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growth live office hours uh Mike and Dylan here with the simple grow team
where we go on live uh once or twice a
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week and answer your questions regarding your software questions and
business questions to help you along your way to
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seven figures and well beyond uh Dylan well welcome back to the show here
and uh just about going on and it’s probably
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uh just like last week where uh there we go you were you were front and
center so we’re good now video wise
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awesome yeah we got a couple uh returning questions from last week uh that
we didn’t quite answer properly I
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guess uh we needed a little bit more clarification and then we got a new
question from Orbin this week about
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scheduling so I kind of have some initial answers sort of fleshed out here
but I’m curious to definitely hear your
0:46
opinion on them and how you tackle them in service autopilot all right and
since I haven’t seen the questions yet this should be interesting so let’s
see what
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happens yeah well let’s let’s go back to the one from last week just to
make sure that we don’t forget it so I’ll share uh
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my screen here [Music]
1:05
Support Center got an area
1:11
this one’s from Steve Delaney from last week so I’m gonna hop off here a
second hop back
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on so I can get that I think from last week we figured out how to actually
get that on top yeah no worries
1:26
um let’s see if we can get that a bit bigger if not we can just kind of
just all
1:33
right hold on I’m gonna I’m gonna pull you off and we will uh
1:39
what could go wrong here we go I think we are good here all right perfect
we got it big enough okay by week three
1:45
we’ll have this down pat sure um week 300. so
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yeah the the issue if you remember from last week Steve wanted to know what
I thought was
1:57
um basically who had can who who was still active in his company how many
clients were still active in this
2:03
company and how long they had actually been with the company but I guess
either I misread it or Steve added some some
2:10
additional information I guess he was actually looking for the client
lifetime value which I don’t know how I I messed
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that up but um so Mike I don’t know if you did this at your company or
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um with any of our clients at all but I was just kind of spitballing a
little bit before this um I don’t think we have like a
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pre-canned report for that or anything we do not but kind of what I I know
a lot of the
2:34
actual service details like when we’re doing our kpi reports and stuff like
that this is typically one of the main
2:41
analysis that we start with so I pulled in the job cost detail here
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I pulled in you know obviously we need some client information so I did
client name client sense
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um and then cancellation reason and then this was just like the next thing
that it the only next level of
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information that it allowed me to pull up so I don’t know if we necessarily
need that per se but
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It’s tricky sometimes with these reports because you kind of go down this
Rabbit Hole of what does service autopilot or
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low G kind of let me pull into the reports and with this kind of string
3:21
that I’ve created it doesn’t let me pull in like cancellation date or
anything like that so this might
3:28
honestly not be the the optimal way to do it but I think this will actually
work so down here I have it set and this
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is just our our demo account to kind of mess around with but
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I have these columns here client name actual revenue and this would be for
each individual service with the date
3:49
uh cancellation reason and then client sense so
3:54
Mike I’m curious your opinion but I would think if they have a cancellation
reason they would be a canceled client and we
4:00
can filter those people out right correct yes I think that um had a pretty
interesting conversation
4:07
with jonathoshnick the founder of sa um or co-founded with John Caldwell and
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one thing that Jonathan and I did a lot in the early days is we did a lot
of these Regional events or spoke at conferences or did Facebook lives we
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answered questions and um Jonathan and I were pretty much on the same exact
page if we hadn’t served with someone in probably 12 to 13 months
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that that would be considered basically a a dead client um so there’s a
couple different ways of
4:33
tackling it ideally I would look at it yes cancellation reason first place
I’m looking uh for sure
4:39
reason and if you’re going in we should be tracking the cancellation reason
on all our clients now uh if that’s not the
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case we may be able to build some logic and a case statement in saying has
this
4:51
if it is a reoccurring service um we could take a look at it based on
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reoccurring but if the service hadn’t happened in over 13 months of the
case statement we could filter it out that
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would obviously take some formulas being built in yeah I think the one
thing that I would probably look at though is is
5:10
really going in and getting those cancellation reasons because that’s going
to be the cleanest easiest way of doing it the way you’ve done
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um the other thing that’s interesting is you got actual Revenue total there
and the service name so if you scroll back
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down they’ll know some other things here it looks like you probably have
done that didn’t touch uh touch on yet uh but
5:27
it looks like you went into the client and actually grouped them is that
correct
5:34
and Dylan may have froze here so we’ll see in a minute um but as we’re
waiting for Dylan to
5:41
kind of glitch back in here uh a couple of the things it looks like he
probably did was under uh the test client on the
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far left there under client need he went into aggregate group and that is
probably I’m guessing so actually did
5:55
you just on aggregate I did can you you can’t hear me can you I can hear
you now oh okay there we go
6:02
at Verizon commercial over here but yeah so we uh so client so you did a
couple things here obviously so the first thing
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as you build in that data table you would want to go in your client name
and actually group the clients
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exactly yep so that was the first thing I did I actually forgot that I I did
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that um the the other thing that I did is like um
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it will make the report many many pages if you have a lot of data so I don’t
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know this is just more so a personal preference but under the data table
right here if you go into settings and
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then uh paging you can select to show all rows rather than have you know
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sometimes up to like 80 pages of data yeah completely agree the bigger
companies we work with with kpi reports
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that’s that’s definitely the way you want to go and then
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the if we now on that do you have the ability to do
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um service date uh yeah yeah I believe we do let me just I think it’s right
here
7:08
so that might be another one that I would look at too because then we’ve
got clients in service date and uh if we
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were so inclined we could probably go in and sort it um from oldest to to
newest or newest
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oldest we can actually build some formulas in there but I think down and
dirty if you’re looking just to answer the questions today uh the way I
tackle
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I would tackle Donuts probably just the way you tackle it identically um I
would go in and make sure
7:32
everything has a cancellation reason and then be able to uh put in the
7:37
termination or cancel date and then run some math off that yeah and that’s
like
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kind of what I was trying to say earlier is this is just my first step
there might be one A different kind of pathway
7:50
starting with a different item here that would actually let you pull in the
actual cancellation date yeah and it may
7:57
not um because I think on job costing detail as well it does it the uh that
and then
8:02
the the over one on leads and clients it does not so I think this is
probably the closest you can get to it
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um so I would probably drive it off the cancellationary uh I hope it’s
helpful that people can just
8:15
kind of hear our like thought process too because a lot of this stuff in
service autopilot it’s like you can there’s so many different combination or
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things that you can do that it’s like you kind of just need to sometimes
take a second think about it and a little bit
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of trial and error and you’ll usually get there um yeah filter
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the cancellation reason and we would go uh
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not equal to I suppose
8:49
and I think there’s only one cancellation reason so yeah and the test count
there’s probably not a lot but
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yeah you would put your test your cancellation reasons in there yeah you
might have a bunch of them
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um but then if we add this filter then it should kind of filter out one
other clients anyways so then in theory
9:06
we’d be left with every client who does not have a cancellation reason
which should be active now whether or not
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you’re you’re keeping your database nice and clean by canceling the clients
that don’t have any active service with you
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that’s a maybe a topic for another day but let’s just assume the remaining
clients are the active clients
9:26
from here um Steve basically like this still isn’t
9:31
very useful you’d really have to start doing some totals for for some of
these
9:37
items so under this Revenue column that’s the first one that I would
definitely want to basically Aggregate
9:45
and then do a summation and that should give us the total
9:52
revenue I don’t have a date filter applied here so it’s not only pulling in
like this year for example this should
9:59
be pulling in once again this is our test account but for test client
number one their total
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revenue their total value essentially to the company is six thousand two
hundred
10:12
and eighty now if you want average um lifetime value of your current active
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clients then you would need to do an average of course as I’m sure you
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probably know so let’s see kind of what how that looks here
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and so you know once again a test test account your average might be four
thousand dollars or or something like
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that right who definitely depends on what uh what field you’re in but in
this example our average kind of client value
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is 191 14. now if you have like your costs and
10:50
things like that in the system you could drive this down to like a net
profit amount and then average it from there
10:57
that might be a little bit better because maybe some of these services are
a high
11:02
dollar amount in Revenue but they’re a low margin service so you kind of
need to factor that in as well but this is
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basically what I’d be looking at and if this report is probably very
lengthy for for some
11:16
people that are doing this um I believe you can actually remove the
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detail in some of these forget which one it is I think it’s this
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one right here so you can hit exclude detail rows
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and I believe that will get rid of basically every single line item in here
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so if you wanted to you know if you got thousands of clients you might not
be going in and looking at each single line
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item and say oh that fertilizer service was 60 bucks like that probably
isn’t the meat and potatoes of this report you
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probably just want to have this load fairly quickly and be able to pop in
here and maybe say well which clients
12:00
are lifetime value under 500 bucks and we got to figure out why and maybe
Target those customers and maybe do some
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upsells or something like that and try to get that value up so just a
thought I know some clients
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that I’ve come across do have that where they do like a single aeration for
the client each year and it’s like that
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might be a good candidate to reach out to and try to upsell into
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you know overseeding or grow control or something like that so I’m hoping
with this version too
12:31
Steve that’s a little closer to what you’re looking for it’s definitely not
the prettiest report in the world but
12:37
hopefully this average here would get you to very close to what you’re
looking for like I said if you did want to do it
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based off of net profit instead of uh basically gross revenue
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that might be a little bit more useful to you but this would just be shown
you
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if you just wanted to do it based off of Revenue so hope that helps any
13:01
yeah I was just playing on the other side here I think the only other thing
that you may want to put in there um we don’t have to do it on the screen
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here but it is client source so you may be able to see the client lifetime
value based on each marketing source so those
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are the things we’d want to dial in um there so I’m just looking on my
other screen here
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um other things you could potentially run into if you build uh some
formulas in there we won’t dive into that today uh but we do have the
ability of invoice
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date and invoice amount so we could potentially uh do some logic if they
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haven’t been billed within x amount for a reoccurring service or x amount of
13:37
time for one-time service then that would that would basically filter them
out as a canceled client yeah and yeah that is definitely one
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thing that I I do um recommend you do whether you do it how Mike said or
you just look at your
13:52
Client List CRM Client List and select um active service I think it is and
then
13:59
do there’s a couple different like date filters that you can do there um
but yeah if you don’t have a client
14:06
that receives service in the last year um I think it’s definitely safe to
to mark them as lost and you could just put
14:13
a cancellation reason as a one-time client right I mean they were a client
they’re no longer a client it’s not
14:19
really a bad cancellation it’s a natural cancellation but you definitely
don’t want to have
14:24
like 10 000 clients in your system when in reality you have 500. yeah and
that’s
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that’s a good stat twos if that’s the case you’re probably not using an
automated upsell to actually go in and reactivate them so when we put those
out
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for clients 60 to 80 estimate requests in the first 24 to 48 hours is not
uncommon so those you’ve got some data
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points in there so you could really focus in and have some standardized
marketing copy ought to activate those people that have
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left too so we have a cancel uh basically reactivation nurture that that
happens there too sometimes so that’s
14:54
those are things you want to look at if you’re building your own automation
to segment that database uh good work on that one Dylan what do you got
next for
15:00
me so the next one is from Orbin and he was asking you know paraphrasing
here
15:08
but I guess he has grown his fertilizer division it seems like and usage
have one technician and he’s curious what is
15:16
like the actual steps that I need to do to break that route that was
previously one person into two routes essentially
15:24
where two sales reps are fertilizer technicians are actually going to be
performing two separate roads
15:31
um that makes sense so in my opinion there’s a couple different ways to
tackle that but
15:38
I’m curious your opinion obviously as well Mike but how I would think about
it I’m just logically is I would probably
15:45
go to the CRM Client List and sort for every single client who has a
fertilizer
15:51
package with me right now if he hasn’t done this already and and maybe this
is just like because
15:57
I did this in the past but I always thought about my service area in zones
and I I don’t know how I would
16:04
necessarily survive without that so I I kind of just started a little bit
16:09
of a Google sheet here I’ll share this sheet and I’ll zoom in a bit
16:14
but I feel like a lot of people and we’ll get back to the fertilizer
example here in a second but I feel like a lot
16:20
of people are they do know this method when it comes to lawn mowing like
most people because
16:26
there’s five days in a week Monday through Friday they think okay it makes
sense to break my service area into five
16:36
zones and it doesn’t need to be one ZIP code per Zone you might have 25 zip
16:41
codes per Zone the number of zip codes per zone is is essentially
irrelevant but you kind of want to break it up into
16:47
zones is that what you did at Callahan’s yeah we did I was actually just
pulling to see if I could pull up a screenshot
16:53
of it you’re going to pull up a mapper I like this because we want to
blueprint it before we implement the change Yeah
16:59
well yeah we can definitely go to the the map next um but I was just
thinking and I’ve had
17:05
this conversation with a couple of people while we do deep Dives and stuff
like that where their fertilizer division is expanding and they they the
17:13
mowing is fairly simple in service autopilot the fertilizer is a little bit
more abstract it’s a little bit harder
17:18
to plan because it’s less frequent you’re doing it maybe once a quarter
once a month at the most so kind of how
17:27
I like to think about it is you still want to have your zones for fertilizer
17:33
um but it does work a little bit differently because you’re going
17:38
you know five or seven times a year instead of once a week so for fertilizer
17:44
Mike did you still have five or ten zones however you ran it yeah we did let
17:49
me see if I can actually share my screen here I just pulled this up so full
transparency I was completely unprepared
17:54
for this call doing some homework for some other stuff but let me see if I
can pull this up here
18:00
and show it in the screen and I’ll get this CRM Client List
18:07
while you’re doing that oh there you go perfect
18:13
all right side note if you’re running this yourself down when you’re off
screen you people cannot hear you talk so uh what we’ve got here is the old
map
18:21
here for Callahan so what you’ve got is basically we had three or four
different zones so obviously we kind of started
18:26
the business shop was right about here um but basically this this area here
was
18:32
like Zone one and then there was a major uh Highway that kind of went
through her Road this was kind of zone two
18:38
three and as we came down this was basically four we ended up
18:45
getting rid of this stuff up here past this 104 because Rob density um and
then this was the other Zone here so
18:52
we had another one here it covered this area and this area here uh some of
these guys were Big commercials that were like
18:58
hanging out way out of nowhere um just like the one that’s hanging out down
here there’s some some very large
19:03
Big commercials over full day jobs uh but the majority of this was all
residential so we we broke those in uh
19:10
Zone one zone two three four five and then these basically just bigger
19:16
commercials um so that’s how we kind of tackled that the main thing that we
looked at too is
19:22
we broke it up a lot of people have probably seen this here but this is
this would be for a mowing crew uh but if we
19:28
went in and made this for a a Fert crew
19:33
obviously it’s a one-person technician unless it’s a large commercial
property uh where you got multiple write-outs
19:38
going but if you had one individual on there and you were doing four tens
uh we would go back to an average wage of that
19:46
division so if we had certain techs or crew leaders you’d have an average
wage of say 30 to 25 with overtime would be
19:54
33.86 so you’d go in and actually plug that in uh right here
20:00
and the labor burden uh is that number that we came up with fictitiously in
this example for um uh FICA workman’s
20:07
comp uh workers comp in uh see FICA unemployment workers comp
20:14
liability insurance and some other things such as holiday pay vacation pay
and they come out as a percentage of the dollar so we’re going to add that
in as
20:21
well to the the crew breakout on where I’m going with the stone so a lot of
times and then we have a overhead
20:27
recovery if we’re using a bar system uh to cover a fixed g a cost that’s
about 25 here so let’s say on an industry
20:35
average we want to make say 45 50 net profit on fertilization um let’s say
it’s 45 so 1.45
20:43
our daily labor costs just for that technician with a 45 net margin is seven
20:49
seven seven hundred thirty dollars um we’ve got a truck we probably don’t
have a trailer so we would zero that out
20:57
um and our hourly rate then is going to be coming in for the truck at 758
10 hours a day
21:04
because we’re going to capture the curb time as well not just the
utilization time got already recovery and our profit
21:10
now built in at 45 um so why I’m doing this is the thing
21:16
that orbin’s asking about a lot of people that ask about it with this is
when we schedule
21:21
um fertilization or any service we don’t have a dollar amount that we need
to be producing so in callahans it was about
21:27
12 to 1300 a day each technician had to produce to hit our numbers so it’s
without kind of giving it all away right
21:33
here as I’m walking down what we’re going to see is we finish filling this
out is we’re actually going to see
21:39
um what fictitiously this crew would have to bill out so if orban’s going
out he’s gonna have a fixed number he needs to
21:45
bill out to hit his projected profit margin and his overhead recovery so
this would be not our truck but this would
21:51
just be our truck um there’s no mowers but let’s just say our hourly rate
for our ride on spreader
21:57
is 9.75 and we’re going to be using that probably seven of the of the 10
hours so
22:03
it’s just the time it’s being used and
22:10
our equipment cost for the spreader maybe the right on spreader and the
push spreader that’s possibly on there or the
22:15
hose in real attachment is 98 bucks a day and then we really don’t have a
maintenance package we’re doing
22:21
maintenance it’s going to be our stick address weed whackers blowers things
like that uh maybe you do have a
22:27
backpack sprayer and some different canisters and things like that if
you’re doing perimeter pass that’s where this would be in come in but you
would
22:33
actually add in how many hours a day are using that maintenance package or
what’s the hourly rate how many hours is being
22:40
used overhead recovery and the overhead recovery so let’s assume maybe
22:46
Orbit’s doing lawn care and he’s now he’s created a perimeter pest division
so he’s doing that at the same time as he’s doing the fertilization to
probably
22:53
double or triple that ticket or if you’re doing um mosquito control so
that’s where we
22:59
would bundle this additional equipment up uh so obviously this is
fictitious but the daily sales goal here before product
23:06
is a thousand dollars it would be costing uh Orban or somebody 715 dollars
23:11
before profit 10 hours a day and is Break Even to be 71.49 that’s what it’s
costing per hour
23:18
before it makes a profit so he needs to have an hourly Bill rate of about
101 dollars
23:24
so this right here uh my guess with product is going to put if this was his
23:30
numbers would put him probably around 13 to 1400 a day in product with
product so
23:35
when you when you break up the areas first and then use that 1300 a day as a
23:41
kind of a benchmark or a guideline to make sure that the roots are at least
feasible so you yeah you absolutely nailed it so just like your Google sheet
23:47
we broke out the zip codes or zones the zip codes that are in that zone and
then optimized it
23:54
um here but obviously we need to build more route density down here can we
realistically in a 10-hour day
24:01
capture all of these homes in this area yeah and what’s it going to
generate so
24:07
really especially if you’re using a waiting list job we want to take that
waiting list job and be able to delegate
24:13
it we don’t want it to rely on the business owner so not emotionally let’s
say with product in there uh it’s a 1300
24:19
day that’s literally a sticky note like it’s going to be right here we’re
gonna stick the sticky note up on the corner
24:25
Christine in my office did the same exact thing but she knew when she did
the waiting list and put that together per Zone that
24:32
um that’s how it lined up now the other thing to take a look at too that I
would recommend is when we’re doing those
24:39
waiting list jobs we’re grabbing say this route here
24:44
one day and then this route here the next day um or if he has two Crews
24:50
potentially have route group number one start from the farthest place in and
24:57
then group The Crew number two start from the farthest place out and work
its way in so the crews actually meet each other reason being if there’s a
25:03
breakdown equipment wise they can help each other or if there is a rain
delay or any issues if you’re tackling this
25:10
whole side of town in one day and you only get half the day done on both
technicians and there’s like a washout
25:16
with rain you can only have you only have to send back one truck and you
can reoptimize it and then that other crew
25:21
can start working out the next day’s work so those are the things we looked
at when we routed especially with snow removal as well in the mowing because
25:27
that eliminated the drive time from out here all the way back and that was
probably an hour and 25 minutes round
25:32
trip if you took two sides of traffic sometimes and the thing I’ve ran into
with a
25:38
different company was they knew how long a round was taking them each round
25:44
so I use that number to kind of back into like a similar system to like the
day of the week and the zip code
25:50
but instead like the company that I worked with previously I don’t know
Orbin how much fertilizing you do
25:56
currently but let’s just pretend he has like one round currently takes him
five
26:02
weeks I mean that would be pretty perfect to kind of use almost the exact
same system
26:07
as the mowing but instead of in this fictitious example 902 zip code 90210
26:13
being on Mondays zip code 90210 could be potentially the first week of every
26:19
round yep yeah and we keep consistency so it’s going to give that um the
CSR that’s routing that some
26:25
consistency too and why I like using the CRM Client List like you’re on
right
26:31
right here is let’s say Orbin you determine like Mike said the the North
26:36
West area is going to be Zone one let’s say well you can bulk
26:42
select those jobs and then bulk apply a tag from here so I see some people
trying to do it from the dispatch board
26:48
or the waiting list which can be helpful but I don’t believe you can bulk
apply
26:54
tags from the dispatch board or waiting list yet hopefully that’ll come in
the future so this is the way to do it so
26:59
you can tag them and then from there you can find these customers and make
sure that they are getting routed um
27:06
on the appropriate days if you’re pulling from the waiting list you would
pull everybody with the Zone one tag and
27:12
make sure that those are getting scheduled on week one of the round and
week one of round two
27:17
awesome advice love it um hopefully that answers the question or been there
uh I’m assuming that’s
27:23
probably all we had but is there anything else that we have uh lined up
here I think that’s it for today
27:30
um those were the two big ones I’ll make sure to reach out to those people
and hopefully we did answer those correctly
27:36
if they need any clarification we can hit those uh first next week and yeah
any future questions just comment them
27:43
on this video and we’ll make sure to get them next week yeah Dylan and
after the video is up here uh can you put a link
27:49
to your calendar link because I know a lot of people after the call
yesterday wanted to basically have us go in
27:55
um and do for lack of a better term and Analysis of their system where it
was set up uh was it set up to scale for
28:01
workflow uh they’re having some issues so I think it’s like a 15 or 20
minute call that you were doing but basically
28:08
no charge you went in and actually gave some people some insight of these
areas I’d work on setting the system up a
28:14
couple people I know did it themselves and then a couple people actually
ended up uh one purchase to Deep dive on the
28:19
last seven days here um just because they saw some things they just didn’t
have the time to tackle it so if you’re looking for a free
28:25
resource to just do that Dylan’s gonna pop that in the chat uh right after
this or during the call and
28:31
um somebody on our team who’s done this will um we’ll definitely show you
how to how to
28:36
do that and then it looks like you want to share your screen so I will yeah
if I could just kind of show me uh hold on
28:42
one second I’m gonna pull this I’m gonna pull us both off again so we can
actually see it
28:47
uh but as we do it we will not be able to hear each other
28:54
all right you’re trying to talk I’m gonna take myself off here okay well
yeah this is just like a glimpse at our
29:00
audit that we do I’m sure you maybe have seen this before but um basically
yeah depending on your size
29:06
of business we kind of walk through all aspects of your your CRM and some
people
29:12
honestly like they got everything in there it’s just a kind of pat on the
back but others are missing some some
29:18
things that they just weren’t even aware about so at a bare minimum you can
kind of walk away this is just like
29:23
fictitious results here but you can kind of walk away with an actual score
of how your business is doing as it relates to
29:30
kind of service autopilot as a CRM so love it um yeah so make sure you check
29:37
that out Dylan and the team is available to do those analysis uh there is
no charge for him you walk away with an
29:43
actionable report like that and uh that’s your blueprint if something we
can help you with obviously we can get you some pricing on it but really
29:49
um you know some stuff on there that we we technically don’t even help with
uh but we can get you resources of people that could help you as well so
29:56
um Dylan appreciate you joining us I know we’re still trying to iron out
between your schedule nine set days and times this moving forward but we’ll
get
30:02
at least one of these live uh next week as well yeah awesome sounds good
30:07
everybody has a good weekend yeah so until next weekend drop your comments
questions below and we’ll be tackling
30:13
again next week