Noritz America recently revamped its longstanding contractor incentive program to provide trade professionals with upgraded digital tools to generate more customer leads and qualify those leads more quickly, thus helping to grow their tankless water heater businesses.

The new ProCard+ is a subscription-based lead creation and retrieval system for participating contractors to create a customized, online Advanced Business Profile to more effectively connect and communicate with interested consumer and business customers. The program is designed to put buyers more quickly in touch with the information they need to make informed decisions, in the process delivering a more satisfying customer experience.

How it works: Home and business owners clicking on the “How To Buy” button at the top of the Noritz Home Page are prompted to enter their zip code. This will take them to a special “Contractor Directory” landing page, listing all qualified Noritz water heater installers in their area.

The listed companies are all ProCard members. But the higher ranked firms are ProCard+ subscribers who pay a monthly fee to have a red “Get A Quote” button positioned at the top right corner of their listings. Prospects who click that button are asked to enter their name and contact information for the selected contractor to contact them. Or they can click on the contractor name to be taken to its Business Profile Plus, an online “storefront,” to learn more about the company.

Among the special features of this information-rich, highly customizable business profile include the following:

Quick-connect engagement features: These include buttons to request an immediate quote, a phone call or a personal visit by the contractor. Or the consumer can send a text message or make a direct phone call to the contractor. Inquiring prospects can even attach photos of their applications for the contractor to view. “The idea is to encourage the prospect to ask pre-qualifying questions, so that the contractor can get back to them more quickly with specifics immediately relevant to their needs,” said Noritz Marketing Manager Andrew Tran. “Streamlining that initial, back-and-forth communication between buyer and contractor to generate a highly qualified lead is critical. Most water heater buyers understandably have a high sense of urgency to obtain the answers they need to get their hot water running again. Meanwhile, we want to ensure that these interested consumers are quickly converted into completed water heater installs at as high a rate as possible.”

Owner background: ProCard+ members can post friendly details about themselves (hobbies, favorite sports team, place of birth and school, etc.) to help put a human face on their enterprise and make the buying process more comfortable.

Owner company description: Besides the customary contact information, including website URL and owner’s email, the company itself is profiled with a capsule history, a mission or policy statement, a Google map pinpointing its business location — whatever the ProCard+ subscriber believes will help inspire interest, as well as trust and confidence.

Accreditations and customer ratings: Possible content here might be the badges and logos of various national and local trade groups that count the contractor as a member, as well as Google, Yelp and other reviews, the better to affirm the contractor’s professional standing.

Photos and videos: ProCard+ subscribers are able to create slideshows of previous tankless water heater installs, installers on the job, industry awards won, and so forth. Manufacturer product videos or company commercials are also possible, or even clips and pictures of the contractor on a job site explaining how a actual customer’s hot-water problem was resolved.

For the most part, a contractor’s rank on the “How To Buy” list aligns with sales activity: The more Noritz water heaters installed and registered on the ProCard website, the higher the ranking.

“But the algorithm takes other factors into account,” Executive Vice President and General Manager Jason Fleming said. “Response speed to the customer, login frequency on the ProCard site, and the number of online tankless training sessions also matter. We want the smaller plumber to have every opportunity to move up in the rankings as well.”

The Business Profile Plus engagement tools, noted Tran, are designed to distill the consumer’s inquiry down to a few basic questions. “Of course, we cannot anticipate every scenario, every exotic element of every water heater project. But the tool elicits the essential information contractors need to confidently make a product recommendation and even provide a price — if they choose to do so,” he said.

ProCard+ is available now to plumbing, HVAC and building contractors nationwide. “We are confident that this program will provide our customers with better sales leads, while also providing home and business owners with better service,” Tran said. 

To register or to get more information about the Noritz ProCard+ program, email ProPlus@Noritz.com.

To schedule a 30-minute demo session, providing all the essential details of the new ProCard+ subscription program, visit https://training.noritz.com/proplus.