All jokes aside, there’s a saying that I have on repeat as a business coach. “The answer to your problem is somewhere close by, you just need to know where to look.”
The idea that there is an ideal HVACR customer waiting to be discovered may seem absurd, but according to Justin Jacobs, marketing coach for Hudson Ink, finding the right customers for contractors depends on the bait that is used.
On the residential side, contractors are concerned about keeping IoT-enabled thermostats safe from hackers, and on the commercial side, they want to ensure that building automation systems are as impenetrable as possible.
For decades, many company business models have remained the same. Run service calls one after the other, and fix or replace the equipment. This often results in companies barely surviving and a bleak outlook on the future.
When working with consulting clients, I take my operating manual templates that I’ve created at my own company, and I help owners tweak them to become their own. The lesson is that it’s easier to edit than to create.
At Welsch Heating & Cooling Inc., we are far from perfect at accumulating this information. We have very little success getting our salesforce to find out why a particular customer called us. However, our sales coordinator does a good job of obtaining that information as the calls come in.
In just about every industry, the traditional title of the person in charge of sales is ‘sales manager.’ We now believe that to be most effective, the sales manager job description (and title) must evolve from being a manager to becoming a leader.
While the issue of whether employees are properly classified as exempt is always an issue that could potentially arise, exempt status is more likely to be called into question if and when the Department of Labor (DOL) goes forward with a proposed increase in the salary amount required to qualify as exempt. It has been reported that such a proposed rule could be issued in early 2019.