Videos

00:00
hey mike callahan here wanted to welcome
00:02
everybody back to callahan’s corner
00:03
where you ask the questions and we
00:05
answer them live here on facebook so
00:07
today’s submitted question
00:08
was actually going out and how to set up
00:10
holiday lights in your business so
00:12
uh middle of july right now uh probably
00:15
no one in the right mind is normally
00:17
thinking holiday lights but this is the
00:18
ideal time in my opinion to start laying
00:20
some of the foundations of
00:22
some of those fall and mid-fall services
00:24
such as holiday lights so
00:26
we’re going to do today on today today’s
00:27
callahan’s corner is go in
00:29
and show you how to build out holiday
00:31
light estimates
00:32
inside service autopilot so as normal
00:34
i’m going to pop the screen open and
00:36
show you how it’s done so as i’m doing
00:39
this if you have any questions on the
00:40
live or recorded version
00:42
as always we will answer those or if you
00:43
have any questions in your service
00:45
business
00:45
how to get things um to operate
00:47
appropriately and
00:49
uh possibly set them up in service
00:50
autopilot uh we’re here to help so
00:52
first we’re gonna do is go into service
00:54
autopilot or in one of our test accounts
00:56
and we’re gonna go out and build out our
00:58
services so
01:00
obviously if you’re in the holiday
01:01
lights uh you know that you
01:02
traditionally are gonna be going out
01:04
and setting up c9 bulbs whether it’s led
01:07
or traditional lights
01:08
and those gonna be around the roof lines
01:09
and other such areas so
01:11
first thing we want to do is go in and
01:14
go to services
01:22
and we’re going to go in and add a
01:23
service so the first thing we’re going
01:25
to do here is
01:26
move my notepad so we can actually see
01:29
and we are going to go in
01:30
and create our c9 service i’m just going
01:33
to put 0-0 in front of it so i can find
01:35
it on the facebook live a little bit
01:36
easier
01:38
but i’m going to put a new c9
01:42
installation and for time sake i’m just
01:45
going to copy and paste that into the
01:47
code invoice description we’re going to
01:50
say it’s taxable here and our
01:52
service mode is going to be per unit our
01:54
account
01:55
we would go in and assign it to the
01:57
appropriate chart of accounts here in
01:59
this test account i’m just going to call
02:00
property maintenance
02:02
and then we’re going to estimate we’re
02:03
going to create an estimate description
02:06
and then under the rate matrix we want
02:08
to go in and set up the rate matrix so
02:10
the first thing that we traditionally
02:12
want to do before we go in
02:13
is going to create a custom field so i
02:16
did not do that so i’m going to save
02:18
this here and show you the
02:20
um how to add those custom fields and
02:23
we’re going to add them all in
02:24
right now
02:28
so what we’re going to do is going to go
02:29
in and in this basic example i’m going
02:32
to say
02:32
linear feet of c9
02:36
now you could do this for roof you can
02:38
do it for trees
02:39
branches shrub wraps or shrub balls
02:42
you want to make the custom field
02:43
appropriate to the different areas
02:44
you’re measuring
02:46
but for this example i’m going to say
02:47
linear feet of c9 and we’re just going
02:49
to assume that all we do is
02:50
roof lines value it’s going to be
02:52
associated to the customer value type is
02:54
going to be a number so we can do
02:55
calculations
02:56
and i can hit save and do so we’ve taken
02:58
care of the lights in this example and
03:00
now i’m going to put
03:01
number of
03:08
36-inch reefs
03:13
once again associated to the customer
03:15
and
03:17
it’s a number so i think that is i’m
03:20
just taking a look at my notes i think
03:21
those are the basic ones that we’re
03:23
going to need right now
03:24
just for this example but we’re going to
03:26
show you how to handle the setup to take
03:28
down the storage
03:30
and a new or existing setup because
03:31
obviously those are going to be
03:32
different it takes a lot longer to
03:34
do the initial setup than it does the
03:36
reinstall the following year so we want
03:38
to go back
03:38
in then i’m going to grab my c9 service
03:41
and continue to build that out
03:48
and we are going to go in and grab
03:53
our c9 bulb
04:01
c9 new installations like our original
04:03
one uh that we had already started here
04:05
before i put to
04:06
forget to create all the custom fields
04:08
and that’s always the first step you
04:09
want to create your custom field
04:10
create your services and then create
04:11
your packages that’s kind of the
04:14
direction from top to bottom so our rate
04:16
matrix here we’re going to go in and
04:18
grab
04:19
the linear feet of c9
04:24
and what i’m going to say is from one to
04:26
one foot i’m going to
04:28
charge 6.25 cents
04:31
and for the new install i’m going to
04:34
make it .08 man hours
04:37
and whatever that is going to cost me
04:40
per
04:40
um labor materials right here so that’s
04:43
how you would set that cost up
04:45
and then i’m going to go in and do each
04:49
additional
04:49
foot at 625 and additional 0.08 man
04:53
hours
04:54
and let’s just say we’ve got about a 50
04:56
profit margin here
04:57
uh so we’re going to go out and make
04:59
this 3.25
05:00
per linear feed now what you want to do
05:03
is pay attention here too is if you
05:05
are um either leasing out those
05:08
lights they got about a three year life
05:10
span on them you’d want to include the
05:11
cost of those lights for the new install
05:14
uh here now you can spread it across the
05:15
three years or an upfront cost in year
05:18
one
05:18
traditionally most people absorb that
05:20
cost in year one
05:21
so we’ve done is we’ve got our new
05:23
install of c9 and i’m going to hit save
05:24
and new
05:25
and then we’re going to go in and put a
05:29
existing
05:34
c9 install because they’re going to be
05:37
two different services and why you want
05:39
them to be two different services we’re
05:40
going to create
05:41
uh two different packages and the
05:43
budgeted time is going to be
05:45
uh different uh traditionally 45 to 50
05:48
less time so we want to be able to count
05:50
that for our job costing
05:55
and estimates obviously for time sake
05:56
i’m just copying and pasting these here
05:58
then our rate matrix quantity rate times
06:00
visits and once again that’s linear feet
06:02
of c9
06:04
and one to one but and we still have six
06:07
dollars and 25 cents per linear fee but
06:09
the budget hours instead of being .08
06:11
now is half of that point
06:12
zero four and then that is going to go
06:15
in
06:18
and update here and we can add our
06:21
budgeted cost
06:23
uh say maybe two dollars and 25 cents
06:25
for each existing
06:27
linear foot after year number one so now
06:30
we’ve gone in and we’ve created our
06:32
linear foot pricing for either new and
06:35
existing and now i want to go in and
06:36
create
06:37
our second example of wreaths
06:45
so we’re going to go in and do our 09
06:50
new wreath install
06:57
if you’re wondering here just for time
06:58
sake i’m creating the invoice and that’s
06:59
in the description but
07:01
um when we go into the actual uh
07:05
package itself i’m going to show you
07:06
some trips tips and tricks
07:08
to make this look a little bit better
07:14
service mode is per unit and then our
07:16
rate matrix we’re going in and doing
07:17
quantity rate times visits
07:19
and we’re going to do the number of
07:21
wreaths
07:25
so for each wreath one to one is going
07:28
to be a rate of let’s say 165 dollars
07:31
and we’re gonna give them 1.2 hours for
07:34
the first time and it’s costing us say
07:35
55 bucks
07:37
and every each additional wreath over
07:39
the first one is in 165
07:41
1.2 hours and 55 dollars this is for our
07:45
new uh wreath service here
07:48
and we are going to make one for
07:54
the existing
08:05
so we’ve got our existing wreath install
08:08
we need to go in and do our per unit
08:10
we need a code voice description account
08:16
estimate description and
08:20
rate matrices so we’re going in quantity
08:22
times visits
08:23
once again number of reas and this is
08:26
for the existing
08:27
so we’ve already incorporated the cost
08:29
of that wreath
08:30
from the first and we’re going to be
08:32
going in
08:34
and we’re still charging 165 bucks
08:37
budgeted hours is now one hour instead
08:38
of 1.2 and
08:42
it’s 50
08:49
and we’re gonna save so now we’ve done
08:50
is created the custom fields for the
08:52
linear length of c9s
08:54
we’ve created the custom field for the
08:55
wreaths they’ve both been associated to
08:57
the customer and our number
08:58
we’ve gone and created new and existing
09:00
setups for the c9 installs and the
09:02
wreaths
09:02
obviously some other services that would
09:04
go in there but this is going to give
09:05
you the basic idea of how to set this up
09:07
here on the facebook live so the next
09:08
thing you’re probably going to do is go
09:10
in
09:11
and go to the gear icon
09:14
and create a package and that’s going to
09:18
be
09:18
our master package and we’re going to go
09:20
in
09:22
and label this zero zero dot
09:27
new install
09:34
c9 you’re going to want to make one of
09:38
these for
09:38
the new install and the re-existing so
09:40
i’m going to show you how this
09:41
looks right here
09:48
and
09:51
actually what i’m going to do just so we
09:52
can connect all the dots i’m going to
09:54
create one more service for the takedown
09:55
so you can actually see what this looks
09:57
like
09:59
so we created the new install the
10:00
existing install and i’m also going to
10:02
create a service for
10:04
the takedown so it doesn’t matter if
10:06
it’s new or existing
10:17
now we’ve got new existing
10:21
and the takedown for new or existing
10:27
and that custom field of linear feed is
10:29
still going to be the same
10:30
and this is maybe take down storage some
10:33
companies we work with like to break up
10:35
the storage as a separate unit
10:37
but we can this example here
10:49
we can make it like this
10:54
so now that we have the takedown
10:58
uh set up here we’re gonna go and build
11:00
out the rate true matrix and then once
11:01
again it’s quantity rate tens visits
11:03
and it’s gonna be based on the linear
11:04
square linear feet of
11:06
uh light because it doesn’t really
11:09
matter if we’re putting them up or
11:10
taking them down that’s the
11:12
quantity of lights that we are going to
11:14
be um going to be taking care of here
11:19
and what you’re going to notice here is
11:22
traditionally when we set this
11:23
up there is no price because we build
11:25
that all up front but we do still want
11:27
to account for the budgeted hours
11:29
um and 0.02 is about an average for
11:32
taking those lights down per linear foot
11:35
so once again the price is zero but we
11:36
want to track the budget of time
11:38
budget versus actual here and there is
11:40
going to be a cost as well
11:42
um so maybe it is 50 cents per linear
11:46
foot of overhead
11:48
and we’re going to save a new and we’re
11:49
going to do another one for
11:52
taking down of those reefs so we’ve done
11:54
the new and existing we need to go in
11:55
and
11:59
take down 36 inch
12:14
all right so we’ve got your information
12:15
here we’re going to estimates
12:18
and our rate matrix quantity times
12:22
visits
12:24
36 inch wreaths and then once again
12:26
there’s going to be no price on this
12:27
because it’s the takedown
12:29
but we are going to want to put a
12:30
budgeted time in there
12:33
and maybe a cost
12:41
so each additional wreath is an extra
12:43
0.25
12:44
basically 15 minutes
12:48
so once we go now that we’ve got all
12:49
those services we can go back up to our
12:51
gear icon master packages
12:53
and build out the packages to be able to
12:55
actually route this stuff
13:07
let’s see if we save that last one we
13:09
did not so we’re going to go in and add
13:10
that package
13:13
and call it c9
13:22
holiday lights
13:27
and set a renewal date so probably right
13:30
around now would be a good time so let’s
13:31
call it the week after fourth of july
13:33
we’re gonna renew those
13:35
and now we’ve got our
13:39
zero zero uh
13:43
existing or new c9 install so new
13:49
and depending on how you’re setting
13:50
these up you can break them up in new
13:52
and existing packages separately that’s
13:54
traditionally how we see with most
13:55
larger companies
13:56
there are use cases where you may want
13:58
to put them all together in the package
13:59
but
14:00
traditionally uh you’re gonna do each
14:02
package new and existing and take down
14:04
to separate packages
14:06
uh so you’re gonna go in so we’ve got
14:08
new c9 installation
14:14
and you’re gonna have new c9
14:17
uh take down as well
14:23
down in storage and traditionally we’re
14:25
gonna be looking at it so
14:27
we’re gonna set the dates here um
14:31
for the earliest you’d be able to put
14:32
those lights up and then the
14:35
um the latest you put the light up now
14:37
depending if you start as early as let’s
14:38
just say october
14:40
or early september you may have another
14:42
package item here to actually go in
14:43
and turn the lights on with a timer so
14:46
that would be appropriate
14:47
but this is a real basic example we’re
14:48
going to go into here so i’m going to go
14:50
in and say okay based on
14:53
september 1st is the earliest and then
14:56
say
14:58
december 15th is the latest we’d want
15:00
those lights up
15:02
and then um based on christmas we could
15:05
go december 26th
15:07
is the earliest we take him down and
15:08
maybe the latest is going to be
15:10
uh january 31st
15:17
be aware that you’re there because that
15:18
will get you every time in my opinion
15:21
uh so now what we’ve done is we’ve done
15:23
our new installation between 91 and 12
15:25
15
15:25
and our takedown of new installation
15:28
here between 1226
15:30
and 131
15:34
so now that we’ve gone in we’ve done the
15:35
new setup so i want to save the changes
15:39
and then i’m going to add another
15:40
package for the existing setup
15:43
so this is going to be our
15:47
existing
15:52
c9 light
16:02
we’ve created the new now this is the
16:03
existing the renewal date’s going to be
16:05
exactly the same so we’re going to call
16:06
it july 6th
16:08
and then we’ve got our c9
16:11
existing install
16:16
and we’re going to set the dates once
16:17
again the beginning of september
16:20
call it september 1 and
16:24
all the way up to december 15th
16:29
then we’re going to add in our c9 take
16:33
down storage that can be the same
16:35
it doesn’t matter if they’re new or
16:36
existing
16:42
and same thing here we’re going to go in
16:44
and grab
16:46
day after christmas and
16:50
into 2021 we’re going to give them up to
16:53
january 31st
16:56
minimum days default budget hours
16:58
default budgeted rate
17:00
are not really needed now once you have
17:02
these packages set up
17:03
best practice with simple growth that we
17:05
recommend here is
17:07
um clicking here and this can override
17:11
the estimate description on the service
17:13
level and you click use an estimate
17:15
description
17:16
and that’s a way to override that as
17:18
well as uh you can go into the estimate
17:20
grid and manipulate the way
17:22
um the service and service or estimate
17:25
descriptions are shown
17:26
so if you’re using this internal
17:29
language of existing c9 install and c9
17:31
take down storage if you don’t want that
17:33
to be viewable
17:34
to the um client we can manipulate on
17:38
the estimate grid the estimate
17:39
description being the actual service
17:41
name on there i’ll show you what that
17:42
looks like in a minute
17:43
but the idea here is you’ve set this up
17:45
so you would do your c9s your wreaths
17:47
any like trunk wraps tree wraps anything
17:49
like that but you want to have new and
17:51
existing and break those
17:52
up so any comments or questions on the
17:54
live stream i’m here to answer them for
17:55
sure
17:56
uh final part here is when you go into
17:58
the gear icon
18:00
and go into estimate grid
18:03
it’s going to give you the about ability
18:07
to add your own grid and a lot of times
18:10
things like quantity and certain things
18:12
like that we probably are going to
18:13
remove that
18:14
and remove the rate but we could do is
18:17
go in now
18:18
and add service name or invoice
18:22
description these are
18:23
areas that we can go in and manipulate
18:25
so if we didn’t like the name or
18:27
description the service
18:28
we can go in and remove it ours
18:32
name slash description
18:40
so we can actually name description
18:44
there it is so we can go in and take the
18:47
amount
18:48
an invoice description and maybe
18:50
estimate description
18:52
for the two things that we’ve actually
18:53
manipulated
18:55
either on the service level or the
18:58
package level and then we could just go
19:00
instead of saying estimate description i
19:02
could say service
19:04
description so there’s some ways there
19:06
to manipulate those grids
19:08
to make it portray what you want but you
19:10
still can have your
19:11
standard naming convention on the back
19:13
end of the service that makes sense to
19:14
your internal estimators in the office
19:16
and in the field so that’s one way of
19:17
tackling that there
19:19
um and there’s some additional
19:20
formatting here always recommend
19:22
just so there’s no sticker shock uh take
19:25
the tax off
19:26
and the uh grand total and subtotal
19:29
and have a little disclaimer at the
19:30
bottom if you guys the girls do charge
19:32
sales tax we have that in the estimate
19:33
documents
19:34
so that’s going to cover you there now
19:36
the final thing is uh
19:38
in my opinion probably just workflow is
19:40
if we go into marketing forms
19:42
uh we’re gonna go in and we’ll we’ll try
19:44
our hand at v3 forms here but i started
19:46
a holiday light one just so i had it
19:48
uh ready to go and once you go
19:52
into the holiday light form um or create
19:54
your own
19:55
this is basically what it looks like so
19:58
main thing you want to do
19:59
is add your name in we’ll add that up
20:03
it says it’s a client’s name
20:08
actually i’m going to delete this out
20:09
here so we have a fresh start
20:13
so we client’s first name last name
20:17
and we’re going to go in and add address
20:20
which is going to be the service address
20:25
and maybe a phone number if we needed to
20:27
get a hold of them
20:31
[Music]
20:32
email and phone number
20:36
we’re gonna want our cell phone in case
20:37
we’re out there we have any questions or
20:39
maybe they have a dog in the yard
20:40
idea is we’re gonna create this form
20:41
this is gonna be our on-site estimate
20:43
form so this is when we’re walking
20:44
around
20:45
and we pull out our mobile phone or
20:46
tablet we start typing in
20:48
the estimate variables
20:51
so as we go in we’re going to go in and
20:54
add
20:55
a field and the first field we’re going
20:56
to drop in in the existing
21:00
example that we’re using is going to be
21:01
our number field
21:05
and when we click in that i’m going to
21:07
go in and
21:08
label it here number of
21:13
linear feet c9
21:17
as you measure that roof line that’s the
21:19
number you just plug in
21:22
and you can change any of the
21:23
descriptions so maybe this
21:28
is
21:30
roof line only so the estimator knows
21:34
and where it says enter number you can
21:36
change that here that that’s appropriate
21:38
for what’s going on here
21:39
so and then we’re going to do is make
21:41
this a required field
21:43
if you’re always doing linear feet of c9
21:45
if not we can leave it non-required
21:47
main thing is under field mapping we
21:48
want to go in and grab our custom field
21:51
number
21:52
and associate it to our
21:55
linear feet
22:01
c9
22:08
and the next thing we’re going to do is
22:12
add a field and we’re going to do
22:13
another number
22:16
and we are going in to label that again
22:23
number of 36 inch
22:27
crease
22:31
and we’re going to go in and field map
22:33
that back to a custom field number
22:38
and we’re going to do that for number of
22:40
36 inch reefs so now
22:42
once we have this obviously there’s a
22:43
lot more functionality in this v3 form
22:45
that we can go into
22:46
um on different videos but the idea is
22:48
we’re going to go and hit next
22:49
uh this is the form submission for your
22:52
employee that knows it’s been taken care
22:53
of
22:54
we’re going to hit next again we’re
22:55
going to make this available in the
22:56
mobile and office
22:58
and we’re going to make it available for
23:00
all accounts
23:02
which accounts should use this all which
23:04
rolls all
23:05
and is this form required to be filled
23:07
out automatically no
23:08
so we’re gonna hit publish if there’s
23:11
any issues
23:12
it would come up and alert you obviously
23:14
this is a really basic setup of a form
23:16
so we’re good to go
23:17
and then based on one of the previous
23:20
just happened v3 releases i want to show
23:22
you how to connect your v3 on-site
23:25
estimate form
23:26
to a client or lead this only needs to
23:28
be done once
23:30
but it’s important to show you that when
23:33
you’re in
23:33
the account screen here that we should
23:37
be able to connect this here so we’re
23:39
going to do is
23:40
go back to v2
23:48
and pull up a client
23:55
so this is our v2 screen there’s an a
23:57
for auto assist now i’m
23:59
not sure if this is going to be pulled
24:00
over to v3 but they did just give us the
24:02
ability to attach a v3
24:04
form in version two so uh one would
24:07
assume that at some point you may have
24:08
this access
24:10
but uh not too sure i haven’t got word
24:11
from essay on that but what you’re going
24:13
to do then is once this
24:15
loads we’re going to go in and hit the
24:18
icon here to add an actual
24:21
form and then we can go in and grab that
24:23
v3 form and add that right on here so
24:26
we’ve got our on-site estimate form and
24:28
that’s the idea it all pops in here but
24:30
i’m going to go and do a
24:31
holiday light form here so add a form
24:38
and then i’m going to go in and name it
24:39
and this is going to be our on-site
24:40
holiday form
24:41
and we’ll be able to work this form on
24:43
site
24:44
so once this loads we should be good to
24:46
go
24:48
any comments or questions drop them
24:49
below but i’d have to answer them here
24:51
on the live recorder version so we’ve
24:53
got our forms we’ve got our holiday
24:54
light form
24:56
and just going to grab
25:00
an icon and it’s called
25:05
holiday light form
25:10
save and now once we go in this will
25:12
always be here in live in the mobile or
25:14
in the desktop we hit that form
25:16
and then our form loads all the
25:18
information is automatically loaded in
25:19
here so there’s no double entry
25:21
and then the consumer would
25:23
automatically just enter the number of
25:25
linear feed for c9
25:26
maybe it’s 150 feet and we have three
25:29
36-inch wreaths
25:31
once we hit submit it’s on the file and
25:35
then we can go down
25:40
and hit add an estimate
25:43
and if we had that an estimate template
25:45
that’s how we would handle a holiday
25:46
light estimate
25:47
in service autopilot comments questions
25:49
drop below callahan’s corner you ask the
25:51
questions we answer them live
25:52
right here on facebook

00:00
hey Mike Callahan here wanna make a quick
00:01
video in the comment or gets the
00:04
question I want to propose to you is is
00:06
your business your service business
00:08
specifically quality driven and what
00:12
brought about this question when I
00:13
started thinking about this was that our
00:17
home cleaning service provider made for
00:20
time which did an amazing job as
00:22
continue to do amazing job is utilizing
00:25
two specific tools around Quality
00:28
Assurance in social reviews so the first
00:32
of which is they are utilizing a product
00:36
called quality driven software by Martha
00:38
Woodward known a lot of ecosystems is
00:41
cutie ass but what really happened here
00:43
which was really cool to see it as a
00:45
consumer and not always as a service
00:48
business owner or a business owner as
00:50
all is when the cleaner left the house I
00:54
got an email and it basically was a very
00:57
simple survey with some basically almost
00:59
emojis with like a smiley face and all
01:02
the way to being upset face and what
01:04
happened there is it literally said hey
01:06
how was your cleaning today would you
01:08
take two seconds and click the button to
01:11
basically rate the cleaning for that day
01:14
so it gives instant feedback but as a
01:16
consumer I started to think that wow
01:19
this really is impressive because the
01:22
service business owner wants to get
01:24
immediate feedback for improvement and
01:26
feedback to their team on a daily or
01:28
weekly basis as that cleaning was
01:30
happening so this project is used in
01:33
lawn care and home cleaning quality
01:36
driven software’s it’s something we used
01:37
in my lawn care business as well but it
01:40
got to be thinking like are you going
01:41
out and actually talking to your
01:45
customers every time after you’re done
01:47
with a specific service to get feedback
01:49
improve your service and let you know
01:53
where you’re at basically on a almost a
01:56
net promoter score a neutral detractor
01:58
promoter and do you have a process in
02:00
place then if you have a neutral or
02:03
detractor to get them back up to a
02:05
promoter and the cool thing with qts
02:07
that we saw there was that it goes out
02:09
and prompts a social read
02:13
view if the response is going to reflect
02:18
probably a five-star review so big thing
02:21
today is setting a quality driven focus
02:24
like quality driven software provides
02:25
and going out and serving your customers
02:27
every time you do service now the second
02:31
part of this here is interesting so
02:33
obviously you know it’s an automated
02:35
survey there’s no negative effects of
02:37
that but what I would also recommend is
02:39
outside of the automated survey is if
02:41
it’s a one-time service you have an
02:43
automated email that looks personal it’s
02:45
plain text it looks like somebody’s
02:46
coming from your office or if it’s an
02:48
ongoing reoccurring service like a
02:50
weekly or bi-weekly lawn mowing or
02:51
cleaning that we go out and send out a
02:55
somewhat of a automated but personalized
02:57
looking email around the 30 60 and 90
03:00
day mark because traditionally the first
03:01
90 days is where the churn happened so
03:03
the cancellation happens so
03:04
traditionally in my lawn care company
03:06
when we did this through the simple
03:07
growth automations what we would see is
03:09
the consumer would respond back and say
03:12
hey the guys and girls are doing a great
03:13
job mowing the lawn but occasionally not
03:15
blowing off the back patio
03:17
so that was a major pain point and allow
03:19
the company to address that and overcome
03:23
that pain point so the customer wouldn’t
03:25
cancel in a proactive but almost
03:27
personalized manner but it was automated
03:29
in addition to that like a lot of people
03:31
that are on our home cleaning industry
03:33
utilize the simple growth automations
03:35
that do our 30 60 and 90 day followed
03:38
for reoccurring services what we’ll see
03:40
is the feedback occasionally is hey the
03:42
guys and girls are doing a great job
03:43
cleaning the house but occasion they’re
03:44
not wiping down the tiles in the master
03:46
bath so no matter the industry or the
03:48
service you’re providing I feel that
03:50
it’s very important to have an automated
03:52
survey like quality driven software
03:54
going out after each service and then
03:56
couple that and run parallel not to
03:59
compete with something like QDs but in
04:01
the simple growth automations where we
04:03
go out based on the actual service if
04:05
it’s a reoccurring service we go out
04:07
through an automated email that looks
04:08
personal from somebody in your office in
04:10
30 60 and 90 days or only one time if
04:12
it’s a one-time service so that’s where
04:14
you would build the logic into your
04:15
automations if you’re doing it yourself
04:17
to make sure the automated communication
04:20
looks personalized based on the
04:21
customers are the services they have in
04:24
a repetitive nature of that so I think
04:27
that is the key to having a quality
04:30
driven service business if anybody’s
04:33
interested in checking out Martha’s
04:35
products here quality driven software
04:37
that we used in callaghan’s lawn care as
04:39
well as a lot of our other clients and
04:41
simple growth to use I’ll put that in
04:42
the notes here if you check that out in
04:45
the library recorded version but I was
04:48
just looking at is I got that as a
04:50
consumer I really was was pretty excited
04:52
to see that but I think and I actually
04:54
really know in my opinion is the the key
04:57
to success is having an automated
05:01
doesn’t need to look personal like
05:02
Martha’s QDs software to survey after
05:04
each time and then sprinkle in some
05:06
automated emails that look personal
05:09
based on the specific service and the
05:11
timing of the repetitiveness of that
05:13
service that’s the key to success there
05:16
as well and then the last thing that
05:18
traditionally we would want to look at
05:20
is if you’re not going to use a product
05:22
like qts one of the other things that
05:25
we’ve done is mps the social reviews so
05:27
we’ve done it on a ten it’s basically a
05:31
ten scale for MPS a social review now
05:33
social this isn’t really competitive
05:36
with like UDS this kind of runs again
05:38
kind of parallel to this but I would
05:39
recommend whether you pay someone to do
05:41
this or you do it yourself the NPS the
05:44
social review can be manually triggered
05:45
or automated throughout the year it’s
05:48
not something you send out after every
05:50
service but maybe once a quarter but
05:52
really we’re trying to see if they’re a
05:53
promoter neutral or detractor and then
05:55
based on them being a nine or ten as a
05:58
promoter the automation then pushes them
06:00
out to social review and then what we’ve
06:02
done is created reporting around that
06:04
automation inside the platform we
06:07
automate on service autopilot to
06:08
actually be able to see all the
06:10
responses and then we have them chunked
06:12
out so you can see all the responses
06:14
where they’re at promote or neutral
06:16
detractor and then like a pop pie it
06:18
basically a pie charts you can visually
06:19
see where your client base is far as are
06:23
they all mostly pro promoters in neutral
06:25
or do we have a serious chunk of
06:27
detractors then maybe that’s just a
06:29
quick phone call to take that person
06:30
from being dissatisfied and pumping them
06:32
up to promoter and usually it doesn’t
06:34
take much it’s a quick phone call we’re
06:36
all busy running our service business
06:38
but if we take just a little bit time
06:39
and you have that
06:40
communication we can get those people
06:42
that are at the biggest risk of
06:43
canceling or bad-mouthing us in public
06:46
or on social review and get them up to a
06:48
promoters so combination of a few things
06:50
automated surveys quality Geron
06:52
software’s and one we recommend using a
06:55
30 60 and 90 day follow four are
06:56
reoccurring services or one time for one
06:59
time service that’s gonna be an
07:00
automated email that looks personalized
07:01
based on the timing the service and
07:03
service third process is going to be is
07:06
going in doing something like our NPS
07:09
social review so you trigger it out
07:10
maybe once a quarter you get a benchmark
07:12
where your folks are at your clients and
07:14
then you’re able to move them up with
07:16
reporting I think reporting Zack Lee
07:18
because the key because it gives you
07:19
clarity of your business and where all
07:21
those people are in your business car is
07:23
happy are not happy and then I guess as
07:25
an added bonus or something else that
07:29
we’re seeing a lot of right now and very
07:31
similar to the cleaning company that
07:33
we’ve hired in my personal home that
07:35
actually uses our automations she’s
07:37
utilizing another process that we call
07:39
they’re called be their bin there and
07:41
that’s kind of a tongue twister but be
07:43
there been there is kind of the the
07:45
final capping piece in my opinion of
07:47
communication and proactive
07:49
communication to your clients in your
07:50
service business so what happens is when
07:52
that cleaning job of the lawn mowing or
07:54
whatever that is the fertilizing is
07:56
dispatched there is either an email or
07:58
text that’s automated to the client so I
08:00
literally get a text message letting us
08:03
know the cleaners coming tomorrow
08:04
between 8:10 and when she leaves using
08:07
the mobile app of the software within
08:10
five to 10 minutes of her leaving the
08:12
home I get an actual text message on my
08:14
cell phone saying hey the cleaners left
08:16
the house house is locked back up and
08:18
you’ll be getting a survey through
08:21
quality driven to to rate this cleaning
08:23
when you get home to make sure you’re
08:24
happy so we can follow up so those the
08:26
keys to success of having a quality
08:27
driven and focused service business and
08:32
it’s going to be those surveys through
08:34
something like qts Net Promoter MPs a
08:38
social review be there been there and
08:42
just having proactive communications and
08:45
like I said in the live and recorded
08:47
thing I put a note to quality driven
08:48
software Martha Woodward worth checking
08:52
out we don’t have any relationship far
08:53
as
08:54
bonuses or anything like that it’s just
08:56
something we’ve used into my business
08:57
and now seeing it as a consumer from the
09:00
cleaning business it resonated with me
09:02
to make a video today about being
09:03
quality focused and quality driven so
09:05
callaghan’s Corner you ask the questions
09:08
we asked him answer live right here in
09:09
Facebook see again tomorrow if you’re
09:11
watching this live we’re gonna be live
09:12
on the service autopilot Facebook page
09:14
today with Doug Meyers talking all
09:17
things service business as well Doug and
09:20
his wife Michelle run a virtual
09:21
assistance service called pink collars
09:25
and they have gone out and really
09:28
dominated and scaled that business so
09:30
we’re gonna be talking all things
09:31
business and scaling a service business
09:33
with Doug today at 1:00 p.m. Eastern
09:35
12:00 p.m. central on the SI Facebook
09:37
page as well as the SI weekly talkshow
09:39
Facebook page as well so we’ll see you
09:41
there if not feel free to accept or feel
09:44
free to submit your questions to
09:47
callaghan’s corner so we can answer them
09:48
live from right here on Facebook
09:49
we’ll see you get them out

00:04
Facebook so had a question submitted
00:06
about quality control and how to ensure
00:09
quality after the job is completed for
00:11
your landscape maintenance crews or even
00:14
home cleaning for that matter so one of
00:16
the things that I highly recommend is if
00:17
you’re using a serum a customer
00:20
relationship management software that
00:21
gives you the ability to tie a form
00:24
based on job completion so what I’m
00:26
talking about is a form pops up in the
00:29
mobile application and requires the crew
00:32
or the solo person to actually fill out
00:35
a form based on a quality control
00:38
checklist what we did my company here is
00:42
at Callahan flankers what we did is
00:45
required a form submission at the end of
00:47
each job plus on some jobs a actual
00:50
picture that was required to complete
00:53
the job so got me thinking I was walking
00:55
out of the office here today for simple
00:58
growth and notice this monstrosity
01:00
behind me that is a tree well weed but
01:04
looks more like a tree growing outside
01:06
of this Bush right here so I’m guessing
01:09
the landscape maintenance contractor has
01:11
no quality control it’s a younger
01:14
gentleman that cuts the grass here he
01:15
was just here yesterday but I’m willing
01:19
to bet if he had a quality-control form
01:21
that was required each and every time
01:23
that he completed his lawn mowing in
01:25
landscape maintenance duties this would
01:27
not happen because he would actually
01:30
have to check off all the things that
01:32
required for that job that were
01:33
completed so it would create
01:35
accountability for each part of the job
01:37
that should be done in a picture or a
01:40
series of pictures to document the job
01:42
that was done the specification so as
01:44
you’re walking out of your commercial
01:46
office if you hired a landscape
01:47
professional do this and you saw a weed
01:50
that resembled a tree coming out of a
01:51
shrub taller than me and I’m not too
01:54
tall in stature but at least five six
01:55
here this would not be happening so what
01:59
I’m recommending in your service
02:00
business if you’re looking to control
02:02
quality whether it’s lawn care or home
02:03
cleaning we’re gonna choir a form
02:05
completion so when you’re on your mobile
02:07
the form is required to be filled out
02:09
and everything’s checked off so we’ve
02:11
got personal accountability for the job
02:12
and depending on the job we want to
02:15
require a picture con
02:17
so if you’re using a product like
02:19
service autopilot that picture now is
02:21
going to be associated that form on the
02:23
clients record a place that we had great
02:26
success with this is in our snow removal
02:28
division our manager or our scouts would
02:32
go out and have to have required
02:33
pictures and forms to document the
02:36
weather across all of our service areas
02:38
so we had an audit trail of what the
02:41
snow depth was and the ice was before we
02:44
triggered the crews to go out and
02:46
service those areas but in the landscape
02:47
maintenance division we required
02:48
pictures so things like this didn’t
02:50
happen especially in a high-end
02:51
commercial property like this or an HOA
02:53
so quality control forms are going to be
02:57
required on the mobile application in
02:59
your software upon job completion so in
03:01
order to complete the job the form had
03:03
to be checked and a picture needed to be
03:06
taken or a series of pictures so a lot
03:08
of times the home cleaning companies
03:10
that we work with require a picture as
03:12
they exit the house or building of the
03:15
locked and closed door and that can be a
03:18
safeguard of what has happened
03:21
additional lawn care and landscaping a
03:23
required picture if the customer has a
03:25
fence gate we take a picture of the
03:27
closed gate as we leave so when they get
03:30
home we can’t be accused of leaving the
03:32
gate open and having a kid or a pet run
03:34
out of that backyard so couch questions
03:36
down below callaghan’s corner you ask
03:38
questions we answer live here on
03:39
Facebook I’m recommending the
03:42
requirement of a form completion after
03:44
each job by the crew leader and
03:46
potentially some pictures to avoid
03:48
something like this behind me we’ll see
03:50
you tomorrow callaghan’s corner you
03:51
asked the questions we handsome live
03:52
here on Facebook

00:00
hey Mike Kelly here with a Facebook live
00:02
Callahans corner you ask the questions
00:04
we answer them live right here on
00:05
Facebook so question that was proposed
00:07
today does facebook Messenger work for
00:10
closing sales in your sales funnel and I
00:13
believe it absolutely does well I know
00:14
it does we’ve been using it in my
00:16
business for five or six years now and
00:18
have helped well over 100 businesses
00:20
implement automated facebook Messenger
00:22
BOTS in their business but there is some
00:25
defining points of success to leverage
00:28
Facebook Messenger and have a winning
00:31
equation so the first thing is we didn’t
00:34
want to take Facebook messengers not
00:35
only use it in social media far as your
00:38
Facebook and Instagram posts but we also
00:40
want to put that on your website so
00:42
those three main areas as well as
00:44
utilize some other things such as QR
00:46
codes or links that you can be putting
00:48
in emails and different things like that
00:51
but the idea here is that facebook
00:54
Messenger is not just messenger if you
00:56
use a product called many chat a name a
00:58
ma NY chat many chat is you’re able to
01:02
leverage not just facebook Messenger but
01:05
automated text messaging and emailing
01:07
all inside the platform now if you’re
01:09
using automations with a company like
01:11
simple growth some of the text messaging
01:13
and emails can be used on your
01:15
automation platform for also but there
01:17
are some benefits to use them inside the
01:19
automation inside Facebook messengers so
01:22
they say five or more touches is eighty
01:25
percent of the sales that are being
01:26
closed so if you’re not touching your
01:29
new prospect at least five times
01:32
you’re probably losing out an 80% of the
01:34
sales so what I’m recommending is that
01:36
we use Facebook messengers another tool
01:38
in the toolbox to have real time live
01:41
conversations whether it’s
01:42
person-to-person or automated to create
01:45
a real time buying situation so your
01:48
Amazon your Netflix your ubers they’ve
01:49
figured out how to deliver real time
01:51
buying conversations that’s what we need
01:53
to be doing in our service business and
01:55
one of the tools that I recommend using
01:56
is facebook Messenger and automating it
01:59
and using that automated platform to not
02:02
only have conversations over a messenger
02:04
but trigger automated text messages and
02:07
emails and the combination of that is
02:09
the magic and we don’t want to make it
02:11
look automated we want to make it look
02:13
personal
02:13
and a lot of times if the contact is hot
02:16
it can actually signet signal a person
02:19
in your office if it’s during working
02:20
hours to jump in to face the messenger
02:22
and have a live conversation over the
02:24
chat feature so it’s not only to have
02:26
automated sales but it can be also used
02:28
for customer service and one of the
02:30
things that we are soon to release is
02:32
employee recruiting on messenger as well
02:36
so it is a multi-faceted tool but
02:40
Facebook Messenger
02:40
absolutely works and if you’re not using
02:42
I highly recommend taking a look at it
02:44
whether you do it yourself or you hire
02:46
your profession we’ll help you out
02:47
but the key is to start the conversation
02:49
on messenger try to close it bring a
02:52
live person in once you’ve qualified
02:53
them and then continue the conversation
02:55
after 24 hours via text and email
02:57
automated to close more sales and you
03:00
need to be putting that messenger tool
03:03
not only in your social media but on
03:05
your website and other places that
03:06
you’re driving traffic and that’s the
03:08
key to success so hopefully the answer
03:10
the question but messenger by itself but
03:13
just sticking it static on your facebook
03:14
page is probably not going to create a
03:17
massive return on investment but if you
03:20
take it and put it on your website in
03:22
your social posts in other areas that’s
03:25
where we see the biggest return and
03:26
closing sales and not only is it for
03:29
sales but ap can be for customer service
03:30
and employee recruiting as well so if
03:33
your present or future employees are
03:35
hanging out on social media why not talk
03:37
to them where they’re hanging out just
03:39
makes sense so comments or questions
03:40
drop and below Callahan’s corner where
03:42
you ask the questions we answer them
03:44
live on here on Facebook want to give a
03:45
shout out to the shark daddy as well
03:47
daddy shark is in the house today buddy
03:49
so Jeremiah what’s up brother hope all
03:51
is well and we’ll see you soon buddy
03:53
so callaghan’s corner you ask the
03:55
questions we answer them live here in
03:56
Facebook want to say what’s up to dawn
03:57
and Mike Robinson as well and Jason
04:00
Murphy Mike hope all is well but I
04:01
haven’t talked to you in a while and we
04:02
go way back so hope all is well and and
04:04
your business hopefully using some
04:06
Facebook messenger to close more sales
04:07
in 2020

00:00
hey Mike Callahan want to make a quick
00:02
video about evaporating profits in your
00:04
business just hanging out here with my
00:05
buddy buckles a unicorn and he’s give me
00:07
a hand filling up the pool and what I
00:09
noticed is the pool with the extreme
00:11
heat in upstate New York and the pool
00:12
heater is evaporating water um really
00:16
unsighted unseen when you wake up the
00:18
morning it’s gone very similar to the
00:20
profits that are eroding in your
00:22
business so gotta talk about the top
00:24
three or four things you should look at
00:25
to make sure your profits are not
00:28
evaporating right in front of your eyes
00:29
like the pool water behind me first
00:31
thing is having a standard SOP standard
00:33
rating operating procedure how you
00:36
actually go out and perform the work
00:38
where you park the truck where you start
00:40
the weed-whacking we start the mowing
00:42
where you end it these things will go in
00:44
and erode your profits if you don’t have
00:46
a standardizing operating procedure
00:48
where you park the truck where you start
00:50
and each function you are losing big big
00:53
time money at least I did in my business
00:54
before I standardized the next thing is
00:56
mobilization non-billable drive time
00:59
route density we need to go out and take
01:01
a high-level look at a map and see where
01:04
we’re at and create route density if the
01:08
route density is not there we got to go
01:09
in and do things such as nine arounds or
01:11
direct mailing to go out and build that
01:13
route density so you may be profitable
01:15
in hitting or beating your budget at
01:17
times on site but the profits may be
01:20
eroding because you’re driving around
01:22
with no route density in addition I like
01:24
to call it the Wendy’s frosty factor you
01:26
want to go out and make sure those crews
01:28
aren’t driving halfway around town
01:29
because they like those Wendy’s Frosty’s
01:31
either damn good on days like this out
01:33
here I’m sure my buddy buckles the
01:34
Unicorn and I could go for Wendy’s
01:36
frosty but we need to educate the crews
01:37
not to make bad decisions to drive
01:39
halfway around town for gas station or
01:42
the frosty stop now the third one is not
01:45
setting realistic and expectations for
01:48
your crews upfront so if you do not have
01:51
budgeted time on each job and the crews
01:54
aren’t being held accountable to them
01:56
with a quality standard the good chance
01:58
is if they are only working to keep a
02:00
pulse to forty hours and loving that
02:02
overtime so those are the top three
02:05
things that I would recommend looking at
02:06
your business to hopefully not have your
02:08
business profits evaporate without you
02:11
noticing just like the pool water has
02:12
been evaporated
02:13
reading behind me and having to fill it
02:15
up once a week so come to questions drop
02:17
below
02:18
callaghan’s corner you ask the questions
02:20
we answer them live here in facebook
02:21
coming back at you Holiday Edition
02:23
myself and buckles the Unicorn
02:25
we’ll see you next week

00:00
hey Mike Callahan want to make a quick
00:02
video here just got out of a first day
00:04
of a two-day deep dive where we go in
00:06
and literally reinvent and restructure a
00:09
company’s pricing particularly their
00:11
pricing matrix but one of the biggest
00:13
questions around going in and rebuilding
00:16
your pricing structure or pricing
00:17
matrices in your service business is how
00:20
does that affect your current client
00:22
base well it doesn’t so the first step
00:25
is we want to go in and build a pricing
00:27
matrices based on production so there’s
00:29
three ways of estimating that we find
00:31
the first is when we all start on a
00:32
business we traditionally go up to a
00:34
property and say based on my market this
00:36
is what the market would charge this is
00:39
what I’m going to charge obviously not
00:40
probably the right way of going at it
00:41
the next is a production rate based
00:43
estimating system based on square
00:45
footage number of units small meter
00:47
large or linear feet and then that’s
00:50
gonna go out and calculate a price
00:52
budget a timing cost before profit and
00:55
those are distinctively the two main
00:58
ways we desta mate but the other way is
01:00
what if we don’t have a production rate
01:02
already that we’re comfortable with we
01:03
don’t have an industry standard we can
01:05
use well we can base it on how many
01:07
minutes or hours the estimator thinks
01:09
it’s gonna take
01:09
they plug that into a thing we call the
01:11
on-site estimate form when you pull up
01:12
the estimate in the software it
01:15
calculates a price budget time and cost
01:16
based on the estimators experience and
01:19
then once we have enough data in the
01:20
software we can run a production
01:23
analysis so without emotion we can find
01:26
out how long it takes to service that
01:28
square footage area on average with your
01:30
guys and girls in the field so the
01:33
pricing matrix is going to be going in
01:35
and updating from today moving forward
01:38
it doesn’t go back historically so what
01:41
we need to do for our historical clients
01:42
is go in and create a job costing report
01:46
and that job cost report if you’ve got
01:48
good data in your software is gonna go
01:50
out and pull out your start time your
01:52
stop time hopefully some drive time
01:54
associated with each job and how long it
01:56
took for you to do those jobs and then
01:59
you could say if I want fifty five
02:01
dollars per man-hour per person on the
02:03
crew I’d plug that in and when you drag
02:05
some formulas down it’s going to give
02:07
you property specific pricing whether
02:09
you keep the price the same or have to
02:11
raise it so two distinct
02:13
season I recommend in your service
02:15
business is creating production rate
02:18
based estimating system in updating the
02:20
matrices that’s moving forward and
02:24
that’s what we’re doing an in the deep
02:25
dive in addition to the deep dive we’re
02:26
gonna go in and create a job cost report
02:28
where we take all the information
02:30
historically for start and stop times
02:32
per service and update anybody’s service
02:35
that’s not hitting our financial
02:36
threshold so most people in the service
02:38
industry post on Facebook say hey I’m
02:40
raising my price is $2.00 a cut or 3%
02:43
across the board and home cleaning in my
02:45
opinion that’s the worst thing you can
02:47
do we wanted to create a report and Nan
02:49
emotionally raise the prices on the jobs
02:51
that are not hitting our economic or
02:53
dollar threshold per man-hour so want to
02:56
put some clarification around what that
02:58
looks like when you come to a deep dive
02:59
or you’re doing it yourself
03:01
pricing matrix updates are moving
03:03
forward only in the future to go
03:05
backwards we need to do job costing
03:07
reports and update those services on
03:09
anybody not hitting our financial
03:11
threshold and it’s a non-emotional way
03:13
to raise the losers and keep the winners
03:15
there and never raise their price if
03:17
they’re meeting our goal because they
03:18
are the most profitable clients and we
03:20
don’t want them to go out and shop our
03:21
services so comments or questions drop
03:23
them below callaghan’s corner you ask
03:25
the questions we answer them live right
03:26
here on Facebook

00:01
Hey Mike Callahan here back
00:02
Hey Mike Callahan here back with Callahan’s Corner Take
00:03
with Callahan’s Corner Take number two had some technical
00:05
number two had some technical difficulties. We’re trying to
00:06
difficulties. We’re trying to build out the matrix but
00:07
build out the matrix but question was submitted how to
00:09
question was submitted how to create a estimate for lawn
00:10
create a estimate for lawn mowing based on each size of
00:12
mowing based on each size of lawn mower and some production
00:14
lawn mower and some production right so the consumer doesn’t
00:15
right so the consumer doesn’t see the particular price that
00:17
see the particular price that you’re charging for each part
00:18
you’re charging for each part of the property based on the
00:19
of the property based on the size of the mower so you can
00:21
size of the mower so you can have in this example, I’m gonna
00:22
have in this example, I’m gonna have a 22 inch mower 30, -, 660
00:25
have a 22 inch mower 30, -, 660 and 72 inch, and how to break
00:26
and 72 inch, and how to break that down and especially if
00:28
that down and especially if you’re in a larger commercial
00:29
you’re in a larger commercial property if you utilizing Areas
00:31
property if you utilizing Areas in large 60 or 72 inch wide
00:34
in large 60 or 72 inch wide open areas, How do we charge
00:35
open areas, How do we charge and create production based
00:36
and create production based estimating on that? also gonna
00:38
estimating on that? also gonna go and show you how to do it
00:39
go and show you how to do it based on a normal mowing
00:41
based on a normal mowing scenario where you average in
00:42
scenario where you average in your average production rate
00:44
your average production rate for your mowing blowing and
00:45
for your mowing blowing and edging you can get that in and
00:46
edging you can get that in and if you Service Autopilot we’ll
00:47
if you Service Autopilot we’ll also show you how to get that
00:48
also show you how to get that in there for success so sorry
00:50
in there for success so sorry about the delay on the first
00:52
about the delay on the first version, but I’m gonna pop this
00:54
version, but I’m gonna pop this open and show you really
00:55
open and show you really quickly how we do this so first
00:56
quickly how we do this so first thing I’m gonna do here is I
00:57
thing I’m gonna do here is I take number two is jump right
00:58
take number two is jump right into the particular. On how to
01:01
into the particular. On how to break it down per size and
01:01
break it down per size and mower and linear feet of edd
01:04
mower and linear feet of edd and blowing then I’m gonna show
01:06
and blowing then I’m gonna show you the general example of the
01:07
you the general example of the lawn mowing where we average
01:08
lawn mowing where we average the mowing and nudging
01:09
the mowing and nudging altogether. so I’m gonna be
01:10
altogether. so I’m gonna be using some industry averages.
01:12
using some industry averages. you obviously wanna make sure
01:13
you obviously wanna make sure you do time and for your team
01:17
you do time and for your team based on the guys and girls
01:18
based on the guys and girls that your equipment you’re
01:19
that your equipment you’re using. so the first example is
01:20
using. so the first example is we’re gonna create a basic
01:21
we’re gonna create a basic parent service. everything
01:23
parent service. everything underneath this will be hidden
01:25
underneath this will be hidden underneath it. This is a simple
01:26
underneath it. This is a simple growth blueprint where we
01:27
growth blueprint where we actually go in and frame this
01:28
actually go in and frame this out. What we’ve done is made
01:30
out. What we’ve done is made some assumptions here on
01:33
some assumptions here on service three we’re charging
01:34
service three we’re charging $50 an hour so that’s our goal
01:36
$50 an hour so that’s our goal for revenue per hour and our
01:37
for revenue per hour and our expense per hour based off our
01:40
expense per hour based off our budget is $36 and 42 cents. so
01:43
budget is $36 and 42 cents. so the first mower we’re gonna be
01:44
the first mower we’re gonna be building out is a 22 inch
01:46
building out is a 22 inch mower. so I put in the service
01:48
mower. so I put in the service name of 20 – two inch Mower in
01:50
name of 20 – two inch Mower in the job variable the custom
01:51
the job variable the custom field that we’re measuring the
01:53
field that we’re measuring the area that 20 – two -inch mowers
01:55
area that 20 – two -inch mowers can be mowing is the 22 inch
01:59
can be mowing is the 22 inch Down here that we’ve already
02:00
Down here that we’ve already kinda created so we we’ve we’ve
02:02
kinda created so we we’ve we’ve decided based on industry
02:04
decided based on industry averages a 22 inch mower and
02:05
averages a 22 inch mower and mow up to 5000 square feet so
02:07
mow up to 5000 square feet so kinda actually happy about the
02:08
kinda actually happy about the technical difficulties. I’m
02:10
technical difficulties. I’m gonna show you how we actually
02:11
gonna show you how we actually break this down. so I’m gonna
02:12
break this down. so I’m gonna go in and show you from 125
02:14
go in and show you from 125 zero zero square feet here What
02:18
zero zero square feet here What it breaks it down how to break
02:19
it breaks it down how to break it for thousand and, then I’m
02:20
it for thousand and, then I’m gonna recommend you re edit at
02:22
gonna recommend you re edit at the top line to reflect a 4000
02:25
the top line to reflect a 4000 square foot increment for each
02:27
square foot increment for each mower as a minimal. so we’re
02:29
mower as a minimal. so we’re gonna do is go in and say it
02:31
gonna do is go in and say it takes us one hour to based on
02:33
takes us one hour to based on one hour and 50 is $50. So what
02:35
one hour and 50 is $50. So what I’m gonna do it on the bottom
02:37
I’m gonna do it on the bottom line. Here is go in and say
02:38
line. Here is go in and say equals this divided by five cuz
02:40
equals this divided by five cuz five parts of
02:43
five parts of a thousand 500 a thousand 5000.
02:44
a thousand 500 a thousand 5000. It’s point two hours in our
02:46
It’s point two hours in our price. I’m.
02:51
Equals $10 and the cost of $7
02:54
Equals $10 and the cost of $7 and 28 cents, so I’m gonna do
02:56
and 28 cents, so I’m gonna do is now is just manipulate this
02:58
is now is just manipulate this from one to a thousand is my
03:02
from one to a thousand is my $10.
03:05
$10. Point
03:05
Point two hours. and $7 and 28
03:08
Point two hours. and $7 and 28 cents so that for an industry
03:10
cents so that for an industry average, we’ve got 5000 square
03:11
average, we’ve got 5000 square feet for 22 inch mower. Now the
03:14
feet for 22 inch mower. Now the next one is gonna be a 36 inch
03:15
next one is gonna be a 36 inch Mower so a 30 – six -inch from
03:19
Mower so a 30 – six -inch from one to 10000 square feet Our
03:25
one to 10000 square feet Our rate equals that time of $50
03:28
rate equals that time of $50 there’s going to equal out that
03:30
there’s going to equal out that $50 an hour so I’m gonna do is

Welcome back to Callahan’s Corner where you ask the questions we answer them live here on Facebook. Had a question submitted in the Service Autopilot Facebook users group… how to go out and create route density? This gentleman owns a lawn care company, but this will be applicable for pretty much any service business that does routing he is midseason and he’s adding a secondary mowing crew and he wants to know how can he go out and not injure or effect the route density on the first crew but allow both crews to have route densities. I’m gonna answer that question and as you’re looking at this, this will actually apply to the beginning of the season. This is something that most of our businesses we work with in the south and southwest don’t deal with a lot because traditionally they run 12 months a year and so if you have a major spike of sales in the spring this is applicable for that south or southwest market but then in addition if you’re in the northern market where I’m at upstate New York we traditionally go dormant for three to four months in the winter we don’t actually go out and service those come those businesses or residential homes so that has forced us to create a process to go out and create route density when we go out and route. I’m gonna show you some best practices in one of our test accounts here and give you an idea of how we tackled it in my business. What I’m gonna do is as usual drop the screen here and lower this out but if you have any comments or questions drop them below here in the live or recorded version I’m happy to answer them. The idea here is were in Service Autopilot so the first thing I want to look at is if you already have the existing routes or you’re going new into the season as you probably want to take so we’ve got 163 jobs in this test account here and what I would do is probably go into the grouping selection and take all of those jobs that you’re looking at and then once you click and we’ve got them I would go in and assign it to a needs to be scheduled account here. What we’re going to do is check it to mowing scheduled to be scheduled and hit update and this would be permanent in this test account I don’t want to screw the data up too much as I’m manipulating it here this may take a few minutes just because there is a lot of data points here but what that is going to do is take all of those jobs and then send them to that one 2020 lawn-mowing needs to be routed you can kind of see as the screens updating here the blues are all turning to yellow so it’s gonna be all on one main and crew. What we’re gonna do is take all of our accounts and bucket them together on one screen and then what I would recommend is going in and routing those two routes so Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday possibly Friday if you are going five days a week. What you’d want to do in my opinion is route truck 1 and truck 2 here so they start from the farthest part apart and they go together. Traditionally Callahan’s this is what we did because if we were all the way out on the east side of town and our shop was on the westside of town we wanted them to be able to help each other if there was a breakdown and it was an issue and then in addition to that once I clear this out so let’s go into this area right here and fictitiously let’s just say we’re gonna be out in this area of town today or actually let’s go over here we’ve got more pins that kind of break this down but we’re gonna split this area up in half so maybe truck number one is going to grab this area here and when you click that in you double click it’s going to close that gap and what it does is it actually updates in the upper left-hand corner here that we had budgeted hours of 18 hours 27 jobs in gross revenue of $900 so if I go into marker display and I break this down to show all markers it will have all the markers so maybe my goal is to have a 20-hour day so let’s grab a couple more here so now we’re up to budgeted hours of 28 with a two-man crew that’s probably going to be too much so it’s going to give us the ability to kind of play the game here to get that so let’s just say this was 20 and we had about a thousand dollars worth of revenue that was our goal for that revenue so total man hours and revenue goal we would go in and then assign it to well go in and say this is gonna be lawn mowing crew number six and we would make it permanent and you want to make sure that we’ve unchecked all and we’re just assigning it to the mowing crew say number six and then we hit update so now we have that route dedicated to the first crew and then the other crew we could go in and do the same process here. When you have those two chunks now you’d want to go in and optimize to start from the outside and go in now there’s two reasons like Isaid if we have a breakdown it’s great they can help each other out if one’s running behind the other main thing is if you have rain delay and maybe your shop isn’t over here where ours was but it’s it’s all the way over here we wouldn’t want to drive all the way back to this area so we could take what’s left of two routes if we got rained out midday and have one crew as the crews are working in work that one consolidated area right here so we’re minimizing the drive type so two crews don’t have to have all the extra nine available drive time one crew can go out and handle that area and then minimize the drive time and the other crew can stay close to the shop. Traditionally Callahan’s what we did is we took the farthest away areas from the shop and worked our way back to the shop all the way through Thursday we went from Monday to Thursday four 10s and then Friday and Saturday were rain delays if we needed them but that allowed us to really optimize and catch up for any rain delays or holidays and we went in. First idea is you want to go in chunk all the areas out and use the group selection for budgeted hours and total revenue and then once you have them each day for two crews together you want to route them so they run into each other so if there’s issues that can help each other and if there’s a rain delay that both crews don’t have to drive all the way to the other side of the town or city if that’s the issue going on. The next step as you’re doing this here you want to pay attention to how many budgeted hours and total revenue foreach crew it makes your your scheduling appropriately because if you set a budget to a certain amount of dollars or man-hours per crew and you’re not paying attention that can erode your bottom-line profits immediately and in addition so like let’s just say our fertilization and weed control crew with Callahan’s was between about twelve to thirteen hundred dollars a day for a one-man technician and that was our revenue point with budgeted hours and we had tied to it for routing as we pulled them off the waiting list. The next thing you want to do is make sure your teams are set up so like we said we’ve got the 2020 Mow Scheduled list so this is if this gentleman’s watching this video I would take all of your lawn mowing accounts and put them all and group them in there with no emotion and then chuck them out geographically so they run into each other and on those crews we want to go down so if we went in to say mow crew number six we are gonna go in and make sure ,I’m just gonna hit some of the highspots that you want to do so you want obviously the description, the team code, the map color icon, the starting address that’s important because when you go to use the route optimization if there isn’t the starting address to that truck it’s not going to be able to fully optimize it so that’s why it’s very important to have that in there and then team assignments we’d go in and add our two resources our two employees and the days of the week they can work so if they couldn’t work on a Sunday we wouldn’t put Sunday on there but otherwise we leave it open all seven days selected because they would then be available to be routed on those jobs so those are the foundational parts of that in addition you want to have your employees set up with payroll and job costing tab taken care of. Now next thing is if we go in and now we’ve seen some kind of gaps in inefficiency as far as density we want to go in and go into the CRM client screen and what’s going to this test account I’ve got all of the clients in here and these are all the pins that we were servicing so what I would do is zoom in and let’s just say we’ve got a gap here and it’s not as dense in this area so I want to build some route density in this residential neighborhood because we’re pretty dense in here right here it looks like we could probably use some help so we’re going to dial into that this area here and I’m going to go to satellite and once you go in there and now you can really see okay yeah we’re pretty dense over here but we need some density over here that’s gonna affect us or maybe we’ve got some stuff all around this area but we don’t have anything in this block here. What you could do is go into the sparsely populated neighborhoods and just continue to dial in and this is actually probably a good example here so we’ve got one home over here but nothing else in this whole area so what I’m going to do is go in and right-click on the houses in this neighborhood so we’ve got one in there but we don’t have that many so as we click those pins down on the left here it’s building a marketing list so I recommend is your admin if they’re slow they can do this if not we used to hire college kids to come in part-time during break and we would take this list and build out custom field so we’d go in and measure the turf square footage of these properties and then through some automations and some processes we used inside the business we could send out automated pricing for these properties with property specific pricing with upsell opportunities. The idea is when you dial in now you’re creating a marketing list so now I’ve got ten homes around the one that I’ve already got and we’re just going to keep selecting and this is how we had upwards of 10,000 homes in our database to continue to do this you just go in and keep dropping those pins. Jonathan Pototschnik of the Lawn Care Millionaire always talks about nine around so we’ve every time we got a new account before we used a product like Send Jim we’ve manually go in and create nine or twelve arounds basicallyof all the properties around it to build density or in this example if we only had one home in the neighborhood that blue pin we’d go in and tag all fifty or sixty of these homes and start sending property specific mailings. In addition depending what part of the country are based on the question that you submitted how do I build more route density or not effect the dents they’re having thatmain crew is what we did is and it probably didn’t make our competition a happy but we would actually go in and drive around all the neighborhood’s we were in or the neighborhoods that we were around here in what we would do is literally drive down the street as we drove down the street we could tell based on the striping in the grass here of the lawn we were cutting because I knew that’s commuter so it looks like there’s another one over here we would write down all the service addresses in a notebook and then once again in the winter season we would go in and create qualified database and physically mailout hard copy contracts or proposals to all the people and on the envelope it would say lawn mowing customer. Two different ways of tackling it I recommend both but the idea here is at first you want to go to your dispatch board and select put all your mowing accounts on one account or one map break them up and then assign days to the route them together for overlap for breakdowns and weather delays to minimize non-billable drive time when you do that you want to set up a a team for let’s say 2020 mow schedule list so that’s the mowing that needs to be scheduled and we take that large bucket and pull it off assign it and optimize and save it to recur weekly or bi-weekly and then our main mowing teams we want to make sure we have a starting addressin team assignments and the final thing is we go into CRM clients and we grab all of our clients there and we go in and actually create a property specific lead list so we have one client we’re gonna grab all the other homes we’re gonna measure them and through some automations and other processes we’ll lsend property specific pricing to all the other homes in this specific neighborhood and as we dial back out it’s really easy to see where are we really dense and where are we needing to add some density in between routes so that’s how I would tackle it hopefully that makes sense. First thing is to take all your accounts put them on one basically bucket account and then we want to go in and chunk them out route them together set up your teams with assignments and starting points then we go into our CRM client list just like we are here we go in and drop the pins where we need to build density we do property specific pricing based on the leadless that we are creating, those are the secrets that we had success in Callahan’s Lawn Care as well as going in and using a product called Send Jim to do those automated nine arounds to build and do this automatically so every time a new client popped in it would grab the nine surrounding homes and automatically fire off a series of postcards to build that route density. Comments or questions drop them now in the recorded or live version. Callahan’s Corner you ask the questions we answer in live right here on Facebook

Hey Mike Callahan here, had a question submitted around creating automations in your service business, whether it’s lawn care or home cleaning pest control doesn’t matter, the question was around how do we go out and create tags and what is the best practice to actually go out and create tags to create an automated system and there’s a two-part approach that really needs to be taken in my opinion. After working with probably four or five hundred different businesses as well as my business that we automated completely there definitely is a best practice and a wrong practice of tags. I’m gonna pull out the screen here and actually break it down for you but it’s pretty interesting that a lot of times when people get into automations that they don’t understand the naming convention and the methodology for creating tags in a successful fully automated service business. I’m gonna take the screen here and pop this up and show you what i’m talking about here. The first thing is automation tagging system so Simple Growth uses a naming convention here and the first thing we’re gonna look at is a category so that’s on the top of the screen here we’re looking at five different categories so their status, history, profile, to do or to do’s, and system tags. A status tag for easy sorting and searching in the system so they are all grouped together so all our statuses are 01.Status, history is 02.History, profile is .03, to do .04 and systems are 05. so that’s where they’re going to group together and sort nicely for you in the list of tags that you have. A status is where somebody is at in your actual campaigns, i’m going to break down some examples of this but this could be a new lead needs an estimate that could be their status. History is just going to basically be where they’ve been in the automation, so we’re just going to continually add those history tags that’s going to be our audit trail where they’ve been where a status tag we are going to go in and either take them on and take them off as they go so status could be a new lead needs an estimate and then once they get an estimate new lead has an estimate that needs to be closed. The status continually updates so we subtract and add statuses as we move through the campaign, history gives us an audit trail we don’t remove those we just continue to add those on, profile is going to keep track of the data not stored in a custom field so if you have custom fields in a process or platform like Service Autopilot your profile tags probably are going to be not really prevalent but if it’s something you’re not storing in a custom field the profile is going to tell you something about the profile of the customer. The fourth one is the to-do so these all the things that a person in your office would have to do or a field manager so we’re going to track the different todo’s and sort them down with an 04 to do tag. Now the 05 system basically tells your automation what to do or Service Autopilot if you’re using it. Easy analogy for this is the system tags will basically tell the automations when to start and stop and actually do something so these are the categories and then i’m gonna suggest breaking out five different types of campaigns that you’re building so they are going to be 10.Marketing, 20.Sales, 30.Fulfillment, 40.Finance and 50.Internal i like to say slash HR. Some examples is that our marketing campaign could be 10.Marketing upsell aeration overseed or 10.Marketing deep clean up sell for a cleaning industry. 20.Sales is an actual sales process so that would be like our 20 days to close. Fulfillment if something has actually been sold. 30.Fulfillment a certain job needs to be done, 40.Finance would be something around overdue invoices or some financial transactions so a lot of our overdue invoices have the naming convention that start with 40.Overdue invoices. Then the last one is 50.Internal/HR so when you go into start automating your employees we would use the 50.Internal campaign name so what what happens now is you’ve got all your campaigns and all your marketing campaigns now are grouped together because they’re 10, all the sales are 20, 30 are fulfillment, 40 are finance and 50 are internal hr. This is going to give you the ability to easily search and filter through each campaign name and then a category of where they’re at the automated. These are the basics that we’ve learned in my business in the last eight or nine years and like i said automating well over 300 companies now in lawn care and home cleaning and pest control. An example if you want to go out and build your own automations is how would you actually use the naming convention and put this into best practice so i’m going to see if i can bump the screen out here but what we’re doing is we’re taking our status so that is going to be where someone is at in your campaigns 01 status and this is where we’re going to start with that and so that’s the category. Then space hyphen space or space dash space 20. so it’s a sales campaign sales estimate to close so we need to close that sales estimate we’re following up on it and 01 is going to be the status now of where the person is that leader client new prospect needs first follow-up phone call. Now we can go in and filter down to the status, the campaign whether it’s marketing, sales, fulfillment, finance or internal and then we can see where the person is actually at in the campaign itself so this is really important in my opinion to really dial this in because it gives you the control to go in and check your automations if certain people are in certain areas of your automation and you want to add or subtract something into it or if there’s ever an update on your automation platform where you need to pull people out insert them back into an area this will allow you that granularity to see exactly the category the campaign name and then the tag detail of where they’re at the actual automation itself. This is a methodology that we use Simple Growth here so we want to break down our categories feel free to borrow these categories are going to be broken into five naming conventions for 01, 02, 03, 04, 05 that’s important for sorting and then our campaigns naming conventions be 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 any more than these five categories and five campaign naming conventions will get really will get really wonky quick so i recommend no more than five categories and five campaign types and everything we’ve seen in the last eight or nine years falls really nicely within these so investing well over 150 000 in figuring out how to do this and make it successful we wanted to lift the hood up a little bit and share this with you for a road map to category and campaign naming success in your tagging system in whatever you’re using automate your business. Comments or questions drop them below here but i thought it was important to answer the question that was submitted regarding automations and tagging and what was the purpose and how would you tackle it. Callahan’s Corner, you ask the questions we answer them live right here on Facebook.

Mike Callahan here with Callahan’s Corner, where you ask the questions we answer live here on Facebook. Questions submitted last week was how to actually go out and fire a bad client so welcome back to Callahan’s Corner had a question submitted last week how to go out and fire a bad customer. Callahan’s Corner where you ask the questions we answer them live here on Facebook so if you have any questions feel free to set them in on the live or recorded version and I’m happy to answer your questions. The questions submitted really was how to go out and fire a bad client so in order to fire a bad client in my opinion what we did in my business that Callahan’s Lawn Care was in our actual lawn care I want to say contractor agreement in the actual estimate document we went out and built a area air of Terms of Service and this Terms Of Service was built for the consumer and the business and what it did is it spelled out a cancellation period. So the cancellation period spelled out it was a two week written notice by either parties the company or the customer to cancel and obviously if the customer called and wanted to cancel for legitimate reason we would let them out immediately but the idea is that we made it a two-way agreement we took the risk out of it for the consumer but it also gave us an out and the out that it gave us if we eventually worked with a client that was a bad fit we had the ability to politely let them go and not injure the relationship as far as getting destroyed on social media or review. There really is two reasons why we did this so the first reason is the obvious of the question being asked if they’re not a good fit and they’re just they’re crazy which some clients are how do we get rid of them so we built it into the contract agreement two week written notice and we can let them go so traditionally we do is we would give them a written notice and then give them a call and within and let them know he unfortunately you know we need to part ways and we were pretty honest about it but you know obviously politically correct but we would also give them a reference of several other contractors that we would recommend inservice area so we didn’t just cancel them and leave them high and dry. The second part of this where I think is a little bit interesting as well is that when we would set that up in the lawn care estimate or contract that it was a two-week written notice for either party to cancel the agreement this allowed us to go out just right pretty much after this video here on the next few weeks we traditionally did the week of July 4th that following week we ran a job costing report and that job costing report would allow us to go in there not emotionally and actually list all several hundred lawn mowing customers and say on average if our goal is fifty five dollars per man-hour are we hitting that goal and if we weren’t hitting that goal the report that we used would actually kick out property specific pricing so if your goal is fifty five bucks an hour you need to raise the price per cut say two dollars and seven cents whatever it was but it was to the penny and it was based on us using our mobiles in the field clocking in and clocking out of the job so based on the historical data on that yard it would tell us what we needed to charge so what we would do is send a written agreement not a cancellation agreement but written contractual agreement that we needed to raise our price X amount of dollars per cut and this is the reason being because we’ve been tracking the time and we’re not hitting our goals and the property is under price but that gave us an out to raise the price and still would fit within the confines of that contract so it wasn’t exactly asked at the Callahan’s Corner question of how do you get rid of a bad customer I recommend putting that in your estimate and contract agreement sending it in writing and then give them a call and give them some different contractors they can contact so that’s if you’re firing them but in addition to that you also want to have some verbiage in there to cover you so you can raise your prices midseason when all the other contractors are too busy to return phone calls and do estimates so if you did underpriced a job or maybe they added fifteen trees in the front yard and your crew didn’t tell you about it and obviously the job was priced for no trees so you’ve doubled or tripled the amount of weed-whacking engine blowing we can account for that so these are the things that I would recommend that we did on our business throughout the years to learn from things we weren’t lucky enough to get right. In your estimate and your contract if you have one contracts are hit and miss there are some pros and cons if you can get away with it in your market I like agreement there is non contractual that runs 12 months a year that auto renews but in the estimate document and agreement you want that clearly spelled out it’s a two-way cancellation with a two-week notice is what we found is the the appropriate time to make that work and that allows you to raise your price mid season or mid rolling contract as well. Comments questions drop them below but that’s how we tackled getting rid of bad customers we literally just had the verbiage in our estimate or contract and mailed that out soon the two-week notice with competitors that we would suggest that they shop to and unfortunately just wasn’t a good fit and we couldn’t meet their needs and if we couldn’t meet exceed their service needs we wanted to basically help them out and provide them with contractors that hopefully could we were able to do that legally through the actual contract agreement that we put together in our estimate and when we wanted to raise our prices we had that ability as well so comments questions drop them below Callahan’s Corner- you ask the questions we answer them live right here on Facebook

Mike Callahan here, back again with Callahan’s Corner had a question submitted this week and gentlemen wanted to know in his service business when is it a good time to automate his business and do I have any tips or tricks to actually go out and automate your service business? So little background on myself I want to automated my service business almost probably eight or nine years ago and I’m gonna share some of the tips and tricks that we learned along the way of actually knowing when it’s ready to actually automate your business how to go in and track the different procedures to make sure it’s good ROI (return on investment) and how to get your team to actually buy into automation since the biggest push back or knee-jerk reaction we find with team members or business owners is that when we go to automate a business we people think we’re replacing them with a piece of software and that’s definitely not what we’re doing. If you have any comments or questions on the live or recorded version here feel free to ask. As we go here on the step number one is to basically embrace technology what is it the right time to automate and if you’re looking at your service business you want to know is it the right time to automate my service business the first thing I say is most service businesses wait entirely too long to adapt new technology. If your business is feeling the weight of daily tasks slowing you down it’s time to automate invest some money in a software that will help you automate these tasks and buy back time and money in the long run by automating all those tasks. Step number two is is it the right time to automate far is your business tip number two is going to be to track the time so use time tracking on all your daily routines. I would suggest going in and go in and have your team use like a Google sheet and track the time you’re spending on tasks that could be automated and once you go in and go from top to bottom what are the the major time things that are sucking timeout so is it accounts overdue is that getting invoice is out is it upselling is it quality control is it communicating when your team’s are gonna be at a property or they’ve left or property all these things can be automated and reduce the human input to get the people on your team to do higher level ROI things. So tip number two is track the time and see what tasks you perform regularly and where you can go in and do that and productivity or how will improve your service business so take a look at after you’ve tracked the time how will that increase productivity or save time and these two steps are gonna help you create a clearer non-emotional priority list of what things to automate first if you choose to automate. Step number three is going in and reducing the number of processes or procedures in your service business. The first thing we want to look at is can we reduce the number of marketing procedures, logistics, sales and customer service process so those four were the big ones marketing, logistics, sales, and customer serviceI would probably actually add a fifth here as I’m thinking about it accounts receivable but those may be customer service processes as well. Use a limited time frame but maybe a month two weeks to a month to review all the processing systems in your business and work from the top down for the most important processes to the least important and this process is gonna help you go in and hopefully eliminate some of the processes that aren’t actually needed in your business there’s repetition or maybe they’ve been in place since day one and you haven’t actually looked at them and then the ones that are still left we’re going to optimize the process of procedure to create bottom-line results and start to buy that time back. The fourth and final step of automating your business is include your team so most businesses will go off-site or the business owner will kind of come off the grid and literally go in after everything is built and go into their team and say hey this is a new automation and this is what we’re doing you need to start doing it tomorrow. I your team is not bought in from the start in my opinion your new automations are basically doomed from the start so you want to show your team how these actions will work and how they’ll improve everyone’s life and performance at work and then explain how basically we’re not going out to replace the people but we’re actually putting the people in your organization on higher level functions so they can have a higher level return on investment and hopefully maybe expand their scope of work and potentially their pay so the idea is not to replace people it’s to empower people and avoid having do the tedious and monotonous tasks. One study we did with some Facebook estimator bots that we’re doing that with the Facebook automated AI (artificial intelligence) and the sink into a CRM such a Service Autopilot we were able to basically get back close to 18 weeks of time and when that was basically is these sales people doing all the double-entry and working the system now the automation qualified and primed the lead and put the most important leads in front of them in a systematic way and buying time back. I don’t know about you but if I could get an extra 18 to 20 weeks of production out of my sales team that’s a big bottom-line improvement and now your sales team isn’t bogged down in the minutia in the monotonous task but they’re just doing the high level value so if they’re on commission that’s something you want to communicate with them that this is going to make you more successful put more money in your pocket and bring your team on and the automation in place implementation step by step so like I said literally from day one as soon as possible involve your key team in the step by step implementation in automation decisions that you’re building in your business. Those are the four steps that I would recommend when automating a business embrace the technology, make sure the time’s right to automate. Next thing is if it is the right time track the time in each area of the business that you do routinely and go in and see where the biggest return on investment happened from top to bottom . We want to reduce the number of processes and then streamline the remaining ones. Then the fourth one is include your team get buy-in from day one and those are the four main key points to automating a service business with success from day one. Comments or questions drop them below, Callahans’s Corner- you asked the questions we answer live right here on Facebook

Hey Mike Callahan here I want to make a quick video today about building accountability and reporting in your service business. As we’re growing and scaling our second seven-figure business here i’m starting to think about some of the things we’re putting into place this week and dialing in in my business and I started to looking at accountability and reporting and where i’m going with this is yes a lot of the processes are automated but they still require a human touch and reporting. So if the automation does everything which it normally does people tend to forget to do that follow-up and follow up if something isn’t happening that the automation may have not been able to follow through on. A couple examples of how this would playout I recommend creating a ownership of one person umor each person in the team managing three or four of these responsibilities so probably three’s the magic number but an example is that we are looking at getting a credit card on file a lot of service businesses require a credit card on file to have the service done so in order to get the service done you need to have a credit card on file so now the automation automatically goes out each and every time that we sign up a new person to get that credit card on file. Once that credit card is on file the continued process of scheduling and maybe in design build going out and ordering materials. What i’m recommending is someone in your business either the owner or manager is going to be responsible for two to three people to basically daily report into them so what that person may do is if i am in the office is i’m gonna be looking at credit card received every time we have a new client the schedule was then booked with the credit card on file and if there’s any materials that need to be ordered that’s taken care of so those would be my big three that i would report out to on a daily basis. Dillan on our team is managing an onboarding process of automations that we’re refining in . A lot of the stuff is completely automated but in order to make sure things don’t slip through the cracks Christine and Kevin on the Simple Growth team now are going through and sweeping through a project management board that we have a lot of it’s automated but we still want a physical person to double check and if it doesn’t happen the automated alerts that person that didn’t happen and now we’re holding a physical person accountable to make sure those things happen. The things you may want to look at for accounting reporting is a daily meeting cadence and look at the things that are the biggest pain points that you need so automated process to get a credit card on file someone dials in to make sure that happens once the credit card on file a automation or to-do basically a task in your CRM should tell somebody to schedule that job and then we may have a deadline if that each job needs to be on the schedule or waiting list within 24 hours if that doesn’t happen it physically pulls a person in and that person’s reporting out to their manager that it has happened so we’ve got a checks and balances with the automation. Then the third one may be maybe going out and ordering materials for like a design build job or another while i’m sitting here just thinking about it would be an accounts receivable process so maybe you have an automation like we’ve built in Simple Growth where it goes out and does several warnings and then finally pauses of the service is that physical act of pausing the service happening someone should be reporting on that daily and then when account becomes in good standing again we reschedule that job is there an additional fee for getting the property back into place if a certain time has elapsed? Then the final thing is worst case scenario if they go past a certain point the automation is actually going to trigger a process and system to send the people out to collections so that would be a daily reporting out is there anybody we had to send to collections and was that process take care of? Automations are great but i highly recommend building a weekly cadence or daily cadence meeting where your people on your team that are responsible for certain things to happen report to a manager or owner on a daily basis to make sure what should happen always happen without the business owner having to go in and micromanage it and then that manager if you have someone between you and the ownership group is running those meetings then that’s maybe a once a week meeting to see where we’re at on those key KPI those key performance indicators that the team is going out and doing that. I want to say a big shout out what’s up to Keith, Dillan on the Simple Growth team, Shane , Jim Morrison, Tim – Jim and Tim, boys i’m coming out to your cities respectively sooner or later I think we both need to catch up for a few drinks i haven’t seen you guys in awhile so hopefully all is well. I’m looking at accounting and reporting, assign three things to each team member and have them report out to a manager owner daily so they have ownership. One of the things i learned at Callahan’s is when i kind of took ownership of the reporting and when we got to those daily meetings and weekly meetings some of the team members weren’t exactly prepared the way they should be by forcing them to actually present the numbers to you in a quick five to ten minute meeting whether it’s in person or virtual we call it a virtual 10-minute standing meeting they are going to have ownership and they know when they come to that meeting they’re going to be on the hook to actually report that out. I want to say what’s up to Mike Robinson too long time no see brother hope all is well. So once again Callahan’s Corner – you ask the questions we answer them here live on Facebook. See you again tomorrow with different practices and tips to run your service business and go out and dominate your competition