The Maintenance Mindset
The Maintenance Mindset
How many miles are on your car? If you’re like most, you drive around 15,000 miles a year and keep your car for about nine years. But there are some car owners out there who push their car further… a lot further.
Not long ago, I read an article about car owners who maintain their cars so that they last for years, even decades. One gentleman in the article was still driving his 1966 Volvo® that had an astounding 2.7 million miles on it! He was the extreme, but there were many others in the article with hundreds of thousands of miles on their cars.
The secret that all of them touted to their cars’ longevity is maintenance. Maintenance. It’s a simple word with a big benefit, and it’s one that will likely ring true with many of your clients nowadays.
How many homeowners do you serve that are trying to push their roofs to last a hundred summers? How many would like to keep their air conditioner cooling through 2.7 million days of summer? How many would like to see their water heater keep heating and their electrical panel keep powering for a few more decades?
You may not know the number, but they are out there. Are you sending them the right message?
You might be a business that is focused on replacements, but what about those homeowners who aren’t looking to replace? What can you do to pique their interest and get them to make you their service company of choice?
Here are three ideas to try and attract homeowners with the Maintenance Mindset:
Promote Maintenance
This is what they want—so give it to them. You don’t need to shift all of your marketing from replacement to maintenance, but it doesn’t hurt to let homeowners know that you have a “Maintenance Mindset,” too.
Offer Tips
These homeowners who want to push their homes as far as possible would love some tips on how to do it. A great place for this is your quarterly homeowner newsletter or even emails to your client base. Tell your technicians to give homeowners some easy examples of what they can do reduce wear and tear. They’ll appreciate it, and may even call you when the tips alert them to something in need of attention.
Explain the Club Membership
If you notice a homeowner with an old car in the driveway that keeps going strong, you can bet they’d be interested in a club membership. But you don’t need the car to know that you should be offering the benefits of a club to every homeowner you talk to. For the maintenance-minded consumer, a club membership offers a double benefit—scheduled maintenance and savings, which should get them interested in being your next club member!
These three simple tips are ways to attract the business of homeowners trying to stretch their systems as long as they can. But what’s in it for you?
For starters, these homeowners will go for maintenance year in and year out. That means you’re practically assured a call from them every year, and if you can get them locked into a club membership, they will be calling you.
Plus, even those with the maintenance mindset will eventually see the need for a new system, service panel, roof, or water heater, and when they do, they’ll turn to the company that has taken care of them all along.
In today’s budget-conscious times, more and more homeowners are working to stretch their dollars even further. Providing and promoting maintenance are ways that you can help these homeowners and your bottom line.