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you’re listening to the simple growth
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podcast
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the show that helps business owners get
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their life back
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here’s your host mike callahan welcome
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back to the sa weekly talk show mike
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kelly i’m here with cody owen
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my co-host i’ve got a huge lineup coming
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next week
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carla from the landscaping accountant is
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going to be joining cody and i
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talking about all things landscape and
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accounting but this week
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kind of backed by popular demand a lot
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of people were asking
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over the last several months mike would
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you mind going in and breaking down
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how you automated your service business
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um and kind of the story behind that
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and if i’m going to look at a business
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fully automated on service autopilot
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what are
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the things i should be looking at to
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doing that so whether you go out and
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utilize a certified advisor you’re
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building them yourself
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or working with all the experts over at
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the automation pro plus launch team
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over at service autopilot which is also
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a great resource
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as you’re going in and kind of
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conceptualizing what does a
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service business look like fully
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automated i’m going to kind of break it
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down
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how we actually did it in my company
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step by step and what you’re going to
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find
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in your business is you can’t really
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automate the whole thing out the gate
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there’s certain areas that you want to
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look at look at and i’m going to kind of
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expose some of the biggest pain points
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in my business as we started the scale
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um and there’s basically as we find
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traditionally in most service businesses
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there’s really
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three main hurdles or blocks in your
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business
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of growth to that million mark and well
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beyond and if you’ve been lucky enough
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to
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kind of blow past some of these hurdles
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or just kind of as we say grind through
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them
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um if you can automate these areas in
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your business
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it’ll start pulling that time back and
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allow you to as michael gerber says work
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on the business and not in it or
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um if you’ve got a long-lost family and
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friends you haven’t talked to in the
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last five years because you’ve been
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working 100 hours a week well
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uh you may be able to make some
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reacquaintance of actually seeing your
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wife or husband at
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dinner for once in a while and seeing
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them on the weekends so i’m going to be
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kind of diving into that before we jump
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into it cody though um
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just kind of touching base with you
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what’s going on what’s new what’s good
02:05
uh since last time we talked last week
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on the essay weekly talk show with uh
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dylan rothenberg
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um well i have disappeared into a
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world of virtual reality my uh my vr
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headset arrived and that’s kind of been
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what i’ve been doing for fun i don’t
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have anything exciting to report
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all right well you know maybe the fun is
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inside the goggles you never know
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so i was they’re pretty cool we’ll have
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to give a little show and tell later in
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the
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show today but um and if you’re watching
02:31
the podcast or listen to the podcast you
02:33
may want to tune into this one live
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uh so you can see this apparatus that
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cody has is purchased off of amazon or
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wherever he got that thing but uh
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be a little little teaser for later but
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very very cool uh technology investment
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uh
02:46
by the young millennial here so as we
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pop this out here i’m going to um
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kind of flip it around here so we can
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probably get the best view of
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the deck here and what we’re looking at
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here is
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um basically uh
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my my journey from beginning uh my lawn
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care business approximately about 25 26
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years ago
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um and the story behind it so the idea
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here is that
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um the business that i actually started
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um
03:16
if you haven’t heard the story i’m going
03:18
to give you a quick two minute rendition
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but the business i started in high
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school through college
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um basically had revolved around me as a
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single point of failure
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and that business literally would have
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crumbled if i left for a day or two at a
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time or even a week at a time for
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vacation i was constantly tied to this
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business
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um and that business ended up causing a
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lot of pain and suffering inside my
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uh personal life as i was kind of joking
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about with cody here
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um literally working about 100 hours a
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week seven days a week
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um just trying to keep this business
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going because everything that had to
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happen
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needed me to approve it or actually do
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it so
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uh once we kind of hit a point where
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that business actually caused a divorce
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uh we went out and found automation so
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uh right now we’re looking probably
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closer to four to five thousand hours
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that we personally have spent inside my
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business and simple growth automating
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uh systems and processes on service
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autopilot i went out and invested well
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over 150 thousand dollars finding the
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experts in automation so was it text
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messaging sms was it email marketing
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was it upsells whatever that was we went
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out and
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literally i flew around the whole united
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states over a five to six year span
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and actually canada to understand um
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how to make the best decisions in an
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automation and how to build them out
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as we hit each pain point also if you
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haven’t seen it
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author of callahan’s corner in snow
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magazine and lawn and skate landscape
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magazine and obviously
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simple growth is a certified advisor
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with
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service autopilot but that’s really not
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what today’s about today is really going
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in and breaking down
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what a fully automated business looks
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like in service autopilot i’m gonna just
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break down
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literally um how we did it how you can
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do it
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um and this should hopefully clear up a
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lot of the questions that have been
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coming in especially with a lot of
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people who
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have either bought pro plus and one of
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the specials and haven’t fully
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implemented or
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um you’ve just upgraded a pro plus or
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maybe you’re a brand new service
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autopilot subscriber because there has
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been a massive influx
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of service autopilot users that have
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actually come in
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so the first thing we want to look at is
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traditionally your sales
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process and this is a flow chart of the
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sales process on a very high level i’m
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going to break down
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some of the tips and tricks to have this
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fully implemented but
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as we always kind of do at simple growth
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or even in the essay weekly talk show we
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really like to talk about
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workflow and standardization we don’t
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want to just talk about features and
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functions
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we want to actually connect the dots
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because a lot of times in any software
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especially service autopilot
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you may have a lot of these dots in the
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system set up but they’re really not
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connected in an optimal workflow so that
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leads for
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inefficiencies or confusion for your
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office staff or yourself so
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the thing you really want to first do is
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go out and create an
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estimate request form and that’s going
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to be under the marketing tab
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in service autopilot now we’ve got two
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different options we’ve got a v2 option
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and we’ve got a v3 option so what i’m
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going to recommend for best practice at
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this point
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uh v3 forms in my opinion
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are show ready now when jonath
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petrochnick the co-founder of service
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autopilot
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made a video uh several months ago he
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was talking about how they’re continuing
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to evolve v3
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and some of the things are building on
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top of each other some of the things may
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not be
06:29
show ready but they’re there so they can
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found out foundationally build upon
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uh the next features are gonna be
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released when they make the next v3
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release so
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um i highly recommend using the v3
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uh form for your estimate request
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there’s several reasons
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why and it the main reason is gonna be
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it’s going in to do duplicate
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checking and we can have some logic
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built into that uh
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v3 form uh based on different
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decisions and things they make in there
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but uh at a bare minimum whether it’s v2
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or v3 form you want that on your
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on your website and what that’s going to
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do is when the consumer enters their
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name in
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and selects what the service they’re
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interested in it’s going to
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automatically enter them into service
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autopilot with no double entry and
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that’s why i’m recommending a v3 because
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it’s going to do some duplicate checking
07:13
cody
07:13
um and that’s going to make sure you
07:14
have a clean database database hygiene
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is a lot of things we talk about here
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in addition i’m going to recommend you
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going into a bot similar to facebook
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messenger
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and connecting that automated estimator
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bot or chat bot
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on your website and your social media
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platforms and what we’ve done
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in my business um is created a sync with
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facebook messenger and service autopilot
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and we can now automatically enter those
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leads and clients
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through social media in your website
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automatically in the service autopilot
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and trigger all the things we’re going
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to be talking about here
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and then the other thing we did is we
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created a um an office entry form so i
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would call this kind of like your master
07:52
form corey
07:53
or cody and what this allows allows us
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to do cody is go in and
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get all the right information in there
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so when somebody calls it creates a
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standardized intake
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um so how do they hear about us what
08:05
services they’re interested in so no
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matter who is working that office phone
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we’re getting the data inside the
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software the same way um in the same
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predictable fashion and
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it’s going to start triggering these
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automation so the first thing right off
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the bat cody is we’re looking at
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uh the website estimate request uh with
08:21
some logic built behind it entering him
08:23
in sa
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hopefully tying the facebook messenger
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in social to get them an assay
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and a standardized phone intake form um
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obviously i don’t want to go through
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this whole thing and kind of preach but
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any thoughts or comments before i kind
08:34
of really dive into the um
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the immediateness so looking at the lead
08:40
capture section
08:41
the only thing that i don’t immediately
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understand how you’re doing it
08:45
in essay is that connection between
08:49
messenger and essay because we we talk a
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lot about
08:52
how service autopilot doesn’t have an
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api
08:56
so it can be difficult to use other
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tools with service autopilot
09:01
how are you making that connection
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yeah great question so uh we’ve got a
09:07
simple growth as a certified advisor has
09:09
its own development team i mean it’s a
09:11
pretty deep bench so what we’ve done
09:12
is going in and wrote some custom code
09:16
um tying into the api
09:19
of facebook messenger and then being
09:21
able to
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insert that code into service autopilot
09:24
through a couple different methodologies
09:26
that’s why we’re also recommending that
09:28
v3 form because that v3 form now
09:31
is going to do duplicate checking based
09:32
on certain criteria of basically
09:34
there’s many combinations but let’s just
09:36
say real basic first name last name and
09:38
email so if that combination comes up
09:40
wait they’re already in the system let’s
09:41
append the new information
09:43
in to the existing leader client right
09:46
um
09:46
whole different conversation about happy
09:47
willing to have that conversation as
09:49
well kind of how we built that out but
09:51
yeah
09:51
we definitely have created a one-way
09:52
sync with duplicate tracking from
09:54
messenger
09:55
um and messenger on your website into
09:58
that into that
09:59
form and then into the system so yeah
10:01
it’s been pretty good i mean we probably
10:02
got well over 100 essay users
10:04
already using that process and it’s it’s
10:06
been very popular
10:07
um so the main thing here now is what
10:09
we’ve got is we’ve got somebody coming
10:10
off your website and cup or somebody
10:12
coming from your office here
10:13
um or even from messenger but the first
10:15
thing we’re going to do is we’re going
10:15
to automatically fire off a thing called
10:17
a lead letter
10:18
the lead letter is the five or six main
10:20
reasons why your business is different
10:22
and why people want to work with you so
10:23
immediately we’re going in out and
10:25
differentiating ourselves from our
10:27
competitors
10:28
now what we can do or if you’re doing it
10:30
yourself is we can also tie into another
10:31
product that is integrated with service
10:33
autopilot called send
10:34
jim and what send jim can do is trigger
10:37
off an automated
10:39
uh hard copy mailing in the mail
10:42
with this lead letter and the envelope
10:44
can look like it’s hand addressed
10:46
so now we’re not only just sending the
10:47
lead letter automatically in email but
10:49
we’re sending something hard copy in the
10:50
mail so this would really be
10:52
something if importance of doing like a
10:54
design build per se
10:55
because it’s a higher you know 50 60 100
10:58
000 job
10:59
and you probably have to schedule one or
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two on-site estimates and proposals
11:02
before you actually
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get them the estimate so now they can
11:05
physically grab something
11:07
and hold it and there’s an emotional
11:08
connection when they get that lead
11:10
letter
11:10
uh in the physical mail and that
11:12
reinforces why you’re different
11:14
than your competitors so before the
11:16
estimate here
11:17
uh we want to go on to a thing called
11:19
short-term nurturing what this is all
11:21
based on is life cycle marketing so life
11:23
cycle marketing was applicable eight or
11:24
nine years ago when i started automate
11:26
my business
11:27
and now uh even eight or nine years
11:29
later it’s still very applicable
11:31
um but the idea here is we want to take
11:34
the logic from that v3
11:35
uh website form and say okay if
11:38
somebody’s interest in
11:39
weekly lawn mowing or weekly cleaning we
11:42
are going to educate them
11:43
to the specific service they’re
11:45
interested in themselves so
11:47
uh let’s just use the example of lawn
11:49
mowing so if mrs smith hit the website
11:51
she’s automatically getting that lead
11:52
letter via email
11:53
and before the estimate or in
11:54
conjunction with the estimate if you’re
11:56
closing those gateway services we talk
11:57
about over the phone
11:58
she’s going to get between one to three
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emails of short-term education and it’s
12:02
literally
12:03
no sales pitch we are going to teach her
12:05
how to do that lawn mowing as a
12:06
professional
12:07
uh herself how to sharpen the blades
12:10
maybe proper mowing height proper
12:11
irrigation to go with
12:13
that service and what that’s done is
12:17
created you as the expert we’re creating
12:18
that higher perceived value so you can
12:20
charge a higher price
12:22
in addition what i really recommend is
12:24
if you’re building this yourself
12:25
go in to those short-term education
12:28
education documents
12:29
and overcome any sales or price
12:32
objections up front
12:33
so we’re going to shorten that sales
12:35
cycle traditionally in my market in
12:36
upstate new york for my lawn care
12:37
company
12:38
was do i need to be home to have the
12:40
service done and are you going to close
12:41
that fence gate behind you because a lot
12:43
of people obviously are nervous
12:44
if they get home they’re afraid the
12:46
technician didn’t close the fence gate
12:48
neither the dog
12:48
or the kids are going to be running out
12:50
of that fence gate and possibly running
12:51
into traffic so
12:52
we’re going to address the concerns
12:54
before they’re even brought up so we
12:56
shorten that site that uh
12:57
sales cycle and we create a higher
12:59
perceived value as you as the expert to
13:01
charge the most in your market
13:03
and this is right up to the point of
13:05
where we submit that estimate cody
13:06
um any thoughts or questions around that
13:08
process up to this point
13:10
no that is that’s awesome uh what you
13:13
were saying
13:14
about like life cycle marketing being
13:15
relevant eight or nine years ago
13:18
and still today those principles don’t
13:20
change the tools that we use
13:22
to exercise them will definitely
13:24
continue to change
13:25
over time but i mean eight and nine
13:27
years ago sending
13:28
you know email nurtures was still
13:30
something that
13:32
yeah those tools were still relevant
13:33
then as well so it’ll
13:36
this knowledge will stay with you
13:37
regardless of what tools you need to use
13:39
in the future
13:40
yeah and very similar to so we’ve got
13:42
marcus sheridan i believe is going to be
13:43
the keynote speaker at sa thrive this
13:45
year
13:45
uh the virtual summit well marcus uh
13:48
sheridan owned a company called river
13:50
pools and spas
13:51
by no means by comparing myself to
13:52
marcus but what marcus was doing
13:54
um outside of some of the seo and videos
13:56
was doing
13:58
life cycle marketing that’s something
13:59
that he learned on another uh crm
14:01
platform called hubspot
14:03
we were doing this originally in
14:04
infusionsoft before service autopilot
14:07
had automations and some of the things
14:08
i’m going to touch on later in this is
14:09
why
14:11
if you’re going to automate using
14:12
service autopilot it’s really important
14:13
to keep your automations inside natively
14:15
and pro plus
14:16
and the major benefits of that but
14:19
marcus sheridan of the sales line
14:20
was out there doing this literally eight
14:22
or nine years ago i was doing and he was
14:24
doing pools
14:25
and i was doing this in lawn care um so
14:27
i will tell you no matter the industry
14:28
if it’s a service business
14:29
this works um and it’s about education
14:33
very similar to marcus’s book they ask
14:35
you answer you’re answering those
14:37
questions or concerns before they arise
14:39
and shortening that cycle becoming the
14:40
expert so very
14:42
very interesting uh perspective when i
14:44
saw marcus speak first time at uh one of
14:46
the s8 conferences
14:48
um so the next thing is we’re looking at
14:49
cody is we’re going to submit that
14:50
estimate
14:52
i know we always talk about it here you
14:53
know it usually takes five or more
14:54
follow-ups
14:55
to land 80 of the sales so eighty
14:57
percent of sales are made on five or
14:59
more follow-ups on an estimate so
15:01
what you really need to do is create a a
15:03
sales pipeline
15:04
so you can see where people are at and
15:06
we’ve chosen through a lot of research
15:08
20 days so we call just this process
15:10
right here 20 days to close
15:12
but what it does as soon as that
15:14
estimate is submitted
15:15
it goes out and follows up on each and
15:18
every estimate
15:19
um via automated email automated text
15:21
and phone calls yeah believe it or not
15:23
phone calls
15:23
we’re going to recommend you do that um
15:25
and they will come in as a form of a to
15:27
do and in v3 once some updates kick in
15:29
it’ll
15:30
be in the form of a ticket but what you
15:32
want to do and that to do is what we
15:33
recommend and what we’ve done is
15:35
we literally have a script for the
15:37
person in your office calling saying hey
15:38
call mrs smith
15:40
it’s been three days since we dropped
15:41
off that lawn mowing estimate
15:43
here’s what to say if she says the price
15:44
is too high here’s some call script
15:45
overcome that sales or price objection
15:48
and then the most important part really
15:49
in my opinion cody is at the bottom it
15:51
says if she becomes a client do this in
15:52
a service autopilot if she doesn’t
15:54
become a client
15:55
do this in service autopilot she’s like
15:57
you know what i’m not sure if i’m going
15:57
to hire you guys or not
15:58
i’m price shopping and it’s the spring
16:00
and i’m going to get a couple quotes
16:02
cool do this in service autopilot so
16:04
what we’ve done is created a predictable
16:06
workflow
16:07
for either your eternal team or a
16:09
virtual assistant
16:11
such as pink collars or call boss or
16:12
some of the other certified advisors
16:14
that are working with inside service
16:15
autopilot so
16:16
you’ve created a um a process there i
16:19
want to say what’s up to hobie barrett
16:21
obviously hobie uh your longtime watcher
16:24
there he says
16:25
ringless voicemail bomb so absolutely
16:27
hobie so that was
16:28
you stole my thunder so if you don’t
16:30
want to make those phone calls
16:32
we also tie into that product called
16:34
send jim
16:35
what a ringless voicemail bomb does is
16:38
it literally hits the cell phone on
16:39
record
16:40
it doesn’t ring but it looks like a
16:43
missed call here
16:44
and it’s a pre-recorded message so you
16:47
would have probably a different message
16:49
at day one and day
16:50
three but in my instance be like hey
16:51
it’s mike from callahan’s lawn care so
16:53
sorry i missed you wanted to leave you
16:54
this voicemail it’s been
16:56
one day since we dropped off your
16:57
estimate if you have any questions call
16:59
our office back at this number or
17:01
better yet feel free to accept the
17:03
online estimate
17:04
but we’ve created a personalized but
17:06
automated
17:08
phone call follow-up based on the timing
17:11
of this estimate and the service
17:14
or the status of that estimate so it’s
17:16
fully automated and the
17:18
secret to success here and i will tell
17:19
you time and time again a lot of people
17:21
want to mess with the methodology
17:22
and every time people want to tinker
17:24
with it um the issue is
17:27
it doesn’t work unless
17:30
um you actually do that so it looks like
17:32
we may have lost cody here
17:33
uh hopefully he’ll be back here in a
17:35
minute uh but let me uh
17:38
swing over here to see if i can’t grab
17:40
him and get him back in
17:47
um and we’ll see if cody joins us again
17:49
but uh going back into that so
17:51
the secret to this success is if you’re
17:53
building this yourself you want to go in
17:54
and alternate it
17:55
via automated email text and phone calls
17:59
and if not a phone call a ringless
18:00
voicemail but i’m tied into
18:02
the integration with send jim it’s those
18:04
different mediums that are going to be
18:05
successful
18:06
when people say they don’t want to make
18:08
phone calls or they don’t want text
18:09
messages
18:10
it really um depletes the effectiveness
18:13
of this 20 days to close process
18:15
if you’re building it yourself highly
18:16
recommend it that’s where you go with it
18:19
now the next thing that we’re looking at
18:21
here is an estimate
18:23
process here and it looks like cody is
18:26
back in
18:27
action all right so perfect we got we’ve
18:29
got the kid back all right
18:30
nudge the cable in that happens so
18:33
cody what you missed here is we’re
18:35
talking about the the process and the
18:37
ability of uh 20 days to close the
18:39
automated that’s involved the secret is
18:41
different communication channels of the
18:43
text email and phone call or ringless
18:45
voicemail bound so
18:46
now that we hopefully have won that
18:48
estimate
18:50
right here we want to automatically
18:53
trigger a welcome and wow sequence and
18:55
that welcome and wow sequence just like
18:57
jonath patosnik
18:58
of the lawn care millionaire talks about
19:00
a lot of it and something that i adopted
19:02
early in the early years as well is
19:04
requiring a credit card on file to have
19:06
service
19:07
so the welcome and wow sequences an
19:09
automated email that automatically
19:11
triggers no one in your office has to do
19:12
anything
19:13
but it welcomes and acclimates the new
19:15
customer to your
19:17
service business and then it also uses a
19:20
clearance pci compliant
19:22
credit card form we capture that credit
19:25
card form so those
19:26
credit cards are secure they’re
19:27
tokenized and then clarence takes care
19:29
of that so
19:30
um those are the things i would
19:31
recommend in the initial welcome and wow
19:34
and next thing we do is we drive in and
19:36
build logic in the automation so if
19:38
you’re building this in your service
19:39
business
19:40
you want to have some logic in that
19:41
automation because if the first person
19:43
or the first time they sign up is a
19:45
reoccurring say weekly or bi-weekly
19:47
mowing or cleaning
19:48
we want to follow up with 30 60 and 90
19:50
days so 90 days is the biggest area
19:52
where people cancel
19:53
and what we’ve done is made a very
19:54
personal looking email so this is
19:56
another kind of expert tip i’d rather
19:58
share is
19:59
automated emails are great but they
20:01
probably shouldn’t look
20:02
automated so we want a plain text email
20:04
they’re going to deliver better
20:06
and make it personal so the way we built
20:07
this out um in our process is it looks
20:10
like it’s a personal email coming from
20:11
somebody in your office just checking in
20:13
and touching base
20:14
what you’re gonna find is the consumer
20:15
if they’re unhappy is probably gonna
20:16
write back and be like hey
20:18
guys and girls are doing a great job
20:20
mowing the lawn but occasionally not
20:22
blowing off the back patio or
20:23
cleaning hey they’re doing a great job
20:24
cleaning the house but they’re not
20:25
wiping down the tiles in the master bath
20:27
so we’re capturing those little issues
20:29
before they escalate the cancellation
20:31
issues
20:31
but it would be kind of weird cody like
20:34
if you just signed up for one time
20:35
aeration and overseeing
20:36
the first time in my business in the
20:38
fall it’s gonna be goofy if i follow up
20:40
three times so what i recommend here is
20:41
you build logic in that automation
20:43
to follow up only once if it’s a
20:45
one-time service or if it’s a
20:46
reoccurring service
20:48
you follow up the 30 60 and 90 and this
20:50
is going to be part of the benefit
20:52
of automating having your automations
20:54
inside service autopilot through pro
20:56
plus because it’s going to be able to go
20:58
in natively
20:59
and jump into different statuses and
21:01
features of the actual service and
21:03
scheduling and billing
21:05
where if you used an outside platform
21:08
it would never do that and that’s one of
21:10
the things you talked about cody’s like
21:12
how did you do that without an api and
21:13
an api allows two softwares to talk to
21:16
each other very similar to the
21:17
quickbooks sync
21:18
there isn’t that in there but you really
21:20
don’t need an api with service autopilot
21:22
because
21:22
the automations tie into all the native
21:24
features that already there so it’s it’s
21:27
um if you have an experience it’s
21:28
something i think you really should
21:30
because that’s what
21:31
allowed us to shift from our other
21:33
automation platform and move it all in
21:34
sa
21:35
once they started having automations and
21:37
we had huge success even more than we
21:38
did in the earlier days
21:40
because there wasn’t multiple system
21:41
chaos yeah
21:43
mike real quick one of the the themes
21:46
that i’m seeing here
21:47
is that we’re we’re maintaining a very
21:50
close relationship with these clients
21:52
but we’re able to automate
21:54
all of our side of that relationship
21:57
while giving them
21:58
every opportunity to raise their hand
22:00
and tell us hey i have a problem
22:02
hey something’s going on here that’s not
22:04
like up to my expectations
22:07
that that keeps you really close and
22:09
feeling really
22:11
uh like small and mom and pop
22:14
while having the customer service of a
22:16
much larger
22:17
company exactly um there’s a couple
22:20
things that i actually i’ll touch on
22:22
that before i kind of get into the happy
22:23
holidays and some of that long-term
22:24
nurture
22:25
is um in this kind of welcome and wow
22:28
process or kind of uh extended nurture
22:31
is
22:33
we built several automations that do
22:34
just that cody so i’ve got the pleasure
22:36
of having one of the service autopilot
22:38
users actually do the home cleaning
22:40
at my house um and tina and her crew
22:42
utilize a
22:43
automation that we call be there
22:46
been there real tongue twister but the
22:49
automation basically says
22:50
hey we’re going to be at your house to
22:52
either cut the grass or mow the lawn or
22:54
do the pest control and it
22:55
depending on the dispatch when it
22:56
happens traditionally we recommend 24 to
22:59
48 hours as a heads up
23:01
so i know i got to leave the key or do
23:03
something for the cleaner so she can get
23:04
in the house and clean the house
23:06
cool thing i mean and i’m working from
23:07
the house today so it’s a little bit
23:08
different but normally i’m at the main
23:10
office for simple growth
23:11
i’ll get a text message that they just
23:13
left the house within about five minutes
23:15
so now i know okay the house has been
23:17
secured
23:18
it’s locked and i know the cleaning’s
23:19
done
23:21
so um yes and but a larger company
23:25
would probably do that you don’t see
23:27
that from smaller companies but the
23:29
power of automations
23:30
now gives you the ability to have those
23:33
extra touches that you would never have
23:34
as a smaller organization
23:36
um pretty much at no extra cost it’s
23:38
once it’s set up it’s kind of set it and
23:40
forget it
23:41
um the other big one that i really like
23:42
is we call it nps to social review so
23:46
this is something you can definitely
23:47
build out yourself but when you do it
23:48
nps to social review
23:50
um you’re probably gonna have two
23:51
different ways to trigger it at least
23:52
that’s the way we tackled it so you can
23:54
have it automated
23:55
you know once a quarter once a month or
23:58
you can manually just dispatch but what
23:59
it does is it literally goes in
24:01
um it does an nps score so it’s a one to
24:03
ten ranking and like hey
24:04
how how happy are you or how likely are
24:07
you to refer us to your friends and
24:09
family
24:10
a net pro uh a promoter is gonna be that
24:12
nine or ten so what it does is oh you’re
24:13
nine or ten
24:14
what it does then is kicks you into
24:16
another communication
24:18
with email or text depending how you set
24:19
it up to actually push them out to
24:21
social reviews so it’s going to go to
24:23
your google your yelp your facebook
24:24
review
24:25
if it’s an eight or below so a neutral
24:27
or detractor
24:29
it kicks it back to your office and
24:31
allows them to know like hey you’ve got
24:33
some people that may be at risk
24:34
you want to go out and actually try to
24:37
get them up to a promoter
24:39
and what we’ve done is actually created
24:41
processes around that automation
24:44
that actually reports out in their new
24:45
report center and you can visually see
24:48
all the people grouped as promoters
24:49
neutrals and detractors
24:51
and all their comments and actually see
24:52
a pie chart so you have a visual
24:54
representation of where is your customer
24:55
stat
24:56
um right now based on the time of the
24:58
season and the actual response
25:00
so these are things that we would never
25:02
be able to do um especially until we hit
25:04
scale
25:06
but now the power of automations once
25:07
it’s set up continues to do this and has
25:09
that personal touch
25:11
that you’re talking about cody
25:12
absolutely
25:14
all right so the next thing is happy
25:15
holidays sounds a little corny but i
25:17
will tell you
25:18
people enjoy it so what i suggest doing
25:20
is going out educate them around that
25:22
holiday
25:22
and just wish them a happy holiday it’s
25:24
just a nice touch
25:26
newsletters a lot of people bock at
25:28
newsletters like oh my gosh like they’re
25:30
old school we don’t do it
25:32
i take i like to take a look as a
25:34
newsletter is more of a long-term
25:35
nurture it’s education
25:37
with a very soft upsell based on the
25:40
time of season
25:41
so as we’re going into the winter months
25:42
we may be talking about ornamental
25:44
pruning in the lawn care industry
25:46
so the proper types of cutting the
25:47
timing and how to do it and
25:49
and educate the consumer to do it it’s
25:51
just a free give but at the bottom if
25:53
you do that service by the way if you
25:54
need some help
25:55
click here to to request nets or ask for
25:57
some help very similar in home cleaning
25:59
maybe we’re going in the holiday season
26:01
we’re talking about fridge clean out
26:02
stove cleanouts
26:03
what’s the proper technique what
26:04
products do we use on the inside the
26:06
outside the stove
26:07
we’re probably not using chemicals on
26:08
the inside of the um the fridge
26:11
i mean so we’re talking about what best
26:13
practice is and then you can say hey by
26:14
the way if you need some help with those
26:16
services we’re here
26:17
but the idea is a newsletter is just
26:18
providing consistent education
26:20
month in and month out of what what
26:22
should be going on in their month their
26:23
home
26:24
or outside how out the side of their
26:25
home in the yard depending on your
26:27
industries we educate what they should
26:28
be doing in the month in advance
26:29
with a soft upsell nice now the the next
26:33
thing here is this was kind of a new
26:34
thing that we we figured out
26:36
um in automations in the last 12 to 24
26:39
months
26:39
uh but we figured out kind of like you
26:41
said cody we want to have a personal
26:43
conversation with these people where
26:44
they’re at but have it automated
26:46
so the conversation that we’re having
26:48
with someone who isn’t a client like a
26:50
leader a cancelled client versus a
26:51
customer
26:53
is potentially a completely different
26:54
conversation
26:56
so what we’ve done is segmented our
26:57
pipeline of communication for leads
27:00
and clients separately and that allows
27:01
us to send out special communication
27:03
promotion or tips based on where they’re
27:05
at in a customer life cycle
27:07
yeah very meaningful now obviously if we
27:10
haven’t won the estimate we’ve lost the
27:12
essence so our first take of this which
27:14
i think is still very applicable
27:16
and i’ll tell you why i kind of lean
27:18
more towards an upsell
27:20
model now but originally what we call
27:21
these guys here
27:23
is service automation so very um
27:26
100 life cycle marketing if you had a
27:28
lawn mowing customer they were either a
27:30
lost
27:30
estimate for lawn mowing they were
27:32
canceled lawn mowing or
27:34
a client of lawn mowing or someone who
27:36
needed a renewal or reminder if you run
27:38
year round for that service without
27:39
contract renewal
27:41
we were able to go in and talk
27:42
specifically to the service whether a
27:44
loss
27:45
canceled or needed renewal or a reminder
27:47
that we’re coming back out after the
27:48
slower uh winter months
27:50
that died down a little bit very
27:52
applicable
27:53
but what we came up with is uh the
27:55
upsell model
27:57
and the upsell model literally kind of
27:59
came out of callahan’s lawn care when i
28:00
uh
28:01
was acquired and callahan’s was bought
28:04
out we needed to have i believe it was
28:05
about an 80 percent
28:07
uh re-sign-on rate basically
28:10
contractually to get the final payout
28:12
for uh the business being acquired so
28:14
what we did it’s simple growth
28:16
is we kind of opened up the gates a
28:17
little bit said okay if they’re in my
28:19
database
28:20
and i’m trying to renew my lawn mowing
28:21
contracts if they don’t have
28:23
lawn mowing as a service they don’t have
28:25
an open estimate for lawn mowing
28:27
or on a waiting list the upsell would go
28:29
out and sweep through your whole entire
28:31
database not just your clients
28:33
and upsell that service so predominantly
28:36
there’s about five or six
28:37
uh times a year you probably want to do
28:39
this you want to do about a month or so
28:40
in advance that
28:41
season so the big one that’s kind of
28:43
right now in the middle of is aeration
28:45
and overseeing
28:46
or holiday lights or potentially snow
28:48
removal if you’re in the northeast
28:50
but what we’re finding is when we did
28:51
this with service autopilot clients and
28:53
you can see on the facebook page
28:55
um in the users group if your service
28:56
auto pilot member is um
28:59
people are getting 70 or 80 estimate
29:01
requests in two to three hours
29:03
um a lot of times people will actually
29:05
call us if we help them with this and
29:06
say hey
29:07
stop the second or third communication
29:09
because i’m booked the whole entire fall
29:11
like i can’t
29:12
i’m a capacity um but the idea here is
29:15
through a very soft upsell based on
29:18
where they’re at in the customer life
29:20
cycle that allows us to have a very
29:21
specific
29:22
message the biggest mistake you can see
29:25
and a lot of people who are just getting
29:26
the automations and it’s a rookie
29:28
mistake and i made it myself
29:29
until we really adhere to life cycle
29:31
marketing is that um
29:33
you may shoot out a lawn mowing upsell
29:36
or
29:37
fertilization upsell to everybody in
29:38
your database including the people who
29:40
have already signed up so what that does
29:42
is causes confusion
29:43
it’s probably going to cause some some
29:44
issues for your office um
29:46
but now the the blanket’s been pulled
29:49
back the cover’s been pulled back
29:50
cody because now they know it’s
29:52
automated it’s an email blast
29:54
where the difference in my opinion
29:55
between an automation and an email blast
29:58
are significantly different if an
29:59
automation is built with logic
30:01
and understanding of the customer life
30:02
cycle with with segmentation
30:05
that’s where you’re gonna win and some
30:07
of these emails
30:08
um and i’m going to show you one here in
30:10
a minute we wanted to make them look
30:11
personal
30:13
before i hop into that cody any
30:14
questions or thoughts up to that point
30:18
mike this is awesome this is taking
30:22
everything that we know is true about
30:24
marketing
30:25
putting it into service autopilot
30:28
getting service autopilot to work
30:30
for you to free up all of this time i
30:32
mean
30:33
most of these things your office staff
30:35
couldn’t even do
30:37
if you asked them to and gave them you
30:39
know as much time as they wanted there’s
30:41
only so much time in the day
30:42
you can only do this for so many
30:44
customers yeah
30:46
and and i think i’m glad you hit on that
30:47
here um is
30:49
the point of automations is not to
30:51
replace people
30:52
in your office it is truly to take the
30:55
monotonous repetitive tasks that nobody
30:56
likes doing or you don’t have time for
30:59
and allow the higher you know 20 30 100
31:02
an hour jobs to go to the actual people
31:04
in your office and if there is a manual
31:06
task like a phone call
31:07
it puts accountability and creates
31:09
predictability um and that’s i’m glad
31:11
you touched on that because that’s the
31:12
biggest concern but what if you looked
31:14
at everything on the screen here cody
31:15
what i would say is
31:16
if you’re a company from about 750 000
31:19
to about a million is what i find or
31:20
above
31:21
that process right there uh if you were
31:24
to do it all manually in the peak season
31:25
will save about 35 to 40
31:27
hours a week of manual process in your
31:30
office
31:31
so it really does and everybody’s stress
31:34
level
31:35
during busy season um it’s going to
31:38
improve
31:39
just the quality of being in the office
31:41
because everybody’s not going to be
31:42
running around like a chicken with their
31:43
head cut off
31:44
100 and the other thing too is um
31:48
i made a video about it on callahan’s
31:49
corner where we answer a lot of facebook
31:51
questions live you know every day or
31:52
every other day
31:53
uh but one of the questions submitted to
31:55
callahan’s corner was you know
31:57
what size is the appropriate size to
31:59
automate or beyond pro plus
32:01
um and obviously there’s some gray area
32:03
but i would say
32:04
working with well over i mean several
32:06
thousand clients now
32:08
um through service autopilot and in
32:10
simple growth
32:11
uh i i see i see a benefit of where
32:14
you’re going
32:15
uh probably around that 250 000 mark and
32:18
beyond
32:19
uh we used to think it was around a half
32:20
a million um but what we you kind of see
32:23
here is that level one two and three
32:26
we’ve kind of chunked out this part here
32:29
for a smaller business and then a little
32:31
bit larger business goes up to 10 to 20
32:33
days to close and then when you kind of
32:34
get
32:35
into that process then you open it up so
32:37
we kind of basically call it level one
32:39
two and three
32:40
um and if you’re building yourself
32:41
that’s where i mentioned the front of it
32:43
you don’t want to try to automate the
32:44
whole business
32:45
tackle the biggest pain points first and
32:47
then sequentially build upon that
32:49
um so that’s where i’m saying you know
32:50
you don’t have to be a million dollar
32:51
half a million dollar business to
32:52
benefit from this
32:54
uh just the ability to update credit
32:55
cards and overdue invoices and things
32:57
like that
32:58
is a huge huge um thing that’ll pay for
33:01
itself
33:02
um and just like the ar accounts
33:04
receivable
33:05
um in the early days of callaghans they
33:07
got out of control but we automated a
33:09
process that systematically followed up
33:11
on those past two invoices and when
33:12
credit cards were about to expire
33:14
or failed um it just started to buy that
33:17
consistency back
33:18
um and to get into that that
33:20
personalized view of
33:22
you know uh it needs to look personal it
33:25
doesn’t
33:25
it shouldn’t look automated this is
33:26
literally right out of my email inbox
33:28
um before we even went over to gmail uh
33:31
but this was out of 2016 and we had
33:33
almost 500 people there you can see on
33:35
the screen
33:35
that responded to this email it wasn’t
33:37
500 people sent it was
33:39
496 people actually responded to this
33:42
email and i call it a quick follow-up we
33:43
still do
33:44
but this is the email right here and
33:45
some people may have seen this but i
33:46
want to reinforce this
33:47
if you can’t read it on the screen here
33:48
it’s probably pretty small what that
33:50
email says it says hey stacy just want
33:52
to reach out to any questions regarding
33:53
your estimate
33:54
if you want me to save you a spot on the
33:55
list this season just let me know have a
33:57
great saturday
33:59
and it’s got my name underneath my cali
34:00
and you probably can’t see it on there
34:02
but the m on mike
34:03
is lowercase now everybody knows
34:05
sometimes i fail to proofread some of my
34:07
stuff going out if i’m in a hurry but
34:08
this was intentionally left with a
34:10
lowercase
34:10
m because i wanted to look like it was
34:13
sent from my iphone and if you can see
34:15
it on the screen there
34:16
it looks like it’s sent for my iphone so
34:18
this email goes out two days
34:20
after every estimate and it closes on
34:23
average right now in lawn care and home
34:25
cleaning within a percent or two either
34:26
way
34:27
20 of all the cells that you win
34:30
are usually closed on this one email
34:32
because it looks like you actually took
34:34
the time
34:35
it’s 6 6 30 in the morning after two
34:37
days every estimate to follow up
34:38
personally
34:39
um these things close lady wrote back
34:42
i’ll talk it over my husband and get
34:43
back to you asap i love the business
34:45
practice and all the info you provide up
34:47
front
34:48
so stacy loved the short term nurture
34:50
and the lead letter
34:51
because we were different just another
34:53
copy this here
34:54
uh lady wrote back she says um we have a
34:58
puppy and don’t want anything toxic in
34:59
our yard so it allowed us to upsell our
35:01
organic fertilizing so cody we built
35:03
this
35:04
uh this is the winner of 12 to maybe 15
35:06
different versions of this email and it
35:07
sounds so stupid right now saying
35:08
hey make it look like a person actually
35:10
send it don’t plaster your logo and
35:12
videos and pictures all over it
35:14
because at this point the customer life
35:15
cycle a person
35:18
or an automated person is going to
35:19
convert better than something that looks
35:21
like an email broadcast very similar
35:23
going through your facebook feed we tune
35:25
that out and advertisements and
35:26
advertising same thing when we’re in an
35:27
email
35:28
so this email uh has been a b split
35:31
tested and this was the
35:32
winner by a landslide so if you don’t
35:34
take anything away from this
35:36
if you’re going to automate your
35:37
business or even if you’re sending
35:39
manual emails make them look like
35:40
they’re sent from a person
35:42
they will interact and convert a lot
35:44
better
35:45
absolutely all right so i know we’re
35:47
almost near the top of the hours i want
35:48
to go through this a little bit quickly
35:50
but we’ve tackled your sales process
35:53
now in my business we had all this work
35:56
we almost went out of business because
35:57
we couldn’t get enough employees
35:58
uh to do the work and this was well
36:00
before the labor crisis we’re all seeing
36:01
right now
36:02
um so what i’m going to recommend is
36:04
this can be done in service autopilot
36:05
and this is what we are doing in service
36:07
autopilot
36:08
so first thing we want to do is create a
36:09
hosted landing page that’s going to be
36:11
your v2
36:12
or v3 form in an office entry form if
36:14
they come into the office so i’m going
36:16
to recommend
36:17
is the way we tackle it is english and
36:19
spanish
36:20
not textbook spanish street spanish
36:22
there’s
36:23
huge shocker that the textbook spanish
36:26
application didn’t quite convert the way
36:27
we thought it would
36:28
but once we put it more of a street
36:29
spanish um it flowed
36:31
people filled it out and it worked but
36:33
the idea is once you get them to fill
36:34
out that application we drop them in
36:37
to the or the entry point we drop them
36:39
into an online application english or
36:40
street spanish
36:41
make them jump through some virtual
36:42
hoops cody so a lot of times people are
36:44
just filling these out to stand
36:45
unemployment
36:46
let’s at least have a couple processes
36:48
here that make them walk through this
36:50
but let’s say joe’s our applicant he
36:51
gets through that now what to do or
36:53
ticket pops up in service autopilot and
36:55
says hey call
36:56
joey and set up an interview date time
36:58
he’s made it through the application
36:59
process you’d enter that into i would
37:01
recommend
37:01
what we call our employee master form if
37:04
you plug in start the
37:05
application date in time the automation
37:08
now
37:08
is going to text message joe the day
37:10
before and the week before the interview
37:12
letting him know where to show up when
37:13
to show up
37:14
in the ability to opt out of it so if
37:15
the guy’s not going to show up hopefully
37:16
gives us courtesy
37:17
because he’s already met his
37:18
unemployment threshold so you’re not
37:20
having 10 estimates and only having one
37:21
person show up maybe
37:22
which happens especially nowadays
37:25
other cool thing i would recommend doing
37:27
in this if you do it this way is
37:29
assign some homework to this guy or girl
37:30
send them out to the dmv to get a
37:32
driver’s abstract they got some skin in
37:33
the game so by the time they get to your
37:35
office
37:36
um we know they’re at least interested
37:37
and i don’t hope about you cody but i
37:39
right before covet i i had to spend some
37:40
time in the dmv
37:42
if that individual is willing to sit in
37:43
that dmv for 45 minutes to an hour
37:46
they’re committed to getting a job um
37:48
usually cost four or five bucks and we
37:50
would just literally pay him when they
37:51
showed up with that to reimburse him
37:53
uh what we’re gonna do here is create a
37:54
standardized interviewing package five
37:56
or six main questions you’re asking
37:57
every applicant
37:58
the automation in my opinion should
38:01
prompt the interviewer
38:02
to rank the applicant in a b and c
38:05
fashion this is built around
38:07
stacking the virtual bench that we talk
38:08
a lot about here in the assay ecosystem
38:10
so we’re going to go out at least once a
38:13
week and interview all the positions in
38:14
the company
38:15
whether we need them or not and the
38:16
automation ranks in a b and c and what
38:18
we did in essays we created a
38:20
custom view or filter in uh reporting
38:24
that literally allows you to say i want
38:25
all my a applicants from the last say 20
38:27
days and it
38:28
gives you a glorified laboring
38:31
or a labor pool to hire from that’s
38:33
qualified or basically a glorified
38:35
hiring checklist
38:36
so now when you need that person you’ve
38:37
got them in your database before
38:40
normally you’d have to go out and find
38:41
the person when it’s too late so we’ve
38:42
created that virtual bench
38:44
when you hire them we’re going to go out
38:46
and automatically indoctrinate them
38:48
your mission vision uh values uh jason
38:51
cupp uh
38:52
really near dear to the essay ecosystem
38:53
talks about culture a lot
38:55
so we need to indoctrinate them to that
38:57
culture peace
38:58
we concentrated more on the mission
38:59
vision values to get the alignment to
39:01
not just a paycheck but the culture
39:03
and tax documents i all know we all know
39:05
too well too in the spring
39:07
when things get crazy we don’t always
39:08
get the documents filled out when we
39:10
should we just need to get them in the
39:11
field trained up so we can get going
39:13
so we allow the automation to take care
39:15
of what should happen uh to happen each
39:17
and every time and when we built some
39:18
uh timing this so indoctrination tax
39:21
documents goes up to three and final
39:22
attempts
39:23
so one thing to keep in mind is when
39:25
you’re building your automations here
39:26
cody is you don’t want to think about
39:28
just the perfect path but what happens
39:29
if this guy or girl just
39:31
after three attempts doesn’t fill out
39:32
their tax stocks i’m guessing they’re
39:34
not a good fit if they won’t take the
39:35
time to actually get
39:36
paid then they’re probably not a good
39:38
fit so what the automation does here is
39:40
it says
39:41
hey through a task or a ticket or a to
39:44
do says hey
39:45
joe didn’t fill out his tax documents
39:47
after the third and final attempt at
39:48
this point i recommend fire and joe
39:50
um so the automation here is really
39:52
built out if you model it after this
39:54
to buy time back from you and your team
39:57
to screen out the right applicants to
39:58
only get them the
39:59
the interview and then after you
40:01
interview them here we indoctrinate them
40:03
and on boredom
40:05
before we train them and test them again
40:08
and then the final part here is kind of
40:10
my favorite
40:11
um we go out and actually we made
40:14
about 36 videos on how to use service
40:17
autopilot in the office
40:19
with testing so we created an online
40:21
automated video training series
40:23
to and basically on board any new admins
40:26
so that took
40:27
sometimes a 20 or 30 40 day period to
40:29
get someone up and running 100
40:31
on sa now we’ve standardized it to about
40:33
a 7 to 10 day learning curve and they’re
40:35
up and running on their own
40:37
and then that worked so well that we
40:38
went out and actually took a tripod a
40:40
wireless mic for about 100 bucks
40:41
and a smartphone and made videos in the
40:44
field how to do every service we did
40:46
so instead of going out and buying an
40:47
online generic uh
40:50
process to train your field staff we
40:52
created a video training process inside
40:55
our business
40:56
and what we found is that cut off at
40:58
least a week to a week and a half of
40:59
learning curve because we had them watch
41:01
the videos before we ever put them in
41:02
the field
41:04
and that was huge but if you’re looking
41:06
to create a turnkey business
41:08
that’s almost like a franchise without
41:09
the franchise fees this was one of the
41:11
things that allowed me to leave the
41:12
business at 30 days of pop
41:13
because every time we hired a new person
41:15
myself the guy who ran the business had
41:17
to be there
41:18
the first two to three weeks to get this
41:20
individual up and trained
41:22
um and then the final thing here is the
41:24
employment contract
41:25
and handbook so these are things once
41:26
again i mentioned jason cupp
41:28
um really really good resource for these
41:30
type of things
41:31
but the problem is even when you had
41:33
them in place things got crazy in the
41:35
spring
41:36
half the time you you’d forget to get
41:37
the person to sign it or actually go
41:39
through it
41:39
so now the automation tracks what should
41:41
happen and make sure it happens when it
41:43
happens now the business owner
41:44
manager doesn’t have to babysit the
41:46
process so as we wrap it up here in
41:48
the last few minutes here cody any
41:50
thoughts comments around this before i
41:52
dive into the third
41:53
final hurdle to get to that million mark
41:55
and beyond when you’re automating your
41:56
business
41:57
mike i think you’re you’re touching on
42:00
one of the really important things about
42:02
automations
42:03
that i think people forget about is that
42:05
automations act as
42:06
guard rails for the processes in your
42:09
business
42:10
you’ve set things up to work a certain
42:12
way but when things get crazy
42:14
that’s when we start cutting corners and
42:16
skipping things that we know are
42:18
important but we just
42:19
we don’t have time to deal with it right
42:21
now
42:23
um and having an automation that pushes
42:25
all of these things that handles them
42:26
for you
42:28
acts as those guard rails that keeps you
42:29
within the bounds of what you
42:31
said you were going to do correct you
42:34
know you couldn’t
42:35
it’s kind of like bumper bowling with
42:36
the kids i mean it kind of keeps you in
42:37
that lean it keeps you focused
42:38
and if you start veering off it it takes
42:40
care of it for you so the final part
42:42
really cody is
42:42
this was kind of my final journey to be
42:44
an absentee owner um
42:46
like i call it repetitive tasks but what
42:48
triggers what we do is we just take
42:49
what’s in the business owner’s head
42:51
um and obviously if you’re in my head
42:52
that’s probably a scary place but what
42:53
we do is we go in and delegate and
42:55
automate
42:56
um and what we found inside service
42:57
autopilot is there’s actually seven
42:59
core areas of business can be automated
43:01
on service autopilot
43:02
um and they are sales customer service
43:06
scheduling billing office manager
43:08
maintenance and owner
43:09
and what i found is if we’re not there
43:12
telling people what to do every day
43:13
every week every month quarter or even
43:15
annually it’s not happening
43:17
um so now that you’ve got 20 30
43:20
employees that’s great
43:21
you get sucked back as a full-time
43:22
daycare so
43:24
you know you thought you got yourself
43:26
out of the fire but you really haven’t
43:27
now you’re just
43:28
literally fighting fires all day by
43:29
telling people what to do and if they
43:31
don’t do it you got to follow behind
43:32
them
43:32
so just an idea here of kind of some
43:35
things you can do here
43:36
um if you’re watching the recorded
43:38
version you want to zoom in that’s
43:39
awesome but these are like the 38 or 39
43:41
core things
43:42
um when people work with simple growth
43:44
as a certified advisor we just give them
43:45
these are like some of the big things
43:47
um that we recommend on a repetitive
43:49
nature that you should be doing
43:51
but a real quick example here is let’s
43:52
say you got a full-time sales guy his
43:54
name’s joe
43:55
and joe’s job is to go out and do all
43:58
his estimates today
44:00
and make his follow-up phone calls if
44:01
you’re not utilizing ringless voicemail
44:03
bombs
44:04
so what happens is when joe signs in he
44:06
gets
44:07
a notification that these are all the
44:08
things he needs to do at 5 or 5
44:10
30 the automation will notify joe if he
44:13
doesn’t have his job done via text or
44:15
email depending how you set it up
44:17
you know based on the severity of it and
44:18
then it can auto automatically notify
44:21
the business manager
44:22
or owner via text or email depending how
44:24
important it is
44:26
um so what we do is we allow the
44:28
automation to handle the
44:29
delegation of repetitive tasks with a
44:31
deadline and instructions
44:33
and if it doesn’t happen it notifies the
44:34
person responsible and escalates a
44:36
person to come in
44:38
uh physically to manage the process so
44:41
we’re leveraging the power of service
44:42
autopilot to do this and a quick
44:44
story is actually cody when i was at gie
44:46
with you and bear and a bunch of the
44:47
service autopilot
44:48
team um when i had camel hands that the
44:51
the gentleman that ran callahan’s
44:53
had a repetitive task to do to winterize
44:55
all the fertilizing tanks for
44:57
uh the northeast because after a certain
44:58
point things get cold they freeze and
45:00
the tanks would blow up
45:01
uh but he inside that repetitive task he
45:04
had a grocery list or a shopping list of
45:06
the things he needed materials
45:07
so how many gallons of rv fluid per tank
45:10
um
45:10
written instructions how to do it pilots
45:12
checklist and the manufacturer’s video
45:14
all embedded inside this
45:16
so everything he needed to know was
45:18
inside that too so now
45:20
the information and everything was
45:22
relying on what was in the software not
45:24
as me out on the floor of gi out in the
45:27
middle of kentucky
45:29
so my phone didn’t ring because the guy
45:30
knew what he needed to do he knew how to
45:31
do it
45:32
and he had a video and the pilot’s
45:33
checklist and by the time i got onto
45:35
that plane
45:36
um that friday night if it wasn’t done
45:39
literally that was the day i would have
45:40
got a text message saying dude you
45:41
better get back and
45:42
winterize the spray tanks um but that’s
45:44
the power of automations and what we’re
45:47
looking at here
45:48
and how we want to dive into that um
45:51
and i know we’ve been talking a lot
45:53
about just automation so i want to be
45:55
conscious of the time here with your
45:57
uh top of the hour here but in the last
45:59
two to three minutes cody i want to hit
46:00
on some other things because i think a
46:01
lot of people
46:02
assume that it’s the automation they
46:05
need to
46:06
build themselves or help with the launch
46:08
team or off the market place some of the
46:09
free ones the paid ones
46:11
um all that but there is automations
46:13
that are built inside service autopilot
46:15
that are just
46:16
part of the system um so the automated
46:18
part of
46:20
invoicing on a daily weekly or monthly
46:22
basis depending how you the system set
46:23
up those invoices automatically generate
46:25
for you
46:26
and if you have a quickbook sync online
46:28
or desktop it automatically syncs and
46:30
creates those
46:30
invoices in quickbooks um natively
46:34
jonathan and john the founders of
46:36
service autopilot have this vision
46:39
of what a service business software
46:41
should look like
46:42
even before we actually had custom
46:44
automations um and then the last thing i
46:46
want to hit on here is
46:48
this is just a a snippet out of my kpi
46:50
demo so it’s key performance indicators
46:52
um and the thing that has been bothering
46:55
me as of late cody is a lot of people
46:56
are talking in the facebook groups right
46:58
now industry specific
46:59
lawn care a little bit in the cleaning
47:00
industry more lawn care right now
47:02
because we’re thinking about
47:02
renewing contracts for next year is
47:06
that we should raise our prices by two
47:08
or three dollars a cut or as a
47:09
percentage across
47:10
the board so i’ve got two sample clients
47:12
here directly out of a job cost and
47:13
report
47:14
um and if you’re an essay in the report
47:16
center it looks like a little toaster
47:17
icon you can download this
47:19
and bring it into excel or google sheets
47:21
but this lawn mowing was a 54
47:23
cut and the actual revenue per man hour
47:25
was fifty four dollars and twenty eight
47:27
cents and sixty dollars and thirty one
47:28
cents
47:28
on average we generated fifty seven
47:32
dollars and thirty cents
47:33
per man hour and this is literally from
47:36
the mobiles
47:37
or somebody printing them out and
47:38
manually typing the nsa but this is
47:40
this is the real deal cody this is this
47:43
these two jobs on average generated
47:45
57.30
47:47
so if we’re making 57.30 and we’re going
47:50
in and saying you know what in 2021 or
47:52
whatever time you’re watching this video
47:53
next year we’re going in we need
47:55
we we’ve met with an industry consultant
47:57
and we know we need to charge
47:59
60 an hour so we plug that in this sheet
48:03
what the sheet does is tells you your
48:06
current price is 54.
48:08
the new price has to go up 2.56 cents to
48:12
the penny
48:12
to 56.84 that’s what you need to charge
48:15
to hit your hourly goal
48:17
so we’re only raising the prices on the
48:19
accounts
48:21
that um require it and we talked about
48:24
it before but when you go out and do
48:26
this
48:26
and you do a wholesale price update
48:28
you’re raising the prices on your most
48:30
profitable clients and you’re forcing
48:32
them to go out and shop
48:34
you you’re raising your prices on your
48:36
least profitable clients they already
48:37
know they’re getting a deal so they’re
48:38
staying with you
48:39
so that’s what you’ve done is just
48:40
taking your most profitable clients and
48:41
alienating them
48:42
um the cool thing is like if you plug
48:44
this number and made it 50
48:46
and we’re making 57 when the sheet
48:48
updates lo and behold you don’t have to
48:49
change that
48:50
price so very similar to jack welch only
48:53
raising or getting rid of the bottom 10
48:54
percent
48:55
we can do this in service autopilot so
48:57
this is the manual approach
48:59
but here’s something kind of cool cody
49:02
so this is a test account but i’ve got
49:05
all the
49:05
services here um in here and what you
49:09
see here is
49:10
on average this job needs over the
49:12
course of the year needs to be raised by
49:13
ten dollars
49:14
all these are zeros um obviously this is
49:17
fictitious data like this one here needs
49:18
to be raised by 551 dollars of this
49:26
know what but the idea here is you can
49:28
build
49:29
job costing reports and put in that
49:31
variable of 50 or 60 bucks an hour
49:35
and then automate it yep so if you’re in
49:37
here
49:38
i believe the limit right now is up to
49:40
five reports but if you kind of hover
49:42
over this little guy here i can send
49:45
this once
49:46
i can send it weekly monthly and i can
49:49
send it to anybody in my organization i
49:50
want so you can
49:51
take the data from the report center
49:54
and automate the reporting to the people
49:57
that need to know what’s going on when
49:58
they need one
49:59
you know when it’s going on and and get
50:01
that in there so once again
50:03
these are reports if you’re busy in the
50:04
spring you’re probably not going to have
50:05
time or
50:06
it’s the last thing on your mind to
50:07
actually go out and automate that being
50:09
sent to your team
50:10
but now you can even send it to yourself
50:11
so if you’re in the field still being an
50:12
entrepreneur
50:13
uh on the truck that’s great like i love
50:15
that i love my time on the truck
50:17
but man would it have been cool cody if
50:19
i could have got that once a week or
50:21
daily to know how did i
50:22
actually do the day before to keep you
50:25
know keep me on
50:26
point so that’s kind of all i got for
50:28
you today cody but uh it just
50:30
you know a lot of people been asking
50:31
about what does that service business
50:32
look like
50:33
uh fully automated and
50:36
in my opinion that’s it um and some of
50:38
the stuff is already automated in
50:40
service autopilot without you doing
50:41
anything
50:41
but they’ve given you such power between
50:43
the report center and automations now
50:45
to really go out and just dominate your
50:49
competition
50:50
absolutely uh as always
50:53
great great stuff mike uh these systems
50:56
if you’re able to implement them
50:58
into a service business will help you
51:01
like mike said at the top of this
51:02
move from working in the business to
51:06
working on the business and that’s where
51:07
we want to
51:08
end up yeah and i’ll just throw it out
51:10
there too as a certified advisor of
51:12
service autopilot
51:13
uh right now we’re not gonna be doing it
51:15
for much longer but we are still
51:16
offering a free
51:17
audit of service autopilot so if you
51:20
want to hop on a call with myself dylan
51:22
or anybody else in the simple growth
51:23
team for a half hour
51:24
no charge just to help the ecosystem
51:26
getting ready for the end of the season
51:28
going into next year
51:29
um if you want to drop us a call or
51:32
just hop on our website and the website
51:34
chat simplegrosssystems.com
51:36
we’re going to give it a 30 minute free
51:38
audit um there’s no pitch nothing like
51:40
that
51:40
it’s just literally this is what we see
51:43
and based on your goals these are the
51:46
pain points i would hit first and some
51:47
of it may not even be automations it may
51:48
be pricing matrix
51:50
custom fields lead sources whatever that
51:52
is um
51:53
but dylan and i who both have run pretty
51:55
successful seven plus figure businesses
51:57
amongst you know in the addition of
51:58
simpler team we built this audit
52:01
yeah predominantly for service autopilot
52:03
users just to be able to get the most
52:04
out of the system
52:05
um and a lot of the things when people
52:06
hop on there aren’t even aware this
52:07
people aren’t aware the system does it
52:09
so we just show them where it is and hey
52:10
here’s a video how to do it yourself
52:12
so trying to still pay it forward before
52:14
things get crazy in our our crazy sales
52:15
season here coming up so
52:17
um appreciate it cody once again essay
52:19
weekly talk show coming at you
52:20
live 1 p.m eastern 12 p.m central every
52:24
friday gonna have carla
52:25
from the landscaping accountant coming
52:28
on next friday the 18th
52:30
uh we’ll see you there once again cody
52:32
appreciate it and uh
52:33
i believe there’s still a short time
52:35
left for essay thrive the virtual summit
52:38
um special ticket i believe it’s a
52:41
hundred dollars off
52:43
go through uh i believe the end of
52:46
september
52:47
uh okay so if you have an email in your
52:49
inbox that says otherwise
52:51
it’s correct absolutely make sure you
52:55
grab those i know they’ve been selling
52:56
like hotcakes from what i heard from the
52:57
essay team
52:58
myself martha woodward obviously marcus
53:00
sheridan the keynote of the sales lion
53:02
uh amongst uh a whole bunch of other
53:05
experts from service autopilot clarence
53:07
and other industry experts so i think
53:09
the full speaking list
53:10
it just keeps evolving as it it’s been
53:12
being released now so look forward to
53:13
see you next friday cody once again
53:15
thanks buddy
53:16
thanks mike if you like this show
53:20
you might want to check out our
53:21
resources at www.startsimplegrowth.com
53:26
while you’re there enter to win an
53:27
estimator chat bot
53:29
mike callahan is available for private
53:32
coaching