Let me tell you a quick and fairly embarrassing story about one of our Plumbing/HVAC clients and how they lost probably tens of thousands of dollars in business.
Typically, every reasonably successful Plumbing/HVAC business we talk to already has some kind of digital marketing firm helping them.
That was the case with this client (who shall remain nameless to protect the guilty).
We got our foot in the door because we talked sense, and they could see they were not getting the results they should be from their previous marketing provider.
Well, when we began implementing our strategy for them, which included tracking across the board so we could know *exactly* what was working and what wasn’t to make sure they didn’t waste any of their precious marketing budget, disaster struck.
I was actually at the scene of the crime – in this case, on the other end of the telephone dialing their number.
This is part of our due diligence whenever we set up a firm’s online marketing.
I had to test the phone numbers we had set up that track every single call made, indicate how many unique new calls are being placed (oh, and the client completely retains these numbers forever so they aren’t locked into a weird situation where their customers might not be able to contact them in the future if the marketing firm screws up or otherwise stops working with them).
So I dial the phone number to check it and make sure it’s working properly.
A voice on the other end of the line answers:
“Hello?”
Me, in my head, “Wow, we set this up totally wrong…did I just call someone’s house?”
Silence on the line, my mind surveying the likely possibilities of what the heck was happening. Finally, I spoke up:
“Hi…is this SmithCo. Plumbing?”
“Yes it is.”
Wow.
I seriously thought I had dialed some guy in his house. I was about to hang up the phone thinking our team had set the call tracking system up all wrong.
Instead, I made a discovery that easily added tens of thousands of dollars to this company’s bottom line over the next year.
If you don’t instill in your employees the idea that they must perform like highly trained sales professionals whenever they pick up the phone to speak to a potential client, then you are letting the phone be a loaded gun pointed straight at your bottom line.
If you’re not careful, that gun will go off one call at a time. Business will walk out the door. And you’ll be riding a slippery slope of fewer new customers, fewer referrals, and of course less profit.
The phone is a hugely powerful weapon in your marketing arsenal. No amount of skillfully implemented online marketing will save you from your employees’ inept phone habits.
Consider yourself warned.