It’s All In The Processes

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Over the last year I’ve had the privilege of helping a few contracting businesses go from barely staying above water to becoming highly profitable. The solution wasn’t some new sales gimmick, not a great new marketing program, not even a social media blitz. The solution to turning them around was a simple focus on the basics. Too many times I run into clients who ask the same question, “Frank, what can you do to help me increase my sales?” Many times the real problem is not the lack of customers or even sales; it is a lack of profitability. The answer isn’t in just getting more sales, it is what you do with the customer from the initial phone call to collecting payment. Sure, anyone can get plenty of sales, but making a great net profit margin is what’s important.

In service contracting we do everything possible to get the phone to ring, hopefully when the phone rings we do a good job convincing the customer we actually are happy they called and that we need to come to their home to take care of their needs and they actually say okay. The next step is to make sure we actually arrive during the promised time and have the customer be happy to see a well groomed, clean, uniformed, professional representative who will smile, explain things, offer options, and do a great job building a relationship. If everything up to that point goes as planned, yes, we may make a sale.

So, let’s say we are successful in getting the customer to approve the recommendations and agree to make the investment. Well, there are additional steps beyond that, because we want this customer forever, we want this customer to tell all of their friends how great this experience went and yes, we want them to buy a service plan and pay the invoice.

Everything I just mentioned is part of a process. The most successful businesses make it a point to establish processes that everyone easily understands. You see when we all know exactly what it takes to make a successful customer experience, we make much better decisions, we make happier employees and the odds of success go up greatly.

Maybe it isn’t just a matter of “Getting more Sales,” maybe it is a matter of making sure you have the correct processes, communicate them to employees, practice them, and measure them. Doing these basic things will increase something that is much more important than just getting more sales, and that is improving your bottom line today and in the future, by doing the right things with the customers you do have.

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Posted In: ACCA Now, Management