Whether you’re looking to hire or looking to be hired, SimplyHired.com has a useful tool that shows the average salary for specific jobs in specific locations.
SimplyHired gets their information from their job search engine that contains information on millions of current job offerings listed on the Internet. The numbers may or may not be 100% accurate for your location and profession, but it is an interesting site if you want to see the details about the job openings in your area.
Before we get to show how good we are technically, first we have to make the sale. The best field tech in the world won’t be much use, if he can’t make the sale. Fortunately, sales is a skill that can be learned and constantly improved through training and good business practices.
Here are a few key concepts that every tech should be reminded of on a regular basis.
1. Customer First
The goal is not to sell the customer your service. The goal is to show the customer how your service can meet their needs. To make the sale, and earn a loyal customer, you need listen the customer, learn what their concerns are, and then show them how your product will work for them.
The hard sell may close the deal, but the customer will not become a loyal customer. This reduces word of mouth sales, and can lead to buyer’s remorse problems.
2. Respect
Sometimes, the customer just doesn’t seem to have a clue. Don’t let the customer’s appearance or education level change your sales techniques. If your product will fulfill their needs, it’s your job to convince them of it.
Just because they will never really understand what you do, doesn’t mean you can’t explain how they will benefit from buying from you. Most of us don’t understand how a flat screen TV works, but that didn’t stop them from selling us one.
3. Benefits First
The customer has no idea what you services are worth until you show them the benefits. Always start with benefits. Resist discussing price until they understand the benefits they will receive.
4. Close the Deal
Always ask for the sale. Even if the customer appears skeptical, ask for the sale. You can’t make the sale unless you ask for it.
5. Always ask for referrals
You sold the customer on the benefits of your service. Let them help you make the next sale. Whether you follow up with a phone call asking for referrals, or have a formal referral program in place, be sure to leverage the good will your quality work generates into more sales.
In addition to getting another sale, this can cement your relationship with the customer. A successful referral links your business to the customer’s self esteem, and makes it more likely that they will rely on you in the future.
With continual sales training, just about anyone can become more effective at closing the deal, and building your base of loyal customers. It just takes time and tenacity.
How may price columns should I have in my Flat Rate Book?
We usually recommend no more than two pricing columns. More price columns can confuse your clients and techs, and reduce the effectiveness of the entire Price Book.
We recommend that your Value Rate or Standard price column should be your breakeven plus your desired profit margin. Your second price column can be discounted from your Standard price column as a tool to sell your service club or service agreement plans.
What is Value Based pricing?
We recommend that most companies use value based pricing rather than using multiple price columns on the same Task. Value based pricing allows your techs to offer your clients a range of choices based on quality and features rather than simply price.
Value based pricing can include a number of offer strategies based on a combination of features, quality and warranty. For example, on a toilet repair:
This type of pricing strategy is much easier to understand and to sell than multiple price columns for each Task.
How Do I Increase my Additional Task per Call Average?
What we have discovered over the last 15 years while working with hundreds of profitable service companies is that offering a discount for additional work often does not increase the average task per call for most service companies we tracked.
Asking questions does a better job in driving the average Task per call number higher. Ask Questions, Ask Permission. Offer to solve potential problems, before they become urgent problems.
Here’s what we have found works best in most cases. Train you technicians to address your client’s primary problem first by offering several value based options to fix that primary problem. Let the client choose and commit to the option they deem appropriate. Now have your technician ask three prepared questions that address potential future problems that may be in need of attention. This alone will increase your average task per call number without offering discounts.
How do I identify my price sensitive Tasks?
This is a very important part of maximizing your potential with your Price Guides. When you track your key performance indicators like tech close ratios, client satisfaction, and customer complaint calls, you should be able to identify a list of specific Tasks that continually show up as price problems in these reports.
Once these price sensitive Tasks have been identified, you can determine a price point that needs to be met. Then you can build value based repair Tasks that may include a loss leader at the lowest price option. Be sure to build the middle option to be your target sweet spot price.
Give Mike Conroy a call. He can quickly walk you through the business basics that you need to help make your business more consistently profitable. Take advantage of his experience working with hundreds of companies like yours to help you achieve your own business success.
After 11 years of service, Nexstar’s current President & CEO Greg Niemi will hand the reins over to Jack Tester in November 2011.
Mr. Tester was recruited by Nexstar founder Frank Blau to be the first employee of Nexstar (Contractors 2000) in 1992. He was the executive director of Nexstar until 1998. Mr. Tester has been Coaching Manager for Nexstar for the past five years.
Before joining Contractors 2000, Mr. Tester was the Assistant Executive Director of the Minnesota PHCC.
“There is no organization that provides its members with more or better tools to win in the marketplace,” said Tester. “I look forward to helping our members increase sales and profits in my new role as we continue to reach our full potential together”.
We know that not everyone has Numbers Cruncher for calculating their breakeven and other numbers critical for setting their prices, so we have created a quick business cost calculator on the NSPG web site.
This simple calculator takes your selections from a series of choices, and returns estimates of several values that are critical to setting your profitable prices.
The numbers that it returns can be plugged directly into our our order form for printed Flat Rate Price Books. You can also use it to get a quick look to see if the numbers you’re using are realistic for your actual costs.
This free calculator is designed for a simple one person owner/operator business and includes several financial assumptions with that in mind. If you need a more complete and more flexible way to calculate your key costs and pricing numbers, you should use Numbers Cruncher.
The added benefit included with your Numbers Cruncher purchase is a complete Numbers Review by an NSPG Flat Rate expert. We can help you spot where you may be spending too much or too little based on our experience with thousands of businesses.
As we move into the summer vacation season here, we’d like to offer a few basic business tips to ponder if you get some time.
Emphasize How You’re Different
Write a list of the things that make your business different from your competitors. Build these differences into every contact you have with your customers so your business always stands out in the customer’s mind.
Give a Little Bit Extra
Just because the economy is tight for just about everyone, don’t short change your customers. As business management expert Tom Peters says: “Under promise; over deliver”. The customers you want to keep will remember.
Just Say No
Some times you need to say no to a customer. If they want it done too cheaply, or they want something that just won’t do the job, politely tell them no. The customer is always right except when their not.
Make It Right
We all make mistakes. Some installs just don’t go as planned, or there is a manufacturers defect. If something needs to be fixed, fix it, and document everything. Recovery from a bad situation is a great loyalty builder.
Take a look in the Mirror
Tailor all your contact with your customers from their point of view. You have a service they need, and they don’t necessarily understand how things work. Give them easy to understand information that makes dealing with your company a better experience than your competitors. This goes double for your web sites and mailings.
Take Some Me Time
Give everything you’ve got to your business, but don’t forget to take time for yourself. A little R&R from time to time will help you to be mentally sharp and focused, so you can make the best business decisions.
Be sure that all of your employees are aware of your company policies related to these tips, so they are implemented properly every day with every customer and potential customer.
If you have more than one computer that you use to run your business, you need Windows Live Mesh. With a few minutes of setup on each computer, you can have all of your business files automatically and constantly synced between multiple computers.
Windows Live MeshMost business managers have more than one computer that they use to run the business. For example, a desktop at the office and a laptop that they travel with and use at home. One of the biggest hassles is keeping the files you need available and up to date on both computers.
With Windows Live Mesh installed, you simply select the folders you want to keep synced between any number of computers, and it happens. You don’t need to know how or why it works, it just does. Any time you change and save a shared file, the changes are sent to the other computers that are connected to your network or the internet.
With Windows Live Mesh, all transfers are encrypted, and you can sync up to 200 folders, each up to 50 GB in size and containing up to 100,000 files.
You can even sync to Microsoft’s free 5GB Sky Drive so you have access to your files from anywhere. It’s like a free, automatic backup service. (This part of Live mesh is very similar to the free version of Dropbox. Dropbox retains older versions of files for added security, but is limited to 2GB of on line storage, and does not offer direct computer to computer syncing. If you want to share all your files through an on line storage site, Dropbox is an excellent product).
Live Mesh also allows you to remotely control any Windows PC. You just log into the remote computer using Live Mesh, and you can see and control the remote computer’s desktop. So, when you finally take that long vacation you’ve been dreaming about, you can recalculate your breakeven using your copy of Numbers Cruncher on the office computer with your laptop right on the beach.
Windows Live mesh works on Windows Vista, Win7, Mac OS X 10.5 or later, and some mobile devices.
Twenty years ago the “Experts” would tell you that the way to success with a service business was a prominent, full page yellow pages ad. If you could only afford that big ad, all the work and profits would roll in.
Ten years ago the “Experts” would tell you that the way to success with a service business was a web site and email account. If you could only afford that custom designed web page, all the work and profits would roll in.
Today the “Experts” will tell you that the way to success with a service business is a Facebook page and a Twitter account. Get a bunch of “Likes” and an army of “Followers”, and all the work and profits will roll in.
Well, the “Experts” were wrong then, and they’re wrong now. They’re not wrong because print ads, web sites, and Facebook are useless. They’re wrong because they are just tools to reach your target market so you can tell them about who you are, and what you have to offer.
Having a twitter account when most of your potential customers don’t know what a tweet is, is useless. Having a large group of Facebook followers made up of you friends and colleagues may be good for your ego, but it probably doesn’t get your message across to your target market who may think that the Internet is just two things: Google and YouTube videos.
Ask any successful service business where the majority of their business comes from. The vast majority will tell you it’s repeat customers and word of mouth. They use all of the new and old media, but business success in local markets is still based on the quality of your service experience and your customers telling their friends about it.
So, does this mean that you should abandon your social media efforts?
Of course not. You just need to keep things in perspective. New media outlets are just tools for telling your story to your potential customers. Having a web site, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account may help grow your business, but they probably won’t play as big a part as you hope. What can help your business grow is providing a good quality service experience, and then spreading the word about it wherever you can.
Use every media outlet you can find to get your story out, but keep track of your return on investment for each ad, each web site, each tweet. Track every call you get, every job you sell. Measure the profit you earn versus the cost just like you did in the old days with your yellow pages ads. If after a reasonable length of time you find that the cost is not bringing in enough profitable business, scale back your efforts and move on to other tools for telling your story to your target customers.
Remember that there is a synergy to social media that is often not apparent. Don’t abandon your Facebook page, your web site, or your blog just because you can’t trace sales directly to them. Since search engines like Google and Bing are such a huge force in local marketing today, staying towards the top of your local listing is important. Having multiple digital outlets that all refer to your company with a phone number and address on every page can boost your search page listing location.
So, by all means, take advantage of the digital tools you have at your disposal. Just remember that they are just advertising tools. Use them to get your story out, but don’t put all your faith in the “Experts” who tell you that social media is the key to your success because some things never change.
As we all know, the Social Security tax was reduced by 2% for 2011 from 6.2% to 4.2% of salaries up to $106,800. This tax is usually combined with the 1.45% Medicare tax into what is traditionally called FICA. For all employee withholding for the year, you should reduce your FICA amount by 2% from the usual 7.65% to 5.65%.
If you use Numbers Cruncher for calculating your breakeven and profitable selling price, be sure to make this adjustment on the Tax/Benefit form. You can reduce the FICA percentage to 5.65% for 2011. Numbers Cruncher will adjust all of your employees’ salary numbers, your breakeven and your profitable selling price automatically.
You can see a quick summary of the change on the IRS site. You should consult with your accountant to be sure you get this right.
The schedule for the QSC Power meeting in conjunction with PHCC Connect 2011 has been released. You can see the combined schedule at the PHCC web site.
You can find a printable (PDF) registration form here.
