Jo Collins, Managing Director of Sales Performance, joined us for a 30-minute masterclass on how field service businesses can win more customers and hold onto the ones they already have.
What makes Jo’s approach stand out is how practical it is. No motivational fluff, no abstract frameworks that fall apart on contact with a real customer. Just the habits and techniques that actually work in the field, whether you’re a sole trader or running a team of fifteen.
Here are the biggest takeaways from her session.
1. Stop making “close the sale” your call objective
This one landed hard. Jo opened by asking how many people go into meetings with closing the sale as their main objective, and then pointed out why that’s the wrong move.
“People buy people first, and then your product or service second,” she said. When closing is your number one goal, it shows. You’re under pressure, the customer can sense it, and the conversation stops feeling like a conversation.
Jo’s alternative: set three call objectives before every meeting, and make them things you can actually achieve regardless of whether a sale happens. Things like: finding out who else is involved in the buying decision. Understanding what they like and dislike about their current supplier. Getting agreement to stay in touch.
A well-run meeting that ends without a sale but moves the relationship forward is not a failure. It’s a pipeline.
2. Ask better questions and build a team bank of them
Once your objectives are set, work backwards to the questions you need to ask to get there. Jo recommends open questions (starting with what, where, when, how, or which), because they’re designed to get people talking rather than giving you yes/no answers you can’t do anything with.
Cover four areas:
- Current situation — who are they working with now, what do they like or dislike about it?
- Wish list — if they could change one thing, what would it be?
- Buying process — how have they made similar decisions in the past?
- Decision-makers — who else gets involved when a purchase like this is being made?
Jo’s tip here that I thought was genuinely useful: ask every member of your team what one or two questions reliably get conversations started. Pool those answers. Build a shared question bank. Don’t reinvent the wheel every time. Find what’s already working and use it consistently.
3. Objections aren’t rejections, they’re questions in disguise
“We already have a supplier.” “The price is too high.” “Now isn’t a good time.” Every field service business hears these.
Jo’s reframe is worth taking on board: an objection is usually a request for more information. The customer doesn’t have enough to feel confident moving forward yet. That’s your opportunity, not your dead end.
When an objection comes up, Jo’s advice is to pause, stay curious, and ask if you can ask a few questions to understand where they’re coming from. That shift alone (from defensive to genuinely interested) changes the temperature of the conversation.
Prep for objections the same way you prep for questions. Before any meeting, spend five minutes with your team brainstorming what you’re likely to hear and how you’ll respond. The businesses that handle objections well aren’t more gifted salespeople. They just showed up prepared.
4. If you leave without a next step, you’ve lost control
Jo was direct on this one: never leave a meeting without a specific next step agreed before you walk out the door. Not “I’ll leave that proposal with you.” That hands full control of the process to the customer.
Instead, try something like: “From today, here are the three things I’m going to do on your behalf. And there’s one small thing I’d ask you to do: could you [confirm X / check Y / send me Z]?”
The small customer task is a smart move. It keeps them engaged in the process and gives you a natural reason to follow up. The next step doesn’t have to be dramatic: a date for a second call, a proposal timeline, confirmation of who else needs to be in the room. It just needs to exist.
5. The power hour: protect time for what actually matters
Jo introduced a concept she calls the power hour: a dedicated, uninterrupted block of time each week committed to one sales activity. Phone off. Notifications closed. Just you and whatever you’ve decided to focus on.
It could be following up with everyone you’ve been in conversation with. Re-engaging customers you haven’t spoken to in months. Focused outreach to new prospects. The activity matters less than the discipline.
“If it’s not in my diary, it just doesn’t get done,” Jo said. And that’s the whole point. She recommends starting with three power hours per week. If an hour feels like too much, 45 minutes works. Review after a couple of weeks and see what it’s generating.
This is one of those suggestions that sounds almost too simple. Until you realise how rarely most businesses actually do it.
6. New business is the hardest revenue to win. Here’s where to look first.
Jo’s sales plan framework runs across four customer types, and she’s very deliberate about the order:
Existing customers first. Are they aware of everything you offer? Probably not. A customer who already knows and trusts you is far more likely to buy an additional service than a cold prospect. Jo calls this finding the “hand and glove” opportunity — the natural next thing that fits alongside what they’re already buying.
Lapsed customers second. They stopped buying for a reason, but that reason isn’t always permanent. Jo’s approach: reach out to reconnect, not to sell. “You came to mind today. It’s been a while — I’d love to find out what’s been happening in your business. Would you be free for a coffee?” No agenda. Just genuine interest. It’s surprising how often that conversation leads somewhere.
Lost customers third. Yes, even the ones who chose a competitor. People make decisions based on the information they had at the time, and sometimes they regret them. A low-key check-in call six months later — with no pitch attached — occasionally opens a door you assumed was permanently shut. Keep them in your CRM. Don’t write them off.
New customers last. Hardest to win, most resource-intensive, lowest probability. Jo’s point is that most businesses skip straight to new and ignore the first three. The ones that grow steadily tend to have strong, consistent habits around existing, lapsed, and lost, and new business becomes a smaller part of the mix over time.
Fieldmotion’s CRM lets you segment customers by status and last contact date, so these conversations don’t slip through the gaps. And the service agreements guide covers how to build recurring revenue from your existing customer base specifically.
7. Three new business strategies worth acting on
When it comes to genuinely new customers, Jo highlighted three:
Referrals — but ask differently. Happy customers are willing to help. They just don’t get asked often enough. Jo’s tweak: drop the word “referral” (it can feel transactional) and try something like: “Within your network, is there anyone you’d be comfortable introducing me to for a conversation?” You’re asking for help. That framing lands differently.
The referral programme guide covers how to build this into a repeatable system rather than relying on it happening by chance.
Google reviews — and here’s the tip most businesses miss. With around 82% of B2B purchasing starting with a search, reviews are as much a visibility tool as they are social proof. Ask every satisfied customer. Make it easy with a direct link or QR code.
But here’s Jo’s “icing on the cake” move: when you reply to reviews, don’t just write “thanks for your kind words.” Use your business keywords in the response. If you’re a heating contractor in Belfast, say so. That keyword-rich reply helps Google understand what you do and where, and it helps you get found faster.
LinkedIn — for credibility, not cold selling. Jo’s take: LinkedIn isn’t a sales floor. It’s a place to demonstrate expertise, make connections, and build relationships over time. Consistent, helpful content means a potential customer already has a sense of who you are before they’ve ever spoken to you. That matters when they’re ready to buy.
8. BANT: a simple framework for knowing how real an opportunity is
Jo walked through BANT as a tool both for prepping meetings and for reviewing your pipeline.
- Budget — do you know what they have to spend? At minimum, a benchmark range. Don’t write a proposal in the dark.
- Authority — who actually makes the decision? Jo flagged that three to five people are often involved in B2B purchases. Make sure you’re not over-relying on one contact who doesn’t have sign-off power.
- Need — do you understand what they want to achieve, change, or fix? This is what good qualifying questions uncover.
- Timeline — when do they want to start? When would an order be placed? Without this, you can’t forecast anything.
Run your pipeline through these four questions in your next team meeting. You’ll quickly see which opportunities are solid and which ones are missing critical information.
Jo’s closing challenge: pick one thing
This is probably the most practical thing from the whole session.
Don’t try to implement everything above at once. Pick one thing, commit to it for three months, evaluate what it’s produced, and then plan the next move. One strategy executed consistently and well will outperform five strategies attempted in parallel and abandoned.
Decide on one. Start this week.
Related reading:
- How fast you respond to enquiries is costing you more jobs than you think — the link between speed to lead and sales conversion
- How to follow up on quotes — practical frameworks for keeping opportunities moving forward
- How to build a B2B referral programme — turning satisfied customers into a structured source of new business
- Service agreements in field service — building recurring revenue from existing customers
- How to set a marketing budget for a field service business — aligning sales effort with the right investment in lead generation
- CRM software — managing your pipeline, segmenting customers, and tracking next steps in one place
