contractor success Building Loyalty Through Consulting Becoming your customers’ cleaning consultant is a surefire way to increase your worth. By: Dawn Shoemaker O One of the few bright spots about an eco-nomic downturn for a business or an indus-try is that it can result in long-term positive changes. While the economy has not impacted the professional cleaning industry as much as it has, for instance, the real estate industry, most cleaning contractors and JanSan distributors will agree that, in the past few years, they have had their share of turmoil. As a result of this, many contractors and distributors are looking for new ways to help solidify their customer relationships, mini-mizing the ups and downs that come with economic disorder. Providing top-quality service and com-petitive prices is, of course, the “gold stan -dard,” but many contractors and distributors are going further. A promising option many have embraced is to become their customers’ “experts” when it comes to building maintenance — helping facilities managers lower overall operating costs, transfer to green cleaning strategies and become more sustainable. They are adopting a principle that has gone in and out of fashion over the past 40 years: Consultative selling, which is based on a 1970 book by the same name authored by Mack Hanan. The book describes what is essentially a selling technique in which the salesperson — or, in our case, the contractor or distribu-tor — is no longer just selling a product or a service; instead, he or she has become a building manager’s expert consultant. That puts the contractor into a totally dif-ferent playing field with the customer, making him or her an integral part of the facility’s operation. How It Works In order to make consultative selling work and strengthen customer relationships, con-tractors and distributors must first perform some groundwork, asking and answering questions such as the following: ■ What types of cleaning products, tools and equipment are being used in the facility? ■ Does the facility have a green cleaning program in place or is such a program being considered for the near future? Your customers value your opinions and entrust you with the care of their properties, putting you in a prime position to offer consultative advice. 36
CMM – Archives Jan 2013: 36
