Picture this—you’re swamped at the office, working to ensure that all your queued-up production is in order, when you get a call…an angry customer calling to cancel the sale you’ve already put in hard earned dollars to close. The customer is frantic and telling you they can’t continue with their project because apparently none of your team members were available to answer their call.

Now, obviously, with all your existing priorities you don’t have the time to sit down and micro-manage your team. In fact, your teams’ time is probably better spent out in the field closing more sales than it is in the office following clerical follow up phone calls. So how do you bridge that gap—the gap between going out to convert leads into new business and ensuring customers are getting the communication they crave—without wasting yours and your team’s time?

Here are the three best ways to bridge it—ultimately reducing the number of cancellation calls you receive and converting your hard-earned leads into bonafide business for your home improvement company.

1. Adjust Your Final Pitch

Big purchasing decisions make people anxious, so it only makes sense that some of your customers call in after signing a contract looking to get some reassurance that they’ve made the right decision with their money. The same goes for your team and their time. They want to make sure they’re getting the most bang for their buck while they’re out working. Logically, most of your reps then translate putting food on the table into going out and closing as many deals as possible. But when you look at the big picture, it’s not so cut and dry.

You need to teach your team that sometimes working smarter at their pitch, not harder on their next sale, yields the most sales closed. In fact, ensuring that your reps take the small amount of time necessary to address classic customer anxieties (or even simply hand business cards of the next best point of contact), may be the difference between a closed sale and a cancellation call the next day.

If your sales reps outline not only the next steps your team will take, but also the next steps your customers can take as well, you can expect to see less cancellations and convert more business. 

2.Contact Your Customers Before They Contact You

Answering all your customers calls and concerns is great, but it’s unrealistic. Not every team member is going to be available, and not every team member is going to be as reliable as you are. That’s why it is essential that you get in front of your customers before they can get in front of you. By opening a line of communication directly after your customers sign a contract, you show them that you care, and you create a platform in which you can address many of their common concerns. 

Here’s a pro tip: You know that a lot of customers’ questions reoccur. So by simply writing down some of the most common discussion topics your reps receive after closing a sale and attaching a FAQ section to your follow up communications, you can not only begin to build trust with your customers, but also avoid future cancellations. 

By putting a procedure into place where a contract is signed and some sort of email or general communication follow up is subsequently sent, you are ensuring that your customers feel secure in their purchasing decisions and ultimately grow one step closer to turning that lead into a sale for your business.

3.Create a Customer Loop

After putting in the work to turn a lead into a proposal, you know that it’s extremely detrimental to your business, both from a financial standpoint and a team morale perspective, to lose a sale that’s already in progress. That’s why you need to do more than just follow up with initial paperwork and project status. You need to keep your customers looped into their project as it progresses and statuses change. By keeping that communication line open, you stay in front of any issues that might lead to a cancellation and you also free up time spent answering individual customer calls!

An easy way to create a customer loop is with a project management tool that your entire team can easily access and update. Most importantly, your project management tool must relay important information, details, and milestones of a customer project directly to your client stakeholders. 

To see how Spectrum’s project management tool can help decrease your cancellation rate and better serve your team and inform your customers of their project status, contact us for a free consultation and demonstration today!

At the end of the day, the issue isn’t your sales rep availability— it’s your system for keeping customers informed. With a better communication system, you’ll spend less time on the phone and more time converting new business for your home service company. So the next chance you get, sit down with your team, and work out the best processes for keeping customers in the loop. Ultimately, this will help you build trust, fuel even better referrals, and create efficiencies that will reduce your cancellations for a long time to come!