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Contractor Marketing Quick Tips: Telemarketing

Many Remodelers Gave Up On Telemarketing A Long Time Ago… But It Does Still Have Its Place.

Many Remodelers Gave Up On Telemarketing A Long Time Ago… But It Does Still Have Its Place.

Dialing For Dollars

The Phone Is NOT Dead! Pick It Up And Make Some Money!

Written by Rich Harshaw.

October 1, 2003.

That was the day that life officially changed forever for many home improvement and remodeling companies. That’s the day the National Do Not Call Registry began enforcing penalties on infringers of the new Do Not Call Law. Suddenly, thousands of companies in the industry needed to find a new way to generate home improvement leads.

You could say it was the day the phone died.

Or did it?

The reality is that the telephone can still be a valuable source of leads and revenue for contractors. Strict compliance to the NDCR laws are, of course, critical—if you need more information on how those laws work, read all about it on the FTC’s website.

For my purposes, I consider telemarketing any time you pick up the phone to contact somebody. That covers a lot of territory, and I’ll break down some of the most useful purposes of telemarketing below. But the reasons to consider utilizing this seemingly antiquated marketing tool are simple:

  • It can be inexpensive to administer
  • It gives you a chance to have a one-on-one personal contact with somebody
  • It’s quick and easy to implement
  • Not everyone is using it—so that gives you a possible competitive advantage

On the other hand, you do have to be careful. Beyond the legal requirements, telemarketing can be demoralizing to your staff if you’re not careful; it can also make your prospects and customers angry if misapplied. And finally, if done wrong, it can actually get really expensive really fast.

So… let’s start with determining WHO should make your calls… then we’ll move on to WHAT KIND of calls you should be making.

Tip 1: To Outsource Or Not To Outsource? The rule of thumb is pretty simple: if you plan on making twenty or fewer calls a day, you can probably have your staff make the calls. If it’s many more than twenty, then your employees are going to start to HATE that part of their job. They’ll dread it, they’ll find excuses not to do it, and you’ll get behind on whatever calling initiatives you’ve put in place.

On the other hand, if you want to engage in large-scale telemarketing, you’ll probably want to outsource it. Very few remodelers have core competencies to organize and manage call centers any more. If you’ve not done it before, don’t even try it. You can get high-quality telemarketing for about $35 to $40 per hour; if that sounds expensive, think of the time and effort and attention required to hire and manage your own call center.

A middle ground is to hire one or two individual outsourced telemarketers who work from home via a service like Elance or Odesk. This can be a bit tricky to find the right person (trust me, finding the WRONG person is very easy to do), but the cost savings can be worth it—somewhere in the $10 to $15 an hour range.

After all this discussion, my biggest concern is that you DO NOT overburden your existing staff with calling duties. If somebody was not specifically hired to jam phones all day, I can flat guarantee they will HATE it. A small dose—up to twenty calls a day—per above, can be a decent break from the routine of their “regular” job and fairly easy to manage. More than that and you’re asking for trouble.

Tip 2: Cold Calling: You might think flat-out cold calling simply isn’t possible anymore, and you’d be mostly—but not completely—right. Think of it this way: If there are 100,000 homes that you would call if the Do Not Call Registry didn’t exist… but you’re limited to only 12% of them because of the DNCR… that still leaves 12,000 people you can call! It’s easy to focus on the “only 12%” and forget that there are still a buttload of people you CAN call.

By the way, don’t take that number, 12%, as gospel. The easiest way to find out is to contact a list supplier and ask them about specific lists that you may be interested in. If you do try cold calling, make sure that you have a good offer and get to the point very quickly.

Tip 3: Home Show Sweepstakes: One of the reasons to run a sweepstakes in conjunction with your home shows is to generate a list of people you can call to follow up on after the show. Here’s how it works:

  • Offer a grand prize and advertise it at the home show—make sure the prize is big enough that people care to at least try to win it.
  • Have a form for people to fill out to register. Make sure the fine print on the form indicates that they are giving you permission to call them as a condition of signing up.
  • After the show, take all the solid home improvement leads out (ones that set appointments) and set them aside. Take the rest and hand them over to your call center as soon as possible… three to five days if possible.
  • Call the registrants and tell them that the Grand Prize will be given out (on specific date in the future), but you are calling them because they have won a valuable First Prize, which should be a gift card for your company with a value of at least $250 (whatever amount works well within your current pricing schemes).
  • Once you have them on the phone, ask them a series of qualification questions to test for interest and urgency, and offer them an additional gift card if they set an appointment over the phone.
  • You’ll probably want to outsource this—this is hard work.

Tip 4: Confirmation Calls: Telling you to make confirmation calls might seem like the equivalent of telling you to remember to breathe air every day. It’s pretty obvious. But in my experience, confirmation calls are generally vastly underleveraged.

Instead of simply confirming an upcoming appointment, use the opportunity to resell prospects on your IDENTITY, and to let them know that you’re going to go out of your way NOT to hard sell them when you arrive. Trust me, both of these things will pay huge dividends.

First, Identity: For this to have full impact you really need to have implemented the concept of Identity into your website and other contractor marketing materials. Then when you call to confirm, say something like this AFTER the usual confirmation items (time of meeting, etc.):

“Hey John, do you remember us saying or reading on our website that we are Portland’s ‘persnickety remodeler?’ I just want to make sure you’re aware that we do things differently. We’re sticklers for details. We’re obsessed with doing things exactly right. We don’t offer cookie-cutter solutions, and we definitely don’t cut corners. We’d rather do things right than get them done right now. Because of that, we’re not the fastest remodeler in town… and we’re also not the cheapest. But according to our customers, we’re hands-down the best.”

Second, No Sales Pressure: Once you give them your (impressive) identity spiel, they’ll be ready for your NO SALES PRESSURE one. It goes something like this:

“Last thing, John. I want you to know that the reason we’re coming to your home is to help you make the best remodeling decision possible. We’re not there to sell you something, and we’re certainly not there to twist your arm. Obviously, you’re interested in remodeling, and there’s a chance you’ll go with us. If that’s the case, we’d be honored and privileged to have your business. But our main goal in coming to your home is to help you make the right decision, period. So when we get there, you can drop your defenses, relax, and focus on your remodeling project. I just wanted you to know that.”

Do these two things and watch your conversion ratios SOAR. These are calls, by the way, that should probably be made by somebody on your staff. I don’t recommend having the salesperson make these calls simply because it probably won’t consistently happen. Have one specific person be responsible, get them a script, and make them memorize it and USE IT WORD FOR WORD.

Tip 5: Calling All Customers: Two things here: first, make sure you call your BRAND NEW customers immediately after the sale. This call should come from a customer service manager or other similar type of person within your company. The call should be to THANK THEM for their business, give them a POINT OF CONTACT within the company other than the sales person, and to ADDRESS ANY QUESTIONS that may have come up since the sales call the previous day. Make this call religiously.

The second part is calling past customers on a regular basis. Make sure you put a provision in your contract with all your customers that you have the right to call them twice a year to offer additional services and/or solicit referrals. Don’t try to “slide this in” the contract; make sure you point it out to them so they see it and acknowledge it. You want them to remember that later when you call. The point, of course, is to solicit additional business and referrals… but it’s hard to do that if you don’t have permission… or you simply FAIL to make the phone calls. This can be a HUGE source of ongoing revenue for you—DO IT!!!!

© 2014 – 2016, Rich Harshaw. All rights reserved.

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