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.
Password Headaches? Some Simple Advice to Ease the Pain
Cloud applications are like banks: Your money is much safer under lock and key at the bank than it is under your mattress because anyone can “hack your house.” Bank security is as good as it gets, but like a bank, your data is only as secure as the keys to the vault; your password(s). You will have security problems if you use one password for everything or you keep your passwords on sticky notes, notepads, or spreadsheets.
For maximum security, you should have a unique password for every application and you should update them on a regular bases.
Keeping up with numerous usernames and passwords can be a very frustrating task considering the number of online tools you use. Like me, you may have a list of 20-30 username/password combinations that you use regularly. Fortunately, there are products that solve this problem for your PC, Mac, and mobile devices:
– LastPass
– 1Password
Both of these products operate in much the same way. They create a secure, encrypted “vault” that secures all your credentials behind a single password. Whenever you are prompted to login at a website, simply enter your “master” password and these applications will enter your credentials automatically. Whenever you create credentials or change passwords for a website, these products automatically store the data in your “vault.”
You only need to remember one password, that’s it. Your data is secure in the cloud, and your credentials are safe in your vault.
Automate Collections With InvoiceSherpa
In today’s connected world, new online services are popping up each day to improve the connections between you and your customers. One connection that is critical is the payment connection, and we found a cool app called InvoiceSherpa to help you.
This fantastic product helps service contractors better manage their invoices and boosts cash flow by helping speed collections. Cash is the lifeblood of all small companies, and InvoiceSherpa can truly deliver more cash. Instead of monitoring your invoices and sending reminders, InvoiceSherpa does the heavy lifting of reminding clients about due dates, forgotten invoices, and upcoming payment schedules.
InvoiceSherpa reminder interface
From the InvoiceSherpa website —
Automated Invoice Reminders
The key to staying on top of your invoices and accounts receivable is letting customers know the current status of their invoices. Using InvoiceSherpa you can easily automate the entire process including reminders when:
- An Invoice is created.
- A due date is coming up.
- The invoice is past due.
- A thank you when payment has been received.
All of these items can be scheduled at different intervals with a unique template that you customize to fit your custom branding. Our goal is to be a seamless extension of your business.
InvoiceSherpa is one more example of the rapid fire innovation that is available with online services these days. If you still believe you should be running your service contracting business with a single “all in one” application running on a PC server in your closet, you are missing out on a world of great capability.
Nearby Now & ServiceTrade Can Improve Your Local Search Results
Consumers no longer turn to the yellow pages, newspaper ads, or direct mail to find the best service contractors. Instead, they turn to Google to answer the question “Who should I call?” To address this change ServiceTrade is happy to announce an integration with Nearby Now, a tool that helps the best service contractors showcase their great reputation online and improve local search results.
The Results
Need some proof that your company can dominate Search Engine Optimization (SEO)? Try searching for an electrician in Atlanta or any surrounding city. For example, check out the results for these searches:
Atlanta electrician – https://www.google.com/#q=atlanta+electrician
Marietta electrician – https://www.google.com/#q=marietta+electrician
Sandy Springs electrician – https://www.google.com/#q=sandy+springs+electrician
Did you notice that TE Certified Electricians is at the top of the list for every search in the area? Amazing customer service and a Nearby Now-powered marketing strategy led by a digital marketing firm FOR service contractors, LeadsNearby, drive these revenue-generating results.
How Nearby Now Works
Nearby Now enables field technicians to check-in to each job throughout the day. Each check-in updates the Nearby Now check-in feed and network map embedded on their company website. Before the tech leaves the job, he or she can request a review of their service from the customer. Combined, the check-in data and customer reviews generate fresh, powerful content for the service contractor’s website that drive great search results and volumes of inbound inquiries.
ServiceTrade Simplifies the Process
The integration of Nearby Now with ServiceTrade simplifies everything about driving these outstanding results. Service contractors using ServiceTrade check-in to jobs with the mobile application as part of a process that enables amazing customer service. Instead of burdening the technician with extra applications and processes, the Nearby Now functionality is driven automatically out of ServiceTrade.
ServiceTrade enables smart service contractors to provide amazing customer service and the Nearby Now integration helps them broadcast their great reputation to the markets they serve. Give us a call at (919) 246-9901 to learn more.
What is Great Customer Service Worth? About 20% and $41 Billion.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock recently, you know that Uber is a taxi service start-up that connects drivers with folks who need a ride. As a business, Uber connects riders and drivers (just as a taxi service does) and they collect a 20% fee on top of what is paid to the driver. As of December 2014, the company is worth $41 billion. Here is the Wall Street Journal article with the details on the financials. When examining Uber, I find some interesting lessons for service contractors. The key takeaway is:
How does a simple change in customer service practices lead to such a massive breakthrough in shareholder value?
Uber has effectively changed one thing in the customer experience associated with a taxi ride – they have dramatically improved customer service by providing rich information to the customer throughout the service cycle. Uber has done this by eliminating the aggravating service uncertainties and the unknowns that are inherent in hiring a taxi. There’s no need for the customer to jump up and down on the curb to hail a cab or berate a dispatcher who has no better information than the customer on the real whereabouts of the driver and a likely pickup time. The Uber customer simply touches the application on their smartphone, chooses the driver/car with the best value for their needs (arrival time, type of car, price), and then collaborates with the driver from pickup planning through to drop-off and billing. The ride is essentially the same, but everything about the customer service experience is different. Thus, in exchange for amazing customer service and 20% above what is paid to the driver, Uber has built a company worth $41 billion.
Think about the parallels with the service contracting space. Great service contractors will tell you that a premium price is achieved through great customer service. Any contractor trying to run the business simply as a markup on skilled technician labor is ultimately going to fail. Yet most service contractors have a customer service approach that resembles that of a taxi company. The customer is only engaged via phone calls and a paper receipt at the end of the “taxi ride.” How valuable is that customer experience? Not very. How much more valuable might a service contracting company be if it were to adopt an Uber style approach to customer service? Much more.
Here are the lessons from Uber on building a premium brand through great customer service:
1) Engage the customer online throughout the service process: Customers do not want to speak to your dispatcher about status. Also, it is inefficient and likely prone to errors. Show them what is happening online – the driver, the arrival, the problem, the fix, the fees.
2) Images are more powerful than text: Show the customer, don’t tell them. Uber shows the car en route to the customer. Give the customer photos and images of what is happening with the equipment being serviced. Humans learn from stories and images.
3) Make it easy for them to engage your company: Uber does this by being ever present as an application on the phone. You can also do it by being easy to find online, by being in their inbox with regular correspondence about your recent service delivery, by providing service history online, and by allowing them to initiate service online.
Service contracting is definitely different than a taxi service, but the customer service experience has certain parallels. New Internet services are coming on the market everyday attempting to “Uberize” the service contracting business. Because the dynamics of service contracting are more complex than a taxi ride, it is unclear if these emergent Internet brands will gain the momentum of Uber. What is certain, however, is that great brands stem from great customer service. There’s little doubt that service contractors can dramatically improve the value of their business by embracing many of the elements of customer service that make Uber worth $41 billion. What steps are you taking to create a premium service contracting brand by engaging your customers online and pulling them into the service process?
The Only Certainties in Life – Death, Taxes…& Software as a Service (SaaS)
– Apologies to Ben Franklin – . The actual quote is “In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.” If Mr. Franklin were alive today, there’s little doubt that he would add a third item to this list – Software as a Service (SaaS) …aka Cloud Computing.
Why is SaaS as inevitable as Death and Taxes? Why am I using Mr. Franklin’s quote to segue into a discussion about the cloud? To make a simple point — Change is inevitable and a dramatic shift is underway in the world of software.
Smart consumers of software know the advantages of the cloud and thus are demanding solutions based online. (Rather than on desktop machines.)
Here’s a great example: QuickBooks. This product is the king of accounting software for millions of individuals and small businesses (SMB’s). Because QuickBooks is such a popular accounting system for customers of ServiceTrade (all SMB’s) , it also serves as a great example for this discussion.
Here’s a quote from Oct. 2014 – “QuickBooks Online hasn’t received much attention over the years. Launched in 2000, it only had 100,000 paid subscribers in 2009, compared to QuickBooks’ four million desktop subscribers. However, Intuit says at the end of last year they acquired a higher number of users online than on desktop — marking a shift in consumers. Now the company is rolling out all sorts of features to their online product.”
Do you think that QuickBooks is rolling out a ton of new features for their “desktop” subscribers? Doubtful. Will QuickBooks have a desktop version of it’s products in a few years? Very Doubtful.
The reason? The cloud delivers a better product, period – 1) No hardware to purchase/upgrade. 2) Connect from any PC or mobile device anywhere in the world. 3) New features added weekly instead of every few years.
SaaS Solutions are better. Contact ServiceTrade and let us guide you towards the best software solution for your Trade Contracting SMB.
Introducing the Digital Wrap: Deliver More Service Calls to Get More Service Leads!
Want More Service Call Leads? Deliver More Service Calls!
There is an old saying in sales “Activity yields Activity”. The more outbound calls you make, the more inbound calls you receive. The more conversations you have, the more clients you will gain through the insights those conversations yield. The same holds true for service calls. If you can get the service call flywheel spinning, then it will continue to spin under its own momentum, and speeding it up gets easier the faster it is moving. This trick only works, however, if you really understand the concept of perpetual service and embrace technology that automates your ”service call” marketing engine.
Why do you “wrap” your trucks in your logo, brand promise, and phone number? So when it is parked at the jobsite, others can see that their neighbor (residential or commercial) trusts your company. The “wrap” doesn’t do much good when your truck remains idle in your parking lot. The same can be true for your service activities. These activities can become your “digital wrap” when you capture them electronically and forward them to your customer via the Internet. If your customer service management application knows where you are and what you are doing, then both your customers and others in the “digital neighborhood” should be able to easily see and share that information. An email in their inbox is easily searchable, and your client can forward this to their friends and family as evidence of your good work. This doesn’t happen when your customer service approach is limited to accounting information on a multi-part paper ticket that likely gets trashed by the customer.
Another way that service generates leads is the opportunity for discovery that occurs at the customer site. If it is easy to share that discovery with others in your company and also back with the customer in the form of photos, audio memos, online quotes, and service reviews, then you have created potential service call leads for the future. Now the online customer can see and reflect on what you’ve found when it is convenient for them. During the initial service call, when you are trying to get them back to work by fixing their equipment, the timing is typically not right to review and discuss other service opportunities. However, if you create a digital catalog of those opportunities for sharing, your initial service will almost certainly yield future services. Future service calls will not happen if you expect the tech to remember it and write it down for the office to type it into some note field in an antiquated PC application and “maybe” have that delivered to the client. That new revenue opportunity is lost forever.
Marketing for service contractors is increasingly moving from the physical space to the digital space. Your truck “wrap”, your local radio commercials, and your billboards need to be augmented by digital calling cards that gain impressions because they are so easy to move around in the online “neighborhood”. If these digital impressions require “extra activity” above and apart from your typical customer service routine, it will never get done. If it is built in to the way you execute customer service, it will add speed to the service call flywheel. If you want more service call leads, then deliver more service calls after you embrace perpetual service and get aboard the ServiceTrade bandwagon.
