The ultimate goal when developing your home service company’s best practices for sales and lead generation is to become the only opportunity or alternative your customers see.

That doesn’t mean that you run others out of business. It means that you educate the customer and provide expert insight so that you become the only company in your market that they will consider. A solid customer education program and the use of educational marketing can make your business easily stand out from your competition.

Become the authority

Businesses are formed to make money.

But that shouldn’t be the sole reason an entrepreneur works to build his or her company. When starting a new business or building up an existing one, entrepreneurs need to keep in mind that being the authority in your market is one of the best positions to be in.

If you want customers to perceive your brand as the authority in your market, you need to distinguish yourself as the leading educational voice for your industry. Once a customer understands your service and why it’s important in their lives, you will create an eagerness for them to buy your goods and services.

Customers don’t know the things about pipes that plumbers know or the issues surrounding a home’s electrical system that an electrician knows. That’s why they call on us.

We must be mindful that we use our role to provide the homeowner with safety and comfort. By not recognizing and educating the homeowner about potential failures in their home, we are missing the opportunity to be seen as the expert.

We’re all salespeople

Part of increasing customer engagement and loyalty is to recognize that everyone in our organization is a salesperson — from the warehouse guy to the customer service representatives on the phone. Everyone in your organization represents your company’s brand.

Train all your employees to be listeners and train your sales team to be consultants.

Your sales team shouldn’t go into a home merely to give an estimate — take that language out of your world. Your sales team should be able to walk into a home and have a conversation with the homeowner that is informative and knowledgeable. Learn what’s making their lives miserable and create value by providing them with solutions and not “Whack-A-Mole” sales jargon.

Put your sales team in the position of being successful by giving them the tools they need to develop their listening and consulting skills. They may hate to role-play and practice, but practice is just the journey to success, so it must be done.

Using technology

By now, most residential service companies know that they have to have a digital presence to be competitive. Your website needs to be sharp and kept up to date. Google isn’t going away, so you need to continue to optimize where you come up in searches.

You also need to commit to analyzing and reviewing the data you receive from your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay Per Click (PPO) methodology. With the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI), you can also consider incorporating that into your lead generation procedures to help you automate some of the daily analytics you should be performing. Data is the cash of the future. Whatever you can do to enhance how you gather and analyze data will help guide your decisions on future marketing strategies.

And, if you’ve moved away from it, reconsider direct marketing. People still like receiving calls to action in their mailbox.

But, in addition to these tried-and-true best sales practices, you need to add layers to your efforts.

If you want customers to perceive your brand as the authority in your market, you need to distinguish yourself as the leading educational voice for your industry. Once a customer understands your service and why it’s important in their lives, you will create an eagerness for them to buy your goods and services.

You should constantly develop content that frames you as the authority. Whether that is writing blogs, posting videos all over the internet or refreshing your social media daily, you need to drive your content so that you position yourself as the market leader.

Take the time to join some Facebook community groups and answer questions that help you educate potential customers and showcase your expertise. If you’re out there every day offering up the reasons why you are the expert, you will be seen as the community’s only home services alternative.

But, remember, your content has to be informative and creative to be of value to the consumer. Dig deep and show why you are an expert plumber or why you are the most knowledgeable electrician in town. Don’t make your content too promotional. If you sound like a pushy salesman in your content, you’ll more than likely annoy your audience.

Be distinguishable from your competition by inserting your personal brand into your content and make sure it closely aligns with your company’s brand. Once your brand (and you) becomes a pioneer, you are seen as the authority.

Building your audience

Too often, home service companies use a scattershot approach to developing their sales funnel. It’s too broad and puts your sales team at a disadvantage.

Take the time to develop the true avatar of your ideal customer. Consider if they have the need for your services, if they have the means to purchase your services and if they are located within the geographical location you want your services offered.

You want to spend your valuable time nurturing the right audience to get them to convert to a consultation or a sale. By defining the right target audience, you allow for more intentional and educational outreach and can plan content to better appeal to your avatar.