As one of the owners of Kroll Construction, a home improvement company in Garden City, Mich., I am in charge of running and monitoring all of our company’s marketing efforts. We’ve been using a marketing plan for several years now that has never failed to produce amazing results for our company and kick off the year in the right direction. Let me share it with you.

Blank Slate

We call it “15 Calls a Day.” On Jan. 2, we gather all of our sales reps in our telemarketing room and pass out a blank January calendar and a list of past customers from the previous two years.

Each sales rep is required to make calls every working day of the month. The reps make hashmarks on the calendars for every homeowner they speak with on a particular day until they reach at least 15 contacts — kids and answering machines don’t count.

We’ve found that the best approach is for the reps to call every name on their list, whether it’s their past customer or not. They wish that customer a happy New Year from Kroll Construction and then remind them of all the types of home improvements we specialize in — roofing, windows, siding, and kitchen/bathroom remodels.

After explaining all the products we provide, the reps offer to come out and give a free estimate for the homeowner’s next project. If the homeowner wants to wait until spring, we suggest that he or she can take advantage of our winter pricing by putting down a small deposit so that the work can be done when the weather breaks.

Incentive-Driven

To get our reps to buy into the phone calls, we offer some team and individual incentives. We feel that if one salesperson is calling and setting appointments for other salespeople, he should be rewarded.

We set a team goal for the number of deals created based on the phone calls made at the beginning of the month. If the team reaches its goal, we all go to dinner at a nice steakhouse.

Meanwhile, regardless of lead source, Kroll Construction adds money into a collective pot for every deal sold for the month. (We typically sell about 65 deals per month.) Each rep earns three points anytime a lead he sets for another rep is sold, and one point for any deal he sells generated from a phone call.

At the end of the month, all the salespeople add up their points and the pot gets distributed based on the percentage of total points each rep has earned for the month.

Creating a team goal has all the reps pulling and working for and with each other.

I’m confident that any company will have great success having its reps calling past customers. In my experience, having telemarketers call past customers is fine, but having the actual sales reps call is a home run!

Who Makes the Call

Sometimes sales reps feel apprehensive about calling a particular homeowner because maybe the job didn’t go as planned, so it’s important to have salespeople calling other salespeople’s past customers rather than their own. Usually what happens is that the customer is more than happy to hear from Kroll Construction and is ready to move ahead with a new order.

—Todd Kroll, co-owner of Kroll Construction, is happy to answer your questions at [email protected].