Attracting new customers

Service companies must combine referrals with other forms of advertising.

Here are some dos and don’ts from David Hawes, president of H&H Pool Services Inc. in Dublin, Calif., and a service business instructor for several industry trade shows:

One of the best ways to advertise is to put a logo and a phone number on your truck and/or uniform.

“Those who call from seeing it on your truck are almost never price shopping,” Hawes says. “They’ve already made a decision that they are going to hire you because they are disappointed with the service they have now. Why else would they be calling? After all, they made a conscious decision to write your number down when they saw your truck.”

Yellow Pages don’t usually generate new clients, says Hawes, because its readers are mostly price shoppers just going down a list. However, having a listing can serve a purpose.

“I look at [Yellow Pages] more as an easy reference in case they didn’t get [the phone number] off the truck,” Hawes says.

Direct mail is good promotion, but mostly to existing customers, letting them know about upcoming deals, specials and services. But for recruiting new accounts, Hawes says it’s nothing spectacular.

“I don’t find it to be any more successful than anything else,” he says. “You get a 2- to 3-percent response, and most of those are just tire kickers.”

Selling your pool service is the same as selling anything else, as long as you have a good product, says Hawes. In this case, the product is you.

“I think if you take a generic template for sales, it could easily fit the pool service business,” Hawes concludes.

FEATURE STORY
Selling Service
Finding potential customers for your pool service company involves knowing who and where they are, recruiting them, and then proving that their search for the world's best technician is over.

MORE INFORMATION
What are they thinking?
Experts say there are some very specific concepts that attract consumers to service companies.