If you’ve been in the business world for very long you’ve no doubt heard the statement “Inspect what you expect.” There’s a lot truth in that statement, but, this month, we want to modify it just a bit for your service techs. 
   The revised version is “Role play what you expect.” Until your service techs are comfortable role playing with the service manager and/or owner in the room they’ll never be comfortable in front of the customer. Some folks reading this article may be thinking, “Why is that important? I don’t need a Dale Carnegie graduate—I need a great tech!” 
   You need both.
   Your tech “is” your face as far as the customer is concerned—your tech is your company. Techs that can speak well in front of customers have two huge advantages. Number one, the customer feels good about the tech and, therefore, about your company. Secondly, techs that are comfortable talking in front of the customer don’t produce a few more add-on sales…they produce a LOT more add-on sales. What do you need to role-play with you techs you might ask? Well here are a few things for starters.
   
Creating a Qualified Sales Lead
Remember the article on creating qualified sales leads a while back? [“Charrrrge!: Techs can Turn Retrofit Sales on Full Blast,” RJ, November, 2008, Pg. 44—Ed.] If not, go back and read it. In that article we talked about the tech creating what we called a Qualified Sales Lead. 
   The gist of that column was that techs should spend some extra time determining how old the customers’ equipment is and then share with the customer the fact newer equipment will provide additional comfort, use less energy or whatever the benefits might be. 
   If the customer was interested, the tech was to set the appointment while he or she was in the home by calling the office and having the customer and office set it up. 
   The question is this: What do you want the tech to be saying to the customer? It’s up to you, the service manager, to actually script that you want the tech to say. The next step is to hand the script to each tech a couple days before your weekly service meeting so they can review it. 
   Sometime during the service meeting allow each tech to role-play the script with another tech being the customer. I can tell you right off the bat that very few techs will be comfortable doing this the first time through. That is why they need to role-play the script over and over again, week after week. Until they’re comfortable with the group they know, they’ll never do it with the customer when you aren’t watching. Does practice make perfect? Absolutely! Keep up the process until the techs are so comfortable they don’t even need to refer to the script.
   Check out the earlier article on the value or creating qualified sales leads. Properly role-playing this one thing can add tens of thousands of retrofit dollars to your company’s bottom line profit!

Flat Rate and Maintenance Agreements
There’s no better time to sell a maintenance agreement then while the technician is in front of the customer. The flat rate book plainly shows the available dollar discount for the current repair if the customer purchases a maintenance agreement on the spot.
   Having the opportunity and taking advantage of it are two different things. Again, the tech won’t share the benefits of an annual maintenance agreement in the customers’ homes if they aren’t comfortable doing it with their peers. It’s up to the service manager to create the script and then role play, role play and role play again until the process is natural for the tech. 
   By the way, while we’re talking about flat rate pricing, be aware that under-billing is a huge problem on flat rate pricing. This means the tech performed three tasks but only wrote down two. Why? They are rushed and could not easily find the third task the huge flat rate manual. 
   As a service manager you need to have your techs perform flat rate drills (give them a task to find and see who finds it in the manual first) on a regular basis. That will dramatically increase sales and profits and nearly eliminate under-billing.

Add-on Sales
There will be times the company will want to promote some kind of a specific add-on sale to its customers. Step one is to create the offering on a standard sheet of paper. Show a picture of the product and have some kind of heading that says: “XYZ Is Our Special of the Month.” If you purchase while the tech is in your home you will receive a/an X% discount. 
   Then list a few bullet point benefits and state the original price and the discounted price. When the simple flyer in complete, it’s time to role-play. What do you want your tech to say? How do you want them to present it to the customer? Again, the service manager scripts the scene and then to role-plays with the techs until they are 100 percent comfortable.
   What else can you role-play? Role-play the tech’s presentation of the Customer Response Card to the customer. Another good one is to script, and role-play, what you want your techs saying and doing when they knock on the customer’s front door. What should they do? Where do they stand? What do they have in their hands? What should the first words be that come out of their mouth be? Again, script the scene and role-play.
   Keep in mind that the most trusted individual in the customers’ home is your well-trained tech. Your technician probably has 100 percent of the customer’s confidence. The customer trusts their judgment, and guess what else? The customer also trusts their recommendations. Now again, simply having the opportunity does not mean the opportunity become fruitful. It is the owner and/or service manager’s responsibility to script what they want said and done while the tech is in front of the customer. When the process is well scripted, and role-played over and over again, you can be confident of what the tech is saying in front of the customer. Then guess what happens? You got it, sales and profits go up…significantly!
   Now for a new topic. Have you ever taken the time to departmentalize your company all the way through the profit & loss statement? Ninety-five percent of the industry hasn’t. If you don’t departmentalize your company the net effect is often one profitable department subsidizing a department that is losing money. 
   Proper pricing in all departments is critical for continued profitability. If you need some help creating budgets and/or setting profitable hours rates than you might want to consider attending one of our three-day “Basic Business Boot Camps.” 
   You will literally be modeling your company on our software, by department, to find out what you will need to charge. You will also have lots of fun creating “what if” scenarios to see how your proposed changes will affect your hourly rate, cash flow and profitability. Give us a call at (800) 432-7963 or check it out on the Web at www.grandyassociates.com.