Life has plenty of paradoxes to keep us on our toes. Repair work is one of those situations. If you do a good job, it will be a long time before you see your customer again. Here’s an example:
Several years ago we took on a new client who owns over 200 doors, including aircraft hangar doors and overhead doors. When we first started working for them, the doors were in various states of disrepair with incompetent “fixes” by the previous vendor. The new contract kept us incredibly busy, with service calls happening several times a week. That one customer was bringing us enough work to keep two technicians busy.
As time went on, we gradually worked through the kinks and worked to advise our customer on the importance of preventive maintenance. It took time and effort, but we managed to turn things around. Their doors gradually became more reliable, and through reduced service calls our client was able to replace doors and/or operators that were beyond hope.
Now we are at a point where we rarely hear from them except for when preventive maintenance is due. I miss seeing the client as much as I used to, but I’m proud to say we’ve done a great job of helping them actually save money through responsible maintenance practices.
I’m a firm believer in preventive maintenance, and I’ve proven over and over that preventive maintenance done right will pay for itself exponentially. This one customer is a perfect example of how we make that happen for people.
The paradox here is, by virtue of doing good work, there are fewer service calls from this customer, so it’s important that we continuously find new customers. We’ll serve them equally well, and work ourselves out of a job over and over. It’s a continuous process that has to be acknowledged as part of life. If we’re not continuously working to find new customers, we’ll end up in a serious situation.
What’s the best marketing tool for us? Word of mouth. As we do good work, our customers and friends tell other people about our work and the money we’ve saved them. How we’ve helped them change the landscape of their businesses and enabled them to focus on their core tasks, rather than worrying about the state of their buildings and equipment.
Feel free to call us to discuss the state of your buildings and doors. We’ll find ways to make your life better and keep you focused on business!