SocialTract, a blogging/social media service specifically designed for HVACR contractors, has published an e-book called “How to Create and Grow Your HVACR Business through Blogging.”

The e-book is free on their website. You can get it here.

Joe Pulizzi, CEO of SocialTract, shared what HVACR contractors will learn from the e-book:

In this eBook, you’ll learn:

• What a blog is and what it can do for your business.
• The three reasons why HVACR contractors need to consider blogging as part of the marketing mix.
• 30 ways blogging can pay off for your business.
• 30 ways to market your blog effectively.

Joe says that HVACR Contractors should consider blogging for their service companies so they can :

Find and sell more customers on annual service and maintenance agreements….Retain current maintenance customers with compelling and consistent content… [and] position your company as the local home comfort leader.

You can find out more about SocialTract and their contractor social media platform on their website www.socialtract.com.

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.

Make Each of Your Customer Interactions During Service Agreement Service Call a Selling Opportunity

August is almost over. That means the hot weather and the summer busy (or crazy) season is drawing to a close for much of the country.

It also means it’s time to take a look at the health of your service agreement program. Did your technicians sell more new service agreements than they did last year? Did your renewal rate improve? Do you have enough service agreements to keep your technicians busy through the winter? How has your service agreement base affected the overall value of your business? These are all good questions to ask to get ready for next summer’s busy season.

The summer busy season was a great opportunity to sell service agreements to your new or repeat customers. I hope your company had a successful year for selling service agreements. I also hope that the service agreements you sold are more than just a way to keep your technicians busy during the slow times.

Service agreements do give you revenue throughout the year and help to spread out the annual work load, but they also give you an opportunity to sell to your customers. A routine service check can uncover major problems for your customers before they become emergencies.

Those same routine checks also get your technicians face-to-face with your customers, which will beat the odds of door-hangers and direct mail any day of the year. You have a huge opportunity here. Your customers are expecting you to come. They’ve invited you in.

However, this direct interaction will be a huge waste if your techs just go into the house look at the equipment, change a filter or two and move on to the next service call.

This doesn’t mean you can invent problems or be dishonest with your customers, but your technicians should approach each service agreement call as an opportunity to find a way to help the customer through suggesting an equipment upgrade to save energy, proposing automated climate controls to make their house more comfortable, or some other way that you can benefit your customers.

You’ll want to make sure your technicians are prepared to sell during each encounter they have in the home of your service agreement customers.

Conversion Rate on a Service Agreement Call

Conversion rates on these routine calls will probably be much lower than your conversion rate of service agreements or ordinary service call, but it stands to bring in more sales dollars because you’ll be selling a more tangible product or service.

During a service agreement service call is the best time to bring up more extensive tune-ups to prepare equipment for cold weather and seeing what equipment is in need to replacement.

Conversion and sales rates are going to vary by your type of Service Company, but there are a few principals that will remain consistent.

1. Set a conversion rate goal: Every one of your technicians needs to know what the goal is and how well they are doing to reach it. Each tech should know where they stand.
2. Sales Training for Technicians: First and foremost, your technicians are technicians and the good work that they perform will have to stay priority number one. However, they are also the ones on the front line of your business. They have the most face-to-face contact with your customers, and therefore are best suited to selling to them.
3. Provide Strong Marketing Materials to Your Technicians: Your technicians can sell and talk about solutions, but many times it will not be a one call close. However, the marketing materials they leave behind after the sales conversation can help in the decision making process, as well as fill in many of the technical gaps that don’t get talked about in the sales conversation.
4. Reward the Results: The technicians that succeed in converting more sales should be rewarded generously for their efforts. Give them the incentives they need to stay motivated and focused on their goals.

You worked hard to get these service agreement customers. They trust you and count on you. Make sure that you serve them well by finding ways to make them more comfortable and making sure they’re equipment doesn’t break when they need it the most.

Matt Michel, the CEO of the Service Roundtable, has some simple tip for making sure your customers remember doing business with your company.

Some companies work really hard to ensure they are remembered. The employees in these companies are downright creative in their approach. They manage to form a lasting impression that burns the company name into the customer’s consciousness. They generate such an impact that their customers feel compelled to tell their friends and neighbors all about their experience.

These strategies are no secret. Thousands of companies manage to execute them daily.

via 15 Ways To Ensure People Remember You.

You may be surprised how easy it is for you to make a long lasting impression on your customers, and how ready and willing they will be to spread the word about your service.

How many of the tips in Matt’s article is your company guilty of?

Some businesses grow and other’s stay the same size. Computer service software is one of the keys to growing a service company because it takes the pressure off the owner to be knee deep in the day to day operations and gives him or her a better perspective of the problems and opportunities the company faces.

By having a stronger perspective of how this works, owner are able to use computer service software to automate many of their business functions.