After a decade in retail hell, (something I covered in last month’s column) I stepped into the role of a sales rep for two manufacturers in this industry. I didn’t expect that experience to go beyond selling and teach me how to operate, but it did.
There was a lot of driving, and everything I learned behind the windshield — discipline, organization, problem-solving, communication — became the foundation for how I ran my business and how I sell. The two might not seem related, but they are. When you’re covering territory as a sales rep, inefficiency doesn’t hide; it shows up fast. In your fuel bill. In your time. In your frustration. So, you fix it.
You get rid of the zigzag pattern across your market and start building a route that flows. Every stop feeds into the next. No backtracking. No wasted motion. No visiting potential clientele outside my territory.
I see service companies do this sometimes. People come into the pool service end of our business as new entrepreneurs who are ready to bust their ass doing things, and they think, “I’ll work like crazy to build my baby!” but you have to be judicious in running a business. You gotta let that satellite customer go. You’re on a pool route, not an Artemis mission.
The more time you spend behind a steering wheel, the less time you are spending in backyards, and backyards are where you make your money. At the end of the day, you should feel satisfied, not burned out from the road.
CONTROL IS WHERE PROFIT LIVES
Have you ever had a customer ask you what time you would be there? You should be able to give them a solid time, give or take an hour.
That consistency lays the groundwork for trust, and trust is the foundation of sales.
If I let everyone else dictate the schedule, nothing would ever get done. The moment you start bending to every customer request, “Thursday afternoons,” “mornings only,” “Can you switch me to Friday?” serpentine, serpentine, serpentine. One exception becomes five. Five becomes 15. Now you’re driving more, working harder, and earning less.
BEING THERE
Some people like to feel alone on the property, but I like it when the customer is home. That is when sales happen organically. Yes, you can end up wasting a little time in conversation, but if you shut up and just let them talk about their backyard (keep steering the convo back there), that customer will tell you everything they are willing to buy from you, whether it’s a product or a service.
You may want your team members to report back to you so you can close, rather than them attempting to seal the deal on add-on service. That’s fine. I got it. But don’t tell them not to interact with the customer. Your tech is your eyes and ears in that backyard. They need to look for sales cues, and you need to train them in how to do it.
Please don’t rattle off every service you offer in a technobabble word-vomit that leaves the customer’s head spinning. It is okay to suggest selling an item or service. But too many at once, and you’ll overwhelm people; overwhelmed people don’t buy. Start with something simple — a foot-in-the-door service offering; weekly service is just that. Give it time before you attempt to pile on product.
Greater product inclusion should be your goal, but it’s something we build over time, not overnight.
MANAGING THE RELATIONSHIP
You may not want to be a salesperson. You do, however, want your customers to have everything they need, right? Customer service and sales go hand in hand.
A ringing phone is money calling. I’ve heard people say, “If it’s important, they’ll leave a message.” No, they won’t. If it’s important, they’ll call someone else until they get an answer. Answering the phone is one of the best business plans a pool service company can have.
Invest in pool service software. I don’t care which one you choose; choose something. I’m going to date myself here, but I’ve always used some CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool. At first, it was Salesforce, and later Microsoft CRM, but I always had it, and it was invaluable. Can you succeed without it? Sure, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to get there with a tool designed to help you launch.
THE RULE MOST PEOPLE QUIT BEFORE IT WORKS
Do you want to see something cool? If your state has a public pool code, go to the state health department website, not the county website. Specifically, environmental health. If your state is like most, you should see a listing of pass/fail reports of the most recent public pool inspections. Every one of those places that have just failed an inspection needs your help; they don’t know it yet. But my guess is they are probably unhappy with their current maintenance tech or service company at this point.
Commercial facilities are businesses you can actively solicit. Don’t be shy. Whether they’ll admit it or not, they are used to it. Salespeople stop in throughout the day to “drop off a card.” If your routes are not full, or you are just getting started, you can sit around twiddling your thumbs waiting for word of mouth to kick in, or you can get up and do something about it.
When you target a hotel, motel, Holiday Inn, apartment complex, whatever, they are almost always in clusters. To maximize your exposure, hit them one up and one down. Stop in at the property you were shooting for and visit the two properties next door as well. Someone will rarely hire you the first time you walk through the door. Usually, they need to see your “message” several times before they decide to buy from you. Seven is the magic number.
That doesn’t necessarily mean seven visits. One visit could easily turn into two touch points if you follow up with an email that says nothing more than, “It was great meeting you earlier today.” The point is you don’t stop visiting until it’s been seven times, and that should be over seven months, not seven days. The reason most salespeople don’t get the sale is that they stop after three or four attempts, thinking the potential customer isn’t interested. Be like the Energizer Bunny — keep going and going and going…
Also, try to remember that ‘no’ might mean ‘no’ for right now. Or it could mean ‘no’ to a specific level of service, not necessarily ‘no’ to everything.
Value-added services give you a marketable point of difference and an edge over your competition. Every ad and every post says the same thing: years of experience, we net, we brush, we do the things you expect a pool service company to do. That’s not helping, and helping is exactly what someone looking at your information wants you to do. They want to understand why they should hire you. But if you share the same bullet points as every other service company, you blend in.
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
Here’s one for you. Throw a leaf blower in the back of your truck. Make blowing the leaves off the pool deck part of your protocol of care. Now that’s different. It adds probably five to 10 minutes to your visit. You are now in charge of where the leaves go (less in the pool), which makes you unique and frees up that maintenance tech to do other things. The CAM (Community Association Manager) at a large community association will see more value in that than you realize.
What is the underserved niche in your market? Every area has one. It’s like panning for gold. Figure out what that is and roll in beneath your competitors’ radar like a Pool Ninja. Once upon a time, for me, it was REO properties (Real Estate Owned). I’m talking about Green-2-Cleans on pools at foreclosed homes. I embraced it. I built a rapport with the real estate companies that handled them and went to work. No one else in my area was focusing on these. I made a ton turning pools from swamp to swim.
Whether it’s commercial or residential pools, new customers, or adding additional services, when you do talk to people, be a person. Be interesting. People are interested in interesting people. And drop the mindset that more customers are how you get more profitable. It’s not. It comes from building a system that can actually support them. When the route, the schedule, and the way you communicate all work together, you stop chasing work… and start choosing it.
Rudy Stankowitz is a veteran of both the industry and the U.S. armed forces. He has owned a retail store and done his own research on pool chemistry.
