What can make my business more successful? This is the million-dollar question that’s constantly on the minds of company owners every hour of each day. Within our field, as it is with almost all service-based businesses, what your people know ultimately drives how successful your company will become. Why? Because employee knowledge is the root of success making technician training a must.
How do you hire a good technician?
Sometimes the best way to address staffing needs is to develop new technicians. Training new technicians while simultaneously keeping your seasoned technicians sharp involves some level of effort and company investment, but ultimately it is an investment that pays off.
To validate this point, look deeply into the core operations of any successful business plan — or better yet — look at your best competitor. Ask what it is they do or offer that makes them great. Often times you will find two common linchpins of success; customer loyalty and customer referrals. Both are a direct result of training and both play significant roles in establishing a company’s positive reputation with existing and potential customers.
How strong are your customer loyalty and customer referrals?
Are they good? Are they great? Most importantly, ask yourself if they can be even better?
Without customer loyalty, your attention is constantly focused on chasing the next dollar and you are almost always unsure where it might be found. The easiest business to win is the business you already have. Among the many attractive aspects of our industry is the fact that it remains an ongoing, non-optional need for people. Throughout the seasons and years, eventually, customers will have a need. The ability to retain a customer’s loyalty means you can create a predictable, reliable, ongoing business projections for your company.
This makes planning and budgeting operations infinitely less stressful and mysterious. There is an additional advantage to winning a customer’s loyalty too. Doing so removes another opportunity from the market for your competitors to grow. We understand how it can feel overwhelming, perhaps even impossible, to attempt to win customer loyalty across an entire market. But here’s a suggestion, if you change your perspective and view at each address in a territory as an individual market, your goal to own them all seems less ominous.
How training saves on marketing:
Without customer loyalty and customer referrals, owners are essentially mandated to dedicate a significant portion of their operating budget toward marketing. This is an investment that grows quickly as you begin to account for time, energy, and analysis to ensure your dollars are delivering a respectable ROI. Yes, the process will get better, but even when you handle each step of the marketing to perfection, your investment is never as affordable as the cost of earning a customer referral. When a customer becomes an advocate, their close rate is unmatched by even the most seasoned salesperson.
Your path to achieving customer loyalty, customer referrals and, ultimately, a growing customer base is paved by investing in staff knowledge. What your people know is the lifeblood of a successful business. But how can your company increase technician competency? The answer is as simple — and essential — as technician training.
We understand your resistance. For many business owners and operators, the topic of training can seem needlessly daunting. We’re here to say don’t stress it. NexTech Academy offers flexible, online trade school programs that will train your technicians anywhere, at any time, using common web-connected devices.
NexTech Academy technician training goes into all of the nuts, bolts, heat exchangers and P-traps and more. Obviously, your technicians in the field need to know what they are doing to correct issues. What’s perhaps not so obvious is that your technicians also need to feel completely confident in soft skills and the various topics so they can explain their service calls to customers. Technicians should and need to be another arm of your sales force. Technician training moves you closer to accomplishing this objective. When your technicians are properly trained, they are able to hold honest, open, and informed conversations with customers. These moments of interaction build confidence in the work being done correctly and respect for your company. Win a customer’s trust and you win their business — not just today, but for a lifetime.
Your journey to growing your customer base begins with training your technicians to be the best. Make the investment in them today and reap the profits for years to come. Contact us to get started.
