GarageDoorBossPro Blog — Commercial Doors

Landing Your First Property Manager and Commercial Door Accounts: What to Have Ready

Plenty of residential door companies would like more commercial work and never quite get it. Sometimes it is because they never ask. More often, they ask once, a manager asks a few questions they can't answer — “Can you bill us monthly? Do you send a report after a visit? Who do we call after hours?” — and the conversation ends. Having the answers ready before you ask changes that.

What Managers Ask About

Organizing accounts once you have them is covered in Tags, Custom Fields and Reports for Commercial Door Accounts. This guide is about getting the first few.

Property managers, HOA boards and facility managers tend to ask about the same things:

• How fast can you respond when something breaks?
• Can you handle many properties under one account?
• Can you bill us once a month?
• What do we get after a visit?
• Do you offer regular maintenance?
• Who do we call after hours?

Have a clear answer to each before the first meeting.

Have a Maintenance Offer

Decide what a commercial maintenance visit includes and what you charge for it. Set it up as a service on your service list and as a recurring plan with minimum days between visits — every 90 days is a common starting point for busy commercial doors, but offer what makes sense for the client. Once a client says yes, visits come due on the Waiting List on their own.

A clear offer beats “we can work something out.” Managers like knowing what they are buying.

Have a Sample Report

The door safety inspection checklist in the tech app records springs, cables, rollers, tracks, balance, sensors, opener force and limits and more, with a condition and written recommendations. The office can print a Garage Door Safety Inspection report from any job.

Run one on a door at your own shop or a friendly customer's building and bring the printout to the meeting. Showing a manager the paperwork they'll get after every visit is more convincing than describing it. For more on the reports, see Inspection Reports for Facility Managers: Showing What Was Checked on Every Door.

Have Billing Answers

Know how you'll bill each kind of client before they ask:

• Many properties: monthly account billing, one statement covering every address, each line labeled with the address.
• One location: per-job invoices or card on file charged on completion.
• After-hours: a separate after-hours emergency service on your list, so the rate is clear up front.

Being able to say “Yes, you'll get one statement a month with every property on its own line” answers one of the biggest questions managers have.

Have a Response Plan

Managers want to know what happens when a door breaks. Decide how emergency calls get handled: who answers after hours, which van takes daytime repair calls and how quickly you can usually get there. In a typical setup, one van handles repairs and emergency spring calls, which gives commercial repair calls a natural home.

Don't promise response times you can't keep. A plain, honest answer is better than a big one that fails the first week.

Nail the First Visit

Most managers start with one property or one door to see how it goes. Make that visit count:

• Set up the client with every address the manager mentioned, even if only one has work today.
• Have the tech record every door and opener at the property, not just the one on the job.
• Take before-and-after photos with the door or unit number in the frame.
• Work the safety checklist and send the printed report.
• Send a clean invoice or put it on the monthly statement with the address on the line.

A manager who gets that much from a single repair call starts sending more.

Where to Find the First Accounts

Start with who you already know. Residential customers who manage rentals. Shop owners whose home doors you've fixed. HOA board members in neighborhoods where you do a lot of work. A customer who already trusts you at home is the easiest commercial client to win.

Then look at your map. Clusters of townhomes, industrial parks and storage facilities near your existing routes are work you can add without adding drive time.

Use the Demo in the Meeting

If a manager wants to see how it works, show them. The live demo is a fully-stocked sample garage door company you can click around with no signup. Pull it up on a laptop or tablet and walk through a client with many addresses, a door record, a completed inspection and a monthly statement. It turns abstract answers into something they can see.

Ready Before You Ask

Commercial accounts are won by being prepared. Have the offer, the sample report, the billing answer and the response plan ready, and the first conversation goes much further. For how commercial accounts run once you have them, go back to the commercial garage door software overview.