Our Deal

I have been trying to come up with a really good deal that we could offer at Cockrell Electric, other than the usual, free estimates. We have offered free 24 point inspections in the past that went well. They consist of us going in and checking 24 different areas in your house were there could be electrical issues and to make sure everything is up to date and working reliably.

One of the offers we have tried in the past is offering a percent off of their work after so much money is spent. The customers definitely respond when we offer a percent off and it usually isn't a big hit to us monetarily speaking. The thing with the percent off is that it doesn't necessarily bring in new customers or extra work. It just gives our normal customer base a percent off of their bill.

We also don't want to decrease our rates for any amount of time either, even if it is for a special. It is such a big deal for us to raise our rates, especially after not having raised them for the last 15 years. We have to send out notices months ahead, deal with the backlash (there's a little backlash), and stick to our guns no matter what our customers say to get a lower rate. We don't want to give an opening for us to have to go back to our lower rates. That now leads us back to the free estimates.

The free estimates are actually a great special, even if we do offer it all the time. The customer doesn't know that, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I get phone calls every day asking if we do free estimates. I believe we would get at least twenty percent more calls from people with it already in their minds that they want us to do their work if they call us already knowing they will get a free estimate from us as opposed needing to call to see if we even do estimates. It's an easy idea to market too.

Advertising that we offer free estimates can be advertised on any of the Social Media that we have worked with. It could be posted on Facebook and "Boosted" with a great Cockrell picture of one of our guys doing a service call. Or we could advertise on Yelp, where when you do an advertisement, it is placed right under all of your business information and business photo. Or we could Tweet it or make it stand out on the newsletter at the beginning of each new season. Regardless of how we get it out there, we should do what we can to let our customers know that we do estimates for free and advertising that would be an immediate boost to our amount of service calls that we receive.