The following article, by VP of Operations Eric Rausin, is from the November ESC Newsletter. You can subscribe to the monthly newsletter by clicking here and filling out the short form.

They say change is inevitable. I believe this to be true (unless you’re dealing with vending machines) and a lot of interesting changes are sweeping the mobile landscape right now. Just three years ago Apple changed the mobile playing field with the introduction of the iPhone. A few months ago sales of iPhones were eclipsed by sales of Android, Google’s phone operating system. Now Microsoft and Blackberry have both released new phone based operating systems. With all these choices, it can be difficult to determine which mobile solution will best meet your needs when it comes to integrating with ESC. I’d like to take this opportunity to tell you exactly what we’re doing so you can make an informed decision.

Let’s start out with the new technology. A few months ago we converted our existing Mobile Web product to work on both the iPhone/iPad and Android operating systems. While this initially didn’t add any features, it allowed us to radically overhaul the interface to make it much prettier and touch screen friendly. In the most recent versions of those apps we were able to take advantage of the power of the devices and added the following features:

• Attach pictures – you can now take pictures with your phone and attach them to the dispatch itself. This is a huge time saver and a great way to document the work you’ve done.
• View attached documents – view and recall a complete list of documents attached to the customer’s location from your phone. You can recall and view any document your phone can open but you will not be able to make any changes to them. This is a perfect way to view previous pictures or letters while in the field.
• GPS Integration – using the built-in GPS on your phone you can now see your technician’s trucks appear directly on the map in your Electronic Dispatch Board. No more guessing who the closest tech is to a call, now you can see it instantly.
• Turn by turn directions – So the tech doesn’t know how to get to the customer’s site? No problem. We’ll send the address of their next call to the devices built in mapping application so they can get exact directions to the customer’s location from where ever they are.

The android and iPhone apps also allow you to create and email invoices in the field.

Speaking of which, the Windows Mobile 7 client will feature full invoicing capabilities, as well as the ability to take payments and even authorize credit cards (in conjunction with QuickBooks Merchant Services). Once the invoice is saved it can be emailed to the customer, sent to an email enabled printer (see my review of one in next month’s newsletter), or printed out at the office and mailed to the customer.

The Mobile 7 client doesn’t currently have the ability to attach pictures, view attached documents or integrate with the built-in GPS but, just like the invoicing features are coming to the iPhone and Android clients, these features will be added to the Mobile 7 client over the next couple of months. We plan on keeping the feature set for all three of these clients as similar as possible.

These clients are the future of mobile computing at dESCO, and now that the price of these devices and software is so affordable – there is really no excuse not to go mobile. As you can see, we’ll definitely be there for you – now and for a long time to come!

Every sale you make, every dollar of revenue you earn came from a customer that chose you over a competitor. Why did they pick you?

Chances are you are not the only service provider in your city, so there must have been other factors at play. Understanding what those factors are can help you know your customer motives and how to replicate the reasons your current customers selected you to gain new customers.

Each of your customers chose you because you offered the benefit they wanted. You offered the right combination of logical and emotional components that they wanted and needed. Your offer provoked them to take action and choose your services over all the other providers and the option of doing nothing.

Your customers chose you over a competitor. Your competitor’s customers chose them over you. Do you know why? The fact that they chose you means they found something different or better. But it also means that when they pick your competitor.

Knowing what those factors are means you can promote and differentiate your company based on the real reasons your customers choose you.

Here are some reasons why your customers choose you:

• Your company can best solve their problem
• Your company is the most reliable
• They trust your company
• You offer good after sales service
• Your company offered the best price
• Your company is the closest
• Your company was available to meet their schedule
• Your company was easy to buy from
• Your company was the first they found

Which of these answers apply to your customers? What can you do to present your company as the one that represents that choice? Understanding why your customers buy from you will give you a clear picture of your strengths and weaknesses and will show you how to broaden your appeal so that new customers will also choose you.

People will only buy from you when they want to. It is your responsibility to understand why the people who bought from you wanted to and to then communicate to others why they should want to buy from you. People will buy from you when they decide they want what you offer. Do you offer what they want? Do you know what they want? When you know what your customers want and offer it, they will buy from you and not from your competitors.

What other reasons do customers buy from you? What do you do the help them along the way?

There an old adage that goes, “You waste half your advertising budget. The problem is you don’t know which half.” However, technology makes tracking each of your sales back to the ad that inspired it possible. And when you can attribute sales to advertisements and marketing programs you use, you can know which programs to expand and which to cut.

By paying attention to how your customers find you, you can track the revenue, profitability, and return on investment of your marketing and advertising efforts. By doing this, it is possible to get a strong understanding of the comparative effectiveness of all your marketing programs.

To start figuring out what ads are producing the most sales, you need to tag each person that calls you with how they found out about you. Sometimes the way they hear about you will be obvious, like when they bring in your newspaper ad or door hanger coupon. Most time, however, this will require you to ask how they heard about you. It should be part of the regular routine for each new person that calls.

Tagging your prospects and customers

Most customer managements systems have a place to mark a customer’s lead source.

These codes can track the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns if they are associated with the customer’s record or the dispatch. With that kind of association, the code of the way the customer found you can be applied to their dispatch or invoices so you can see how much revenue and profit came from each of your ad programs in a given time period.

It’s important to come up with specific codes with meaningful descriptions for your various marketing programs so that you can clearly identify which campaign to attribute revenue.

For example, if you had a monthly door hanger campaign, you could code the January campaign as DOOR1.

These codes should not just be used and then discarded. Deleting codes will make it impossible to see how much revenue (or lack thereof) could be attributed to that marketing program.

Analyze the results

Another important component of identifying how customers found you is to analyze how much each lead source contributes in revenue for a given period of time. This information is vital to discovering opportunities to expand in certain areas of your marketing and advertising mix and what areas you should cut.

You should report on and compare the volume of sales attached to each of your marketing campaigns or advertisements. This is the only way to know which ones are effective and which are now.

With a detailed analysis you will be able to see the number of invoices attached to each code for the time period, and also shows the total sales dollars and percentage of total dollar sales for each code, allowing you to identify your most profitable types of sales.

Click on the image to see a larger version:

This is one effective way to make decisions about which advertising programs to expand or retract.

How do you decide what advertising and marketing programs are working? What measurements do you use?

Your company probably already has a Google Places “Page,” but if you have not claimed it yet, you are certainly not taking full advantage of all the free benefits a Google Places listing and page provides.

Google Places is similar to the Yellow Pages in that every company with a physical address is able to be listed. However, it is very important for local service companies to have a robust Google Places Page because these pages appear near the top of Google’s organic search results when a person does a local search.

Here’s a quick overview video of what Google Places and why you should use it for your business:

To get the most out of your free listing you should claim the listing, fill it out with all of your company’s important information, get customer review, create and keep it up to date with current content and coupons, and add photos and videos.

1. Claim your Google Places Page and make it your own

To claim your Google Places Page, go to Google.com/places. If you already have a Google account you can just log in. If not, it only takes a few minutes to set up an account, which you can do from the page.

Once your account is set up you can enter your business’s main phone number to see if it’s already listed on Google Maps. If it is you can go through the process of claiming the page which will allow you to edit the existing information as well as add other details, photos and videos.

Once you have logged in and claimed your page, it is important to fill out every field available on the form. The more complete a profile, the better it will appear to your customers and prospects when they find your listing in search. There is also a place to upload your company logo so that it can appear in the Google search results.

The form will ask for basic information about your company, information about your operating hours, what payment types you accept, as well as what your business does.

You are even able to define your service area. Rather than just having a static location, you can show on your Google Places page what Zip Codes you serve or even define a mile radius around your headquarters. The video below will give an overview of how this works:

The images below show the field you can fill out on your Google Places page.

Google has a comprehensive guide that will help you claim your page and get started optimizing your Google Places page.

2. Get Customer Reviews

It’s important to make it easy on your customers to review your company on your Places page. Reviews may raise your pages rank in the search results, but even if they don’t, reviews on your page adds credibility and lets prospects know that other people have used your services and been satisfied.

On your places page there is a link that you can copy into an email and send to your best customers requesting they write a short review of your company. Google says you are not allowed to offer incentives in exchange for reviews, so you will have to request reviews from customers you already have a good relationship with.

3. Keep your page fresh with current content

You are able to leave short, 160 character posts on your Google Places page. These short Twitter-like messages can be details about the services you offer, announcements of special events, introductions of new employees, promotional offers, or any other message. When you are logged into your Places page there is a box on the right side with the heading “Post to your Place page.”

You are also able to offer coupons to your customers and potential customers for your services on your Google Places page. These coupons will be visible at the top of your Places page. With these coupons it is important to make them unique to your Google Places page so that you can easily track their effectiveness. It is a good idea to keep these coupons fresh. One way you can do that is by using them as seasonal promotions, giving you the excuse to offer various coupons throughout the year.

Keeping the messages and coupons up to date will keep your page fresh and current in the eyes of your customers.

4. Add videos and photos to your page

You are also able to add photos and videos to your places page. If you company has an ad you could upload it to YouTube so that your Places page visitors can view it on your site. You are able to have up to five videos so you could also use some of these spaces for video testimonials of your customer or videos of examples of your work.

You are also able to upload up to 10 images. These could be pictures of your service trucks, employees, job sites and work you’ve completed, or anything else that would be relevant to your customers.

For a complete check and to make sure you really get the most out of your free Google Places page, complete the Google Places Checklist.

After you are finished, share a link to your Places page in the comments so we can showcase the best examples.

LinkedIn is a powerful resource for connecting with others in your industry. It provides a forum to share expertise and experience, as well as a good place to learn from other experts in your industry. For HVAC and other service contractors, there are a number of active groups you can easily join and get involved with.

LinkedIn groups help you quickly discover what other professionals in your industries are discussing. They also give you an opportunity to listen in to the discussion as well as have an active voice in the conversation. You also get a vote on what is useful to you by ‘liking’ posts and comments.

Below is a collection of some of the largest of these HVAC and service contractor’s groups on LinkedIn.

Air Conditioning Contractors of America Members

Helping HVACR contractors acquire, serve and satisfy their customers.

HVAC Professionals

I created this group for those who are dedicated to the HVAC Industry and would like to expand their network with professionals within the various facets of this business. I encourage everyone to utilize the knowledge base of the other members so that best practices can be shared.

Owner: David Spaeth | 6,812 members

Home Service Professionals

This group is for Marketing, Sales and Business Development discussions in the home service professional industry. Companies such as home improvements, plumbers, electricians, HVAC, landscapers, cleaning services, window replacements, roofers, painters, etc.

Owner: Lance Brown | 1,021 members

Service Roundtable has shared a PowerPoint presentation by Linda Couch, Chief Operating Officer of Parish Services. She gave the presentation at Comfortech 2010 in Baltimore, MD.

The presentation shares 10 ideas for making your service technicians more productive. You can get it from Service Roundtable’s website or by clicking the image below.

Linda’s 10 tips are:

1. Clearly define and prioritize “productivity” for your techs
2. Define and manage productivity goals
3. Equip your techs with productivity enhancing tools
4. Equip techs with a proper, organized inventory
5. Train your techs: Technical
6. Train your techs: Advising
7. Use supporting customer service and dispatch strategies
8. Use supporting warehouse and purchasing strategies
9. Use supporting sales and marketing strategies
10. Use IT to increase productivity

She goes into much greater detail within the PowerPoint presentation, which also includes her speaking notes. Implementing all of Linda’s tips will take a great deal of time, focus, and dedication. But the effect her tips will have on the profitability of your business will be profound.

The following is a guest post by Darion Miller is the Co-Author of the Service Coach Blog, which provides marketing resources to the service industry.

Loyal Customers are hard to come by today with so much competition. However, with a solid company plan on how to generate leads and turn them into loyal customers you should not have a problem. Here are seven tips to turn a lead into a loyal customer that keeps on giving:

Selling Service Agreements

Creating service agreements is a great way for your service company to provide value throughout the year. These agreements let the customers know that you stand behind your work and that you will be there if something goes wrong. Here are 3 things to keep in mind when creating a service agreement:

1. Make the service agreement simple for your customers to understand
2. Keep the agreement fair and make sure it benefits both parties
3. Create packages that will allow you to extend a service agreement over a year or a season

Be On Time for Service Calls

Being on time is critical for any service business. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes for a minute, could you afford to take time off from work, for a day or even a couple hours, to allow a service technician access to your house? Most cannot and it could mean they are really paying double for your services when considering the lost time in wages. Having a solid dispatch and mapping system will allow you to remain on time and keep your customers coming back.

Keeping Past Records of Your Customers

There is nothing worse than when a customer has to repeat information or provide the service tech with details from a previous visit. Keeping records on your customer’s accounts for at least 5 years will benefit you in many ways. One of the most important is that account information can be extremely useful to your technicians while on-site. If they know what was done in the past, to expect a certain result, or know not to try a certain technique your clients will see that your company really has operations under control and will respect your technician’s advice. When your clients trust your company they will trust your professional opinion on how to best complete a project.

Providing Free Tips & DIY Materials

Sometimes your customers just want to understand how or why you go about a project the way you do simply for their own curiosity. When a plumber comes to my house I make a point to find out what’s going on even though I know I’m not skilled enough to perform the task myself. Provide “do it yourself” articles on your company blog to answer basic inquiries that satisfy your customers questions and present yourself as a knowledgeable industry leader. Don’t forget to have a call to action to convert them into a lead!

Try and Be Accessible to Your Customers 24/7

You should try and be assessable 24/7 even if you don’t answer your phone. When something happens you need to make sure your customers know there is always a line of communication open. Make sure your website has a customer login portal where customers or potential customers can request service or have the information to contact you in the off-hours.

Here are some ways to be accessible:

• Have an emergency email address like: emergency@company.com or help@company.com
• Have a customer portal
• Have a landing page dedicated to Emergency help on your site
• Have an off hours dispatcher

Allow for Company Transparency

There is no better way to create a loyal customer base than to be transparent about your company. If a customer or potential asks you a question the best thing you can do is be honest. With the internet and company reviews (both good and bad) accessible to almost everyone anything you say can be cross checked online. Don’t take for granted how much research people do on a company, a problem, or a solution before actually handing over cash to start a job with you. Train your technicians on the best ways to handle objections or tough questions that may be asked by customers and show they how to avoid making the company look bad or misinformed.

Knowing When to Say No to a Customer

It’s tough to say no to a client especially in a down economy. However when the job is too tough or beyond your skill set it’s better to be upfront and honest with your client and recommend a few people that can get the job done right than for you to attempt and perform poorly. This will allow you to become a trusted advisor and when the client has more work they will defiantly come back to you with questions or referrals.

These 7 tips will not only make for a better service company but will continue to generate revenue through your customer loyalty.

You can read more posts about marketing service businesses by Darion Miller at the Service Coach Blog or follow @theservicecoach on Twitter. You can download his free Service Marketing Playbook.

Contracting Business Magazine named longtime ESC customer, Kahn Mechanical Contractors, Inc., of Dallas, Texas, a winner of the prestigious 2010 Design/Build Award. Kahn Mechanical Contracting became an ESC customer in April 1993 and have been a loyal customer ever since.

Most of this year’s winners of the Design/Build award have previously been awarded and named the ContractingBusiness.com Commercial Contractor of the Year. This award is all about how well the HVACR contractor’s is able to “take a leading role in providing the ultimate HVACR system for the benefit of the customer.”

Contracting Business has been honoring companies that excel in the Design/Build process for two decades through this prestigious award. The Design/Build process can allow for higher margins, warranty control, lower costs, a higher level of quality, and more satisfied customers.

Ron Rajecki, contributing editor at Contracting Business Magazine, had an excellent overview of the Design/Build project Kahn Mechanical Contractors completed for this award, as well as the work that it took to get the client to put faith in them to design and get the project done.

You can read the full article here, or read some of the highlights below:

The steps required to win a Design/Build project can be a greater challenge than the actual installation, because the contractor must win the trust of the client. Kahn Mechanical won this client’s trust, and followed through with efficient comfort and indoor air quality solutions. […] As a prior Design/Build Award winner and Contracting Business magazine’s 2008 Commercial Contractor of the Year, Kahn Mechanical was the right company at the right time to update [the JFO Group Office Building, Irving, TX.] comfort systems. […]

“We presented solutions to problems beyond the nuts and bolts,” says Josh Kahn, president of Kahn Mechanical Contractors. “We avoided discussion of air handlers, chillers, and pumps, and focused on improving dependability, comfort, energy efficiency and lower cost of ownership.” […]

“This client placed extraordinary trust in Kahn Mechanical Contractors,” Kahn says. “They allowed us carte blanche (within budget, of course) to do whatever we felt was in the best interest of the building owners. This was simultaneously an amazing gift of trust, and an awesome responsibility. In the end, the results exceeded the client’s expectations, and showed us that we continue to improve our delivery with each and every project.

“That’s the price of success,” Kahn concludes. “As an award-winning Design/Build team, we want to not only be award-worthy, but to surpass our prior accomplishments.”

(via Contracting Business)