Now that you are headfirst into the New Year, you should be working on bringing more and better leads into your company. The first step is to analyze the leads you are getting to determine their source. At Welsch Heating & Cooling Inc., we are far from perfect at accumulating this information. We have very little success getting our salesforce to find out why a particular customer called us. However, our sales coordinator does a good job of obtaining that information as the calls come in. We have prepared a tally sheet that we summarize on a monthly basis, which gives us at least the basic information. What we are tracking here is strictly replacement installation leads. We have found that 53 percent of our leads come from our own customers, with an additional 16.5 percent coming from referrals from those customers.
There is a reason we don’t receive a large number of replacement leads from the advertising we do. Most of the ads for replacement in our area show ridiculously low prices, which we know (we have actually tested them) must require a bait-and-switch approach. To advertise a price that you know (or should know) would result in a significant loss with the intention of charging add-ons or upselling the size or model number is not ethical, and we don’t participate in that market. Instead, the advertising we do is intended to keep our name in front of the public, along with the positive benefits of letting us serve the customer. We find that this type of advertising typically brings in a first call for service. The customer hopes that his/her furnace or air conditioner can be repaired and prefers a reputable company to check it out.