Last month, from my home in Templeton, Calif., I planned a wedding shower for my sister and future brother-in-law, who live in the Chicagoland area. As I started to make all the necessary phone calls to find a venue, caterer, flowers and so on, I quickly realized that even in a down economy, some companies just never get it when it comes to providing good service. Had the word service become generic like Kleenex or Jell-O?
I called various companies and explained this was the first wedding shower I had ever planned for my one and only baby sister, that I wanted it to be very special and, well, perfect.
Watch this funny video on “Confessions of A Boiler Room Junkie” by Gwendolyn Bounds of the Wall Street Journal. Then read her article on how more and more consumers are doing “mechanical makeovers” when it comes to their residential heating and cooling home improvement needs by clicking on the link below the image.
This is a video of some our ContractorSelling.com members sharing their stories about the greatest challenges facing service contractors today. Watch this fascinating segment of how keeping an open mind can change your life.
Watch this funny video about a sales manager who is trying to describe the most important aspects of selling his service. Although it is hilarious. I think many sales managers can find some of themselves here.
One of the things that has always made me crazy is the labeling of sales and customer service as a so called “soft” skill. If sales and service are soft then why is it so hard to get your team to put them into practice? I often wonder, “Who was the dunderhead, that coined this term?”
My best guess is that it is probably someone who has a very strong technical skill-set that has failed to develop equally strong customer skills. This person (Probably a guy) then trying to justify this weakness, downplays the importance of customers by labeling this uber-important skill as “soft” which implies that it is not very important.
I recently spent a rainy Saturday afternoon watching a show called “Hoarding: Buried Alive.” I really didn’t have time to sit and watch TV but I couldn’t stop watching. Once I was able to get a peak into what looked like your everyday average person’s home I found I needed to see more, like watching a train wreck.
I love this video of world famous entrepreneur Richard Branson because it illustrates a principle so simple yet so elusive to most business owners in the service contracting industry. The principle is the ability to listen to the ideas of others rather than making assumptions that you think you may already know everything you need to about being successful. Watch the video and contemplate your ability to listen to your employees, customers or others who may give you some clues to be more successful.
I received a call from a service contracting sales person named Fred about a situation he found himself in that really took his confidence down a notch. Fred is the top performer at his company and has achieved a 73% closing rate with a 55% gross margin on his jobs. By all measure of success he was a doing a great job.
Then he had a call where after presenting his customized solutions, his buyer lit the fuse on a sales-bomb and completely devastated Fred. The buyer listened to Fred’s presentation and
Total Immersion students who attended a recent HVAC Plumbing & Electrical sales training summit discuss a range of topics starting with their greatest challenge, their expectations from sales training and what they thought of the training and “Uncle Joe.” In the end, everyone is asked to rate the training on a scale of 1 to 10. Watch and enjoy the excitement of these students.
Human nature leads us to follow the crowd because it’s comfortable and, let’s face it, that’s what we do. But when there’s an economic downturn that batters your industry, following the crowd is what you want to avoid. Then it’s time to be different if you don’t want to share the pain of declining sales and profits, says Bill Jones, who with his wife, Deb, owns Jones Service Co. a plumbing , HVAC and electric company that services the Hudson Valley.
Last month, from my home in Templeton, Calif., I planned a wedding shower for my sister and future brother-in-law, who live in the Chicagoland area. As I started to make all the necessary phone calls to find a venue, caterer, flowers and so on, I quickly realized that even in a down economy, some companies just never get it when it comes to providing good service. Had the word service become generic like Kleenex or Jell-O?
