Is Your Company Technology Going It Alone?

“Silo,” in information industry terminology, is not a place to hold the grain on your farm but is a data system that can’t interact or communicate with another data system. They’re separate, not connected – silos in other words.

There may be plenty of practical uses for information silos – but sharing data between sales and marketing is not one of them. When you have one system for sales, one for marketing – and never the two shall meet – you’re asking for lost opportunity. And why would you ask for such a thing? Seriously. To align sales and marketing, you’ve got to be able to share information.

So take a look at your information technology infrastructure and see what you’ve got going on. For example: 

• What software systems have been implemented?
• What can they do? What are they doing?
• How many systems do you have?
• Can they be (or are they) integrated?

Software upgrades sound like overhead to many a businessperson, and they are. But they’re also investments that can put the technological infrastructure in place to grow your business – without which opportunity is lost.

If your sales and marketing systems aren’t synched, and you have to go into them manually, you’re risking error, omissions and lost time. But when they are synched, you’re laying the groundwork for effective lead nurturing.

As lead nurturing is automated, the information is there for whoever in your company needs it – emails sent, opened, clicked through, requests, contact, proposals, service/installation records, referrals, etc. 

And here’s some of why all of this matters. According to Brian Carroll, author of Lead Generation for the Complex Sale, only 5‑15% of the names you collect through your website/marketing campaigns will be ready to buy from you right away.

Obviously, in contractor terms, that assumes that this is not an emergency repair call, but would be a home improvement that can allow time for the customer to research options. Regardless, to keep the large majority of people not quite ready to buy within your company’s sights, you need to nurture the lead, which calls for consistent, relevant communication – beginning with marketing but moving to sales at the appropriate time through one seamless system. 

Download These CSR Scripts

I rant about customer service a lot. We all do. We choose our restaurants, hotels, clothing stores and shops based largely on good or bad service. If poor, we quit using that company, tell our friends or even post negatively online for all to see. How costly is that?

Many paying customers QUIT their contractors. Not due to pricing, or technical skill, but due to one thing: Poor Customer Service. The treatment – actual or imagined – was poor, thus the experience was wrecked. And there goes the customer, referrals and reputation right along with it.

So guess what a large number of contractors do? Shocking answer here, plus some Top Contractor CSR Scripts.

They prefer to pay almost no attention to customer service training. They want to squeak by for “as little as possible,” not realizing that this so-called “savings” is among the costliest money drains known to man. You can do all the research you want: even if everything else is right, bad customer services skills can kill a business.

Remember, ALL who speak to customers become THE spokesperson and representative of your company. However, too often, a company just puts “somebody” on the phone, communicating through email, and making social posts. Or, worst of all, they allow technicians to stand face-to-face in customers’ homes, communicating unprofessionally or setting you up for disaster.

It’s not their fault. They were NOT trained in the lucrative art of customer service. So they just “wing it,” communicating indifferently, sending signals of “amateur” or “sketchy” or sometimes just plain rude.

The Fallacy of “Nice People”

It is TOTALLY false to say, “No, we don’t need training because we hire nice people.”

Wrong. Nice people OFTEN over-promise and can misstate facts. Do nice people know how to upsell? How to handle a complaint? Generate a referral? In fact, here are just a few areas where Top Trained Customer Service Reps excel:

• Effective phone answering, hand-offs and outbound
• Appointment Confirmations
• Upsells
• Callbacks
• Angry Customers
• Referral Generation
• Positive Review Generation
• Agreement Renewals
• Tardy appointment scripts, emails

Imagine if EVERY ONE of those were improved? What would that mean to your bottom line? And what would this cost you to implement vs. what it’s costing you to NOT HAVE?

Now imagine if you focused on each area, just 2 per week; in just over a month, you’d have greatly increased your company image, professionalism and sales.

The Power of Scripts and Professionally-Crafted Written Communication

Some shy away from “Scripts,” assuming this is for robots and recordings. Hardly. The best speeches ever made are scripted. Yet an effective delivery means they’re comfortable with the POINTS of the script, without memorizing them verbatim.

Same with written communication. We supply clients with dozens of email and follow-up ‘mail’ templates (all prewritten) which can be easily personalized. The point is:

Better to have a strategic outline for all written and verbal communications than none at all.

Get 5 Scripts Here.

The above should help you a ton. Of course, we have dozens of scripts, emails, follow-ups, referral requests, renewal letters, thank you cards and more Customer Service pieces. (Ask your coach or email to request more info.)

As we head into summer, I just wanted you to have these scripts to help you get and keep more customers, while conveying a better and more professional image.

Hope you put these to good use. Enjoy!