This Month in CB History: When Service is the Driver

Can we agree that throughout HVAC history, excellent service has been the coin of the realm? It was true in 1988 and it's true today: you can use service to drive additional business, fairly and to the ultimate benefit of the customer.

April 4, 2014

In April 1988, in a special report on Design/Build Marketing, Tim Lewis of Elliott-Lewis Corp. described how the company nearly doubled sales over a two-year period, by doubling its service business.

Here are a few excerpts:

“By focusing on service, we’ve been able to improve our standing in the marketplace, increase our profitability, gain customer acceptance, and enhance our Design/Build capability,” Lewis wrote.

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“Your service sales representative should be reporting to you, your sales manager, or someone who is marketing your company. Seventy percent of our D/B business comes from about 2,000 maintenance accounts, because they see us, they know us, and — because we have consistently performed for many years — they trust us.”

"We do virtually no advertising in the commercial or industrial area because we invest heavily in people calling on customers. We have seven representatives: three of them sell maintenance contracts; four of them sell Design/Build and retrofits."

"If we stay with it and build our service departments, we will continue to grow in Design/Build. However, we must discipline not only ourselves, but each and every employee in our organizations."

TO OBTAIN A PDF OF THIS ENTIRE ARTICLE, CONTACT Terry McIver at [email protected]