ForumsMerchant Services

Happy Monday!. No, I haven't heard of the specific outfit you mentioned, but there are many similar ones out there to chose from. I recently investigated one by the name of proposalportal.com, contact is a guy named Matt at 312-676-4905. Nice guy, I have no particular problem with him or his concept. But I have to tell you, however, that after thoroughly investigating this one and others like it, I have decided NOT to pursue this avenue. The reason is because I heard repeatedly from people who have tried this route that it is not cost effective given the very low quality of potential customers who respond to such things. You make your own decision, of course, since what works for me may well be quite different from what works for you. For my money, however, referrals and networking is the way to go. Meet and speak to as many people as you can through meetings, chamber of commerce functions, business groups, referral groups, etc. Prospecting is a numbers game of course, but when you're dealing with vast numbers of low quality prospects it's too easy to get burned out.

BG
www.MerchantServices-help.com
amspcs@juno.com

Yes, I've used ServiceMagic -- I can confirm (at least in my region) that it is a viable way to have your business show up when people search for "Pest Control" or some similar term in your geographic area.

In my experience as a customer, the lesser known local providers appear right along with the majors like Orkin and Terminix, the customer enters some info, and each firm is provided with this information in order to contact the customer and make a bid or proposal. So in theory, it puts you on even ground with everyone else in your business, regardless of size -- and seems much more cost-effective than a yellow pages ad, for example.

Here's where I'd have a question about the process, however. Large providers seem to follow-up to customer searches in minutes, whereas small providers often follow-up days later (which essentially does them no good, since the customer will have assumed they're not interested in the job and selected someone else before then). I don't know if this happens because the smaller providers are not set up to respond quickly when a new lead comes in, of if it's because Service Magic is slower to pass leads along to the small local providers. That's what I would check into if you're considering registering with them -- because to make a lead generation system work in your business, you have to get the leads quickly (almost in real time), and you have to be able to respond to those leads promptly (ideally within an hour, certainly the same day).

If the customer is on-line right now searching for pest control, he/she will probably won't wait longer than a day to make a decision and choose a provider. If you're a one-person operation, responding to leads that quickly may be difficult. But if you have someone staffing a phone or office anyway, you could probably add the task of following up on ServiceMagic-generated leads to that person's regular duties and get more business as a result.

Hope this helps. Best wishes.

I am actually a past client of Servicemagic.

I had a terrible experience with them.

A few things you must understand BEFORE you start using them:

• They are a lead generating service, and 100% of the leads I recieved were not good leads. (Most were not even interested in having the work done, invalid number, online prank, etc).

• They charge for every lead they give you, and although they do offer a replacement fee for some leads, it is like pulling tooth and nail to get a reimbursement.

• The consumers that sign up are not charged to sign up, and I am not sure how much of a background check ServiceMagic.com does on them. Since they are not charged, they might not even value the service they are receiving, and I have found some leads to be fictitous.

The only service call I came close to making was from a gentleman who lived 2 hours away. He wanted me to come out and give him a quote on work to be done. His description of work was not something I could give an onsite quote. I worked with the gentleman, spent hours on the phone, mass emails, free support, etc, etc. He finally made a decision, and his decision was that he would wait for a couple more years before he would have the work done, and that he was really just fishing for pricing. ServiceMagic of course stated this was a valid lead, and I was not reimbursed.

Several months later, and after losing hundreds upon hundreds of dollars, I closed my account, disatisfied. ServiceMagic responded to me again, with a smooth talking sales agent trying to get me to stay, but ignored the issues I was having with the system.

Your experience might be better then mine, but I would not reccomend them to anyone, including my competitors.