THERE'S NO PROFIT IN WINDSHIELD TIME

[This article came from Matt Michel of the Service Roundtable, a marketing specialist firm that brilliantly focuses on the HVAC industry.  He makes a strong push for community centered marketing, which includes community telephone directories.]

THERE’S NO PROFIT IN WINDSHIELD TIME

One of the blessings and curses of an in-home service company vis-à-vis 

a fixed retail location is the ability to go to the customer instead of 

waiting for the customer to come to you.  It’s a blessing because it 

offers a degree of flexibility the retailers envy.  It’s a curse because 

without discipline, the flexibility leads to an unfocused, inefficient 

service and marketing effort.

Retail operations like McDonald’s and Starbucks seem to be opening on 

every corner.  They’re ubiquitous because they understand the 

opportunity that exists in a relatively small geographical area.  Even big boxes, 

like Home Depot locate 10 to 15 miles apart.  If a Home Depot can 

survive on a five to eight radius, why do you travel more than 30 miles 

between calls?

Gotta Make Those Yellow Pages Pay

Here’s the problem.  Take out a big ad in a yellow pages directory 

serving a 2500 square mile territories and you feel obligated to take every 

call that comes your way no matter where it originates from because 

you’re spending a small fortune on the ad.  Stop!

Does 30 Miles Between Calls Make Sense?

Windshield time, the time spent driving between calls, is the bane of 

service efficiency.  There’s no profit in it.  It’s lost time.  

Windshield time represents fully burdened costs without revenue.  In metro 

areas especially, it makes little sense to drive 30 miles between calls.  

In metro areas a 30 mile travel distance can easily translate into a 90 

minute travel time if the traffic is heavy.  For example, a couple of 

weeks ago I spent 2-1/2 hours to cover 20 miles in our nation’s capitol.  

There are marathon runners who can cover this distance faster on foot.  

A couple of days ago, I drove 35 miles to a meeting paced the entire 

way by an air conditioning service truck.  When I finally exited, the 

Sprinter van kept going.  Unless the tech was taking a trip in the company 

truck, it’s hard to see how this is profitable.

Not Just Distance, But Travel Time

Travel time matters more than distance.  I live in a Dallas suburb 

that’s fairly inaccessible.  It’s bordered by lakes to the south and north.  

The roads into the town reach around the lake or pass through heavily 

congested surface streets.  While the demographics of my town are 

attractive, its inaccessibility gives it a travel time that’s double a 

comparable distance on the other side of the lake.  Nevertheless, I 

continually see trucks from companies located 30 and 40 miles away.

Define a Service Territory

My guess is that unless you operate in a rural market, within a five 

mile radius of your shop is more business than you could possibly handle.  

You fly by it rushing from call to call.  Maybe you’re in a position 

where you feel it’s necessary to accept all calls that come your way.  If 

so, set *some* limit.  Define some radius and stick to it.  

Exchange Calls

Contact competitors outside your defined service territory and work out 

an arrangement where you will refer calls to them that are outside of 

your territory, but within theirs if they will do the same.  You will 

still have overlaps where you compete, but outside of these areas, you 

aren’t competing.

A Core Territory

Next, define your core territory.  This is the territory where you want 

to focus your marketing efforts.  It might be as small as a single zip 

code.  It may be a five mile radius.  It might be a 20 minute drive 

time radius.  

Concentrate all of your discretionary marketing in your core territory.  

Even if you take calls from the next time zone, why spend money 

marketing to distant areas that cost more to serve than your surrounding 

geography?  

Pound your core territory over and over and over again with outdoor, 

direct mail, door hangers, cable (and yes, you can target zip codes with 

some cable companies), and other marketing.  Keep at it until you’re 

close to a household word in the area, until the referral machine kicks 

in, until you have a measurable share of the households in the area on 

your customer list.  What’s measurable?  Try two to five percent of all 

households or four to ten percent of owner-occupied households.

Units of Common Interest 

Frankly, I recommend focusing down to individual subdivisions.  Find 

units of common interest where homeowners talk with each other.  This 

could be an area served by a single elementary school.  It could be 

subdivisions with a homeowners association.  In short, find an area where you 

can afford to become the dominant marketer for a period of time.  

Become the neighborhood specialist.

Once you’ve attained a level of recognition, you can back off slightly 

and deploy your resources to the next area.  Marketing is like pushing 

a car.  It takes a lot of effort to start it rolling and less to keep 

it moving.  Once your marketing has momentum, you can devote resources 

to the next area, so long has you don’t let the momentum stop.

Minimize Windshield Time

What every service company should strive for, but will probably never 

achieve, is a situation where your customers are so concentrated that 

you can run maintenance all day and never travel more than a block 

between calls.  Think about it.  What would happen to your applied time if 

you were able to attain this level of concentration?  Could you pay your 

techs more and still drop more to the bottom line?  Would your 

marketing costs fall as referrals pick up because more and more neighbors use 

and recommend your company?

Windshield time may be a fact of life.  There’s still no profit in it, 

so do what you can to minimize it.

© 2004 Matt Michel

*****

PUT WINDSHIELD TIME TO PRODUCTIVE USE

Ruth King has written a book called Entrepreneurial Terror.  I haven’t 

read it yet because it hasn’t been released.  I have started listening 

to the audio CDs.  Help your blood pressure by doing more than rail at 

talk radio.  If you’re stuck behind the wheel, pop in a CD and learn 

something.  Check the audio version of Entrepreneurial Terror out at 

www.entrepreneurialterror.com or call 800.511.6844.

Ruth’s sort of inspired me.  We’re considering offering audio CD 

versions of some of the best of Comanche Marketing.  This is especially 

suitable for me because I’ve got a face suited for audio.  Is this a good 

idea or not?  Let me know by emailing me at 

matt.michel@serviceroundtable.com. 

*****

REPRINTING

Since you’re going to do it anyway, you’ve got permission to reprint 

this and pass it along. You may copy and reprint any of the marketing 

ideas you find here on web sites, newsletters, or in magazine articles, 

provided you send the me an e-mail with the location of electronic 

publications (matt.michel@serviceroundtable.com) or a copy of a printed 

publication (Matt Michel, Service Roundtable, P.O. Box 270842, Flower Mound, 

TX 75027-0842, USA). You must include the following citation:

Source: Comanche Marketing. Reprinted by permission.

Free subscriptions are available at:

www.serviceroundtable.com -- click on the Comanche Marketing tab

Copyright © 2004 Matt Michel

*****

Comanche Marketing is hosted by the Service Roundtable™. The Service 

Roundtable is an organization of contractors, by contractors, and for 

contractors. The Service Roundtable is dedicated to financial and business 

performance improvement of service contractors and provides a wealth of 

business tools and content for a very affordable monthly subscription. 

Visit the Service Roundtable at www.serviceroundtable.com.

*****