contractors, connecting with prospects that are responsible for facility management has historically been a tremendous challenge for the following reasons:
- Finding the decision maker is challenging
- Discovering their contact information is difficult
- Bypassing the gatekeeper is impossible
LinkedIn is the centerpiece of a host of technology available to overcome these challenges. From prospect discovery to initial contact, the following is a quick guide to using this technology to land your next deal.
Discover
LinkedIn enables you and and your sales team to find prospects that fit your exact criteria. Whether you are looking for the facility manager of a company responsible for multiple locations or a small business owner who is solely responsible for facility and equipment maintenance. LinkedIn’s advanced search functionality can drill down to a great list of potential customers. For example, the following searches returned hundreds of local results:
- Keywords = “facility manager”, Postal Code = “27603”, Within = “50 mi”
- Title = “Owner”, Company = “Restaurant”, Postal Code = “27603”, Within = “50 mi”
Not all of the results are a perfect fit, but it is easy to spot the most promising profiles.
Connect
Once you have a list, it’s time to connect with every potential prospect. Even if they are out of your LinkedIn network, you can take advantage of tools such as Lippl that will find their public profile and enable you to connect. When you request a connection, they will immediately be aware of who you are, so be sure that your profile effectively promotes your service offerings. Take advantage of LinkedIn’s tagging feature to differentiate your prospects from other connections in order to stay organized.
Note: If you are using a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) application to manage sales, be sure to look for tools that help you directly integrate LinkedIn into your CRM. For example, many integrations will automatically add a LinkedIn profile to you CRM as a new lead with the click of a button.
Contact
Direct electronic communication is the best way to reach your new prospects in order to get their attention and bypass any gatekeepers. There are three possible avenues to do so:
- Send a message directly through LinkedIn
- Use Thrust.io to determine their email address based on their name and domain. This tool will find most email addresses, but not all.
- Use the LinkedIn contact export to discover their email address. Note that this is often their personal email address and you may only want to use this as a last resort!
These technologies, a complete LinkedIn profile, and a brief introduction letter that focuses on your differentiators are proactive elements of the “digital wrap“ that are far more reaching – and effective for creating relationships – than a truck wrap alone could ever be.
Cloud Computing & Service Contractors – A Perfect Match
Service contractors need the cloud, but over and over again we see companies that are confused or unsure about how moving to the cloud will affect the operations of their business. Change is scary. As human beings, we are wired to avoid change, especially when it concerns a switch from what we are use to.
Cloud Computing
At a recent HVAC convention, our VP of sales witnessed two different speakers advocating the benefits of cloud computing for service contractors. Obviously, we are always pleased to have others singing the same tune. Here are a few excerpts of what was said:
The Cloud is Secure – One attendee described how all company data on their PC server was held hostage with Ransomware that cost more than $10,000 to remove. Huge organizations like Amazon, Google, and the US Government store billions of documents in the cloud. Virus protection and security are an integral part of data management and these large organizations would never store data in a location that wasn’t secure. Do you trust technology experts to build strong security or do you trust one of your administrative staffers to know about the latest virus, bug, or software flaw?
The Cloud is Cheap – There’s truly no reason to maintain a mail server anymore (or any other type of server, for that matter). Dozens of cloud applications can not only provide a hassle-free email solution, but a more feature rich solution as well. No one wants to pay an outside IT professional to be their problem solver. The cloud has lowered the price of software solutions by allowing software companies to put more power and more features into the hands of users. Cloud storage is essentially free. There’s truly no need to buy more file cabinet or PC hard drives.
The Cloud Empowers Your Customer Service – Items stored in the cloud can be accessed from any device – PCs, tablets, or smartphones. Your technicians can answer questions faster and with greater accuracy, even when they are in the field. Customers expect speed and accuracy. (Don’t we all use Google for fast answers?) Showing clients before and after photos, online work acknowledgements, past work history, or old invoices make you and your team shine.
The key point is simply this: Cloud computing is a perfect match for service contractors and their business operations. Embrace the cloud and prosper.
What is an Inspection Worth? About 2X What You are Being Paid!
I recently went to Vegas, but I was not there to gamble away my kids’ college funds. Instead, I was participating in the annual western region meeting of the National Association of Fire Equipment Dealers (NAFED). During the meeting, an interesting narrative regarding the value of an inspection job versus the value of repair work for the customers’ fire protection systems emerged during several of the conversations I witnessed. Opinions were varied due to lack of relevant experiences, but I am in the fortunate position to have the facts and the rationale to support the findings.
When I arrived at DunnWell (the company where ServiceTrade began) in 2010, I discovered that the company was reporting system deficiencies to customers based upon the findings of the inspection reports, but less than 23% of those impaired systems turned into repair orders for the company. As a sales professional, I was blown away by this poor performance. There is no better sales lead than the following:
“I was at your facility yesterday, and I discovered a malfunction with your equipment. It is not operating correctly, but rest assured we are the experts and we can fix it. In fact, I have already put together a quote and a suggested time for us to return and put everything in good working order for you.”
How in the world can you NOT make a sale with that type of pitch? Here’s how – be unorganized or sloppy in the follow up and speak in “codespeak” instead of customer terms. Customers do not care about “code”. Nor are they concerned about a deficiency you discovered BUT waited 2-4 weeks to report to them. DunnWell was taking 2 – 3 weeks to turn around quotes for the work, if it was quoted at all. Plus, the quote was attached to an email with multiple references to code violations with some accounting codes referencing what the customer must pay.
We fixed all of that at DunnWell, and now those lessons benefit the ServiceTrade application. If you deliver your deficiency quote within 2 days of discovering the problem, and it includes photos that “tell the story,” and it can be reviewed and approved online, the approval rate will 75% or higher. We have the data. How would you like to improve your repair revenue by 3X? Here is another number for you – your ratio of repair work to inspection work should be about $1 of repair to $1 of inspection. If it is not, you are being sloppy in the stewardship of your customers’ equipment. And both you and your customer are incurring liability that should not be there. Higher liability and less profit, simply because you cannot be bothered to do a good job following up on deficiency opportunities, is a recipe for failure.
Why do people respond so positively to online quotes with photos attached? The reason is obvious – it’s easy! Easier than downloading and printing some PDF attachment to an email, signing it, faxing it back – what a drag. Also, if it is delivered within a day or two of the inspection, it must be important. Better review it and make a decision. Finally, people respond more readily to images and stories. Our brains are wired that way. The best sales pitch is a story that people can relate to – not some cryptic code references and accounting bric-a-brac with a price they have to pay. Lead with the images and the story, then watch your conversion rates go through the roof. Here is the science behind story-telling as a sales tool if you are interested.
Well, I have some good news. For ServiceTrade customers, all of the work to be great at service revenue from deficiencies is streamlined for the benefit of our customers and their customers. Our deficiency quoting process is totally integrated with the photo and audio deficiency reporting of our mobile app. It allows you to use templates for frequently quoted repairs, and lets the customer review the quote online. We even tell you when the customer has looked at it online. Higher revenue, higher profit, lower costs, and lower liability. What are your inspections worth?
