A buyer hires the vendor they can check, and the checking starts before the call.

“The enquiry waits until someone is free to respond”

The people who survey, demonstrate or price the work are also the people doing it. An enquiry that waits for a free hour is read by the buyer as a sign of how the service will run.

“What a buyer would check is scattered and slow to show”

Licences and registrations where the work needs them, insurance, references and records of earlier work sit across phones and folders. Where a client cannot be named, there is no ready description of a similar site either, so verification takes days.

“We are compared on the rate and little else”

Per head, per square foot, per flat, per device or per visit, the figure is easy to compare and what sits behind it is not. Unless the proposal shows who does the work, who is answerable and what is left out, price decides.

“Nobody owns the date when the service falls due”

Renewals, annual maintenance dates, refills and visit schedules are kept in memory. The first the vendor hears of a lapse is when the buyer has already chosen someone else.

“Our online presence describes the trade, not the buyer's site”

A page that lists our services in a row says little to a buyer with a particular kind of site and a particular worry. Pages written for one kind of buyer are what that buyer lands on and forwards.

“The work happens where the buyer is not watching, and leaves nothing to read”

Much of what is done is not seen by whoever pays. Without a plain record of what was done, when, by whom and what was found, the buyer cannot show their own side that the money was well spent.