Whatever the size of your home improvement contracting company, you should focus on business development, not administrative activities.  In brief, outsourcing home improvement call center services gives you more time for planning, closing sales, and growing your contracting business.

An outsourcing strategy offers a variety of potential benefits to you.  So, based on WHY you choose to outsource will determine which benefits are most important to you.

DISCLOSURE: Nexus Teleservices is a nearshore home improvement call center outsourcing services business provider.

1 – Home Improvement Center Services | Administration And Customer Service

Your home improvement contracting business is normally seasonal, but is constantly in contact with the outside world. So the home improvement call center inside telesales staff handles the communications with pre-sales prospects, ongoing installation inquiries, and post-installation customers.  Furthermore, this includes your in-house sales team, which may work-at-home. Consequently, outsourcing home improvement services allows you and your in-house staff to be more productive while avoiding a potential sales opportunity falling through the cracks.

A contracting business is always processing paperwork, both physical and electronic. So, home improvement call center services assist in preparing and electronically filing paperwork.  For example, electronically scheduling of meetings with your field sales installers to ensure no conflicts.

A primary goal of outsourcing home improvement call center services is to better organize time and resources.  Consequently, this helps you focus on the more important functions that will contribute to the success of your business.

Here are various home improvement administrative, inside telesales, and customer service activities:

2 – Home Improvement Call Center Services | Leads Generation

Home improvement leads generation services take a variety of forms, consume time, and require lots of effort.  For example, home improvement prospects can come from cold calling, canvassing, website forms, telephone calls, social media, events, and more.

These home improvement prospect leads have no value if they are not converted to sales appointments.  Basically, home improvement call center leads generation moves prospects through the sales funnel to then get closed by your field sales representatives.

The home improvement contracting business is all about projects, and more projects. So, where does home improvement call center leads generation services fit in?  To summarize, it is leads prospecting, qualification, follow up, and supporting your field sales team close sales.

The following are various home improvement leads generation tasks:

3 – Home Improvement Outsourcing Services | Appointment Setting

Appointment setting is one of the most difficult parts of business development and is a major challenge to growing your contracting business. Because new sales won’t be possible without a first handshake and conversation with the homeowner prospect.

As the contractor owner, you need to focus on your sales team to close more appointments rather than prospecting.  Basically, if more time is spent on sales prospecting rather than appointment setting, YOUR FIELD SALES TEAM ARE NOT SIGNING UP PROJECTS. In short, home improvement call center outsourcing gives you more sales opportunities and time to close new projects.

Here are some of the primary benefits of home improvement call center appointment setting services.

Speeds Up The Sales Cycle

When you are setting your own appointments, you could be spending more than 50% of your time generating leads and scheduling visits with potential homeowner prospects. Instead, by outsourcing appointment setting services, you can increase the  time spent in face-to-face homeowner meetings and increase the number of project closings.

Using call center outsourcing services also results in appointments with pre-qualified homeowners owners who are genuinely interested in your services. So, your field sales team will be more motivated and will close more sales.

Keeps Your Sales Pipeline Full

Your sales pipeline starts with prospects that need to be found, then qualified, and then converted to sales appointments. When your in-side sales team focuses on lead generation, they are not converting to sales appointments. Conversely, when converting sales appointments, the are not focusing on lead generation.

Both activities need to be done on a consistent, balanced fashion.   So, using call center appointment setting outsourcing services helps keep the sales pipeline growing with appointments.  Consequently your in-house and field sales team  keep focused on converting sales appointments into projects.

Is Scalable And Cost Effective

Home improvement appointment setting services is cost-effective for an in-house sales team with limited experience and sales/marketing resources. For example, start-up time for appointment setting services is less than investing in in-house staff, considering recruitment, training, facilities, and technology investment.

A home improvement outsourcing provider can scale services according to the demands of your business and budget. For example, let’s say you want to start with a small pool of homeowners in a new territory and gauge the results first. Then, you can can scale up (or down) the types of services (windows versus bathroom remodeling) based o the results of their services.

Provides Measurable Results

Call center appointment setting services provide measurable business goals. For example, by home improvement service types, cost per lead, cost per appointment, number of appointments versus projects, average revenue per project, etc.

4 – Home Improvement Call Center Services | Benefits

Home improvement call center outsourcing sets the foundation for the long-term, mutually-beneficial relationship between you and your target audience. Consequently, it helps your contracting business gain more new customers, maximize revenue, learn more about your customer base, and more. Also, you save time and money while focusing on closing projects instead of prospecting for leads.

Outsourcing call center sevices allows you to benefit in a variety of ways:

Formal Process

Companies that lack a formal home improvement appointment setting process result in fewer appointments and have more cancellations.  Worse, will also have more sales calls where the homeowner doesn’t show up or is unprepared for a professional presentation.  As a result, their salespeople experience lower closing ratios.

SHOULD INCLUDE

First Impression

The process is the first impression and sets the tone with your prospective homeowner. Basically, what the caller hears will create a picture of what the home improvement contractor is.

Whether an outbound cold-call or an inbound call responding to your marketing activities, this personal connection should make the homeowner feel welcomed rather than being an interruption.  Accordingly, the conversation should be courteous, professional, and respectful of the prospect’s time.  Whenever possible, the homeowner should feel in control.

As part of the appointment, the setting is the needs analysis for your field sales personnel.  Chiefly, what are the needs, concerns, history, and urgency of the homeowner?

Your field salesperson will confirm these things during the homeowner visit.  However, learning this information in advance will greatly help in the planning, sales presentation and questions asked.

The home improvement appointment setting process should then confirm the homeowner’s understanding of what the next steps are and thanking them.

Sell The Idea

The home improvement appointment setting process needs to sell the idea of the value of an in-home consultation.  Because the homeowner’s initial contact with your company may be a general information inquiry or for a price quotation.  Consequently it needs adjusteing so the homeowner appreciates the value of an in-home consultation with your field sales personnel.

An in-home consultation is a very simple, normal process repeated thousands of times each day with homeowners.  Consequently, the inside sales personnel need to be skilled at helping homeowners understand the simplicity and necessity of this process.

Furthermore, the homeowner prospect must be comfortable and excited about the results they can anticipate from using your company’s services to solve his/her particular need.

Confirmation And Participation

The process needs to ensure that the right people with sufficient time allotted on their calendar will participate in the in-house presentation.  Also, the appointment setting personnel need to explain how the time will be used.  For example, questions, inspection, measurements, sales materials, and the benefits of a personalized solution to his/her needs.

Who should attend the in-house presentation?  Basically, the homeowner who will decide on a contract, but also the people who need to understand your company’s products and services are there.

Since homeowners have hectic lives, an appointment reminder action should be part of the home improvement appointment setting process. Generally, this is email reminder the day before and confirmation telephone call or SMS text two hours before the appointment.   Because you wish to avoid “no-shows” which wastes your field sales staff’s time.

Finally, one last question for the homeowner prospect is where they heard about your company.  So you can pass this back to your marketing staff for future activities.