Being able to increase the revenue of your existing customer base is a great way to grow your home services business. The cost of revenue is generally lower than acquiring new customers and it makes the customer stickier (reducing your churn risk). Here are 4 plays you can run to help improve upsells and cross-sells to your customers.
The “Christmas Should Come Early”
If you are providing a recurring service like pest control or lawn care, you will have many opportunities to interact with your customers throughout the year. This should put you in a good position to upsell for ‘future needs’ by proactively suggesting add-on services. One of the most common offerings that GlassHouse customers report upselling is Holiday Light packages. Here are some pro-tips for upselling this offering.
Think about when people will want to get this scheduled. Generally, when the weather turns and fall arrives is about the right time. If you wait until after Thanksgiving… it’s probably too late. Think about early October. But it’s actually never too early if you position it the right way.
How will they pay for this? Asking someone to pay for a $1,500 light package all at once in December might be a deal-breaker for many clients. But what if you could spread this cost over their ongoing annual subscription payments? By lowering the up-front costs, you can capture more buyers. But… make sure you sell that offering early enough in the year to cover your costs and/or that you pick the right buyers.
So, who are the right buyers for a subscription add-on? Here's some GlassHouse residential data to help guide you.
Clients on a subscription with auto-pay
Clients with at least a 6- to 12-month history of payments
Clients with little to no issues noted by other service providers around cancellations.
You can use GlassHouse to quickly filter this list of ‘ideal targets’ and then train your staff to start suggesting those add-ons to the right buyers.
The “Preventative Packaging”
By offering a preventative package, you can create an opportunity for regular (quarterly or annual) on-site inspections of your customers' homes. This is a great opportunity to get on the property and look for opportunities to solve other problems. This comes down to training your team on what to look for outside of routine maintenance.
While this varies by industry, the universal truth is that by creating a recurring opportunity to inspect the home and be on-site, you create opportunities to upsell or suggest improvements while you are in person with your clients. An example would be an HVAC quarterly maintenance package. This gives you four opportunities to offer replacement parts and preventative fixes. Many buyers will jump on a $200-$300 fix for something small if it will prevent a $10,000 replacement. Look at how many of your customers have existing maintenance plans and where you have an opportunity to make some outreach efforts to those who do not.
The “Would You NOT Like ‘Flies’ with That”
This one is for our lawn and pest customers again and can take two separate forms.
Play A: If you are selling ongoing/recurring lawn care, you are going to be on-site more than nearly any other service provider (especially in the summer months). This allows you more facetime with the homeowner and that affords opportunity. By adding in some of the less intensive ‘preventative’ pest services, you can expand your accounts significantly. This may require you to expand your team and specialization, but as you look to keep your route density as high as possible, this can give you a built-in customer base for line expansion of your offerings.
Play B: This is for existing pest control engagements and is a straightforward upsell process. Get your on-site teams to work on getting in front of the homeowners to ask about adding additional services that they don’t currently have.
Consider:
Do you track what services each buyer has in a CRM or other field management tool?
Do you train your team on how to run an effective upsell motion?
How to approach the homeowner
How to ask questions about their experience
When and how to make suggestions for additional solutions
Objection handling for initial pushback on added spends
How many of your clients fit your up-sale target? Is that defined by where they live, their overall spend history, their payment history? How many of your customers that you serve with each offering fit into your desired ‘upsell’ bucket? Here is where data again helps you tell the story about where to hunt for this opportunity.
The “Platinum Play”
Do you offer a ‘premium’ package or tier? Some homeowners will pay for the peace of mind that comes with knowing that when they call, you’ll be there.
Considerations:
What service cost should you offer this tier?
What will you charge and what is your profit on these packages?
How will this impact the complexity of your business?
What customers fit this target market - what makes up a good ‘target’ for this package?
Is this expanding your client base or an upsell for existing customers?
When is the best time to suggest this package? When they have a serious issue or on the first call/engagement?
This might be one you want to test in a limited area or basis and then expand based on your answers to the considerations above.
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