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.

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.

For those of you who hate writing business letters, Service Round Table has provided an extensive resource will ease the burden.

The Service Roundtable obtained a special license from Eshinesoft Corporation to make these ready-to-go, easy-to-modify standard business letters available online for our members and potential members. Cut and paste any letter into your word processor.

Why Free? Why is the Service Roundtable making this letter library available for free when others charge for it? Simple.

The library is accessible here for both SRT members and non-members. There are tons of letters here, but the search field makes it easy to find what you’re looking for. Once you find the right letter, you can paste it into a Word document and fill in the blanks.

You can use these letters in your business correspondence, and if you’re an ESC user, you can save the templates you use regularly right into ESC. If you’re not an ESC customer, you can sign up for the 30-day free trial to see how ESC can make your correspondence with your customers more efficient.

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.

“We switched to ESC about six months ago because there were a lot of problems with our previous software. We really didn’t get any support with our previous software, and they were charging astronomical pricing for the support. If we would do an update, it would mess everything up.

“dESCO’s support team is all in the same place, so all the techs know what’s going on. That helped me a lot because they’re all on the same page. That helps tremendously. I really like that dESCO uses the program to test it out. If you’re not actually incorporating the program into your day, you don’t have a clue.

“It’s been a very easy program to use. When we first got it I was trying to figure out our letters for our service agreements. I ran off the report on one of our service agreements, and I could see right there in front of me who needed to be inactive and who needed to be billed. The email and letter templates were great. That’s what I couldn’t get over. They made billing our service agreements so easy.

“On this program which I really like, you can do things and it doesn’t screw it up. ESC has just been great and as I go on, I find more and more things that I can do. I’m really enjoying the program. It’s just so much easier to me. This is such a great program. The more I play with it, the easier it gets. Our previous software was so hard to me.

“This is my game. I feel like a kid. I get to play with it all day long, and get paid for it.”

Lisa Betz, Service Coordinator. Nardco Heating and Air Conditioning

The ESC Mobile Client Support a Wide Variety of Windows Smart Phones with Touch Screens

The ESC Mobile Client works on a wide variety of devices. It works on most laptop, netbooks, and tablet PCs running Window. The Mobile Client also works on a wide variety of Windows Mobile Phones with Touch Screens.

Microsoft has a list of all the mobile phones they currently support that run Windows Mobile and that will work with ESC Mobile. You can view them here. This is not a comprehensive list, and it is still a good idea to check with dESCO if a particular phone will work with the ESC Mobile Client.

Owners, employees, and customers all benefit from Mobile Computing.

Customers are able to receive more timely service from technicians who have better access to the information they need to get to the job with the right parts and tools, and to get the job done.

Technicians benefit from having the information for their dispatches at their fingertips rather than having to call the office for each update.

Office personnel benefit from having technicians in the field with mobile devices because it means they don’t need to re-enter all the information the tech brings back with him.

Finally, owners benefit from the increased efficiency of their operations which means a bigger bottom line!

Mobile computing is an effective way to bring a new level of professionalism and accuracy to your business. To find out more about how mobile computing with ESC can change your business and to see a demo of the ESC Mobile Client, schedule a demo with a dESCO product specialist.

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?