Imagine this: you won a bid to do an EV charger install, but the returns barely cover the $200 or more in marketing costs you paid to get to that winning bid. Sound familiar?
This is a common scenario for many electricians diving into the EV charger installation market. The core challenge? They don’t have the systems in place to profitably convert leads and grow their business.
The high cost, low margin dilemma
It’s no secret that acquiring leads for EV charger installations can be pricey. You’re going to pay a lead provider anywhere from $150 to $500 for each completed job, whether you get revenue share leads from places like Kopperfield and QMerit, buy leads outright from Thumbtack or Angi, or advertise on Yelp and Google. Yet the profit margins on these installations don't always justify the investment if you aren’t ready.
Because it’s a smaller purchase size, EV charger installs can be a great business if you can create a steady pipeline of business, you can reliably win bids, and you use them to fill in gaps in your schedule or, ideally, dedicate a truck to doing 3 to 4 installs a day.
The key lies in establishing a consistent flow of jobs and building or buying a system that maximizes your chance of winning bids by automating tasks that take time and add cost except the bid and install. A critical way to lower costs is by eliminating most site visits.
Grow your EV charger business like the best
Before you buy leads, assess if you’re truly ready. Figure out how much time you’re spending to bid, sell, follow-up, collect on each job, and request reviews. The most successful shops automate many of their processes so that they can:
- Be the first shop to send the customer an actionable bid (you’ll win some with no competition)
- Offer virtual site visits to decrease cost and reduce turnaround time
- Deliver clean, easy-to-understand bids that address common customer problems to cut down on communication
- Centralize your messaging so you aren’t wasting time on miscommunication
- Follow-up persistently and politely to win installs months after your first contact
Your best competition is doing this already. Here’s how you can beat them.
Respond quickly and professionally
Once you have a lead, immediate follow-up is crucial. Here's how to make that follow-up pop:
- Immediate response: Consumers are 8x more likely to pick up the phone or act within the first five minutes of submitting a lead, but only 37% of companies achieve a lead response time of one hour or less. It’s critical here to set expectations with your customers (”Can I call you back at 10?” or “It looks like I have everything I need to get you a bid by 5PM today - can I call you if I have any questions then?”) and let them know what the next step is. Respond via the same channel they contacted you (text / email / phone), but it’s always okay to call as well.
- ➡️ Tip: for online leads, consider an auto-responder that texts leads to let them know you will review their information and get back to them by the end of the day — and make sure you get back to them by the end of the day.
- Professional communication: Your first response sets the tone for professionalism and trust. Online leads aren’t as likely to overlook sloppy communication as leads that come from a personal recommendation.
- ➡️ Tip: having a centralized messaging system means anyone on your team can respond via text and email without creating confusion.
If you are buying leads, you need to have systems in place to make quick responses happen even when you are at your busiest.
Innovate with virtual site visits
Make it easy for the customer to give you all the information you need to provide a proposal and price quickly — without a site visit. Doing virtual site visits right will win some bids before the competition even shows up.
Tools like those created by Kopperfield can help you conduct these efficiently by guiding customers through the process and providing you with a job summary. With Kopperfield you can:
- Collect everything you need to know about the house and electrical setup.
- Guide the customer through collecting high resolution photos and videos of everything you need to bid, from the panel location to the site location.
- Automatically provide other key information like the property type and location, year built, square footage, street view, permit history, and the owner names.
EV charger installers who use Kopperfield remotely bid on over 91% of projects.
Doing a few bids a month in person is doable, but if you’re going to grow your business, you will run out of time. Virtual site visits make you faster, saves you a huge amount of otherwise billable time, and wins more bids.
Craft a professional customer journey
Today’s customers expect a seamless online experience. This includes:
- Online Scheduling: Consumers want to request an install time online. Your system should send automated reminders the day before so every install goes smoothly.
- Transparent Pricing: Provide clear, easy-to-understand quotes by email and text. The cost of an EV charger install is much more than a charger, so it often surprises consumers. Online tools can generate quotes that include a breakdown of cost and the work required to make it easy to understand. For higher priced quotes, increase your close rate by offering to follow up with a call to walk the customer through the quote.
- Convenient Payment Options: Offer online payment methods so your customers don’t have to dig up their checkbooks (and so they can’t “forget” to pay). An integrated quote and payment system can even enable you to collect a deposit up front, leading to fewer missed appointments and no hassle payment collection. Accepting credit cards (with the right system) also means you can get paid more quickly than invoicing. Electricians who take credit card payments also win more bids — even if you bid is slightly higher to cover the cost of the credit card fee!
Use reviews to drive more business
Reviews of businesses happen online whether the business asks for them or not. A good system can get more customers to leave good reviews while also catching bad reviews before they go online.
If customers are happy with their electric car charger installation, most still won't leave a review unless asked. A good system will first ask happy customers to review the business. If they give 5 stars, it can then ask them to post that review online on Google or Yelp.
No business makes every customer happy. So if an unhappy customer gives a bad review directly to the business first, the business has a chance to fix the problem before the customer posts a bad review online. A good review system allows the business to see bad reviews first and try to make the customer happier.
EV charger install leads can grow your business
The EV charger installation market presents a major opportunity to grow your business, but only if you have the systems to capitalize on it profitably.
By automating and streamlining your processes around lead response, site visits, bidding, payment collection, and reviews, you can reduce costs, speed up your operations, provide a better customer experience, and win more bids.
To be successful, invest in creating seamless customer journeys with tools that guide customers, generate clear quotes, enable online scheduling and payment, and prompt for reviews.
Follow the lead of top shops who are growing rapidly in this space by innovating operationally. With the right systems in place, you too can build a highly profitable EV charger installation business.
About Kopperfield for contractors
Kopperfield is the complete platform for contractors who want to grow their EV charger installation business.
Kopperfield’s powerful system includes lead generation forms for Tesla and non-Tesla installs and guided remote site visits so you have everything you need to bid with confidence on every job. Centralized messaging keeps your team and your customers on the same page and online credit card processing with next day payment takes the headaches out of running your business.
Learn more about how Kopperfield can grow your business by booking a demo today.
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