Ken Mara, World Wide/GC Alarm & Audio Video Design: Bartering the Bottom Line

Motivating Staff with Barter

How does Mara keep employees motivated? Besides the sales contests, he provides a $50 gift certificate to any employee who receives a written letter of commendation from a client. He even rewards the people answering the phones with barter gifts and incentives.

"Sometimes, the office staff will get paid extra for the week following a price increase, just because I know they are going to field a lot of 'hot' calls. Some customers will go crazy over a $2 per month increase in their monitoring fees. Insurance is going up, gas is going up, electricity is going up ... we had to raise our monitoring and service fees recently. I had a meeting with all the people who answer the phones and did some role-playing. We went over all the reasons why we had to increase our prices. It's important that our staff understands," he says.

Finally, his customer service department makes a follow-up phone call after every installation and service call, primarily asking questions that reinforce the company's performance, such as:

• Was everything satisfactory?
  
• Do you require any other services?
  
• Is there someone else you know who might need our services?
  
• Did the crew show up on time?
  
• Did the crew clean up?
  
• Is the system working properly?
  

The goal of the call is to get referrals. Inevitably, the customer service person will also attempt to upsell the customer by asking if they are aware of World Wide/GC's other services, such as home theater. The customer service program seems to be working. Mara says that fewer than 5 percent of customers leave each year, compared to 16 percent residential attrition cited by industry experts.

"We fold like a cheap tent for our customers," he adds. "Whatever they want, we give them."

Checking Out Barter Groups

If you Google "barter groups," (enclosing the phrase in quotations) 552 hits are displayed. So how do you choose and how do you join? The exchanges themselves will look at your business and evaluate what services you can provide for its other members. If a barter group already has 15 printers and the trade exchange is not helping those members fill their capacity, then it will not add another printer.

When you log on to the specific barter exchange's Web site, you can see exactly how many credits you have in your account. You can surf the site for the services you need, link to the company's Web site and order it.

"Your local exchange is going to be the most helpful," according to Ken Mara of World Wide/GC. "That's where you find the copy machine toner, snow removal/plowing, landscaping, restaurants or carpet cleaning. I don't want a company from far away to do that."

Some particular barter groups to check out are:

ITEX Corp.
Founded in 1982, publicly-traded ITEX is the largest national barter group and processes more than $300 million a year in transactions across 21,500 member businesses and 60 regional licensees. Headquartered in Bellevue, Wash.
www.itex.com

Continental Trade Exchange
Founded in 1985, CTE has a bartering client base of more than 9,700 business and professional people.
www.ctebarter.com

Business Networking Inc.
A large regional barter group with offices in New York, Delaware and Pennsylvania.
www.businessnetworkinc.com