Success in the Slow Season: 3 tips from a fellow independent contractor

When the milder seasons begin to roll around, the slower side of business begins to rear its ugly head.  But there are several keys that can be performed prior to and during these “slow seasons” in order to secure success.

Matt Stewart, Operations Manager at Advanced Comfort Systems in Hickory, North Carolina, shared three tips he finds important to staying busy, prepared, and successful during these slower times:

1. “It is important to capitalize on every call.”– No matter what a customer calls for, treat it as your lifeblood and do all you can to meet their need at hand.  If customers are not interested in larger investments find a lead-in to prove the importance of lower investment add-on sales such as Indoor Air Quality for HVAC, Water Quality products for Plumbing, or Surge Protection products for Electrical.
2. “Focus on some lower cost marketing and maintain the marketing you have in place.”– If you have set up social media sites or a company website continue to invest purposeful time updating your status, creating blogs, and sharing limited-time specials.  It is important to maintain your web presence no matter how slow business is because your customer base uses the web daily.  Make an effort to go where your customers are located.  Also invest in lower cost marketing efforts such as door hangers.  Utilizing this type of marketing will keep techs busy spreading your message as well as create situations where it is likely that a technician will meet a potential customer face-to-face.
3. “Involve CSRs in outbound calling in order to get technicians in the customer’s door.”– When calls are not steadily coming in then make calls go out on a steady basis.  Calling customers that are in your company’s database to offer a limited-time special on a full system tune-up is a great way to make your customers feel taken care of as well keep your technicians busy and simply get them in the door.  Merely getting a technician inside a customer’s house and face-to-face with the customer is a large portion of the battle.  When the technician is inside the house and has an opportunity to prove your company’s high value of service excellence then it creates an “open door” for setting up a lead, club, repair, replacement, or add-on sale.

The important aspect to remember is to do your careful preparation before the slower seasons begin.  When you have a well thought out plan for your company and for all members of your team the milder months will be less of a challenge.  If you want to have a business strategy in place for your company let Service Excellence Training work with you to set up the best game plan for your team.

If you found Matt’s three pieces of advice helpful and interesting, keep an eye out for individual blogs devoted to each of his specific points for the next three weeks.  Thank you for following our weekly posts.  Here at Service Excellence Training we want to help you turning your learning into earning!

-Resource curated by Whitney Stewart of Service Excellence Training.