Consumers now-a-days are getting smarter. They’re learning to see through tricks and gimmicks, and they are better informed and more educated than ever when making purchasing decisions. They want to get the most for their money, and that’s a good thing.

As a service contractor, it’s important to understand how and why your customers buy.

A good way to discover what they’re looking for in a service contractor is to look at what they’re learning. There is an abundance of “how to” articles on the internet that home owners are seeking out and reading before calling your business.

A few searches on Google will show what they are learning to look for. For example, if you’re an HVAC company, search, “How to hire an HVAC contractor” or if you’re a plumber, search “How to hire a plumber.” With those searches you will find the articles and information that your customers are researching and reading before they call you.

Your customers are training themselves with these how to guides so they can get the best value for their dollars. By reading these articles and becoming the company they describe, you will be making yourself into the company your customers are looking for.

Here are a few examples of the types of articles I’m referring to:

• How to Hire a Contractor
• How to Choose a Heating & Air Conditioning Contractor
• 10 Tips for Hiring a Heating and Cooling Contractor
• How to Get Your Money’s Worth When Hiring a Plumber
• How to Hire an HVAC Contractor

The articles above can offer some guidance and a starting point, but make sure to do the searches and read the articles your customers would look for when teaching themselves how to hire your company.

Almost all the sites recommend their readers to get references. Is your company ready to offer references for your work? The best sources of references are your happy customers, but after you help them, it’s important to ask if you can use them for a reference.

The articles also recommend comparing prices but to not necessarily settle for the lowest price. Are your prices competitive? Are you sacrificing quality to offer low prices or charging more and giving more? You can see where your company stands by mystery shopping your competitors to get quotes over the phone to see where you stand.

How much of the criteria in the articles you found reflect your company? Does your company reflect any of the things to avoid? What things do you have to do to match the advice your prospects are reading before they pick a company to work with? Is your company what they are teaching themselves to look for?

Customers are getting smarter and are doing the research so they know what to look for. Fortunately for your business, you can see the same things they see and make your company into the company they are looking for.

If you’re a current ESC customer, we would like to invite you to join our other customers on our customer wall. We will feature your company’s logo (linked to your website of course) on our customer wall.

To have your company’s logo and web site link added to our customer wall, email jonathanf [at] desco-soft [dot] com. To help me out, please include “Customer Wall” in the subject line.

Click here if you want to see the customer wall.

Also, if you’d like to have your company featured on our blog, email me at jonathanf [at] desco-soft [dot] com, and put featured company in the subject line.

You can also get the “Powered by ESC” badge to show your customers that you’re serious about customer service and have the business tools to back up your promises. To get the badge go to desco-soft.com/badge and follow the easy steps. You can also get there by clicking on the powered by ESC badge on the left.

We come across articles and blog posts every day that help service companies better operate, market, and grow. There’s simply too much out there to keep up with. That’s why we periodically will publish a collection of useful links like the ones below.

Mobile Payments As Marketing Strategy – John Jantsch lays out the argument for using and accepting mobile payments as a marketing strategy, as a way to set your company apart from the competition. He poses this question: “The question marketers of all kinds need to start asking is if their customers are mobile, how mobile does the business need to be?”

Golden Opportunity – Garry Upton and Robert Wilkos write in Contracting Business Magazine about how to get the most out of your existing customers by expanding your service agreement offerings.

Top 10 Tips on How to Sell a HVAC Maintenance Contract – Following on the idea of growing you service business with service contracts, we have a post from The Service Coach about how to sell maintenance contracts more effectively.

Forming a Board of Directors is Crucial for HVACR Businesses – Greg McAfee has a post on his blog about the importance of getting outside advice from trusted advisors, or a board, for long term HVAC success.

HVAC Marketing Terms – Ron Smith published a post on his blog says there are terms HVAC contractors and other service contractors use to describe their business that are less than idea to share with customers. He suggests 14 improvements to your marketing vocabulary.

If you come across a great link you want to share with your service company colleagues, email it to jonathanf [at] desco-soft [dot] 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.

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?

Service agreements are a great way to create regular re-occuring revenue streams for your company. But they can be a tough sell.

Your customers need to understand the value of service agreements. When they see how the plan and its benefits will save them time, money, and hassle, your number of service agreements will grow.

via Contracting Business: Establish Value to Boost Service Agreement Sales

Growing and keeping track of these service agreements is key to growth and creating value for your company.

What do you say when asked how many service agreements your company has? Has that number been reviewed? Is it accurate? Is the number of agreements growing, staying the same, or shrinking from year to year? How do you improve the numbers?

Why all these questions? It’s because the heart and soul of a company’s business are service agreements, and growing these agreements leads to growth of the company in service and sales. It’s therefore vital that the value of these agreements be firmly established on a continual basis — both externally and internally.

These service agreements are also what create real value for your company and make it more sell-able. No one is going to buy your list of names when you want to retire. But they may be willing to buy several thousand on-going service agreements.

This year’s ESC Version 10 release focused around streamlining data entry and data flow. Changes to the customer and dispatch module make it easier than ever to manage customers and contacts, schedule and dispatch technicians, and make sure they are always prepared with the right parts and equipment.

Redesigned Customer Module: The streamlined customer entry screen makes it easier to enter new customers and gives you better control of your data.

• Keeping in touch with the correct contact is easier with space for six detailed contacts per location.
• Correspond directly via mail merge by clicking the letter icon next to the contact’s name and selecting the desired template.
• A ‘date added’ field is auto-filled for all new customer accounts, so you can see when each customer was added and filter reports by date ranges of when a customer was added.
• Attach a sales person to each customer so that invoices will be auto-assigned to the designated sales person.
• ESC will automatically pick the correct city and state for new customers when you enter their zip code, after you import the zip codes for the states you service.
• The customer search field auto-fills after a few characters, and in most situations, you will not need to open up the detailed search box.
• The new customer search screen is both easier to use and more powerful, now allowing you to also search by contact names and email addresses.
• The software now catches duplicate customers before they are created, even if the address is not exactly the same.
• You can eliminate duplicate customers by merging locations—transferring all equipment, history, dispatches, service agreements, attached documents and even invoices from one location to another—making it perfect for transferring information from builder to buyer.
• Making a record inactive prevents those particular customers or locations from showing in filtered lists and on reports, effectively hiding a customer while retaining your historical records.

Expanded Dispatch Module: The redesigned dispatch entry screen makes sure that dispatched technicians are properly equipped for each job site they visit.

• The redesigned dispatch screen is easier to use and lets you browse through dispatch notes for a range of dispatches within one screen, and the improved layout and default sort option keep dispatches from appearing multiple times.
• The date and time stamp and spell checking is now available in the dispatch notes field.
• Printed dispatch tickets are customizable with the new layout designer. You can place your logo on your dispatches and include an area for your technicians to note their work. There are sample templates available to help get you started.
• Attached equipment is displayed in a separate tab, which allows equipment to be attached, added and edited all in one screen.
• A price field displays on the Parts tab, letting you put prices on parts attached to the dispatch. These parts and prices can then be transferred to the mobile clients and printed on dispatches.
• A search field now displays on the Dispatch Board, letting you easily find any dispatch by entering any part of the location name or address.

Service agreement updates: Updates to the service agreements module increase the connectivity among the agreement, the dispatch it generates, and the items in inventory.

• Parts added to service agreement tasks now flow automatically to the Parts tab on the dispatch with a zero price, and then into the related invoice. This ensures the technicians know what they need to take with them to complete the job, and so the parts will be removed from inventory.
• Now there is the ability to post agreement dispatches for a particular customer, which simplifies combining service work with planned maintenance.

Inventory enhancements: Changes to the inventory screens simplify the process of entering, adjusting, and managing inventory.

• The inventory entry screen opens in a separate window that enables you to enter parts on the fly.
• The redesigned screen also features a tabbed layout that groups similar items together and makes the screen easier to use.
• Alternate parts now are displayed as a tab on the screen.
• When searching for inventory parts, inactive parts are hidden by default.
• Import all the parts ESC perceives to be in a warehouse onto the Adjust Inventory screen. The quantities can be automatically set to zero, making this the perfect tool for entering physical inventory counts.

Enhanced reporting capabilities: Alterations to the reporting functions let users better view, compare, and edit reports.

• Users can now view an unlimited number of reports at once. This makes comparing reports a breeze.
• Closing a report now returns you to the module you were working in, but you can still change the report criteria when previewing by clicking the filters button in the toolbar.

Web Front Office overhaul: The Web Front Office received a major facelift in this version. The entire interface has been updated to look more modern, and several new features have been added.

• There is a new connections server, which has been completely redesigned to make it easier to use.
• A status light indicates if any portion of the connections server is not configured correctly.
• Run multiple reports directly from within Web Front Office.
• Expanded set up screens let you add technicians, configure dispatch boards, and add inventory items.
• Recall existing invoices and change or print them.
• Dispatch ticket printing is now supported, enabling technicians to print dispatches while in the field.

Mobile client changes: The mobile client also has many expanded features to make technicians even more efficient in the field.

• Inventory items entered on the parts tab of the dispatch entry screen flow to the invoice on the mobile client for the first technician who downloads the dispatch.
• Service agreement information is sent to the dispatch tab on the mobile client, allowing your technicians to see the agreement type and all sub-tasks.

Accounting updates: There have also been improvements to the accounting integrations, as well as expanded features and forms.

• You can now modify invoices posted to QuickBooks that no longer exist. This solved the common issue of deleting an invoice in QuickBooks that was posted there by ESC. Now you can easily recover from this mistake by making sure all the transactions that were sent to QuickBooks are deleted.
• There is now the ability to print 1099 forms.
• There is also improved compatibility of the direct deposit setup screens.

It looks likes coupon use is up greatly this year. It’s probably because of the recession, and consumers are out to find cheaper ways to get their products

Coupon use is up 27% according to the nation's leading coupon processor, Inmar. Last year was the first year in the last 17 during which coupon redemption increased. Part of the increase may result from marketers' increased use of coupons as a promotional vehicle to drive sales during the downturn.

via Coupons: A Marketing Strategy that Works.

Does your service company use coupons to generate leads or work?

Combining coupons with your direct mail strategy may be a good way to leverage the effects of both.