Sound Familiar?

Every week we visit companies where we hear of leads being lost or not followed up in time, installation errors and problems and cash flow being interrupted due to delays caused by basic but persistent errors.

‘Hello Mr Jones, How can I help?’…….
‘You rang in on Monday asking for a quote and not heard from us since’

‘Ok yes Mr Jones, I will make sure one of our representatives contacts you this morning’.
Can I just take your phone number again?

If you were Mr Jones would you be impressed? Or would you have even bothered to ring back? Lets face it if a company cant be bothered to ring back to try and sell you something, what are they going to be like when you ring them to ask for help when your door handle falls off ?.

Try this one

‘Hello Mr Brown how can I help?’
‘You would like to accept the quotation for your new conservatory,….. thank you
I will need to get our representative to come back out to get the contract signed.
Can I just check, who was the representative that came to see you?.....
How much was the quote for?.........

No I’m not sure when he will be able to come back out but I will get him to call you as soon he returns to the office.
Can I just take your contact details again?

Again put yourself in Mr Browns Shoes he has probably just made a decision to make the second most expensive purchase of his life after his home, this level of professionalism is not going to impress, and don’t forget he hasn’t signed the contract yet!

The chances are that if he is feeling a little concerned and that you don’t really value him as a customer, and a competitor rings him before your rep, you may well lose the sale.

It’s no good relying on the customer sticking with you because they like the rep, or because they bought from you before. In the current climate you can’t afford to be complacent.

Every day I spend in companies where I hear this kind of thing happening, I wonder how many sales and how many tens of thousands of pounds get lost in this way; and let’s face it this is the first fence, the one you really don’t want to fall at.

Many companies fall down at these early stages and this should never happen. These situations are almost entirely down to a lack of control over the information in your business. It is easy to blame the rep or even the receptionist but ask yourself, is it really their fault?

Would the rep really want to lose that £25K conservatory deal and the commission that goes with it?
Could the receptionist or sales administrator have been a bit more helpful?

But if he or she didn’t have the information from the lead at hand what else could they do. After all you wouldn’t want to not know which customer had rang in to accept an order would you.

Unfortunately by having to ask the kind of questions needed if you don’t have the information at hand, you run the risk of looking clumsy and amateurish.

Let me suggest alternative versions of the two scenarios.

‘Hello Mr Jones How can I help ?.....

‘You would like a quote for some replacement windows,… OK if  I can have your contact details I will arrange an appointment for you now.

Problem solved, happy customer, because they feel reassured that they are asking a professional company to quote. If the sales appointment is booked a couple of days in advance imagine how you will have further enhanced you image when a letter arrives on their door mat confirming the appointment.
Our second scenario goes like this

‘Hello Mrs Brown how can I help?’

‘You would like to accept the quotation for your new conservatory,….. thank you, let me check the diary.

 John is in your area on Tuesday morning would that be a convenient time for him to get the contract
signed? Fine he will be with you around 11.00 am

The result, your rep gets back in before anyone else gets the chance and even if a competitor tries the chances are they will be like the company in our first scenarios.

Which one would you choose?

This is the kind of fundamental change we have helped many of our customers achieve in their businesses through the introduction of the sales control AdminBase affords. Don’t get left behind...

Take Control.

 

Is Your Marketing Making Someone Else Rich?

I want to ask you a question, but I want you to think very carefully before you answer it.
What does it cost you to get a lead?

If you said ‘about 50 quid’ please don’t read any further because you are probably already beyond help. That’s what most would have guessed in 1990

Guesses aren’t allowed, this is your  profit margins you are gambling with.

Why would you want to know?

Because it’s your money, the bottom line profit that pays for those leads. To put it another way every pound you save on advertising and marketing is a pound on your bottom line figure, because it’s a cost. One that most companies don’t monitor properly, if at all.

Advertising in the wrong place is like flushing net margin…your money down the drain. You really don’t want to do that, do you?

But every week that is what hundreds if not thousands of home improvement companies do. Are you one of them?

Here are five simple questions to help determine if you are.
 
Now be totally honest when you answer them, your wealth could depend on it.

1. Do you pay for Advertising?, that includes phone books, canvassers etc.


2. Do you have a means of recording the leads that you generate?. The salesman’s diaries don’t count.


3. Do you always ask where the lead came from?


4. Do you record every lead?


5. Do you sit down every week or month and work out how each lead source has performed?

If you answered yes to #1 and no, or sometimes to any one of the others, you have no way of knowing what your leads cost to generate; therefore no way of managing the cost and quality of the leads your marketing produces.

We have a customer who reduced his advertising spend by over £40K in one year, and saw an increase in the quantity and quality of his leads, and an increase in turnover. Now when you  think about that, it is truly amazing.

Most companies expect to spend between 3% and 5% of their turnover on advertising and marketing.
So if you follow that line of thinking through he should have seen an 800K drop in sales.

The reason he didn’t was simply because most of his money had been spent on lead sources that simply didn’t perform.

If the reduction in advertising had no effect on sales, the company would have seen a 40K increase on their bottom line figure. Even if sales decreased, the bottom line would still have improved.

Ask yourself this, how many windows do you have to sell and install to make £40K net profit in an industry where the average net margin is well under 10%?

Get in touch and let us show you how to save time managing your leads and get your marketing analysis for free.


Stop putting your money on someone else’s bottom line

 

I Don't Want To Complain But...

‘Your fitters were great, hard working and so tidy. The salesman was really helpful and never put me under any pressure to buy, your surveyor was brilliant checking every aspect of the contract through with me’.

So you’re delighted right?

Wrong!!

‘I feel that if I hadn’t rung to check up every week, that I would still be waiting for my windows now’

‘Each time I rang someone took a message and said they would get someone to ring me back, because they couldn’t confirm any details as he was on site or in a meeting’

Sound familiar?
The really sad thing about this conversation, apart from the fact that it happens so often, is that you did the really hard bit. They loved the fitters and the surveyor, they even liked the salesman!

But they didn’t feel valued. They didn’t get the impression that you were sat there waiting for their call. Which of course you weren’t, you were busy making sure the frames were ordered, the glass arrived intact; the right panel was supplied with the right stained glass in it.

And probably returning calls to other disgruntled customers who rang yesterday when the installation manager was out on site, again.

I had that problem, it used to happen all the time, but I solved it. I started sending out a letter when each new contract arrived from sales, thanking my new customer for their order and explaining how I was going to deal with their ‘Valued Order’ because that’s what it was, let me explain.

I live and used to manage a window company in a rural area of the country. So when we got an order from a new customer it was a golden opportunity for add on business and recommendations, I had the attitude that once they bought from us we had to perform, so they would provide us with more business in the future.

The problem is that it’s not enough just to perform; you have to let them know you are performing. And don’t get the impression that this is just about the future either; improving your communication with your ‘Valued Customer’ also improves your cash flow.

‘Oh I am sorry, I didn’t realise I had to pay the fitter when he finished, I will have to transfer the money from my...’

High interest savings account / Swiss bank account / business account / solicitors account when I have sold my other house…blah, blah.  Yes, I used to hear them all too.

But is this your own fault? I found that it was, at least partly. Most of us in business are guilty of making the assumption that our customers are business-like as well, the thing is most of them aren’t, most of them don’t even read the contract, until something goes wrong or they are unhappy with some aspect of the job. So when everything goes to plan paying for it gets forgotten, by them at least.

This is a simple problem to resolve though, communicate with them, at least send out an order acknowledgment letter, explaining that they have to have the funds available to pay once the products are fitted. If you are really on the case how about a fitting letter once you have confirmed the installation date.

‘Think of all those stamps’

I hear you cry. Think of all those cheques coming in with your fitting teams after each job is fitted, rather than having to pay for stamps on the reminders you send out each week, to the people who didn’t realise they had to pay.

But back to the original problem of being seen to be performing, once the customer receives the order acknowledgment letter they tend to  relax. For a start the letter thanks them for their deposit, so they are reassured that the salesman didn’t leave on the next plane for Brazil to spend their hard earned deposit on bottles of cachaca while dancing the samba in some bar.

But hopefully it also explains what will happen next, this will help to fill in the gaps left from the sales visit, after all you don’t want the salesman to have to explain about surveys, fitting dates, and paying on completion. These are kind of things that could raise objections that may prevent the sale from happening in the first place. And of course your salesman will probably be in a hurry,.. he won’t want to be late for that samba class will he?

But for many people the stamps are not the only problem, as in addition to all of the jobs you currently undertake I am advocating the production of 2 or 3 letters for each contract as well. You may see this as adding too much to your admin workload, as most companies I see tend to be somewhat understaffed anyway. We are in a very competitive industry and we have to control costs but we have to do this in the right way.


For example you wouldn’t send out your surveyor on a bicycle. Granted you would save money on fuel, road tax and the vehicle but you would be lucky to get one survey done a day.

The same goes for producing those letters. Did I get another office junior to do them for me? No my Finance director (not a man noted for his generosity) wouldn’t add another salary to the cost of the stamps. But he did agree to a one off purchase of the tool to do the job, so I could do it myself.

So my advice is, keep those customers happy, buy some stamps, but give us a call first so we can show how to produce the letters to stick them on.