What does your sales plan look like this year? Deliverable fuel retailers need to raise sales expectations Tom Jaenicke VP of Propane Marketing Services Warm Thoughts Communications It is not too late to develop a fresh sales strategy for this year that incorporates the best sales targets, both heating oil and propane and tactics that will take you far beyond your past sales performance. It is easy to fall into the rut of looking at your last year’s sales performance by target category, adding a small percentage of increase, and calling it a good plan for another year. Then you scramble throughout the year to force sales by using the same out-of-date sales plan, or worse yet, no plan at all. Struggling to meet low sales expectations slows the growth of your business. Your sales plan for acquiring new business should be short and simple. Part of the strategy is a review of your existing business and opportunities in the marketplace. The planning should set a strategy and tactics to acquire new energy business and grow your business with existing customers. New consumer targets can vary by marketing territory and by marketer preference. Finding new heating oil prospects may mean building on referrals and more traditional targets, while finding new users of propane could mean targeting builders and related trades, school districts, landscapers, golf courses, craft beer brewers and the list goes on. It is time to look at where new user prospects are in your marketing territory and decide which ones you want to target. Acquiring new business will also include increasing your market share by acquiring customers from your competitors. While this doesn’t increase overall energy usage and sales, switching suppliers happens, to some degree, because customers have the right to choose a heating oil or propane supplier, unlike the oligopoly the natural gas and electric utilities have. Depending on your individual situation, you will probably want to target how much of your new business comes from new users versus business from competitors. Too many propane-only marketers spend too much time chasing competitors’ customers rather than finding new users that will grow the overall market. Don’t make that same mistake as a multi-fuel retailer. If your company is that good, a certain percentage of the competitor’s customers will migrate to you without blanket advertising and promotion on your part. Most heating oil retailers have a long and rich history of equipment service and customer support and that reputation should carry over well to the propane side of the business. Growing your business with existing customers should be a part of your strategy for profitable growth of your company and has the added benefit of being great for customer retention. The average consumer today wants to spend less on overall energy use without sacrificing high performance. If that energy savings and high performance is also better for the environment, consumers will like it even more. Propane enables your customers to do all of those things across a wider range of uses, but your customers need to hear it from you. Propane water heaters, both tankless and storage tank models, are perfect examples of propane products about which your customers need to hear more. Who is going to tell them if you don’t? Target your current propane customers in your sales plan. If you don’t sell, install and service propane equipment for homes and businesses, this should be the year you start, or promote those added burner 16 ICM/March/April 2016
ICM March-April 2016
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