Business Management] An Untapped Source

If you are a company that depends on that black object sitting silently on your desk to ring for business, the last 18 months or so have been challenging. Economic downturns are at historic levels due to the housing crisis and high unemployment. Consumers have already cut their budgets to the bare necessities. Add all these factors up and the odds of that black antique object (the telephone) ringing to bring you business are slim at best.

While you stare at that silent phone, take a moment to consider the wealth of information trapped inside your customer database. Countless opportunities lie trapped there waiting for your imagination to tap that source. Face it, we are all fueled by sales and in order to make a sale we need stops! Stops generate the fuel that runs the business. Watching that phone and depending on it to bring you business is called reactive sales; if the phone rings and creates a stop, you have the opportunity to produce a sale. This is a reactive response and at best weak in this economy. Reactive responses, normally stimulated by marketing and pest pressure, are unpredictable and frustrating. In this economic environment you just cannot depend on them.

PROACTIVE PROSPECTING. Proactive prospecting involves working your customer base to create stops and opportunities. There are at least seven types of creative stops (a.k.a., opportunity probes or OPs) that can be generated from your customer base with the most notable one being the annual termite warranty inspection. At least six more OPs actually exist; you have to be smart enough to figure those out and use them. The customer base is a perpetual source of fuel (stops) for any company; however, just generating a stop (opportunity probe) is not enough. Thousands of companies squander termite inspections every year, failing to take advantage of those opportunities, so just generating a "stop" is not the Holy Grail. You have to execute it — sell off it in a manner that does not upset the customer or damage the base. Stimulating your customer base to create OPs is not a new idea. If done correctly, it will not corrupt your customer base while at the same time you generate new business from it.

Once you tap into the customer base you have to use the OPs to generate sales from it without damaging the reputation of the company or risking the base itself. Your sales force must be prepared and educated in the fine art of inspections and sales of this nature. To affect any creative sale you must establish two other elements. The first is legitimate reason (you must have a legitimate reason to be at the house). For example, an annual termite inspection provides the inspector a legitimate reason to be at the house. The second element is recognition (educated, skilled inspectors recognizing other existing pest problems and/or conducive conditions and converting them to sales). It’s a "win-win" as the customer appreciates our attention to a problem they were unaware of and, in most cases, requests our services to remediate it within our power.

OPPORTUNITIES STILL EXIST. Opportunity probes such as the annual termite inspection and others provide a wealth of fuel from which you can safely harvest revenue production. First, realize the awesome responsibility and power of your customer base; secondly, use it to generate OPs and harvest sales in a manner that will preserve the base and this perpetual fuel source. There are companies out there right now that are suffering through this economic nightmare while sitting on a "nuclear power plant of fuel." People will spend money on their homes, and they will take care of what they have; you just need to find a legitimate problem while performing a legitimate inspection. Imagine crossing a desert, dying of thirst and having an unlimited reserve of cool water just beneath your feet. It’s there, you just have to figure out how to tap into it and deliver it safely.

The author is general manager of Superior Pest and Lawn Management, Ashburn, Va. He can be contacted at rmarkland@giemedia.com.