There always seems to be an enormous amount of focus when it comes to sales, product options and quality. But very often, we don’t talk about our fitters much unfortunately. Maybe because the exciting bit form our point of view is now done with that contract and we’ve moved on to something else. But our fitters are probably the most important part of our business.

As the title suggests, they are the face of your company. They are reason why your customers come to you in the first place, to have new windows and doors FITTED. As much as we’d all like to believe, customers don’t come to us to be sold to! I know that is going to be hard for some of you to take ;-)

This is why having quality fitters counts. And quality fitters not just in the traditional workmanship sense. They need to be good in other areas too. They need to be able to interact with the customers when they get on site. Our lads make a point of introducing themselves clearly right from the off and explain the work they are doing as they go. That way the customer feels as informed as everyone else and feels more comfortable in their own home. They also need some grasp of manners. Our industry unfortunately has rather a few heavy handed and foul mouthed fitters who don’t seem to care about manners in front of the customer. It’s OK swearing and such when you’re away from the customer, but the amount of times I’ve heard stories of rude fitters while in front of the customer makes me ashamed of our industry sometimes.

Be tidy! Fitters need to be tidy! No one wants to clean muddy footprints off the carpet or polish every surface in the room after they’ve been in. Good fitters are clean fitters and they make sure wherever they think is necessary is dust sheet protected and covered! We also have our lads hoover after themselves when they finish, just to make sure the customer has as little to do when we leave!

Being punctual is a big thing for customers. If you say your fitters are going to be on site at a certain time, it really is important that they are. The customer is making a big effort to put their day to day life is disarray while we fit new windows and doors for them. So it’s only right that we do as we say and turn up at the time we said we would!

I think it’s important that fitters think on their feet. A salesman will not always be able to get on site when a problem occurs, so a vital skill to make sure the job continues smoothly is for the installers to be able to communicate with the customer and have a broad enough knowledge to be able to get round small problems with solutions everyone is happy with. There’s no snags then at the end of the job and then we all get paid on time…in theory!

Of course there is also the workmanship side of things. Your fitters have to be good at what they do. You can have the best window and door in the world, but if it’s not installed correctly then it’s only as good as the worst window and doors in the world. We’ve found through experience that fully qualified joiners always make a good foundation for a good fitter! But a bit of experience is key. If you installers have been taught well and had some experience on site, this helps as well. There are too many fitters in this industry who thought it was easy to fit windows and doors but have made total car crashes of them and left the customer in a terrible state. Our fitters have just qualified in a brand new Government backed national NVQ qualification for the installation of windows and doors, the first of it’s type if I’m correct. It’s good to be able to tell your customers all of this at it will allay any fears of bodge jobs!

The fitters are the ones who will leave your customer with the final impression. No matter how well you sell a job, it is these guys that have the final say on what the customer thinks. Get the right fitters with the right experience and people skills, and you’ll do fine!