You just received a call from a good customer to recharge fire extinguishers. Or, on the way to or from another job, your technician stops in unannounced at a good customer to see “What’s up?” and finds extinguishers needing recharge. What now? Do you recharge them and leave glad for both the money and the gold star you’ve earned? Absolutely not, there are lessons to learn!

Your company wants to accomplish several things every year. More revenue, more business, bigger clients, more monthlies - all of these are on that list and many more besides. Topping the list is adding more to the bottom line, but how do you do this? Again, there are many ways, but every day your technician’s pass up opportunities to earn more money for you and for themselves. The best part is you can both gain while selling safety!

Your technicians, even the most shy, have some conversation at the time of the fire extinguisher recharge work mentioned in paragraph one. What you need to do is help focus the direction of their conversation. While it is nice to talk about the weather or the kids it won’t help you professionally. The following are the questions you need your technicians to ask and the order in which they should be asked:

1. Did you have a Fire? (vandalism, horseplay, or cooling a 6-pack)
2. Was anyone hurt? (any other safety items needed?)

3. Were all the units to be recharged used on the same fire? (if yes, you’re leading to the need for larger units, e.g. if the fire needed 11 lbs. of agent and the units to be recharged are all 10 lbs. that explains why so many units were used and why larger units might help.)
4. Was the fire extinguished by plant personnel? (need more or different training?)
5. Was the fire department called?
6. How (where) did the fire start? (right units in place? Units in the right place?)
7. Were other units partially discharged and placed back on the wall?

Did anything weird happen? (weird is a broader word than “odd” or “surprising” and you need total candor. Don’t worry about the sophistication of the word. It’s being used to encompass anything that the customer wants to talk about.)