One of the biggest issues we have found with customers who have come to us from other companies was that they felt that they were always being sold something and that the service technician was being compensated for pushing unneeded repairs and system replacement. Many companies provide commissions, or what are called Spiffs, to technicians for accessory sales and system replacements. The more the customer pays the better they are compensated. Talk about moral hazard!
My brothers and I have always taken a service before sales focus. We never feel like it is appropriate to provide incentives to employees to do something that is not necessarily in the customer’s best interest. Our idea is to fix what we can, replace what we must and recommend only what we think you will help you save time, energy or money down the road. So the question becomes how do we make sure that those team members here at Boer Brothers take that same idea and run with it. We made a very conscious effort to stay away from commission based compensation. Instead we retain our employees by providing good salaries and top benefits and a flexible environment where they are respected as the professionals they are.
We stay away from sales based training and instead focus on providing top customer services and staying on top of the technical aspects of the field have been our recipe for success.
A sales meeting in a company that pays commissions might look like this. The sales manager walks around the room and asks each tech: How many contactors did you sell this week? How many coil cleans did you sell this week? How many time-delay relays did you sell this week? And so on for the whole list of commissioned parts and services. Then he calls on the carpet those whom he thinks have not sold enough. If they respond that those parts had been in good operating order, the sales manager doesn’t care. Ultimately, the honest techs leave (and then we hire them!) and the dishonest ones stay.
Many of our customers previously used contractors who paid commissions. You will know them because they are the ones marketing like crazy because they need new customers because their old ones have left. They tell me, “Every time they came out to my house they wanted to sell something.” Many consumers get tired of that. They’ll look for a contractor who will treat them fairly. That contractor will be us.