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)

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.

It seems today everyone has a cell phone (or even two). A device that was once the plaything of the rich is now a part of everyday life, both personal and professional.

The question then is should there be a line between how cell phones are used for business and personal matters? It makes sense to carry one device, to receive calls from your spouse and your boss on the same phone, but is it a good idea to rely on your technicians to use their own cell phones to receive dispatches and business information or is it better to have your technicians carry company phones to do use to do business.

One obvious question is information security. It might be wise to have your technicians use company phones if they’re downloading price books or customer details that you would want returned and secured if they are fired or quit. If that information is on the tech’s own phone it may be difficult to secure that information. However, if they’re using a work phone, that would get turned in along with their truck and keys at the end of their tenure.

On the other hand, if the work related information is not downloaded to their phone, but simply accessed through the internet, it doesn’t seem to make as much of a difference if they use their own phone or a work phone. In this scenario, it’s not the device that holds the information but the login credentials that grant access to the information. Under these circumstances, if the tech is no longer working for you, you change their login codes so they can no longer access your company information. This way it doesn’t matter that they used their personal phone to access your business information or if you issued them a company phone.

Many technicians might want to use their personal phone for business if only to avoid having to carry more than one phone with them at a time. Also, keeping contacts’ phone numbers synced across two devices might be more trouble than it’s worth. Others may want to have a better separation of their work and personal phone numbers, making it easier to switch off on the weekends and after quitting time.

Do your techs use personal phones for business or do they get company phones, and why?

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.

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.

Below is a collection of quick tips for your service agreement program. These are from the end of a longer article from Contracting Business Magazine by Robert Wikos of Peaden Air Conditioning. The rest of the article goes into depth about how a strong service agreement program will lead to better customer loyalty, revenue, and company value. The full article provides lots of stats to argue for a strong service agreement program, but for those of you who are already believers, the following list will give you some food for thought of what parts of your service agreement program you can work to improve:

1. Display a total commitment
2. Offer priority service
3. Honor your word
4. Be flexible
5. Provide reasonably-priced service with good value and benefits. It’s the beginning of a long-term relationship and not just a quick sale
6. Monitor your growth
7. Refine and duplicate procedures
8. Track technician performance

How has your company benefited from your service agreement program? Share your service agreement tips in the comments.

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.