Hiring the perfect service technician and establishing partnerships or relationships is critical to growing your residential electrical service business. Through the years, as I have traveled the country talking with fellow business owners, here are two common questions that often come up and the advice I offer.
How should I go about establishing relationships with other service contractors (HVAC, plumbing, etc.) who might be able to refer their customers to me?
Partnering with other business owners in your area is a fantastic idea. You and other contractors are in and out of clients’ homes all day, and your marketing touches many more. You and a plumber might be in the same house, but you aren’t competing against one another. That gives you a great opening to create a mutually beneficial relationship where the plumber can refer his or her clients to you and vice versa.
Begin by identifying the company you feel is the absolute best in your service area in a given trade. Who is the best plumber? Which is the best HVAC company? If you would feel comfortable having them work in your home, then they would probably be a good partner for you.
Next, contact the owner of the company and set up a meeting. At the meeting, tell him about your company and start things off by agreeing to refer customers to one another. After a three to six month period, when you have had time to evaluate their business and how they handle customer service, you may decide to jump into joint marketing projects where you both share the cost of reaching the homeowner. This has been a valuable lead source for our company. Keep in mind that you’ll need to constantly remind your office and field staff to refer these companies to your customers every chance they get. If the plumbing or HVAC company is getting a lot of referrals from your company, they’ll be more inclined to refer you as well.
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We take this a step further by having some of our company meetings in the same facility — either theirs or ours. This allows our employees and their employees to get to know each other. It’s a lot easier for your technician (or theirs) to refer each other when they have an established relationship. When a customer mentions they have a plumbing or HVAC problem, your technician will be able to say, “Mrs. Jones, you should call XYZ Company. They are great. Ask for Mike, he’ll take care of this problem for you.”
We also advertise together now. We have a note pad and a refrigerator magnet that has all three companies’ logos on them but with only one phone number so it’s easier for the customer to call us. This also reminds each customer when they call that “our home services group” can handle electrical, plumbing, or HVAC needs for them. This number is set so that when a customer calls it, they get three options: press 1 for electrical; press 2 for plumbing; or press 3 for HVAC. We track this number carefully, and today it is one of the best lead sources we have — and by far the cheapest.
What do you look for in that “perfect service technician”?
The most often stated requirement, but frequently not enforced in small companies, is: Your employees must pass a drug test and have a clean criminal background. They also must be clean cut with a warm, friendly personality.
They must be willing to keep a clean shaven appearance at all times. They must arrive at work every day in a clean uniform. You should provide this for them daily, with a spare in their truck at all times. I suggest you have these uniforms professionally cleaned and pressed. Employees also must wear clean shoes or boots that they polish every morning.
They must have confidence in themselves. One of the biggest challenges I have found with a lot of electricians is that they don’t appreciate their own technical skills, and therefore underestimate their own value. They’ll say, “It only took me a few minutes to find that problem, so I didn’t charge Mr. Jones.” They’re forgetting the reason it only “took a few minutes” is because they have been in this industry for 12 years and their skill has risen to the level that it took little time to fix the problem. I frequently have to educate employees about this and remind them of the value they bring to the customer. They need to get paid for that, just as your company needs to get paid for it. The doctor with 12 years’ experience is aware of his value. Shouldn’t we, as licensed electrical professionals, also be aware of our worth?
Employees must be ambitious —self-starters who want to get ahead. Now, I know this is what we are all looking for no matter what kind of business we run. But in the service world, it’s even more important because your technician typically manages himself all day with little or no direct supervision. He needs to be motivated to perform well all day.
The right technician must possess sales abilities. He must be told up-front when hired that his job will entail some sales every day. Don’t sugar coat or hide this part of the job when interviewing for the position. If you do, you are only going to hurt the employee and yourself in the long run.
Finding the perfect service technician will be extremely hard. There are only a small percentage of electricians out there who have all of these attributes. It will probably take a long time to find him or her, but it’s worth the effort you put into the search when you find that “perfect employee.” After all, your service business is only as good as the people you hire. Jim Abrams, a leader in the franchise industry and a good friend of mine, told me a number of years ago, “You should spend one-third of your time recruiting, one-third of your time training, and one-third of your time managing.”
Kennedy started Mister Sparky in 1996 in Atlanta. That location is now one of the largest and most successful residential electrical service companies in the Direct Energy Services portfolio, based on sales volume. Kennedy currently owns and operates the Mister Sparky franchise serving the greater Sarasota, Fla., area. He can be reached at [email protected].
