Scottsdale, AZ—December 27, 2016—Al Levi, a longtime columnist for BNP Media’s Plumbing & Mechanical magazine, is writing a new column for BNP publication Reeves Journal—a […]
Al Levi
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The Right Way to Make Time for the Holidays
Got more time at the end of a workday than you know what to do with? Not likely.
How about finding extra time during the holidays to stop and enjoy as a team the holidays let alone finding extra time to be available for fun and family time? Not likely.
But, it doesn’t have to be this way.
How do I know? I was once a stressed-out contractor just like you. I fell in the hole of being steamrolled by the holidays every year. And it was doubly bad when it was a crazy cold winter and we were maxed out covering heating calls and attending to frozen plumbing pipes.
What changed for me and my team?
Holiday Bonus Blues Getting You Down?
The holiday season should be a wonderful time for friends and family to gather. It should also be a time for everyone at your company to come together and celebrate another year wrapping up as a team.
But, the holiday season can be very stressful at work.
One of the reasons is the ugly thing that can happen at companies and that is the tug of war over giving staff holiday bonuses. It’s not that you’re cheap. But, a lot of contractors I’ve worked with have had to take the money out of their own bank account or even worse from their own holiday fund to pay these bonuses. That’s just not right, let alone sustainable.
Can Radio and TV Marketing Still Make the Phone Ring?
Have you wondered whether or not radio and TV marketing still make the phone ring? Well, yes they can.
This isn’t just my opinion. It’s an opinion based on the work I’ve done with clients and partners recently as well as over many years.
Here’s what I do know about radio and TV marketing … it doesn’t work unless you plan out and execute the campaigns way ahead of time.
When planning radio or TV campaigns, there are four key things you must do to be successful:
Marketing Ahead So the Phone Won’t Go Dead
Have you ever picked up your company phone just to check if it was working?
There’s nothing scarier than a phone that’s gone dead.
Most contractors are great at the work they do but they’re lacking when it comes to making phone ring at all much less in a way where they will end up with these three (critical) things:
1. The right amount of calls
2. From the right customers
3. At the right time
The key is to cultivate skills and techniques you can use to make your phone ring with more calls than you can handle. That’s because having more opportunities than you need is what will finally enable you to be picky about what work you pursue and how much you charge. If your phone isn’t ringing off the hook, you’re not likely charging what you deserve and need to be paid to operate a highly profitable business.
The Importance of Power Napping
One of my first jobs at my old company was working with the credit manager, Meyer. Meyer was an interesting guy — really ahead of his time in the early seventies. One of the things that he did was to drink six to eight glasses of water a day. Another one of the tricks that he used for managing his age (being in his late sixties) was to take what he called a power nap during his lunch break. He explained that the nap gave him more energy when he got back to work.
As years went by I began working very long days. One day I stumbled across an article about the people of Japan. It was about how they were very industrious and worked extremely long days, which included required socializing with clients at the end of the day. One of the things they did was to build a room at their offices for people to take power naps — a 15 to 30-minute nap each day. This restored their thinking by giving both the body and mind a chance to rest and reset.
Al Levi to Speak at Service World Expo
SCOTTSDALE, Arizona — If you’re a contractor headed to Service World Expo Oct. 26-28 (and I hope you are) please join me in the Partagas […]
Why You Need to Stop and Eat Lunch
When the busy season hits, most of us are guilty of dashboard dining. For those unfamiliar with the term, it means we don’t have time to stop and eat lunch so we roll through a fast food drive-in and eat as we drive. If we’re really patient, we’ll take all of two minutes to pull over in the parking lot, pile the food up on the dashboard and swallow our food whole without coming up for air.
Some people in an office order in and eat away while they’re trying to handle the phones, computers and more.
What’s worse than all of this is skipping lunch altogether. I should know I used to do that all the time years ago.
It didn’t help my weight since I was generously only 40 pounds heavier than I should have been according to my doctor and my knees. The reason is simple. When I skipped meals especially late at night when I was running calls, I would finally stop to eat and now I was ravenous and I’d eat everything that wasn’t nailed down.
Fortunately, a smart mentor of mine schooled me about the need to stop even if it’s just for 30 minutes to recharge the batteries and to shake off what’s transpired.
The funny thing is when I got disciplined about this good habit I was actually more effective and more productive than when I’d either wolf down my lunch or skip it altogether.
Sales Coaching Isn’t Just For Techs
Selling doesn’t begin when a Tech is at the customer’s doorstep. It starts when your Customer Service Representative (aka CSR) answers the phone. All sales momentum either builds from that moment on – or it falls apart.
Dramatic?
Nope! That’s why when teaching my Sales Power selling system I insist on spending time coaching the CSRs and, if I can get to them, the Dispatchers (aka DSRs) as well.
“Wait a minute!” you might be thinking, “The CSRs and DSRs aren’t selling…right?”
Wrong! CSRs and DSRs have the ability to sabotage sales at every turn if they’re not provided with a documented set of operation manuals and trained how to properly do their job . They need to know not just how to clear the dispatch board of calls but also to how to recognize and then maximize every sales opportunity.
To achieve this, never-ending weekly coaching and daily monitoring is more than a good suggestion. It’s a necessity. Why? Because CSRs and DSRs can either make a Tech soar or they can break them.
Don’t believe me?
Driving Phenomenal Sales With Sales Coaching
When it comes to your contracting business, sales coaching is the key to driving phenomenal sales.
But, how can you effectively coach sales without a repeatable-documented selling system to train Techs how to do sales the right way? The answer is you can’t.
The Tech selling system I teach has five steps. Each step needs to be taught and demonstrated in a certain order because one step builds on the other. If you skip steps, the system falls apart and sales suffer, as does customer satisfaction, a lose-lose scenario that can be avoided!
The five steps are:
- Open the Call the Right Way
- Gain Permission to Survey the Premises So Nothing is Missed
- Price the Work That You’re Recommending Correctly
- Present the Menu With What Must Be Done and Extras Worth Considering
- Write the Kind of Work Order that Gets Signed
Documenting this sales system has been documented and training your techs on it is only half the battle, however. To gain traction and build a good sales culture over time you will also need to provide never-ending sales coaching for it.