Agreements are a key component of most successful pest control businesses. Monitoring your agreement counts through time can be a key way to evaluate how your management choices boost your numbers.
Most software package provide metrics of various kinds for tracking your sales volume and growth. When provided both monthly and annually these tools can be very useful. But tracking Agreement counts, specifically, can be more valuable. If your software tracks agreement counts, use those numbers.
This is one area where software can certainly help you ‘know your numbers’. But it is what you do with those numbers that matters. Here are a few suggestions.
One simple approach that works well is to simply write the agreement count on your calendar each day. This simple step takes so little effort, but be very helpful. Or, just put the weekly count on the calendar every Friday. Watching weekly counts is often more fun than watching daily counts. I know that writing on your calendar sounds old fashioned, but sometimes the simplest is best.
What if your software doesn’t support agreement counts.? You can get this data manually, by finding all agreements created for a given date range and/area. A little hassle, but this is another example why good software pays for itself!
Counts by town or zip. Once you get used to logging your agreement counts, another exercise of value is to map your counts. Take a simple map of your trade area divide it into zones with a marker. Then find all agreements for each area. A followup map that only show your growth in the same areas can be effective.
Put your maps on a bulletin board. Look at them everyday. Encourage your tech to look at them also. Write in your goal for each area also.
Another fun map is one based on pins, where each pin is an agreement, and each tech has a different color. This almost always triggers lots of fruitful conversations. And if you also display a week-base calendar beside the map, it is very encouraging and fun. A side benefit of using map pins, is that it often helps you to re-align your routes to be more effective!
Finally, offer a reward-based contest among your techs for the first person to get ten new agreements. Everyone wins when you offer an incentive for their gains.