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
- 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.
Are you ready to make your business work for you?
Our business growth system will grow your business from where you are to today to where you want to be in the future. If you want a proven system that will help you avoid the pains of running a business by giving you a road map to business success each step of the way, this is for you!
Where Is Your Business Right Now?
SimpleGrowth is the ONLY solution in the lawn care industry that will empower and support you through every level of business growth with a proven system and process that will net real results. If you are sick and tired of a one size fits all attempt to help you grow the business of your dreams, then look no further. Our system will allow you to build a profitable business from day one by following a proven business building system.
Would you like our FREE Training? FREE TRAINING
We’ve found working with our clients that today’s business owners are in one of the four phases of their business. Check our 4 Stages of Business Growth to determine which of the stages best describes where your business is right now.
Regardless which phase you are in, Simple Growth has a proven system to fit your business that will catapult you to your next stage. To create a business that doesn’t own you, and that provides a quality of life you went into business to create for yourself, listen to learn more about the steps you need to take to help you get there.
Consider this more of a free mentorship, where I help you focus on the activities and systems that are necessary for you to reach your goals.
I’ve done it. I can help you do it.
I’ll also be providing interviews with other leaders in our industry that have cracked the code of life and time freedom owning their own service industry business. If you are looking to grow your business with a road map to success and profits, join me here every week.
Try out our Estimator Chatbot
Sign Up for 26 Day FREE training
Check out our resources below.
__________
MENTORSHIP with Mike Callahan
Contact: mike@simplegrowthsystems.com
SPEAKING INQUIRIES for MIKE CALLAHAN
Contact: mike@simplegrowthsystems.com