If you want to maintain customer levels and bring in new business, you must keep in touch with your existing customers and key holders.
Most installers are too busy to think about marketing their businesses, let alone implementing any new ideas. This month I will focus on converting key holders into customers.

Firstly, you may wish to use the process of listing your "Current Realities" Vs "Desired Future State". For example …

Current Reality No1: "Our average order value is £ 790";

Desired Future State: "We want it to be £1000".

Question: What new strategies do we need to adopt to achieve this goal?

What can you manage?

Before I share some ideas with you to help you convert some of your key holders into customers, how many times can you say "yes" to the following questions? Remember ... what you can measure, you can manage!

  • Do you measure the lifetime value of a customer to your business?

  • Do you know the "cost of sale" to gain a new customer?

  • Do you regularly measure the cost of losing a customer to your business?

  • Do you know your average order value?

  • Do you regularly measure the conversion ratios of specs to orders won?

  • Do you measure the frequency of transactions in your business?

    Offer your customer an incentive to arrange a key holder/customer meeting … as long as the key holder benefits to the same degree

  • Do you know how much of your marketing spend goes towards keeping your existing customers?

  • Do you measure your customers' perception of your service levels?

  • Do you have a 'Sales & Marketing Plan'?

  • Do you have your existing key holders listed on a contact database?

    Although you should be aiming to say "yes" to all of these , don't worry if you can't yet ... once the questions become more important than your answers, the solutions will emerge.

    From key holders to customers

  • Firstly, list or group your monitored clients to a suitable contact (sales) database.

  • Secondly, list the key holders (the full details) associated with each customer.

    Once you have this data you can then produce a newsletter from your existing computer software and launch your new service or services to the customer with a covering letter and a new "key holder" form. The covering letter requests any updated information from your customer and may introduce new deals to upgrade them to RedCare, offer automated gate services or extinguishers etc. Moreover, their key holders may have changed and therefore new details are crucial to maintaining your high service levels, hence the key holder form.

    The key holder form should also include e-mail addresses, and work place details etc (for future marketing). But remember, you MUST ask permission from your customer before you write to their key holders.

    Customer incentives

    You may wish to offer your customer an incentive to arrange a key holder/customer meeting … as long as the key holder benefits to the same degree as the customer. These meetings work well just before the holiday months and reassure your customer that the key holders will be able to set and unset their alarm with confidence.

    • Source

    Security Installer

    Postscript

    Adrian Kiely will be holding a Security Sales Seminar entitled "How to make your quotes stand out" in Reading and Birmingham on May 18 & 24 May 2000 at 10am, respectively. Tickets £48.75. (Buy two and receive 50% off second ticket).

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