Idea Machine [EXPERIMENT] – Day 2

Let’s start from the bottom (of my life here) up. Enter “10 ideas for growing Sonitrol this year.”

  1. Spend at least two hours per week calling to set first appointments for our sales consultants.
  2. Join local trade organizations for banks, schools, jewelers, or just warehouse type companies. See if I can get to know anyone and ask them, “Who would you recommend that I talk to?”
  3. Attend networking events or groups. Ask them to recommend businesses I should call on.
  4. Setup a cool demo station to let people see our products when we set up booths at trade organizations, festivals, or conferences.
  5. Set up quality control follow ups for our installation teams. Take the sales person who sold the job out on site at the end of the installation. Talk with the customer. Get feedback. Check the systems. Let the installation technicians know what they did well and help them improve what they missed. Create accountability to do the job correctly the first time.
  6. Frequent local businesses, introduce myself, and drop off business cards when I’m outside of work. Keep a list of where I do this and follow up with phone calls later to set appointments.
  7. Start an email newsletter for all our current and new customers. Send one email a month or so updating on our progress, blogs we’ve posted, criminals we’ve caught.
  8. Follow up with customers who have break-ins when we catch the intruder. Ask for testimonials. Show up on site to interview them and use the video on our blog, in presentations, and as a way to reach out to local news organizations.
  9. Hire an intern from one of the local colleges to be our part-time media person, say, two days a week. Have this person write us blog posts, run our email campaigns, attend in-person conferences, post social media updates, edit video testimonials, and maybe even try some other experimental prospecting ideas (e.g. door to door, LinkedIn connecting, etc.).
  10. Train our more seasoned “second” guys to be lead install techs and hire two more technicians to start training to run wires with us. Get back up to five full time teams.