Anytime, anyplace, anywhere
Restrictions on travel and seeing people indoors are finally easing. But many installers who made the move to selling remotely over the last year, aren’t about to get back in the car anytime soon, according to Chris Brunsdon, founder and CEO of Tommy Trinder.
“Many customers prefer a remote demo,” Mark Ramsay, MD of Kent based installer Kestrel Home Improvement said. “As Covid eases, we plan to continue with remote selling in the long term. It’s gone so well.”
Like many, Mark, who uses the Framepoint app from Tommy Trinder, made the move to selling via Zoom during the pandemic. Not only did he find he save him time and money, but it also proved a real hit with homeowners.
“During lockdown, Framepoint allowed us to embrace remote selling and keep building our pipeline; video conferencing and screen sharing to use the app with homeowners,” Mark said. “Homeowners have reacted in a very positive way. When a potential customer makes an enquiry, we ask them to provide images of their home and we then ‘make over’ their property live online. It never fails to impress. Remote selling has proved very successful, and the remote enquiries keep coming in.”
For some installers, selling without home visits has simply become a lifestyle choice; the ability to sell from comfort of your own office, showroom or deck chair, outweighs the trauma of fighting through traffic to get to appointments.
Phil Barber of Watchet Glass is also a Framepoint subscriber.
“Not everybody wants us to sit in their front room for an hour discussing windows and doors,” he said. “To be able to do that in the comfort of our office and still be able to present the products nicely and pick out the handles and the hardware. It’s very engaging.”
As well as bringing obvious efficiency savings, there are also a number of underlying drivers that conspire to ensure remote selling is with us for the long term.
People who have the knowledge and expertise to sell in the home are in short supply as double-glazing salesmen are getting older and aren’t replaced. Remote selling is in tune with the way customers want to shop. There is abundant resource available to train to do the job – typically ex-retail with modern customer service ethos – and, let’s be on honest, it’s significantly cheaper.
But the elephant in the room is the climate crisis.
The pandemic will pass, and climate will re-occupy centre stage and dominate the decade. Selling remotely is carbon neutral. And driving, unnecessarily to effect tasks that could be done just as well online, will fast become morally dubious in the public imagination. This could happen quickly. Think plastic packaging, eating meat, etc. Environmentally we can only justify one visit pre-install: to check the sizes and sign off on the order.
Activity on Framepoint app certainly tells the story. When the first lockdown came, like most businesses we wondered what was going to happen next. Then sales and activity rocketed. Faced with the prospect of no longer being able to conduct home visits, installers turned to Framepoint as their ‘virtual showroom’, sharing screens, carrying out sales demos remotely and taking orders without an initial home visit.
Volumes of quotes and makeovers on Framepoint surged. In February 2019, less than £6 million of quotes were done on the system. Now, more than £55 million of work is being quoted via the platform each month.
If you haven’t tried selling without a home visit already, we’d invite you to give it a go. Share screens, free sketch your PVCU, timber and aluminium products with your client in real time and see them rendered in full photo-realistic glory. Touch, tap and share the results of colour changes, hardware choices, bar selections. Overlay your designs onto your client’s home live and wait for the ooohhs and ahhhhs.
When you’re done, transfer beautiful quotes by email in a click. And, most importantly of course, take the order.
Tommy Trinder offers a free guide to ‘Selling Without Home Visits’. You can download a copy at www.tommytrinder.com/remote-selling
