As an industry, many home services companies live and die by consumer demand. If everyone cleaned their own house, cleaning companies wouldn’t have any clients. If houses didn’t need to be repainted every five to ten years, house painters wouldn’t have customers. If no one’s appliances ever broke, appliance repair people would be left sitting around. All that to say, you could probably get by as a home services business without doing any direct outreach to new or existing customers—as long as there is an ongoing need for your services, customers will likely find you. But there’s a big difference between getting by and succeeding. Here are three ways that home services businesses can benefit from using outbound marketing calls to grow their business.

Building Brand Recognition

Anyone who starts a home services business does so with the knowledge that there will be many other people in their area offering the same services. The biggest roadblock to growing a customer base is earning a customer’s business that first time. Especially if you are just starting out, it is going to take some legwork to find your place in a community. Outbound calls to potential customers in your service area can serve to tell them that you’re out there and that you are an option when they have a need for the services you provide. Even if they don’t need you at that time, a call will put your name in their head for when they do in the future. What’s more, these calls can also jumpstart word of mouth marketing. Say you speak with a potential customer who doesn’t need your services. But then the next day, that person is talking to a friend who mentions that they have a need. Since you are top of mind, that person might recommend you to their friend.

Converting Need-Based Leads

There are certainly home services businesses who provide emergency-based services. But there are plenty of other projects and services that fall under the category of “should do” or “might do in the near future.” People are busy, and many of the things that end up in these categories are not priorities. But if you catch someone with a perfectly timed phone call, offering your services on an attractive timeline, they might decide to pull the trigger on one of these projects. Likewise, if they have a more immediate need and just haven’t had the time to research providers yet, they may decide to skip that step and hire you to forgo the extra work on their part. And once you get in the door with the first job, provided you do good work, it could be the start of an ongoing relationship.

Maintaining Existing Relationships

As we’ve mentioned a few times, many home services are need-based. But that doesn’t mean that many providers don’t also offer maintenance packages or other services that can be offered on an ongoing basis. Putting out calls to existing customers, especially those that may have only hired you once, is a great way to inform them of these other packages and products and potentially create continuous relationships that continue to earn you money between the big projects.

If you’re a small business owner of a home services company, you may not have time to devote to making outbound calls. Employing a telephone answering service, especially one using CallShaper’s new cloud-based TAS platform, could be the difference between getting by and succeeding for your business.