Transcript

00:00

You’re listening to the Simple Growth Podcast. The show that

00:03

helps business owners get their life back. Here’s your host,

00:06

Mike Callahan. Welcome back to the SA Weekly Talk Show. Your

00:11

host, Mike Callahan right here coming in a little bit earlier

00:13

right before the holiday weekend coming up in the states

00:17

and uh happy Canada Day for our Canadian viewers as well. Uh

00:21

missed last week cuz I’ve been really knee deep in uh helping

00:24

people as a certified adviser of Service Autopilots set up

00:27

their systems with uh two-day, one-on-one deep dives but

00:31

really important I thought to get back and answer some of the

00:33

questions that have been presubmitted for the SA Weekly

00:37

Talk Show. So, what we’re gonna be talking about today, I’m

00:39

gonna open up my screen and dive into it but what we’re

00:41

really gonna talk about is um the office workflow. So, one

00:44

service autopilot is set up. How do we utilize a

00:48

standardized workflow? So, if you have separate admin or

00:51

different people working in your office or maybe you have a

00:53

manager working in the field and out of the field. How do we

00:55

create a predictable workflow to make sure the data intake

00:59

and the call intake from leads and estimates and everything

01:02

else that goes on in your office is standardized. So,

01:05

what I like to call it is the six to eight screens of

01:07

success. So, we’re gonna do is take all the features and

01:10

functions of service autopilot. Once it’s fully set up and

01:13

consolidate a standardized workflow for predictable

01:16

results and um a process that the business owner and manager

01:20

doesn’t have to babysit and if the business owner or manager

01:23

is still working in the office or in the field, that’s totally

01:25

fine. What this is gonna do is streamline your and start to

01:29

buy some of that time back. So, without any further delay, what

01:32

I’m gonna do is open up um a slide deck here. I had some

01:37

problems with my second monitor so it’s actually gonna have

01:38

some previous slides on the left but uh nonetheless, you

01:42

will be able to see exactly what I’m talking about and how

01:44

to actually build this um system in your business inside

01:48

Service Autopilot. So, uh I’m really excited to show you this

01:53

but basically, we’re gonna talk about to get your service

01:55

autopilot pilot ready for twenty twenty-one. So, La times

01:58

in the spring season we have an influx of work our offices

02:02

aren’t necessarily set up for success uh we’re kinda

02:05

scrambling to get it going but right now going in uh to July

02:08

is really probably one of the best times to do that cuz

02:11

things are gonna start to slow down if the holiday season um

02:14

far as the craziness let’s focus on getting process and

02:18

systems built in and built uh with a process before things

02:22

ramp back up the end of August into September again and in

02:25

addition what we find is most business owners here after the

02:28

will start to take their foot off the gas pedal. Whether it’s

02:31

working on the systems in the business or even in the sales

02:34

inside the business. So, really it’s important right now to

02:37

dial in and really accelerate because bottom line profits are

02:41

made in Qthree and especially Q four. So, rolling into just the

02:45

beginning of uh Qthree, quarter three. If you’re watching this

02:49

starting in July, this is a prime time to actually dial

02:51

this in and get this going for yourself. So, uh without any

02:55

further delay, I’m gonna kinda walk through and build this

02:57

out. So, First thing, we wanna look at what are the key

02:59

factors for better profits with Service Autopilot in twenty

03:02

twenty-one. So, we wanna be able to create estimates and

03:04

ensure profits, have jobs with budgeted times that can be

03:07

tracked for accountability, jobs, um that have job costing

03:12

and overhead recovery built into them. A process ensures

03:15

that budgets are being reviewed daily. So, we’re gonna review

03:17

how we do this in the office. Public accountability and

03:20

rewarded team members based on production and quality. So, we

03:23

not only want a production standard but a quality standard

03:26

to go having systems that track and report this automatically

03:30

for you. So, one thing that is kinda crazy is we’ve got all

03:34

this data coming into the software and it’s really um

03:37

it’s really important for us to use especially if you’ve got

03:40

good data in and good data coming out, we need to go in

03:43

and actually take the time to look at it. Well, um either

03:46

later today or on the next essay weekly, depending on the

03:48

time constraints here, I will actually show you how to get

03:50

this out data out of essay automatically for even able to

03:54

make those financial decisions and be able to see where you’re

03:56

at every day every week, every month, and at the end of the

03:58

year and at the end of that, we wanna be able to set a process

04:02

for raising prices with no emotions. So, based on the

04:04

actual job, not just going out haphazardly and raising our

04:07

prices $5 a visit or a percentage across the board.

04:10

Wanna be able to take that data inside service autopilot and be

04:14

able to raise our prices too depending on average uh with no

04:17

emotion. So, those are the things we’re gonna be talking

04:18

about but the main thing we’re gonna be focusing on today is

04:22

what is the workflow in the office leading up to these

04:25

things to create success and then I’ll have another um

04:28

probably next week, the SA Weekly Talk Show will go over

04:30

how do we actually take all this data with the standardized

04:34

system and automate it and go in and uh have price raising

04:37

and things like that. So, that’s what we’re gonna be

04:40

diving into. So, what we wanna do is standardize our lead

04:43

intake for predictable and scalable results. So, uh back

04:46

in the day, we were running all the estimates out of the

04:48

estimate truck here. So, we had a printer, we had a laptop, and

04:52

a WiFi connection. We’re running service autopilot

04:54

literally right out of the truck. Uh on the other side of

04:58

the screen here, you can see, uh this is me actually at a uh

05:02

print house where we went out and sent uh probably about

05:06

forty to $45,000 of direct mail uh to properties um that were

05:12

surrounding our existing client base as well as every door

05:16

every door direct mailings to all the neighborhoods that we

05:20

serviced and the surrounding neighborhoods around them but

05:23

as we went in and exploded the lead intake and the estimate

05:27

request, we needed a process. So, you can’t mail out

05:31

forty-five, forty to $45,000 worth of advertising in thirty

05:35

to 35 days and um not have a process in place to handle it.

05:39

So, this is one thing that I learned uh when I actually went

05:42

to Service Autopilot’s original office from Jonathan, the

05:45

co-founder of Service Autopilot and of the Lawn Care

05:47

Millionaire. Well, Jonathan um helped me kinda develop this

05:52

process because basically, I went to their office before we

05:56

went really nuts and blew past a million. I wanted to make

05:59

sure the office and the workflow Inside Service

06:01

Autopilot was set up in such a way that it could handle the

06:05

load of calls coming in and we could provide a great customer

06:08

experience externally for our leads and clients as well as

06:11

internally for our staff and not have them go crazy. So,

06:14

after four or 5 years after meeting with Jonathan, this is

06:18

the process I refined in my office and we help now other

06:21

companies do this as well as a certified adviser but the first

06:24

place you wanna start looking at is and it seems very

06:26

simplistic and if you already have service autopilot, this

06:28

may seem like review but Trust me, this is where the benefit

06:32

comes in and this is where we go in and train all the new

06:36

admin that we work with to this process. So, this is a very,

06:39

very important thing but we should be going into the green

06:42

plus icon here and adding a lead. So, we’re always entering

06:45

a new person in the systems, a lead, not a client. Reason

06:48

being is we wanna be able to go in and be able to see how many

06:51

people are leads that can become a client and then how

06:53

many people are a closed-out lead that are beyond the point

06:56

of no return and then through marketing, we can actually go

06:58

out and nerd them and then upsell them a service when

07:03

they’re ready to buy but the idea is we need to get their

07:06

first name and last name in here. If it’s a commercial

07:08

client, we’re putting the company’s name in here and

07:11

we’re going in and filling out the service address that’s

07:14

gonna automatically populate the billing address and we

07:17

wanna make sure that we have um Email and II recommend putting

07:23

all the phone numbers in the cellphone field because it is

07:26

going to be able to tap into two-way texting natively in the

07:29

message center as well as automations. Now, if it’s not a

07:32

cellphone, that’s okay. Eventually, it may turn into a

07:34

cellphone because Most landlines are going to voice

07:37

over IP which acts like a cellphone, receive, and send

07:41

text messaging as well as most landlines are now going to

07:44

cellphones as well. So, that’s kind of the main area that we

07:46

need to take a look at here. One other thing while I’m

07:49

looking at master property, if you have one master property,

07:53

let’s say a management group, we have multiple subproperties

07:55

below that, you can hit that in all your properties. So, you

07:58

can assign that to a master property. If it’s a new

08:01

property underneath a master property. So, next thing is

08:04

under the tab. We always wanna go in into in the account type,

08:09

commercial or residential. Even if you do only one of the other

08:12

residential or commercial, highly recommend you putting

08:14

this in here. Reason being, it’s great for database

08:17

segmentation for your marketing. So, automating um

08:21

residential, commercial, uh different marketing through

08:24

automations. You can have different communication versus

08:27

residential commercial and it’s also a great place to start to

08:30

segment your reporting as well. So, by clicking this, you can

08:33

dial into the uh report center by Logi Inside Service

08:37

Autopilot and really dial into your commercial and residential

08:40

work as well. So, I’ve that is a major thing that we wanna

08:43

take a look at and have our team do. So, if we go back,

08:47

first, we’re filling this in, first name, last name, company,

08:49

name, service, address, billing address, Email, cellphone. Next

08:54

tab across the top is details, commercial to residential and

08:57

then the third tab is the uh billing tab if we wanted to go

09:01

in here. Actually, we need, we skipped one here. So, we’re

09:04

down to the bottom, we’re going to the third tab, the sales tab

09:07

source. How do they hear about us? Was it from the Everydoor

09:10

Direct Mailing? Was it a refer by a client that already exist.

09:13

We wanna go and be able to track how did they hear about

09:15

us? Once again, we’re going into the reports later and say,

09:18

how many people came from this marketing source? What was the

09:22

ad spend? And then we’re gonna be able to figure out what is

09:24

the conversion ratio. So, from lead to client, per marketing

09:27

source and we’re gonna get a average client acquisition cost

09:32

from that and once again, a client lifetime value. So, a

09:36

Facebook ad may cost you $150 to get a new client and they

09:40

maybe worth say a to $10,000 on average where a home adviser ad

09:44

may cost you $30 to get the client but they’re only worth

09:47

two to $300 on average so obviously the higher cost of

09:51

acquisition through Facebook is higher but the client lifetime

09:54

value is probably gonna be better than let’s say

09:56

HomeAdvisor ad um obviously making this up fictitiously

10:00

each market’s different how that’s gonna run out but you

10:02

get the idea but the cool thing is if your admin is sticking

10:05

this in twelve to 8 months from now you’re gonna have all that

10:08

data your fingers have automatically pulled up through

10:11

I’ll show you some screenshots of those reports. This is how

10:13

we build a marketing system. So, a lot of times we’re just

10:16

haphazardly right down on a piece of paper in the office.

10:19

We need to get this in and take it in in a standardized way.

10:22

I’m gonna show you another way to do that with a phone intake

10:25

form but we wanna tackle those areas and then last thing, once

10:29

they become a client, um we can take a look at it. We have

10:32

billing here and this is where that’s gonna be. So, we can set

10:34

when to invoice. So, whether it’s daily, weekly, monthly, or

10:37

custom day of the week. Say that the fifteenth of every

10:39

month if that’s on you need to do in your business but this is

10:42

where we can override the defaults of the system and then

10:46

we have office notes as well so those are the main areas that

10:49

we’re training in admin to for basic workflow that’s

10:52

streamlined but once again we’re really only working one

10:54

tab in the system we’re gonna consolidate that workflow down

10:57

to the sixty-eight screens of success now the next thing is

11:00

if you’re using uh Pro Plus in service autopilot highly

11:04

recommended that’s the automations part it’s gonna

11:07

give you the ability to marketing uh automations in to

11:10

automate up to five of these reports that we’re looking at.

11:13

You can have them automatically Emailed daily, weekly, monthly,

11:16

quarterly, whatever you want but that pro plus subscription

11:19

is gonna be a valuable marketing. It’s gonna give you

11:21

this A for auto assist and it’s gonna give you the ability to

11:24

automate up to five reports and the main thing here is that we

11:29

want to go in under this A for auto assist and this is a

11:32

shortcut key. So, this is ideal, ideal because we’re once

11:36

we’re working this lead or client screen, we’re not going

11:38

in and trying to click on a bunch of things to get where

11:41

we’re at. We’re gonna streamline the workflow. Once

11:43

again, we’re working the same screen and we’re gonna get that

11:46

admin trained up as quick as possible. So, what I’ve got is

11:48

a fillable lead sheet or phone intake form here and we click

11:52

that and what that’s gonna do is literally go in. So, Debbie

11:56

Sardone of Cleaning Business Fundamentals, CBF has allowed

11:58

us to share this uh but we make this for lawn care and home

12:01

cleaning companies, pest control, uh but this is

12:04

something that um I kinda developed when I was using

12:07

Service Autopilot. My and now they’re helping people set it

12:10

up is that we really wanna create a standardized form. So,

12:15

first name, last name, cellphone. If they didn’t

12:18

select how they heard about us, we’re gonna ask about that. Is

12:20

this a one-timer ongoing service? Are you looking for

12:23

weekly or biweekly mowing or weekly or biweekly cleaning? Um

12:27

have you ever hired a professional before? What’s

12:30

important when hiring a professional? So, you get the

12:32

idea. We’re going in and grabbing the information that

12:34

you need um standardized from your admin staff and basically,

12:39

this can be um saved and call fields on the back end and

12:43

easily located um on the bottom of the leader client screen. So

12:46

once again, we’re working one screen fully systematized and

12:49

it can be delegated for predictable results. We can

12:51

train somebody within five to 10 minutes how to fill this

12:53

form out and then they’re getting the information you

12:56

need each and every time. Next thing is a lot of people when

13:00

we work with them uh do not have website lead captures. So,

13:03

they may have a WordPress form or something with Wix uh but

13:06

basically, what you really need to do in my opinion is go into

13:09

forms and autopilot um and go in and create an estimate

13:13

request form and that estimate request form is going to be

13:19

placed on your website. So, the published tab and you give the

13:22

stripped HGML codes, your webmaster. They’re mobile

13:25

responsive. They work great. Uh we have a couple of people up

13:27

here that have given us uh permission to share some of the

13:30

stuff that we’ve built with them or they’re using uh

13:32

Garrett Matthews out of Shreveport, Louisiana. Uh this

13:35

is a service autopilot form. So, you put your first name,

13:37

last name, some information, what services you’re interested

13:39

in and then at goes in its segments, a short-term nurture,

13:42

and based on the service they’re interested in and it

13:45

also notifies somebody in your office through a ticket now or

13:48

a to-do basically to go out and get that estimate done. Other

13:53

thing I really recommend is tying in your service autopilot

13:55

forms into your social media and bots. So, uh one of the

13:59

next shifts for if you saw my essay um talk virtually last

14:03

year, we talked about the new shift in buying. So, we’re

14:06

talking about on-demand buying with the expansion of and

14:10

everything being accelerated. So, your Ubers, your Netflix,

14:12

your Amazon. They figured this out. Well, lawn care and home

14:15

cleaning companies or service businesses can do this as well.

14:17

So, what we’re looking at is Rob Treppandale here of

14:20

Treppandale Landscape has got it dialed in but Rob has a bot

14:23

on his social media here. Um and this is what we’ve built

14:27

out for ’em but it ties in the service autopilot and

14:29

automatically syncs all the data in the service autopilot

14:32

including property specific pricing. So, what we’ve done is

14:35

built this bot out. It goes through uh an API where two

14:38

softwares can talk. It pulls the information from the square

14:41

footage of the lawn or the property into the bot and

14:45

automatically calculates a price based on Rob’s pricing in

14:48

a price matrix. So, once we’re again, we’re taking that bot

14:51

for on-demand buying and sinking it with service

14:53

autopilot and pumping the lead information in and potentially

14:57

the new client information where they can sign up

14:59

automatically through the bot in the essay. So, no double

15:01

entry and we’re eliminating that multiple system chaos.

15:05

Now, it’s not only for social media uh Rob has entrusted us

15:10

to actually get this on his website. So, we gave him the

15:12

code and now he has a live bot on a social and his website.

15:16

So, live on demand quoting, signing up, and then it sinks

15:19

into service autopilot and triggers um the additional

15:22

tickets and information that needs to happen with that new

15:25

job sold over the bot, social media, uh Facebook, Instagram,

15:30

and the website. Now, the last thing you hear is best practice

15:32

is um an exit pop up on the website for that bot. So, this

15:37

literally when it you hover to get off that website, maybe go

15:39

to the your next competitor, um this pops up, Get an instant

15:43

quote and that happens within two to 3 minutes but the idea

15:45

is we wanna have all these different entry ports being

15:48

standardized into service autopilot, no double entry, and

15:51

duplicate checking. So, the way we’ve done this is we’ve used a

15:55

Vthree form with dupe checking and synced uh Facebook

15:58

Messenger bots, and the estimate request from the

16:01

website and we drive them all in the service autopilot for

16:04

standardized intake where the admin would take over now. Now,

16:07

next thing is, if you’re using this uh on the Messenger

16:10

platform or even an SA, what we’re gonna recommend is SMS,

16:15

um text messaging, So, we can actually take that bot and

16:19

still sync it with service autopilot but they don’t have

16:21

to be on your website or social media. They can actually text

16:24

AA number um or use a QR code and actually go through the

16:29

same automated online um on demand buying estimate through

16:34

text message and we can use this on our websites, vehicles,

16:38

mailers, nine arounds, and door hangers. Um so, this is a great

16:41

way to create another area of online, on-demand buying of

16:46

estimating and then drive it in service autopilot with no

16:48

duplicate or with no with no duplicates. Basically, it’s

16:50

duplicate checking and it triggers a ticket or to do in

16:53

the system for someone in the office to make sure it’s

16:56

followed up on what should happen happens each and every

16:58

time. So, really, really important in my mind when we

17:01

train this out and build this out in your office. We’ve got

17:04

the website, social media, Instagram, text messaging, and

17:08

QR codes all now being synced into service autopilots. Visual

17:13

clues. So, once again, we don’t want a death by a thousand

17:16

clicks. If we’re not training a new admin, they’re gonna go and

17:18

build their own kind of workflow. Well, I recommend

17:21

kind of using this workflow and you may tweak it for your

17:24

office but this is what we’ve done with hundreds of people

17:26

here um and at SA six, when I gave my talk, this is exactly

17:31

what I was talking about with Chris Folky who um now works

17:34

with launch and support. They’re doing an amazing job

17:36

over there at Service Autopilot um but really as a certified

17:39

adviser, I’m trying to come in and and help uh build a

17:42

workflow at least expose the workflow that uh we used in my

17:46

seven-figure business as well. Um Aaron says, love this.

17:50

Aaron, thanks for the feedback, brother. I hope this is

17:52

helpful. So, uh next thing is if the when you’re searching

17:56

here on the magnifying glass, you’ve got basically four types

17:59

of people in the system. So, you have a lead and that’s that

18:03

little avatar of the person with the red L. Now, what I’m

18:07

gonna recommend is if we lose an estimate and they don’t have

18:10

a service with us, we’re gonna close that lead out and there

18:13

would be no avatar. So, you’ve either got a lead or a closed

18:16

lead. Now, we can see them but when we go into the this uh

18:19

magnifying glass. Now, we have visual clues. So, the other

18:21

visual clue is this long uh gray bar here. So, we can see

18:26

that that long gray bar is another visual clue that it’s a

18:28

lead because when they become a client, there’s three distinct

18:31

columns. So, once again, we’re training visual clues to

18:34

minimize the clicks and really stay focused on these

18:37

sixty-eight screens of success. Now, on the left here, you can

18:40

see this red L, that’s a lead. There’s nothing here. This is a

18:43

closed lead, the little avatar, the person but not next to it

18:47

is a client and now that avatar with a diagonal slashed through

18:51

it is a cancelled client. So, now, we’ve created a

18:53

segmentation for reporting and visual clues where people are

18:56

  1. Now, if someone cancels and they come back and become a

18:59

client, we can convert that cancelled client back into a

19:02

client or we can take the close lead and convert it back into a

19:04

lead, estimate it, and that event These are the different

19:08

areas for reporting that are really important. So, we’ve set

19:11

the foundational workflow um all the way through. Now,

19:16

action items for success, this can be done in Vtwo or Vthree.

19:21

Both work really well. Uh we actually use uh with Simple

19:25

Growth as a certified adviser. We use the Vthree forms

19:27

exclusively for website lead capture. Um they’ve got a

19:31

couple extra things in there that work especially duplicate

19:34

checking um and a code and that can be manipulated uh a little

19:38

bit more uh but the main things you’re looking at whether it’s

19:41

Vtwo or Vthree uh I’m gonna stick with Vthree here um you

19:45

want your first name and last name in here they need to be

19:47

mapped back right here to first name last name the address

19:51

needs to be mapped back to service address so when the

19:54

software sees that information filled in it maps it back to

19:57

the particular leader client um other thing that you’re gonna

20:00

need to do is we want to maybe create some tags on submit so

20:04

if we have some tags um basing on what services they want. We

20:09

wanna auto approved create on submit and we wanna create and

20:12

submit the the uh lead on submit. So, if that auto auto

20:16

approved create on submit and create on submit is not

20:19

checked, that form basically will take a snapshot of it and

20:22

they’ll be sitting on the leader client’s record but that

20:25

data as far as the custom fields or the variables that

20:28

you’re collecting will not sit on the actual leader client’s

20:31

record when we’re going down and looking at. So, once again,

20:34

we wanna minimize the clicks and just streamline the We

20:36

gotta have that all hooked up once before we deploy them and

20:40

that’s gonna be also for your phone intake form as well. So,

20:44

action items for success, we wanna learn about why we’re

20:49

winning and losing these estimates and the reasons. So,

20:51

we wanna go to the gear icon in the upper right hand corner and

20:55

we’re gonna go into estimate reasons right here and these

20:57

are the estimate reasons. So, you can add an estimate reason.

21:00

So, if someone wins an estimate or loses, you’re asking like,

21:04

hey, missus Smith, you don’t be asking, why did you hire us? Or

21:06

hey, uh unfortunately, you’re not going with this but if you

21:09

don’t mind me asking, why are you not going with us? Well,

21:12

They decided to do themselves. They gave the business to a

21:15

friend. We were too expensive. We never got back to ’em in

21:18

time. What are these issues so we can start to track and see

21:21

why we’re winning and losing work. There may be some issues

21:23

that we can dial in once we have some data on it to

21:26

actually go and improve our customer service and workflow.

21:29

But if we don’t track it, we don’t know. Data talks, emotion

21:32

walks. So, next thing is the cancel service reason. So, when

21:36

people cancel your service, we probably should be um asking

21:41

them why they cancel. A pro tip as we started the scale,

21:45

obviously, you’re gonna lose customers. Um here and there.

21:47

It doesn’t matter how good your service is. Eventually,

21:50

everyone’s gonna cancel at some point. Um so, why not put a

21:54

process in place for that admin or manager has to get on the

21:57

phone with them before they can cancel. So, there’s two reasons

21:59

why we do this. A, we’re gonna make sure that that admin or

22:02

manager is gonna track why they’re cancelling so we know

22:04

and I’m gonna show you some stats here in a bit. Um the

22:07

other reason is like, you may be able to save that

22:10

cancellation or churn uh just by having a conversation and

22:14

maybe something as stupid as the guys or girls aren’t

22:16

blowing off the back patio on a regular basis and you might

22:19

just say, hey, listen, let me let me copy a free mowing next

22:21

week and let’s make sure that’s taking care of and moving

22:24

forward. If it happens again, you know, we understand you

22:27

wanna leave but let’s try to make it right. Um but something

22:30

simple as that may be able to save a cancellation and if it

22:33

cost you 100 to $150 to get a new client, it’s worth maybe

22:37

giving up a free mowing or part of a mowing to actually fix

22:40

that problem and get ahead of it but if you just let people

22:43

cancel without having a conversation and requiring it,

22:45

my feeling is you’re missing out on a lot of opportunity to

22:48

save cancellations. So, why do estimate one and loss

22:53

cancellations reason? Well, we kinda talk about this before

22:55

but we really wanna see the trends why people are hiring us

22:59

and why they’re not hiring us and new market trends. So, if

23:03

we weren’t tracking these numbers um and trends, we

23:07

actually started this online automated bots about five,

23:10

almost 6 years ago in my lawn care company um but we started

23:13

to see a trend that people are buying online and requesting

23:16

more estimates online and then with Uber, Netflix, all the

23:20

other things going on that just started to shift but very

23:23

similar to Wayne Gretzky, the hockey player. Uh Wayne always

23:26

wanted to be where the puck was gonna be, not where the puck

23:28

was um and that was his key to success cuz he was looking to

23:32

the future of the game and where the play was gonna go and

23:35

not where it was at and he he he predicted with great

23:39

success. Well, I’m gonna suggest you do the same. It’s

23:41

the same thing in your business. If you don’t track

23:43

these things, you will have no benchmark to say, hey, where’s

23:46

the market going and how do I get ahead of it and be an early

23:49

adopter. That’s been one of the key success of my lawn care

23:52

company in Simple Growth is we have been um really

23:56

aggressively looking where’s the next shift in buying or

23:59

technology. Uh automation is still somewhat new in the

24:02

service industry. Believe it or not, uh I’m going on probably

24:06

nine or 10 years at least of automating my lawn care

24:09

business and that was a huge shift. no1 in my market knew

24:12

what we’re doing or what the success was coming from um but

24:15

it was automations. It was automating of those nine

24:18

arounds and all the different things we do and talk about but

24:21

taking a look at it right now, if you haven’t jumped on the

24:24

automations bandwagon, it’s probably a good time to do that

24:26

with ProPlus and Service Autopilot because that’s where

24:30

the market is but it’s still early adapters. So, there’s a

24:33

lot of time to adapt. Um but without this data, some of that

24:36

stuff may not uh might not be as um So, next thing is action

24:42

items, we wanna add our cancellation reasons and how we

24:46

do that is we go to the gear icon um and cancellation

24:48

reasons here and we we go in and put this in here. So,

24:53

standardizing the workflow to create predictable success. Um

24:56

so, when we go into the gear or the report center, uh in the

25:01

report center, there is, I’ll have a screenshot here in a

25:03

minute but basically, on the left, there’s a little icon

25:05

that looks like a toaster oven. The numbers that we’re gonna

25:07

take start to look at is how many leads were generated, how

25:12

many, how many of Those leads were converted into a client.

25:15

What is the percentage from lead to client? So, converting

25:18

a new prospect into a paying client and cancellation, so

25:23

churn, how many people cancel and why are they cancelling?

25:26

So, that’s why those cancellation reasons are

25:28

important and what’s the average percent of new growth

25:30

um from twenty to twenty-one and and let’s take a look at it

25:34

cuz a lot of us probably at this point just have our heads

25:36

down and we haven’t looked yet. We’re just going, going, going

25:39

but let’s take a half a day or maybe over the holiday weekend

25:41

and see where at compared to last year and where we growing

25:44

and where we are growing. Uh so this is right out of one of our

25:47

sample test accounts but we had some fictitious data here of

25:50

2015 through twenty twenty. So it looks like this test client

25:55

basically would be they just started out in twenty fifteen.

25:57

They had thirty-four leads and 100% of them turned new

26:00

clients. Probably on if this was a real client. They or

26:03

company they would probably be under pricing and just winning

26:06

all the work. Not uncommon. Now we bumped up to 101 and we won

26:09

ninety-six. We’re closing 95% of our estimates. Probably same

26:13

thing. We have a worked out our pricing and we’re probably

26:15

basing it on market pricing. What we think the market will

26:18

demand. What we really need to go is what is our hourly cost

26:21

to operate with a percentage profit margin built in with a

26:26

realistic paycheck for the business owner. Um and then

26:30

what is it with at least a fair market value of the business

26:33

owner’s expense. So now you kinda probably get a little

26:35

savvy in twenty seventeen. Uh we’re invested some money and

26:39

now we’re at a 57% close ratio. So 57% of the estimates were

26:42

winning uh income clients. That’s probably pretty

26:46

realistic. So now, this happens when uh itty bitty company

26:49

kinda starts moving up. You got 271 estimates basically you put

26:52

out that year. At least for new leads. Now, you double down and

26:57

your conversion ratio goes down to 51% but you got 461 leads or

27:02

prospects. Um and we’re hovering around fifty percent.

27:05

That’s probably okay. Fifty to sixty-five percent. Um some

27:08

would argue that maybe your prices are too low but if

27:10

you’re doing this correctly, and you automate it, you follow

27:13

up uh five or more times cuz statistically, 80% of all your

27:16

estimates are closed on five or more communications. I’m

27:19

recommending they should be Email text and phone calls or

27:22

ringless voicemail bombs but now we’re we’re driving into

27:25

twenty nineteen. We got 869 estimates um and we’ve

27:29

converted at forty-one percent. Still not too shabby at that

27:31

volume and you’re probably doing some really good um

27:34

estimating at this point. Now, in twenty twenty, fictitiously

27:38

here, you’ve got 1,100 you’re closing at thirty-five percent.

27:41

Well, probably not too shabby honestly at that number like we

27:44

probably wanna get a little bit higher but I that’s very

27:46

respectful if this was a real company. I think that that

27:48

would be that would be acceptable. Now, the issue here

27:52

is we’re not paying attention to how many people are

27:55

cancelling. So, we’re running as many people through this

27:57

basically imaginary funnel right now and just as many

28:00

people are starting to drop out and cancel. So, all the new

28:02

clients come in and old clients go out and cancel. So, we wanna

28:05

keep an eye out of not only the prospects and conversion of new

28:08

clients but we wanna look at terminations. So, it wasn’t too

28:11

bad as we’re going here um but then, from something happens

28:15

here pretty significantly between 2019 and 2020 like they

28:19

almost double. Um so, if this was a real I would look at this

28:22

‘cuz like, we’ve got some issues here. So, let’s go into

28:25

the cancellation report and see why did they cancel? What’s

28:28

going on? Is it maybe people are just moving out of the area

28:31

that you service and you can’t control that or right here, um

28:36

not happy, seventeen percent. So, increase uh year to year,

28:41

growth. They were growing pretty good here fictitiously

28:44

and then, wait a minute, we’re actually going backwards in

28:47

twenty twenty. So, these are numbers that we need to um take

28:52

a look at and your cancellation percent was about thirty,

28:55

seventeen, thirty-eight percent. Boom. Now, it jumps up

28:57

to almost seventy-five percent. You’ve almost doubled the

28:59

cancellation rate. So, this is why setting those up and

29:02

standardizing the office inflow uh work intake is really

29:05

important cuz as a business owner, manager, you really need

29:07

to see this data. Um so, why do the lead sources matter and why

29:11

do we need, what do we need to know? So, we need to know how

29:13

many of those leads come in per source, how many convert into a

29:16

client? So, once again, we need to start as client and convert

29:18

or start as a lead and convert to a client cuz those are some

29:22

of the um points where the reporting is gonna dial in for

29:25

you and then we not wanna know our client acquisition cost.

29:28

What does it cost to acquire a client per lead source and then

29:30

what’s the client? Lifetime value. So, the Facebook versus

29:33

HomeAdvisor example is basically um the example like I

29:37

now marketing is gonna become fun because if I know I take

29:40

that forty to $45,000 and spread it across my top five or

29:44

six advertising sources. On average, I should get X amount

29:46

of leads, X amount of those leads should become clients and

29:49

X amount of them uh client should last so long on average

29:53

and be worth X amount of dollars. So, this is uh the key

29:57

to getting the data in to run your marketing and sales

29:59

machine. So, how do you access report? I talked about it a

30:03

little bit earlier. We go into reports up top report center

30:07

and we go to little toaster icon here. And that is the

30:11

report that we’re pulling out. So, uh once again, out of our

30:15

test client here but we’ve our test account. We pump some data

30:19

in here uh and this just another look of the new leads

30:24

converted in conversion ratio um and then we’ve got let’s

30:27

just say Google here you had 562 leads uh 191 of them became

30:32

clients you got a conversion ratio of about thirty-four to

30:35

35% um so that is the idea we go through all our marketing

30:38

sources so we’re able to take a look at that data now and go

30:42

out and put a plan in action for next year or take a look at

30:46

this year’s um numbers and uh I’ll show you if I have time

30:50

here quick at the end how to actually put this in cuz I

30:53

don’t think I have a slide of it but the cool thing is if

30:55

you’ve been tracking your lead source You haven’t been

30:58

tracking your marketing campaigns, that will actually

31:03

allow you to go back retroactively at least this

31:06

year to get that data and get these marketing numbers for you

31:09

so you actually have it. So, that’s um in my opinion is is

31:13

really important here. So, let me uh on my other screen, see

31:18

if I can open up. That’s account for service autopilot.

31:22

Perfect. Okay. So, here’s one of the simple growth test

31:24

accounts uh but the idea here is that if you go into the gear

31:28

icon, it and go into client source. It’s not only enough to

31:34

set up the client source but what I really recommend is if

31:38

we had a door hanger campaign per se. Right here, we’d add

31:41

the campaign and we would start in. So, let’s say we had, we

31:44

did one in 2018 uh but let’s say we’re doing one in July.

31:48

We’re gonna go out for our second round of pruning in bed.

31:50

Um we’ve distributed 5,000 uh at ease here and the total

31:54

expense maybe was 1,200 bucks.

31:59

5,000 our total expense is 1,200 dollars. So now, we can

32:03

have multiple marketing campaigns in here uh but when

32:06

you assign the door hanger, whatever that is, Facebook ad

32:09

to the lead source, if it falls within the start and stop date,

32:14

this is where the client acquisition cost and closing

32:16

ratio comes based on the the distribution quantity and the

32:19

total expense and if it was an internal upsell, we could

32:21

actually track that as well. So, this is what I’m gonna

32:24

recommend you set up on the back end. So, the good news is

32:26

if you don’t have this, you can go back and put this in,

32:29

refresh the reports, and then pull the date up for this year.

32:31

So, that’s something we’ve been doing a lot of. So, you get the

32:35

idea here and now, going into the cancellations. Once again,

32:39

under that little toaster icon, cancellation count report, uh

32:42

we’re gonna go in and see how many people are dissatisfied,

32:45

pricing, are you too expensive? Um or how many people moved out

32:48

of the area. So, if you’ve got um right here, let’s see sold

32:55

house, 6% of your client base, six sells their house every

32:58

year. Well, then you know, if you wanna at least stay even

33:01

where you’re at, we need to replace six to seven of our

33:04

client base just to stay even. Now, in big markets, that’s

33:08

pretty common. You can have seven to 8% of your client base

33:11

literally just leaving and it’s totally out of your control.

33:14

So, that is one of the things we wanna take a look at. So,

33:17

that’s why we’re tracking these cancellation or cancellation

33:20

reports and if they’re dissatisfied, they lost their

33:23

job, maybe due to covid, whatever that is, now we know

33:26

so we can go out and scale that business with no emotion. So,

33:30

hopefully that was helpful. We’re always here as a

33:34

certified adviser to help you and if you have any questions

33:37

or concerns, feel free to free to hit us up. We are still

33:40

doing Audits at SG dash Audit.com uh but the main idea

33:43

here is we really wanna go in and um help you grow and scale

33:49

your business uh with service autopilot and create that

33:53

predictable workflow inside your office literally from lead

33:56

acquisition and tracking all the information. So, good data

34:00

in, good data out obviously. Uh the other thing that I find

34:03

with uh most softwares that I work with is no data in, no

34:07

data out. So, I wanna make sure that we’re getting the data we

34:09

need to make those decisions down the line um and by

34:12

standardizing it to basically screen with the auto assist in

34:16

Pro Plus, that is gonna take your administrative staff’s

34:18

learning curve and shrink it down significantly. On the next

34:22

episode or in 2 weeks or next week, I’m gonna probably go in

34:26

and dial in the remainder of the workflow for the office.

34:29

So, literally, now that we’ve won the estimate, what is that

34:33

workflow look like from stem to stern? So, we’ve really gone

34:36

over maybe one screen, one and a half screen as far as getting

34:39

the lead in and converting the client. Now, what does that

34:42

rest look like to really kinda consolidate that workflow. I

34:45

think that’s the key to bring a new person in any software but

34:47

especially service autopilot. If we can make it predictable

34:50

and simple with a phone intake form and standardizing

34:52

information that you need and make it predictable. Uh those

34:55

are gonna be the key success. So, comments, questions, drop

34:58

below. Wanna thank Aaron for hanging out here uh on the SA

35:01

Weekly Talk Show. Be coming to you live once again uh around 1

35:05

PM Eastern, twelve Central uh with the holiday weekend here.

35:07

Um I had one of my meetings uh had to get rebooked so I wanted

35:11

to make sure we got in here before things got created later

35:14

in the day but I’m off to my team call and hoping to see you

35:17

soon at some live conferences in GIE coming up here as well

35:21

in the future. So, as things kinda loosen up, the Simple

35:26

Grow team, myself, will be out and about making our rounds at

35:30

the hopefully some of the normal conferences as they come

35:33

about. So, we’ll see you again next week. SA Weekly Talk Show,

35:36

your host, Mike Callahan. We’ll talk to you soon. If you like

35:40

this show, you might wanna check out our resources at WWW

35:44

dot Start Simple Growth dot com. While you’re there, enter

35:48

to win an estimator chatbot. Mike Callahan is available for

35:52

private coaching.

 

After over 20 years in the lawn care & snow removal industry, Mike Callahan created a turnkey solution that revolutionized his business and is now teaching the lessons he learned while growing his company. You do not have to reinvent the wheel when you can use this proven system that will save you time and money, while allowing you to have a life outside your business.

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