By David Crary  

Note: This is the third in a series of blog posts with tips aimed at helping field service businesses improve during seasonal slow periods.

The offseason is a great time for you to review your marketing activities, review your marketing strategy, and plan for a successful busy season. 

In my experience, you should examine and define the

As Ruth King, founder of TurnOnMyFinancialLightbulb.com, said, “Money is the blood flow of your company.” To keep your company breathing and growing, you need money.  You have employees to pay, bills to take care of, and supplies to stock up on, on top of many other things.

Do you have a customer or two that just drive you crazy?  It could be something they do every time you call or are on site.  Or it can be something they don’t do, like pay on time or answer when you are at their property.  David Crary, President and Founder of HindSite, calls these customers “Ding-Dongs”.  A “Ding-Dong” is just one of those customers who aren’t your favorite and quite frankly are a hassle to work with.  This isn’t to say they are bad people, they just aren’t your cup of tea per say.

When you are dealing with pricing, you will find that some customers will agree with your pricing and others will not.  It’s a fact of life – you can’t please everyone.  Today’s pricing for profit post will focus on how to handle both the yes’s and no’s to your price, as discussed by David Crary and Ruth King on HVACChannel.tv’s Pricing for Profit program.

Pricing is a difficult thing to master.  You don’t want to price too high so that you scare customers away but you also don’t want to price too low so that you are not making a profit.  It can be even more difficult if you are just starting out and have really no idea where to even start when it comes to pricing.

Be honest about the level of the fix when you go out to a site.  You are the professional.  This person or company trusts you and your professional opinion.  Of course you could go out there and “over fix” the issue.  You could also over sell some things.  The extra parts or time you sold will make you more money that day, but this is very short term thinking, not to mention wrong.

There is a simple standard to follow when deciding what level to fix or replace something: What would you do if this were your property?

If you would not do the service for yourself, why are you doing it for a customer?  Because they really need it?  Or because you’d like to make a little extra that day?  Don’t get us wrong.  It’s an awesome feeling when you sell a little extra.  And who doesn’t love extra money?

But be careful.  That little extra may cost you a customer.  I took my car to a repair shop about 20 years ago.  The starter on my Toyota needed replacement again.  I knew the symptoms and asked the repair shop to replace it.  When I came back to pick it up, they had not replaced it.  They told me my floor mat had slipped forward, which kept the clutch from depressing fully.  When that happens, the starter does not engage.  The repair shop made nothing on me that day, but they have had a dedicated customer for the last two decades. 

Moral of the story?  If you treat them right, they will treat you right.  They will ask you to come back.  Or they will refer you to friends and family because they know you will treat them right.  Plus, you have integrity with the customer if you can honestly say, “I would have fixed it that same way, or done the exact same thing if it were mine.”

Here at HindSite, it's not just about our service management software... it's about helping you succeed. In many ways, our Profs are in a great position to provide advice on business operations as well as software implementation, just because they speak to so many contractors on a regular basis.