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5 Rules for Handling Price Shoppers as an HVAC Company
You’re frustrated. You’ve honed your craft as an HVAC technician, worked hard to turn your skills into a business, spent thousands of dollars on marketing efforts, and you finally have leads coming in—but they’re price shoppers. Over and over again you hear your customer service representatives (CSRs) answering questions about the cost of a furnace repair, AC tune-up, or new heat pump installation, only to hang up seconds later after a customer has determined your price was too high.
You are angry that these calls are taking up your CSRs time and not resulting in any sales. Is your service cheaper than your competitors’? No, but that’s not what makes your HVAC company the one to choose. Maybe you only hire NATE-certified technicians. Maybe you are the only Trane or Bryant certified dealer in your town. However, these conversations don’t seem to indicate that customers care about that. You feel discouraged as these price shoppers waste your CSRs’ time and don’t convert into paying customers.
We’re here to tell you to take heart—price shoppers don’t have to be frustrating or invaluable to your HVAC business. If your CSRs have the skills to properly handle them, you can turn these leads into customers. Keep reading to learn the five rules your HVAC company should always use when talking to price shoppers.
Convert Price Shoppers into Customers with These Guidelines
1. Don’t waste time or resources trying to avoid price shoppers
You can’t ever avoid them fully. Nor should you want to—but I’ll explain that later. As a consumer yourself, when you need a service for your home, you probably try to find the best deal before shelling out your hard-earned money. It’s natural to want to get the most value for your money. Trying to circumvent this fact will only waste your time and effort. You should focus, instead, on improving your business—which will help you prove that, in fact, your HVAC company does provide the best value.
2. Make sure your CSRs know all of your services and your entire service area
We have been monitoring and analyzing calls for years, and you would be amazed at how often we hear a sale not being made simply because a CSR simply wasn’t accurate, helpful, or prepared with all the information a customer (even a price shopper) would find important. You need to ensure that every single CSR knows the basic information about your company.
3. Listen to your customers
You know that business is all about supply and demand, so take the time on these calls to identify what your customers want and need from their HVAC company, and you’ll be better prepared to give it to them.
Always remember that people value their time. Once they like and trust a brand, they’re much less likely to go looking for other options. When you invest your efforts in meeting and exceeding the demands of your customers, you’ll often enjoy dividends in the form of loyalty. It pays to truly engage and then listen to price shoppers and understand what they’re after—price is only one component of value.
4. Know your worth
The lowest price doesn’t always win the sale, and dropping your price to meet what you perceive as demand from price shoppers can actually sometimes lead to the perception that your service isn’t worth what you were charging. That’s not a signal you want to put out into the marketplace. Know that most people are willing to spend more money for higher quality services—isn’t that true for you?
5. Smile when you speak
A customer can hear your CSR’s smile through the phone, and a positive tone and first impression can signal that your HVAC company is competent, pleasant, and easy to work with. A hurried or annoyed tone can give the impression that your technicians will be too busy or inconvenienced to do a job well.
Close More Sales with Customer Service Training
While it’s important that you know how to handle price shoppers, it’s even more important that your CSRs do. But you have a company to run, so how do you make sure they learn?
Try Smart Selling: A training program for CSRs.
As an HVAC internet marketing company that specializes in working with the home services industry, we have listened to and analyzed more than 1.5 million phone calls between CSRS and customers looking for services like HVAC, and have discovered:
- The most common CSR errors that lead to missed opportunities and the loss of booked appointments
- Effective approaches for closing sales over the phone on the first call
- A proven method for tracking and recovering lost leads
We have learned that, whether they realize it or not, your CSRs are most likely the first—and potentially last—impressions a customer will have of your HVAC company, making them arguable your most important representatives. Ensuring that they are fully trained, prepared, and confident enough to handle price shoppers (and any other common type of inbound lead) is critical if you want to close as many sales as possible.
When you implement our customer service representative training program, our seasoned coaches will work one on one with your call handling team to apply Smart Selling concepts in practice call scenarios that are created and selected based on your industry and team’s needs. Through ongoing coaching and training, they will have the confidence to handle difficult phone calls, provide peerless customer service experiences, and convert more calls into appointments.
See how Smart Selling helped one HVAC company double their booking rate through bi-weekly one-on-one training and development sessions with our Smart Selling coaches—download our free case study!
Train Your Call Handling Team Convert Common Inbound Leads with our Smart Selling Program
If you are the owner of an HVAC company who wants to make more sales from your existing lead pool, you need Smart Selling. This program will maximize your marketing dollars by transforming your customer service department.
Contact us today to start our CSR training program and convert more leads!
About The Author: Jenny was an SEO Analyst at Blue Corona. She enjoys spending time DIYing around her home and exploring new restaurants with her husband.
View more blogs by Jenny Mott
The information on this website is for informational purposes only; it is deemed accurate but not guaranteed. It does not constitute professional advice. All information is subject to change at any time without notice. Contact us for complete details.
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