A successful career, just like a successful marriage, takes a lot of hard work and dedication. In companies today, it is unusual to have one or two employees celebrate a 10 year anniversary, but dESCO was fortunate enough to have 5 employees hit that achievement in 2011 alone. Aside from those five, there are 4 employees with over 15 years tenure, 2 with over 20 years and one who will be celebrating 25 years of service in 2012.  Currently, the average dESCO employee tenure is 9.7 years – an amazing achievement!

The culture at dESCO has long stood out in contrast to more freewheeling software companies who continually seek to lure new employees, creating a constant churn. While dESCO has established a strong base of long-tenured employees, many of whom have spent their entire careers here, that model is hardly common in today’s workplace.

“It is important to me to hire the right people and retain them over the long haul in order to give our customers the best all-around experience with our company and products,” explained Dean E. Schreiner dESCO Owner and President. “We have built an environment that permits creativity and autonomy, while maintaining the discipline to stay focused on the needs and goals of our customers.”

This commitment and loyalty is translated to dESCO customers through each interaction. dESCO’s customer service/support process is high-touch and focused on total care, digging deep into each customer’s business needs to deliver true results. With clear communications and a personal approach to help service companies overcome business challenges, dESCO values cultivating long-term customer relationships and having the opportunity to watch businesses grow and thrive.

While its employees give the company a competitive advantage in the marketplace, dESCO remains committed everyday to converting that into continued success. With over 6,000 dESCO customers nationwide, great products AND great people really do make the difference.

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?

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.

We are pleased to announce the official release of ESC Mobile Web for the iPhone/iPad and Android based phones. We have customized both applications to make full use of the device’s touch screens and feature the following abilities:

• View complete dispatch information
• Change dispatch status
• Track time spent on jobs
• Add dispatch notes
• Create new customer records
• Create new dispatches
• Send text messages to the office

The applications work with the ESC desktop software through a link to the Connections Server in your office, so you will need a connection to the Internet to use the software. The link is in real-time, so any changes you make, either from the office or from in the field on the phone, are instantly visible on the other. This gives you unlimited flexibility in scheduling.

Both apps include a connection to a demo database. This means that you can download the app today and see exactly how it will work for you in the field without any setup or commitment. Once you are ready to buy this add-on, just give us a call at 800-226-7529 and we’ll help you get everything working perfectly with your database for just a small monthly fee per user.

You can download the iPhone app directly from iTunes for free by searching for ESC Mobile or viewing this link. Please note this app looks fantastic on the iPad as well.

You can download the Android app for free directly from doubleTwist, the Android store, by clicking this link. You can also download the app by scanning the following QR code with a bar code scanner application on your phone.

The following is a guest post from Darren Slaughter, a contractor marketing consultant who works with contractors large and small to sell more, advertise better, and market to buyers.

Online communities offer formal and informal networking opportunities to help you expand your contacting business now more than ever. More formal methods involve webinars and online training as well as online networking events.

Informal networking and brand building can be and is done just about everywhere online. Forums, twitter, Facebook, and so on. Sometimes the opportunity to network happens quite coincidentally, but you should always remember to have your game face on when participating online.

If you’re just starting your contracting business or you are a large home improvement contractor with 200 employees who is just dipping the company toe in the water of online marketing, plan on spending some quality time online answering questions for people who have general home improvement issues. This helps build your overall brand, but it might just make you your next client as well.

Social media is network marketing on a shoestring

Think about it, 20 years ago you would be standing around some nondescript hotel conference room networking with some other person who didn’t want to be there just as much as you, while you both stare at your watches wondering when it’s all going to be over.

Enter Social Media for Contractors

Social media has given you the opportunity to be in your office or sitting at home in your pajamas and make new friends. I think I read somewhere that the average number of jobs the average contractor does a year is 50, which leaves you a lot of time to market your business online.

The key to social media is to become an active member in the community whether it nets you clients or not because over time you gain the ability to become an expert in your field through the knowledge you pass on to others.

Here are some tips to help you get started with social media as a contractor:

1. Join home improvement forums and participate in the conversation
2. Stop waiting for something to happen — go make it happen
3. Concentrate on listening more than talking
4. Make time to network on sites like twitter and Facebook
5. Don’t think spending time on social media sites takes you away from the office, over time it expands your reach dramatically
6. Try not to mix business with too much pleasure
7. Don’t be a pushy salesperson through social media marketing

And that’s it. These ideas should help get you started opening up dialogue and starting to have conversations online. Do this long enough and I guarantee you will build a base of people who consider you the go to person in your market. Have you already made social media work for you? Let me know by leaving a comment below.

For more from Darren Slaughter, visit his blog where he writes daily about marketing for contracting businesses.

DIY website, eHow, has a short tutorial on selecting HVAC Service Software for a service management company.

HVAC service software is an integral tool for mechanical service management companies. You will want to find a solution that helps coordinate your customers’ needs in such a way that maximizes tasks completed, customer visits, and gross revenue while simultaneously lowering overall costs. Follow these steps to help in identifying HVAC software for your company.

eHow suggests looking for HVAC service software that works on mobile devices and can handle functions like dispatching, invoicing, and communicating with the office. It also suggests looking for software that will integrate well with your current account package.

eHow encourages readers to make sure the HVAC Software provider has a quality phone and email support system that you can reach during your working hours. eHow suggest finding service software that is tailored to work with your HVAC business. Finally, they suggest choosing HVAC service software based on its ability to to give you good and relevant reports about your business.

You can read the full guide at: How to Choose HVAC Service Software | eHow.com.

Version 11 of ESC is here and available for upgrade. It’s packed with new features and functions to make managing your service business easier than ever. Overall, this release is about improving your workflow. From qualifying your customers, to creating quotes, to dispatching technicians to complete the quoted work, to creating invoices, the whole process has been streamlined even further and puts you in control of the process.

Sales Invoicing

The Sales Invoicing Module underwent a complete redesign, which made it even more intuitive, added time-saving functions, and made more useful information readily available.

• The sales invoicing module has a new and clearer design and is now in the .NET framework.
• There is a new “View Details” button, which lets users with the right permissions view the costs of parts and labor used on an invoice, making it easier to see the profitability of each invoice.
• You are now able to adjust the quantity of assemblies, which will automatically calculate the quantities and costs of all the components that make up that assembly.
• This version also lets you adjust the quantity of flat rate parts on an invoice.
• You are now able to make templates out of the invoices you create, which will dramatically reduce the time you spend on creating common invoices involving many line items. Rather than having to create each invoice from scratch, you can just load the template you created and make any necessary modifications before saving.
• A new search screen in the Sales Invoicing Module makes it easy to recall recently modified invoices without having to enter detailed search criteria.
• The Sales Invoicing Module now supports barcode scanning, letting you scan parts and items directly onto an invoice.
• You can now modify the details of equipment you sell from within the sales invoicing module.
• The “Tender” button is now available right on the Sales Invoicing toolbar.
• You can create a credit memo directly from a saved invoice’s activities menu.
• The credit memo function now has its own screen, making it simpler to create a credit memo from an invoice.

Quotes

ESC now has an independent quotes module that allows you to enter, edit, and manage quote status in its own screen.

• The updated Quote List Report gives a number of different sorting options as well as summary statistics (such as quote status and closing ratios) for each individual sales person.
• There is a new screen that allows you to selectively cost out the parts on a quote when making it into a dispatch, making dispatching from an accepted quote an easy one step process.
• There is now a “Status” drop down, which allows you to keep track of whether a quote is pending, accepted, or rejected. ESC automatically updates the status to “Accepted” when you create a dispatch or invoice from the quote.
• There is a new search screen in the Quotes Module that makes it easy to recall recently modified invoices without having to enter in detailed search criteria.
• You can also make templates from the quotes you create, reducing the time you spend on common or reoccurring quotes involving many line items.
• The Quotes Module also has a new “Markup%” field, which allows you to adjust your markup percentage on individual line items as you create the quote.
• Any equipment or service agreements you attach to a quote will also carry over to the dispatch you create from the quote.

Qualification Screen

The Customer Qualification screen is the most visibly modified screen. It underwent a complete redesign with drag and drop functionality that provides the ability to modify your screen layout so it displays the information that is most important to you.

• You are able to choose from a number of our included layout templates, or create your own templates.
• There is a new “Refresh” button on the Qualification Screen tool bar which allows for a quick view of how the changes you made in different modules affected the customer.
• A “Create Quote” option is now under the Activities menu.
• There are three new columns of information in the Invoices/Quotes panel of Qualification Screen: Billed %, Associated Quote, Quote Status.

Dispatching Module

The Dispatching Module and the Dispatch Ticket Layout Designer both have new features to put you in control of the information that appears on printed tickets and what shows up in your customers’ history.

• The dispatch ticket layout design now has multiple grow-able body fields and grouping so that all the information you need on your printed tickets will appear.
• There is also a line spacing option to make your customized tickets fit onto pre-printed forms.
• The ticket designer provides the option to print the customer’s entire equipment list or only the equipment that is attached to that dispatch.
• You can now decide to post dispatch notes to the invoice and to the customer history.
• There is a new pull down menu to select which billing code to use in posting dispatch notes.
• There is also an option to select which billing code to use for dispatch notes that are posted to the invoice.

ESC Accounting Software

The ESC Accounting Software package also has some expanded features and updates, including recurring credit card transactions and “work-in-progress” options.

• You can now set up automated, recurring credit card transactions from several screens; including: “Enter Customers”, “Enter Agreements”, and “Sales Invoicing”.
• There is a new “work-in-progress” option, a WIP Enabled checkbox, and Closing Account drop down in Enter Chart of Accounts for asset and liability accounts.
• If you set the status of a job that has money in WIP accounts to “Closed”, a journal entry screen will come up that moves money from the WIP accounts to the closing accounts when you save.

Miscellaneous

• A new data structure makes auto-fill searching much faster in large databases.
• There is now a summary page that shows which invoices posted after you use the “Post Monthly Invoices” screen.
• ESC Version 11 is now compatible with Peachtree 2011.
• Version 11 works with the new HST Canadian tax.
• History and billing codes can now be up to 36 characters long, and you can make them inactive.
• There is a new billing code type called “Agreement” that maps to the Agreement column on the sales reports.
• Version 11 supports job classes in the ESC Mobile Client and ESC Front Office.
• We improved grouping in the layout designers, making it easier to create custom layouts.
• When you modify parts on an invoice that post to equipment, it automatically updates the information in the Equipment tab in the customer’s information screen.
• The inventory module now has spell check and date\time stamp for the Inventory Entry Notes tab.
• Also, inventory part adjustments are now date sensitive.

You’re not going to get paid on time for every job you do. Sometimes the situation just gets out of your control. It’s a fact of life. Fortunately for service contractors, three of the most common reasons service contractors are not paid on time are within your control.

Before reading on, take a quick second to glance over the bolded heading below. If you can honestly say that your company has never lost revenue or had their cash flow suffer due to late payer, skip this post or try reading something like this, this, or this.

Lost Invoices

It’s amazing how generous service contractors can be. However, to get paid on time, you need to avoid the accidental freebie jobs. Invoices and completed work orders shouldn’t be filed under the seat in your tech’s vehicle. But somehow, it’s still a regular occurrence to find old invoices there when cleaning out the truck. If the customer doesn’t get the invoice, you’re certainly not going to get paid.

Your business needs a system to follow every job through from beginning to end to make sure that nothing gets lost in the shuffle and business of every working day. Your company should have a method to track each customer from the time they call requesting service, through the time your techs get the job, through the time they finish the work, through the time the customer receives the invoice, to the time you receive the money. Any gap in this work flow can mean lost revenue or a delay in cash flow.

Delayed Invoices

Customers–more than ever in this Internet age–expect to get their invoices right away. Many contractors, especially if they also work in the field, don’t keep up with their office work. That means that there can be quite a gap in time between when you do work and when your customer sees the bill.

It’s hard to expect timely payment from a customer, when it’s been so long since you completed the job that they hardly remember what the invoice is for. Customers have become used to receiving bills immediately. They’re also becoming more used to having invoices emailed to them, and then being able to pay those invoices online. To get paid quickly, it is important to bill quickly, in the field as soon as the job is completed if possible. When techs are able to create invoices and collect money via checks or credit cards for work they do in the field, you are far less likely to wind up waiting for payment or losing out on uncollected revenue.

Invoicing with Terms

The terms you offer can also have a negative impact on cash flow and timeliness of payments. Giving a customer 15 or 30 days to pay by cash or check invites the possibility of the customer forgetting about the invoice. Some contractors have gotten fed up with the issue of late cash or check payments and have just started to require customers to have a credit card on file.

Contractors that balk at having to pay 3% to the credit card companies often forget the cost of uncollected debt and the time and effort of having to call up and remind customers of past due invoices. Being able to capture signatures and accept credit cards in the field can be the difference between having a healthy cash flow and constantly be waiting on customers to pay their bills.

A predictable cash flow is incredibly valuable to service contractors. Your employees and vendors expect to be paid on time, and so should you. Putting systems in place to track work and invoices, making sure customers are billed quickly, and avoiding invoicing with terms are all ways to make sure you get paid on time.

What are some other ways to make sure you are paid in a timely fashion? Leave your ideas in the comments.