Maintenance agreements are the cornerstone of profitability in the 21st century. Maintenance agreements tie the customer into your company long term, increase your service work, fill your slow times, nearly guarantee you will be selected for the eventual equipment replacement and they substantially increase the selling price of your company. Assuming you agree with the previous statements, the question then becomes "How do I increase maintenance agreement sales?" Let's check out a few ideas that might help.

Set Goals for Your Techs
Step one is to determine how many maintenance agreements your company needs. Normally there are about 90 slow days in a tech's year. Those days need to be filled with maintenance agreement work, so the first objective is to determine how much wrench time is required to perform your maintenance agreement. 
   Once the tech understands how many agreement are required to fill the slow times (let's use 180 agreements sold annually as a target for this example), you will want to want to post "Maintenance Agreements Sold-By Tech" on the wall for all to see. When the tech has sold 180 agreements they have reached the goal and can then theoretically be working all year long. If you have three techs, but only one has sold 180+ agreements, guess who gets laid off first if work is slow?

Move to Flat Rate Pricing
Flat rate pricing is the perfect, yes perfect, system to sell maintenance agreements. The up front pricing book clearly shows, in black and white, the normal customer's price right alongside the maintenance agreement customer's price. 
   One of the benefits of being a maintenance agreement customer is that they get a discount ranging between 5- and 20 percent on any additional service work that is required during the year. When the tech completes the process of determining what is wrong with the piece of equipment the customer is then shown the firm price in black and white in the flat rate book. However, right next to the price is the maintenance agreement customers "discounted" price. Seeing the two prices side-by-side gives the tech a great change to offer an agreement for sale. The answer is usually yes! The answer is usually yes! I have literally seen contractors sell as many as 500 maintenance agreements the first year they moved to flat rate pricing.

Train Customer Service Reps to Answer the Phone
You are going to love this. It's time to script and train your customer service representative, or whoever answers the phone in your company, to ask whether the caller is a "regular" or a "discount" customer. The CSR can then provide a brief explanation of your maintenance agreement program including the fact maintenance agreement customers receive a discount on all service work needed during the year. Also, be sure to tell the customer the discount can apply to today's call.

Role-play with Your Techs
The CSR has now primed the customer for a maintenance agreement sale and informed the technician of the conversation. The tech then needs to complete the process when they arrive at the customer's home. However, that will not just happen. 
   Simply telling the tech what to say usually produces little fruit. The proper process is to begin with a written script of what you want the tech to say when they enter the customer's home. The next step is to role-play. During your weekly service meeting (you do have weekly service meetings...don't you?) role-play what you expect, over and over, until the tech is completely comfortable doing it in front of you and the other techs. Until they are totally comfortable in front of you they will never talk to the customer. Grading the techs performance in front of the customer will be pretty simple. Maintenance agreement sales, produced by that technician, will begin to flow in on a regular basis! 
   During our three-day "Basic Business Boot Camps" we spend nearly half a day covering the development of a very profitable maintenance agreement program. Tuition also includes 500 custom design and printed Maintenance Agreement three-fold brochures. Check the schedule of dates and locations on our Web site.