Service Excellence in Independent Contracting leads to Referral Leads

When it comes to growing leads inside of an HVAC, plumbing, or electrical independent contracting company, it is important for every company team to consider the value of each specific type of lead: referral leads, technician-generated leads, and marketed leads.  While each of these types of leads is vitally important to company growth, each one is reached in a bit of a different manner.  In our post today, we are going to delve into part one of this three part series and explore the service company skill that leads to referral leads– relationship-driven service excellence.

When it comes to referral leads, we could explore the more obvious aspects of acquiring these types of leads.  Such as asking for a referral or providing service that is completely deserving of a referral.  However, we are going to explore the team mentalities and mindsets that work to lead to these leads:

-Be more than just a company team member, understand and relate to each component of your clients’ needs-

A company team must be willing to go above and beyond basic service needs if they plan to build a strong relationship with a client.  CSRs, techs, and managers must be willing to listen and understand that each client is different and must be interacted with in the way that makes them most comfortable.  Clients’ needs often relate to their personality type or their stage in life.  For example a tech may need to quickly and efficiently provide and layout all numbers, calculations, and comparisons to an accountant that has a busy schedule.  However, a tech may be working with an elderly lady that values the time the tech takes to talk and relate to her as well as appreciates a selfless act of service such as taking out her garbage. In the first instance, the accountant wants to-the-point-efficiency yet the elderly lady wants cordial gestures that make her feel taken care of.  All company team members must be willing and prepared to interact with clients in the way in which targets the client’s needs based on their personality type and current life stage.

-Put yourself in your client’s shoes and try to think like you are the client- what would you want?-

While the first aspect of acquiring referral leads deals with relating to the undercurrent needs of your clients, the next component deals with how your clients see your service company as a whole.  In this case, you should be able to put yourself into your client’s shoes and see your company the way they see it.  If you were the client would you invest in the service you were providing? Did you provide the best and most thorough explanations? Did you prove the need effectively?  Were you professional?  While clients need their most pressing needs met first by a team member that is willing to listen; it is also important that clients see the “wow factor” that sets your company above all the competition.  When the client opens their door to you do you show gratitude for their call, professionalism, and a personable nature right-off-the-bat?  If techs work to understand and relate to their clients’ perception of their company’s service then when they reach the end of the call, asking for a referral will be a comfortable and more natural process.

Growing leads begins first with owners, managers, CSRs, and technicians’ mindsets.  The relationship-driven acts of service excellence that follow in the wake of these positive mentalities then work to grow referral leads inside an independent contracting company.  In our post today, we explored two important thought-processes: Meeting clients’ unique needs and having the ability to put yourself in your clients’ shoes.  Thank you for following our weekly post.  Here at Service Excellence Training, we turn learning into earning!

-Resource curated by Whitney Stewart of Service Excellence Training