Qualified Remodeler helps independent remodeling firms to survive, become more professional and more profitable by providing must-have business information, namely best business practices, new product information and timely design ideas.
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Nail Down Qualification Criteria Picking up the phone quickly and answering in a friendly manner are simple techniques, but you can���t stop there. Add effective and consistent lead qualification, and now you���re talking. Qualification criteria invariably create a tug-of-war within home improvement companies, because your marketing team wants to maximize lead volume and will naturally want qualification criteria as loose as possible, while your salespeople want just the opposite. They���re looking for the strongest, most qualified leads they can get. In short, they ���don���t want to waste their time��� pitching unqualified prospects. The key to qualifying prospects is consistency. Create a defined set of criteria, then write it down and blend it into your scripting. This ensures that everyone in your company has a clear understanding of what constitutes a qualified prospect. Appointment Management Even the strongest appointments can experience complications, such as homeowners rescheduling. Sometimes they reschedule three or four times. Or, they can fail to show up for an appointment, but still want to see your salesperson. With thousands of inquiries per year, this can become frustrating and difficult to track. This is why strong lead management and scheduling systems are so important. Keeping appointments on a white board or in a free online calendar system can work for smaller organizations, but as you grow these systems fall short in a critical way ��� they don���t maximize the number of sales appointments you���ll make. For one thing, loose appointment keeping leads to lost sales opportunities. In addition, rescheduled meetings become difficult to manage, and callbacks and confirmation calls slip through the cracks. No-shows increase. Confusion mounts. Remodelers must embrace a professional lead management and scheduling system, such as the solution that MarketSharp provides for remodelers. Many other such systems are available, and they all offer a number of key advantages. Properly handling leads when they come in the door is more important than ever before. First, they provide a central system that everyone in the organization can understand. These systems simplify the process of handling reschedules, making confirmation calls and sending reminder emails to homeowners. Take the confusion out of the process, and automate your operation with one of these systems. The immediate improvements will be subtle, but when you review your numbers, you���ll find your company is sitting more appointments and closing more business. Make Lead Handling a Priority Too many home improvement companies get so caught up in selling deals and installing product that they miss the big picture of how they handle their lead flow. And that���s an oversight that costs them in growth and profits. Lead handling must be your priority ��� not just for you, but for everyone in your company. When that phone rings or that email arrives, you can ring up big dollars through great lead handling. Todd Bairstow is a founder and partner at Keyword Connects. He is a writer and speaker in the area of online marketing for home improvement and writes a popular lead generation blog. Keyword Connects runs hundreds of risk-free, online lead generation campaigns for home improvement companies that produce exclusive, branded sales leads. iStockphoto/Thinkstock ForResidentialPros.com QR February 2013 13