Whether you operate a commercial or residential service business, closing a larger percentage of sales opportunities is key to growing your business. There are many ways that you can leverage XOi within your sales, service and support workflows to optimize and automate your business. Here are four ways that contractors are leveraging XOi to grow sales.
In Bid Situations: A Sales Tool on the Front End
Making your deliverable part of the sales conversation is one of the fastest ways to increase closed business using XOi.
It’s easy to differentiate on price, labor warranty, and financing options in bid situations, but most contractors don’t want to be the ones to sell on lowest price. The most difficult part is proving you stand out from competing firms when it comes to quality and craftsmanship.
Most customers live with one fear after selecting a contractor in a bid situation: “Did I go with the right one?” That question carries both short- and long-term fear, especially considering the cost involved. The key to winning more bids and avoiding buyer’s remorse is to increase your trust factor by actually showing the quality of work you provide and the transparency your customers can expect.
Empower your service techs and sales teams to talk with customers about why and how your organization uses XOi to deliver greater value to them. Teach them how to speak about the type of content captured and how they can show prospective customers an example of a completed workflow relevant to their specific application. Techs should explain that this information is captured to assure quality and provide the customer with the transparency they deserve regarding the work performed.
Equipping Techs to Sell on Recommended Repairs and Upgrades
One of the most difficult challenges for any contractor is closing business on recommended repairs and upgrades when a unit is still in operation. For most, this is a challenge being fought on two fronts – first, to overcome an inherent distrust of the trades and second, to educate the customer on something they often know nothing about. XOi can help with both.
Techs aren’t in the business to sell; they’re there to fix. So it makes sense that we constantly hear that “only 20% of my techs are any good at selling.” What if instead of relying on sales skills, your team could leverage videos that basically do the selling for them?
Use XOi to virtually walk the customer through the cause for concern, educate them on the criticalness of the situation, and explain the benefits of moving forward with the recommendation. Those benefits can be energy savings, efficiency, system performance, preventative measures, or any number of outcomes that could be important to that customer.
Stand out from your competition by adding a little touch that goes a long way. It’s good practice to add personalization by starting every video with a greeting to the customer and introduction of the tech, as well as being sure to always add a “Thank you” at the end. It sounds simple, but this extra touch goes a long way.
Large Projects: Spec’ing in the Difference
When run properly, large projects seem like finely tuned machines, but if communications get out of sorts, they quickly become a challenge to manage.
Most large projects begin with an RFP that lays out the work to be completed. As bids roll in, the commonalities between contractors are evident, with exception to the internal line item language. Lately, contractors have been utilizing XOi to spec themselves into a different realm by creating a cadence of communication within their proposals. This is very similar to leveraging XOi in the front-end sales process but can be customized to the specific project or customer.
Creating a communication cadence with video updates, milestone markers, and completion check?ins is a quick way to create a technological differentiator up front. It is also highly recommended to include language regarding change orders, providing that any change order request will be accompanied by a video explaining the reason.
Conducting Complimentary Audits
Utilizing XOi to conduct complimentary building audits is more widely used on the commercial side, but residential contractors can certainly employ this strategy as well.
Building and home owners don’t know what they don’t know, especially when it comes to the (expensive) equipment that keeps their properties comfortable and safe. Often located in areas that aren’t frequently visited, such as mechanical rooms, rooftops, crawlspaces and attics, units and their conditions are typically out of sight, out of mind for most customers.
Contractors generally provide a complimentary audit at three distinct moments: the end of the heating season, the end of the cooling season, and the end of the company’s fiscal year prior to budgetary planning. These audits are not designed to be hard?sell sales, they are meant to be informative. In a video to the customer, using language such as “if this were my home” or “if this were my building” can turn the perception of a hard sell into that of a helpful partner looking out for the health and safety of a customer’s home or building.
