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Hey Mike Callahan here at Callahan’s Corner- where you ask the questions we answer him here live on Facebook. One of the questions submitted earlier this week was how to communicate the time that your crews are going to be showing up at a property so this is appropriate for lawn care, home cleaning or any service business and in that matter. The question kind of spawned off of how to actually charge people when you’re going to skip the job and the question was basically what happens if my crews are delayed for weather delay or maybe a no call no show employee and obviously we’ve all had that happen. The idea of the question is how do we go out and seamlessly communicate with our clients to give them accurate information about what’s going on without bogging down our office and having them make fifteen, twenty, thirty phone calls per crew. What I’m recommending doing if you’re using a platform like Service Autopilot or another automation platform that ties into automations is creating a process that we call here be there been there it’s a tongue-twister be there been there and what it does is the automation creates an automatic trigger so when those jobs are dispatched or despatched back with delay they will update and send a text message or email to your crews. The idea is with the click of two or three buttons in the office we can live update our customers that our crews are going to be there before hand and then if you’re using a mobile device in a product such as Service Autopilot we can automatically trigger an email or text that the crews are leaving the home. Pretty interesting I’ve actually been able to see this as a consumer so the home cleaning company that we hired to use and clean our home uses our automations on Service Autopilot and it’s very interesting I get a text when Margaret is coming to the house to clean so I know that she’s on her way that day so it’s a reminder traditionally the day before to leave the key there or any information we need to leave for her and when she’s done after she clocks out of the mobile device I actually get a text message let me know that the cleaning company has actually left the house and locked the door so really interesting to see it on the consumers end and I will tell you as consumer I really love the feature because that reminds me that they’re coming so you got to do a little pre cleaning up at the house where the actual cleaner comes and then after they leave you know that they’ve actually left the premises. The idea is how do we communicate scheduling to the consumer very quickly and update them for things like rain delay or maybe a no call no show employee. Well I recommend going out and getting the free be there been there automation from Simple Growth on the marketplace if you are an existing Simple Growth client so if you’re an existing Simple Growth client we’ve got this automation that we give you for free and it alerts your clients before and after the service just like I’m talking about just like my home cleaning company does for me so be there been there that’s gonna be the optionI would recommend and if you’re building your own automations just make sure you build some logic into that automation to get and handle all the things that may and will probably happen along the way but the idea is we want to send a text or email up before the crews are out there and afterwards once they clock out of the job and the mobile device it fires off that automated text or email. To answer the question is how do we go out and notify our clients if when we’re coming out when the job’s done or inclement delays with weather employees I recommend making an automation just like be there been there and if your Simple Growth client just drop us a message and we’ll get that installed in your setup free of charge for you quick as possible thanks a lot Callahan’s Corner where you ask questions we answer live here in facebook

Hey Mike Callahan here, I want to make a quick video, had a question submitted about something we always deal with in the summer season as we ramp up in the heat just like today definitely rays, how to handle skip services so it’s particularly in a lawn care question but definitely think this would warrant discussion around home cleaning as well. The question was how to handle skip services so predominantly you’ve got a 28 or 30 week contract and the contract is to guarantee your spot on the schedule for weekly lawn mowing, it’s gonna include your weed whacking, your mowing, edging and blowing off of the surfaces. What I would recommend doing is writing in a contract even if it’s not a contract per se signed, it’s an agreement it’s a term of service and what we did at Callahan’s Lawn Care is we clearly define the obligation of us not over booking our schedule providing quality service. It was what was in it for the consumer and then after that we actually went in and talked about a 50% charge for skipping a scheduled service throughout the contract or seasonal term of lawn mowing so what we did is the client had to give us at least a minimum of 24 hour advance notice and if we didn’t show up we would charge 50% of the visit. What this did is it allowed us to cover our fixed costs and some of our variable cost and the way we tackled this for the consumers it was upfront any estimate so there was no shock factor this was in there plain as day in bold letter that there is a skip charge of 50% and if it’s less than 24 hours it’s the full charge. What we did is we left the decision in consumers hands because a lot of times the consumer would assume that we would skip the lawn and originally in the early days in the lawn care company we did but sometimes we made the wrong choice skipping it because maybe they were having a graduation party or birthday party we had no idea that they didn’t want it skipped and they would call back aggravated if we skipped it so kind of damned if you do damned if you don’t . So what we did is we gave the skipping ability to the consumer we outlined it in the contract and they had to call 24 hours in advance to skip the service and if they did would be a 50% charge in the what was init for the consumer and this was the important part as we twisted that is that it reserved a spot on the schedule and we didn’t over booked our schedules. By charging 50 percent for skipped service it reserved their spot and allowed us not to overbook our schedules because it covered our fixed costs such as insurance and office and overhead and it also allowed it enough time every time whether it was in spring summer or fall to do a quality job. You can’t go out there in my opinion and just say we’re gonna charge you fifty percent for no reason just because you skip but if you flip the switch a little bit in talk to the consumer why it’s important that you don’t over book your schedule and how you’re giving them a slot that’s served at that point that 50% charge is going to actually benefit the consumer so up to 24 hours 50% charge less than 24 hours full charge and highly recommend spelling this out clears day in your estimate to be upfront and honest about it and when you do that you have the ability to cover some of those fixed cost., just like the 90-plus degree day here up in upstate New York a lot of the lawn care companies are starting to get skipped mowings. What I recommend is if you haven’t do it institute a skip policy 50% charge at least for any skip mowings up to 24 hours if it’s less than 24 hours it’s a full skip and the benefits the consumer is it you continue to provide a quality product that’s not rushed and you don’t overbook your schedules and if you didn’t provide the 50% charge you would have to overbook your schedules by probably 10 to 15% to cover the skipped lawn mowing that could potentially happen. Comments or questions drop below but that’s traditionally how we handled it in my business. I want to say what’s up to Chase Coats, Tim, Colleen, BJ and I can’t see the rest of the people on here live right now with the sun rippin right now. Conversations around skip services and charging for him 50% with 24 advance notice and 100% less than 24 hours and the benefits of the consumer that you’re charging them that is it saves their spot in schedule we’re not gonna rush through the work and we don’t over booked our scheduling. Probably gonna be a lot more around this in the upcoming weeks here with the heat that we’re seeing at least in the Northeast and some of the southern states but don’t be afraid to do it that’s a benefit to the consumer because mostly your fly-by-night competitors do not charge that we were the first person in your city to actually institute that rule and I would tell you within about 12 to 24 months 99% of our competitors that were running legitimate businesses adopted the practice so it was not just us but it was everybody in the community that started doing it as well. Comments or questions drop them below hopefully that was helpful. Callahan’s Corner – you ask the questions we answer them here live on Facebook.

Hey Mike Callahan here, want to make a quick video about creating call scripts and workflow in your office and what we’ve seen a lot of very successful service companies is that the business owner or the management team takes the time to actually create a flowchart with different call scripts to standardize their marketing communication process. A real basic example of this success workflow is creating the ability to see if we have let’s just say someone comes from a facebook messenger bot and as they came in from your facebook messenger bot no matter lawn care or home cleaning pest control whatever the service is there’s certain information that we hopefully have gained on the facebook messenger bot. So we’ve got their name obviously now hopefully we’re gonna get their phone number but depending how far they get into that marketing funnel we may not have a phone number but we’re gonna be looking at it the way we’ve dialed that out is a hot lead with a phone number a hot lead with a phone in an email or a hot lead with just the connection in a product like many chats so we can have a messenger conversation one-on-one not automated but through a workflow and some of it up the first 24 hours can be automated . The idea here is if we have a hot lead coming in with a phone email and obviously messenger those are different conversations so the first thing we would probably suggest is if they came in through Facebook Messenger and we have their phone number somebody’s gonna reach out in the first 24 hours to make a phone call now you’ve kind of got a decision dimond there if they picked up the phone this would happen if they didn’t pick up the phone this would happen so let’s say best-case scenario we’ve got their phone number we make a call they pick up we are trying to book a estimate or a sales call and through that process if we actually do submit an estimate there’s an automated follow-up but what if we get him on the phone and they were just kind of shopping the bot and they aren’t as hot as we thought and maybe they’re not a good fit so we need to have a sequence that goes through they’re not a good fit for maybe a long-term nurture or maybe they’re interested but just not ready to commit and shop you there at that point. You’ve got four or five different things that can happen just off that lead has a phone number now what if we called and left the voicemail so what I’m gonna recommend is another flow below that is an automated email that’s triggered after you leave the voicemail into email subject line is something simple as we just I just left your voicemail with a follow-up saying hey we’d be interested to get you that estimate I left you the voicemail and this is how Ican be contacted and maybe if you’re a service business that provides on-site estimates it’s linked to an on-site or online calendar such as calendarly or appointment core. The idea is we really want to have different scripts because the conversation I’m gonna have a live phone call is gonna be significantly different than the call script that I’m leaving on a voicemail so the the purpose of today’s video is really dial out all the different ways that you could be communicating with a lead and I think that it should be a hot lead warm lead or cold lead so our cold dead is just probably that somebody’s not ready to buy right now maybe it’s not a good fit yet so we’re gonna throw them into a 12-month long-term nurture via email or messenger or whatever communication channel you are Bob and then you’re warm and hot leads those are more qualified leads so obviously if we have a phone number we want to reach out but if we don’t have a phone number we have messenger an email hopefully so we’re gonna have kind of the same decision diamond how do we handle the communication via email how long does it go is it two or three emails over two days each and then if they engage to request an estimate they go to the top option and if they don’t engage we kick them down into that long-term nurture so we educate them and hopefully to reciprocity when they’re ready to buy they reach back out to us. Whole idea is we want to create a workflow out of flowchart something like lucid chart for Google drawing and then after you build that out you build a systematic automated process around that and after you build out each email and call script you write out the call script and standardized and trained to those call scripts so we can standardize that marketing process whether it’s the business owner or someone in the office or someone halfway around the world as a virtual assistant. First thing you want to do though is define whether they’re warm hot or cold and then what contact information do we have so do we have a cell phone do we have an email if we have none of those in the example like Facebook Message do we have a contact on messenger and then think about all the different ways we would communicate that it’s appropriate for that time in the customer lifecycle based on them being pre-qualified hot warm and cold and then dial in the conversation of what if we do have a phone number they don’t answer how do we continue this conversation offline via text or email so hopefully that video is helpful but a lot of people want to know now that I’ve got some folks in Facebook Messenger how do I actually go out and prime the pipeline in that sales funnel for appropriate communication in your service business as well

Hey Mike Callahan here I want to make a quick video talk about mindset of business growth and some of the lessons I’ve learned in building my second seven-figure business and going out to build that second figure business to break a million and beyond. The first go out it was obviously in the lawn care landscape snow removal industry and in that service business started at freshman year in high school worked through college and didn’t really know how to go out and scale a business and basically it was just hard work and determination day in and day out knocking doors grinding and grinding some more to build and scale that business pretty quickly. Then once we figured out that sales machine how to grow the business became a massive second challenge to kind of that glass ceiling of growth and what that glass ceiling of growth really encompassed was the owner’s mindset or the leadership mindset mainly the owner’s mindset being myself and the problem there is I was ready to delegate or at least I thought I was but in order to delegate you really need to emotionally detach yourself from the things you’re doing on a daily basis. The fact that the business owner traditionally thinks that they’re the only one that actually can go out and sell and grow the sales is a crazy idea but honestly is all business owners we think no one can sell better than usand in order to grow and scale the business with our sales machine that the business owner needs to be out there selling. It took several years after college to realize that I was not the best person to sell the lawn care I may have been the figurehead but there was those folks in our organization could sell just as good as me if not better and to put that in perspective so Simple Growth are our business where our mission is really to help entrepreneurs or basically service business owners take their life back from their business that’s kind of been my mission with Simple Growth. Very similar as we scaled Simple Growth that the mindset shifted and I forgot about the conscious decision I made at Callahan’s Lawn Care that I was not the only one that could sell and I wasn’t the probably the best salesperson nor did I have a good return on investment but I knew that at Simple Growth originally that our overhead didn’t really allow for us to have a full-time salesperson outside of myself so many of the folks are probably watching this video live or recorded probably talked to me in the earlier days or even in the last up to last five or six months on the sales calls um and that was pretty predominant. Now Dillan and Kevin on our team have stepped up and I’ve realized that you know Dillan and Kevin are just as qualified if not more qualified to talk the sales process and where Dillan, very similar to myself in Simple Growth, brings expertise is he’s lived the trenches for fifteen to twenty years in the service industry those wounds are still fresh and we can relate to what’s going on and make sure it’s a good fit . It just didn’t have to be me and I had to step back from it and say wait a minute if we’re going to break that seven-figure mark again in a secondary business and continue to grow in scale past seven figures and provide good customer service I’ve needed to step back and allow Dillan to run that sales machine at Simple Growth. That wasn’t enough and that’s where my biggest mistake at Callahan’s Lawn Care happened originally when I went to go delegate it I thought I had put process and systems in place but I really didn’t I walked through it I talked with with the salespeople how to do it but it took several years to figure that out it really didn’t drive home where their sales basically lapped in overshadowed mine which I was good with but the only way that happened was for me to actually create a standardized process of messaging and qualifying and that’s what I think we’ve done this really good in the second seventh figure business that. We’ve built here is that we’ve created a sales process that’s standardized it qualifies to make sure the clients a good fit and if they are a good fit it’s the same exact process day in and day out. Now obviously the salesperson should have put their own spin on it and there’s room for them to make it personal and their own but to the core of it the sales process and really the qualifying process is standardized now this doesn’t matter the service business whether it’s Simple Growth, lawn care, or home cleaning but the first thing that I’ve realized is a I’ve got accept that I am NOT the only person that could sell I’m probably not the best fit to sell I need to create a standardized process that can be trained especially after COVID now we built everything in a online learning hub with videos and testing and for reinforcement of that training. Now that we standardized that process the second biggest mistake I made at Callahan’s Lawn Care was there wasn’t an accountability factor out the gate ora support factor so what we do is very similar to the big three so basically we have three metrics that we track the driver monthly and quarterly goals and driving to our yearly goals but those metrics are tracked daily for accountability and we have a weekly meeting so I meet with my sales team and a few other individuals on Monday but the sales team has an individual call with me it’s a standing virtual 10 to 15-minute call or in person after COVID or before COVID but basically we’ve got those three metrics we talk about how many people have come in the pipeline how many are qualified how many we’ve committed to that are actually potentially become a sale within the next say 30 days or the end of the month and some other factors but we’ve called in the top three there and we don’t only look at it for basically the week were in or the week that had just happened before but we look at it that week the week before that and then three weeks so now we have a historical trend of how many leads are coming in how many leads are turning into prospects they’re qualified and then how many sales are closed and what is that lifetime value so CAC to LTV is cost of acquired customer to lifetime value. These are things we’re tracking metrics to make sure that the sales team knows where they’re at and where they’re going and then management as myself can go in and support them and give them the tools they need. Now in addition to that the salespeople kind of pick in where those leads come into that sales funnel so one of the other meetings I have on Fridays at I believe 2 or 3 p.m. but it’s a recurring meeting and I think actually it’s 2 o’clock every Friday is with my marketing team not necessarily the sales team now they do communicate because that’s important but my marketing team is talking about all the different ways we’re advertising and going out organically and paid across the different social medias such as Facebook advertising. So not only do we have to have those conversations with our sales team but we also have to make sure that funnel is full with qualified contacts for that sales team to do their job. As you grow and scale that business to that seven-figure markand beyond some of the mistakes I made the early years is I didn’t create a process so the business owner after you get to a certain point whether it’s 750 to a million in sales maybe a little before or a little after that but the idea is the CEO the business owner the only way in my opinion that you’re to grow and scale that business is become the visionary the strategic force so you’re setting the vision you’re studying the strategy and you’re setting metrics in place with team buy-in to track those things such as your yearly, quarterly and weekly goals driving into that BHAG that big hairy audacious goal so that’s your 10 to 15 year goal and that is been instrumental in scaling Simple Growth significantly quicker that’s seven-figure mark the Callahan’s Lawn Care which took quite a while on through college and beyond. The idea is that when we have the CEO pulling out of the field and jumping in when needed to support the team we can set the vision we can set this strategy and then have meetings on a recurring weekly basis or daily basis with the key stakeholders to reinforce where we’re going and continue to push relevance. The first thing that this video is about is do you have the mindset to pull yourself out of that and have you built the structure to allow that to happen and not only be built the structure but have any of you set a recurring support mechanism to grow and scale the business of seven figures and beyond and we can dive into more detail in later videos. Those are the things that in my opinion are going to scale the business successfully whether in a million or beyond a million five million those things need to happen and then that five to seven million mark now we’re taking that strategic vision and strategy of the leader as the CEO and we need to distill that through the other managers and leaders and continue to replicate that throughout the larger organization. Main thing in the video today is make sure your mindset is right you are going to be the single point of failure and scaling your business if you think that you have to do all the jobs in the business and you think that you’re going to be the best at them because the truth is and the ugly truth that business owners are gonna have their strengths and weaknesses and traditionally we can find somebody as good if not better than us and then we can bring our real value to scale the business and have a good work-life balance as just a strategic leader and build that vision and strategy and scale the business. Comments or questions drop below I want to say it’s up to Jake and Dustin both crushing it out there in the lawn care world what’s up guys

Mike Callahan here with a question that was submitted – What is a CRM and I wanted to add upon that question and why would you need a CRM for service business and particularly what are the four main functions of a CRM for a service business? As we dive into it and pop over the screen here and I’ve got basically a quick cheat sheet so if you’re looking at a software platform to run your service business whether it’s lawn care, pest control, home cleaning or any other service business there is four distinct functions that a CRM will actually accomplish for you and then obviously there’s some more additional things such as automations but there’s four different areas that we really need to look at of a CRM and probably before we dive into what is the CRM. As we look at this you’re gonna pop the screen open here and break this down for you kinda see it but for functions with CRM a what is a CRM probably to begin with is a CRM is a customer relationship management software so the acronym stands for customer relationship management software. In a CRM basically once we have a customer relationship software the one that we actually use predominantly is Service Autopilot is the first thing we’re looking at capturing leads we want to store the information about our leader cup or our customer in one place and how we’re getting that information about the lead or that customer in one place is we want to add the information hopefully automatically through a form so if you’re using a form in most CRMs customer relationship management softwares there’s things called custom fields and these custom fields will track things such as first name last name address cell phone number landline and all the other information needs so the pertinent information that you need will be saved in a custom field through a form and then automatically entered into the software of your choice. Now the second option is to manually answer these when a phone call comes in so you pick up the phone in the office and we’re manually entering these in now as we manually enter in these informations we probably want to somewhat standardize the process so one of the things we found very successful in my service business is taking an additional internal form and creating more custom fields soas we enter this information this basically standardized phone intake form ask for certain questions like first name, last name, service address, what services are you interested in, what’s the last time is your property been serviced, have you ever worked with another lawn care or home cleaning professional before so we’re qualifying the customer but by using a form internally we can also use custom fields to enter all that information into the CRM and create a standardized intake of our clients. Now the next thing we’re looking at here as we go through here is number two we want to track this sales pipeline so can we track the opportunities as they move through the sales pipeline so in Simple Growth and my businesses we call this twenty days to close so basically as soon as we have a lead come in they are in here and basically from one to twenty days we’re gonna track that sales pipeline so are they on the day one phone call they on the day two automated texts day three phone call day five email whatever that may be but we can see historically or actually in real time where they’re at in the sales pipeline and then it the ability this is gonna increase our visibility and reporting to allow our sales team to forecast the buying behaviour so traditionally where is the drop-off in that twenty days to close so traditionally is there a certain point where those leads drop off and go cold or traditionally is there a certain hot spot in there and where we close predominantly most of the lead. So what we’re finding in our twenty days to close sales pipeline when you see that forecasted behavior is the forecast the behavior is between one in three days we have our biggest spike of sales and then we have another spike of sales between seven and ten days and believe it or not we actually have another set spike of sales for that forecasted sales behavior between eighteen and twenty days and what happens there most people don’t believe is they’ve actually gone out and hired your competitors and they haven’t given you the benefit of the doubt ontology they’re not buying your services but when that current competitor actually drops the ball those constant communications via email which is automated text message which automated in phone calls yes believe it or not phone calls via phone call scriptor if you don’t have the bandwidth of desire to make those phone calls we do a thing called a ringless voicemail bomb so it hits the cell phone on file looks like a missed call it leaves a pre-recorded message that’s automated but personal based on where they’re at in that sales pipeline something the fact it’s like hey Mrs Smith this is Mike from Callahan’s, sorry we missed you but I wanted to leave you this voicemail we dropped off an estimate three days ago and if you have any questions regarding that estimate or please give us a call at this number otherwise feel free to accept the online estimate so what we’ve done has been able to forecast the predictable behavior we’re going to see the the buying habits of one – three days, seven – ten days or eighteen – twenty days so statistically 80 percent of all sales are made on five they heard it right five or more touches so if you’re not following up on yoursales and your estimates at least five or more times you are missing out on 80% of the sales so the biggest gripe I hear in the service industry is that we’re getting crushed by low ballers “low ballers” people who are going out with lowball prices in in losing work because they have no idea what they’re doing but let’s let’s take those low ballers out of the equation is it possible your competitor down the street is following up five or more times consistently via email text and phone calls and hitting those multiple communication channels and they are there and present five or more times which means they are statistically grabbing 80% of the sales in your market and if you’re only following up once or twice you’re losing out on those sales so maybe it’s not a lowball but maybe you don’t have a sales pipeline with hopefully an automated follow up with accountability to hit five or more times. So outside of forecasting those behaviors of in the beginning of the first three days seven – ten and 18-20 we could prioritize your head so big shout-out to Dillan on the Simple Growth team but Dillan crushed it this month because he was able to at the end of the month in order to hit his sales goals prioritize his leads and by going in and prioritizing these basing on a lead scoring or ranking of hot, warm or cold he was able to work those leads in a systematic way from the most qualified to the least qualified and close those leads and hit best sales goals. Not only does tracking yourself pipeline give you a forecasted behavior where those leads are gonna sales are gonna happen but you can prioritize those leads if you’re trying to hit those end of the month goals or crush you out before the sales season starts to evaporate in your seasonal business such as lawn care. Next thing is streamlining context and I got a quick shout out to Jeremiah if he’s still watching the sales shark and in this gentleman has taught me some definitely some sales skills i want to give a shot out to the shark if he is still watching. The third thing is to streamline your contact so we want to avoid sticky notes Excel spreadsheets in notepads and anything else you may be doing maybe a note with a pen on your hand um I’m getting these contacts information in but if we streamline our contacts we can get the contact information we can track the communications so did we leave a voicemail did we have a phone call did they respond did they have questions or anything else in between so if you are the main salesperson and somebody is following up behind you and you’re not in that day what has happened with the communication where are they at the sales pipeline. Next thing we want to talk about is customer service all the interactions sales, revenue, tracking so did they buy one of our gateway services potentially and those are gonna be things that you can sell over the phone very quickly. So a lawn care example would be your lawn mowing, fertilizing something measured online and we sell them and then we systematically go out and upsell our ancillary services that potentially could be measured or sold in person after going to the property or is that in the home cleaning industry a gateway service such as a top-to-bottom deluxe that we give a high low price range so we can’t we’re not committing to an exact price but we’re saying you’re top to bottom lock your initial cleaning before the maintenance clean is going to be between three and maybe three fifty based on how many people are living in the home and the square footage in the home and how many pets and then we go in and give them an exact price for a recurring maintenance clean or weekly bi-weekly every three or four week cleaning. Both industries have these gateway services and the ancillary recurring services it can be added on to raise that client lifetime value once we streamline those contracts we can go in and do some tracking of the sales what is the client acquisition cost per marketing source what is the client lifetime value and several other things we want to know those different stats as we go out to build our marketing and sales pipeline and diving back into reporting so now that we’ve got this reporting with those contacts can go in and say okay what is the outcome of job costing report so we got our start and stop times of every job we’ve done we have a budget of time versus actual. Through reporting we can say is this client profitable so if my goal is to make fifty dollars per man-hour and I’m only making forty five what should I charge to get this individual client up to fifty or if my goal is fifty dollars per man-hour and I’m making a hundred dollars an hour well I don’t want to raise that price so this gives you the ability for an-emotional way to raise your prices based on the data in a streamline contact in your CRM your customer relationship manager and software so by reporting in tracking we take the emotions out of it and we can raise our prices on our least profitable clients and our most profitable clients we leave the same so if you don’t do that you raise your prices say three to four dollars per visit or a percentage across-the-board well you’re in essence is doing is not looking your tracking not look at your reporting and pricing out and creating your most profitable clients to go out and shop you. The final thing is analysis so we can go in and do some a-b split test marketing so maybe we’re doing email marketing or text marketing or phone calls and we can say okay based on this marketing campaign versus this marketing campaign what copy worked the best so this is what exactly what we did in my business Callahan’s we had our second email that went out and we had 15 may be 12 to 15 versions of this email that went out and the winner was an email that looked like it was sent from somebody in there in the office’s iPhone it wasnt it was automated but it looked like it was personalized from somebody’s iPhone but what we did is we had long copy text we had two to three paragraphs we had logos we had pictures leaked out to videos you name it we tried it but what happened is this two line email that literally said hey Mrs. Smith I’m just checking in and see if you’re interested in getting on our list this season if you are please let us know have a great Saturday whatever it was it merged a day the weekend, secret sauce is ahead a little misspelling on Mike on the bottom so the M was lower cased so it look like a typo look personal didn’t look automated in at the bottom we put in sent from my iphone just like it does from your phone but so it looked personal . The ability to have an analysis and run a a-b split test was the ability to go in and say this is the overall winner and lo and behold that one email that looks like it was sent from our iPhone on average right now closes 20% of all our sales without ever talking to the consumer so reporting and analysis in a CRM is essential if you utilize it. Fourth and final thing delivering and sharing information so if you have a reporting center we can organize the information and potentially automate the delivery of that information to the specific people on your team when they need it so the way we utilize this is in Service Autopilots report center wecreate automated delivery to the manager or the team or the crew whoever that is when it needs to be delivered automatically so it’s not if it’s going to happen it happens when it should without the business owner or manager babysitting or physically managing or going in and doing that so we’re able time the repetitive information tasks each and every time and it happens the way it should each and every time without having to manage it or physically do it. Hopefully this makes sense but I wanted to go in and kind of demystify what a CRM is a customer relationship management software the four things that a customer relationship management software does for a service business and they are capturing leads, tracking the sales pipeline, streamlining context and delivering and sharing information so you’re taking that knowledge silo that’s in the owner’s heads and disseminating it throughout the organization for content information and if you’re solo entrepreneur there’s nothing wrong with that but what it’s going to do is organize the information and deliver it to you in a repetitive and automated fashion so you forced to look at it and see where you’re at from a day-to-day basis. As we close this up as always want to say what’s up – Jeremiah the sale shark what’s up – Lisa Todd Goodrich that’s watching but the pro tip is do not try to use all these tools at first evolve into the system the customer relationship management software that you’re using and address the biggest needs if they arise and utilize the tools that are needed for that stage of your business and it’s a sequential building when you try to eat the elephant all at once it’s not gonna happen you want to eat it chunk by chunk so what is the the issue and how do we solve it and these are the four main areas before we can completely automate a business that a customer relationship management software will tackle. Now obviously in a service business we’re gonna have our services, a pricing matrix, and estimate process as well built within these four areas but on a high level without diving into the weeds these are the four things you need to be looking at when you go in and evaluate a software for a service business for success. Hopefully this is helpful if somebody told me this seven or eight years ago when I evolved into other platforms and then eventually moved into SA it would have been helpful because the analysis of these four main things are not existent on a lot of softwares for the service industry. Comments or questions dropped below hopefully this helpful CRM customer relationship management if you’re in pen and paper in your service business highly recommend diving into these four functions and finding a solution that’s right for your service business to create predictable results and start to pull back your time in your life from your service business

Hey Mike Callahan with a question that was submitted- how productive should my crews be out in the field? So this is a pretty interesting question and I think really there’s only should be and that is a time and motion study with your guys and girls on your crews with your specific equipment. The way we did it my company was literally tracking the start and stop times in the mobile of Service Autopilot and it wasn’t enough just to grab a time in the spring or the fall what you really need to do is get a statistical mean so that’s gonna be 25 or 30 visits throughout the year especially if you’re in the Northeast. Now your southern markets like Florida and things like that maybe a little bit different but traditionally we want to get a statistical mean and in the spring we’re probably double cut and blowing out it takes a lot longer mid spring we get a little more efficient that’s about average summer it dries out burns out wefly through them we’re just touching up the edging and then in the fall we get back into it and we’re mulching up some leaves. In a lawn care example that’s really what we need to do is go out and grab anywhere from 20 to 30 visits start and stop times and do a time and motion study and if you can’t be on the crew obviously all 30 visits you need to be spot checking those crews to make sure they’re actually doing what they should be doing. Then we need to be tracking the square footage of the property that they’re mowing or cleaning so cleaning obviously has a distinct advantage here because the conditions are pretty much the same in the inside of the house now we may have different living areas number of pets and people which are going to contribute to that and those are things you want to track in that industry but specifically in lawn care we want to go out and track that. Now if you’re probably right around where we’re at right now at the end of May beginning of June that’s gonna be an average time if you can get a couple cuts here that’s a good starting point so actually the time is ideal but we really want to do is have the business owner on that crew it’s part of the crew are there and that’s gonna get you a true efficiency of what that team can do because we all know when the business owner leaves the efficiency will drop and that’s a natural tendency but we obviously need a combination of productivity and quality and if you’ve seen some of my video with Callahan’s Lawn Care several years ago when I was on the crew retraining folks the way I would tackle that is we went out and trained people that were new either myself or to the gentleman ran the company is we would run with them and model the behavior how it should be done the pace that we expected with the quality and then follow him into either another truck or an estimate car and let them work half a day and just literally follow them and we’d be working on laptop with the Wi-Fi and get some work done but half the time we’re watching them. What we found is up through about lunch they would start beating the times and then after lunch the productivity would drop and it was weird because they would kind of forget everything we taught them based on the standardized system but it’s not just productivity that drives that goal so I’ll make a video later this week on it but the idea is literally when folks come in and talk to us at a deep dive we talk about where do you park the trucks if you’ve got a weed whacker and it’s standing on the left-hand side of your body we’re gonna park the truck on the left hand side if it’s on the right handside we’re gonna park on the right hand side and what that does is it streamlines the whole entire operation of walking and minimizes that waste and standardized it . Then the other thing we traditionally do is take it and look at what does additional drive time orthose trips to maybe Wendy’s for those ice cold Frosty’s in the winter I mean the summer so imagine you got job a here job a ends so job B’s time starts but instead of going for a straight line from job A to job B you go up here t Wendy’s so five minute drive time to Wendy’s five minutes at the drive-thru and five minutes back now we all know it’s probably more than five minutes at Wendy’s but let’s just say five minutes driving five in the drive-thru and five back and basically we’ve given them 30 minutes to do that job including drivetime so in essence what you’ve done you’ve picked up an extra 15 minutes of drive time time to say the two folks inthe in the vehicle so what you’ve done is actually lost all 30 minutes of production for that job number B so they’re basically over budget by the time they get to that job. We also not only need to look at production but where are we losing money on bad decisions by the crew for that non-billable drive time because that will erode profits and productivity just as quick as not following a processing system. Obviously most people are doing this but it sounds obvious where are we parked the truck where are we starting where are we stopping are we mowing the whole entire front lawn and the side yards first if it’s a two-man crew and then going into the back yard so the second person weed-whacking by the time they’re done can have the whole property blown off and meet the individual back at the truck and help pick the gate up and get him on the truck or the trailer and move on to job number two. Next thing is certain real easy things like weed whacker line are we going in and carrying extra spools on the truck and re spooling those while we’re driving is a passenger do we always have a full spool of weedwacker lines so if they’re in the back of a property they walk all the way back in the middle of the job they could take six to eight minutes of your budgeted time your product production and literally erode that so there’s several things that go into that so I think that we need to look at the whole picture drive time, mobilization, are we making the right decisions, route density, where are we parking the vehicle, how are we going out and actually doing the job as far as workflow and I’ll make a video how we actually did that at Callahan’s and then the next thing is are there extra things that we can save 2 to 3 minutes per job such as having weed wacker line or having the weed wackers gas tanks filled up in idle time in between all those things add up to big big wins. The productivity at a bare minimum or right now if you’re watching this video right now the end of May beginning of June is ideal this is going to be probably the closest average you’re going to find between spring and summer and fall get four or five cuts and use that as an average right now to get started but what you want to do is really track from spring all the way through October November and create an average and then group all of your accounts based on say one to five thousand five thousand one to ten thousand ten thousand one to fifteen thousand and so on and we’re gonna do once you have enough accounts and data we can get an average production rate that’s accountable and base it on an average across the season. As the business owner if you’re out there hustling yourself and doing the lawns or cleaning the houses your crews are never going to hit the same production that you have it’s not realistic. Now the closest thing that I’ve seen to be able to make that happen same productivity and quality is the owner is creating a piece rate pay system where we reward productivity aligned with a quality score and we pay them for the budget hours and not the hours at work otherwise you got a scenario where most folks are trying to just keep a pulse so they get that 40 hours and that overtime we’re ideally with a piece rate with quality they’re gonna work less and make more money. Comments or questions drop below, but that’s how I would tackle the production, go out with a crews do a time and motion study and make it applicable to when you are with them, model the behavior, make sure they’re using their processing system before we start timing it. Right now beginning of May into June in most markets is probably an ideal average time but you really want to get a full scope assist statistical mean across maybe you know April through end of October and then take that average and use that as a production rate based estimating system off using a product like Service Autopilot clocking in out of the mobiles will get you all that data but main thing is at the end of the day or the beginning of the next day you need to go into that closeout day screen on a daily basis. The closeout day screen is the most important screen and that whole entire system in my opinion because it’s the last point human can fix any errors for billing any production rate or job costing information so and the things you’re looking for on that closeout day screen are gonna be a start and stop time that makes sense it’s not like a minute like the crew got there and mowed the lawn and forgot to clock in so they clocked in and clocked out under minutes a start and stop times that makes sense a budgeted time so we can do actual versus budget and you want to have a a price obviously to build that out you’d be really surprised how many people assess the instances we get into that they don’t have pricing in there especially if it’s a monthly installment contract if it’s under the installment contract and it’s associated with the contract either v2 or v3 the system will not bill it out but if you have no data in you’re never gonna get any data out and you won’t you won’t have those pieces of data you need in the report center . Comments or questions drop below. Hopefully that was helpful- production rates how to get them how to be accurate while in the field do a time and motion study makes sure they’re following the plan and then once you have the planas far as production talk about where there parking the vehicle how is the workflow where this starting where the ending how do they streamline it and all the let’s say not good decisions to go to Wendy’s and grab those frosty’s on a hot day like today. Hopefully it’s helpful and we’ll see you again on Callahan’s corner tomorrow you ask the questions we answer in live here on Facebook

Hey Mike Callahan here wanted to make a quick video about bottom-line profits. Whether the industry lawn care or home cleaning this video is applicable but industry stats for the lawn care industry is traditionally a four to six net percent profit margin paper-thin margins are very dangerous. What we’re seeing is a lot of clients that we’ve been talking to and working with is that they’re really close to that 15 to 20 percent holy grail of profit margin in landscape maintenance but where the bottom-line profits are getting left on the cutting room floor is the inability to address I call the imaginary estimate checklist so if you’re using an example of landscaping and mulch installation how we’re gonna break that down is first the depth of mulch so is it 1 inch 2 inch or 3 inch we’d have a separate production estimating process so we’re going on in multiplying behind the scenes in a price matrix the actual quantity needed based on the depth and the budgeted hours and cost and basing the product if there’s different types of product or using we have that built out behind the scenes. In addition we’re gonna go in and handle bed edging so maybe it is a per linear foot for hand edging or per linear foot for power edging we have two different production rates and we want to be able to count for that and create profitability. The next thing we’re doing is maybe going in for hand weeding of a bed that’s already been maintained or a bed that has not been maintained we have different production rates so instead of saying well it’s all gonna come out in the wash it doesn’t matter we just need to get a price out quickly well in my opinion that’s really a cheap excuse we need to spend the time upfront and define the estimating process for predictable profits and results and then the final part is what about the drive time mobilization so if you’re wondering why at the end of the year your profit margins are wendling down to single digits my guess is you are possibly not accounting for all the things you need to in your estimate and going in and accounting for each imaginary step in having a process like an on-site estimate form is going to be the key to success for creating bottom line profits that are double-digit and more and predictable that can be reported on, very similar in the home cleaning industry a lot of times where we’re working with folks in home cleaning and very political the lawn care as well is the dry time between the homes or commercial properties is not being accounted for and it’s very tough whether you’re paying in a piece rate pay system or hourly that those cleaners need to have some budgeted time for mobilization especially if you’re in an urban or city area where you need a place to actually park the cleaning vehicles that takes some time. So we’re looking at how do we just define a process of an imaginary checklist that the estimator or the office can use to create predictable production rate based estimating and the big ones are we need to define in them like a mulch example the different depths and how long that’ll take and the quantities needed the different products so if there’s arange you want to define each product with its cost the bed edging while you’re doing it by hand or by poweredge two different production times gonna be double the production with the power edger now there’s gonna be some additional cost for that machine and it needs we figured in there as well drivetime and mobilization so whether you’ve got the materials at your shop or you’re going to a nursery those things need to be accounted for but if it’s your ship don’t say oh well we got something in the yard and they just load it with our skid or our tractor that those times need to be taken care of in yard expense or yard time now maybe that’s already configured in your general administrative cost and it’s covered there and you don’t want to double dip but if you haven’t that should be applied for a time in that estimate behind the scenes and maybe removing or disposing debris as well. The idea in the video today is don’t just assume that everything is going to work out in the wash at the end of the day and we can throw a price on it and each job like you know this job needs a lot more weeding but the other ones didn’t so it’s all gonna come out in the wash predominately what you’re doing you’re setting yourself up for failure in that that happened in the early days in my businesses I thought it would all just kind of workout on average but it doesn’t in traditionally you do if you end up bidding that way and you win the least profitable jobs that way and traditionally the jobs that you aren’t suited to do you end up as well so it’s a compounding effect. The advice today is go out take the time to find each steps of the job create a production based estimating system on it based on square footage linear feet if you don’t know what that is yet that’s okay base it on your experience how many minutes or hours you think it’s gonna take but have a non-emotional way of plugging in the minutes or hours and when you pull up the estimate to calculate the price budgeted time and cost before profit. Hopefully things here in upstate New York open up I’m rocking some COVID hair with going on about ten weeks so you know hopefully things loosen up here in New York like they are in the rest of the country but if you are in New York or any the areas that are pretty much locked down still stay strong you know thankfully the service industry lawn care home cleaning are deemed essential and folks are out there making the money and helping their consumers have great-looking landscaping or clean homes as well. Comments or questions drop below hopefully it was helpful don’t erode your bottom line profits take the time to create a standardized estimating system based on a production of units or minutes of hours based on your experience if you don’t have a production rate based estimating system defined and built out quite yet

Hey Mike Callahan, had a question submitted how to go out and determine the salary of an involving lawn care or home cleaning company. Basically the question is really revolving around probably two parts in my opinion at least in my experience in my business. The first part of it is how do you actually go out and continue to grow your bench and stay within your budget and actually figure out how much you should be paying the individuals on your existing team when you replace them and then the second part of the question Ithink we should look at is how do we go out and figure these salaries and compensation for new team members as the company continues to grow and evolve and scale. It wasn’t uncommon in my business several years to actually double in size each year so those are things that I think really need to be taken into account well in advance of the upcoming season. Traditionally what we’re gonna do is in a service business if you’re looking at I would go out and create a bhag a big hairy audacious goal I mean this is gonna sound a little crazy first I’ll hang in there with me but the idea is that big hairy audacious goal is gonna be 10 to 15 years we’re gonna break that down into yearly goals and growth goals and then as we get into let’s just say going into 2020 if we had done this in say November or December or we’re going into 2021 and we’re doing this in the beginning of Q4 going into next year what we want to do is create an organizational chart of the existing business as it is no names on it strictly positions and responsibilities so first thing is we go in and we create our goals for 10 to 15 years we’d back those into yearly goals and as we’re going into next year’s goal we create an organizational chart hopefully already have them if you don’t we’re gonna create one with the existing positions and responsibilities only do not put names on it. Now once you have that we need to go in and project what our future growth looks like for the next 12 months on that organizational chart and it is all the roles and responsibilities so as the business is evolving the business owner maybe the bookkeeper they may be the estimator they may be the general manager in the morning get the crews out. Each business is different as we scale certain people in the organization way but maybe wearing multiple hats so the point of the organizational chart without any names in it with responsibilities we wanted to find all the roles and the responsibilities then we go to grow out the management team for crews so if we have five mowing crews and we’re looking at seven next year and we’ve got those responsibilities we’re gonna go in and potentially plug in the names of the existing people that are handling each role and responsibilities in the business and like I said somepeople’s names may be on multiple roles now looking at the roles are you taking one individual so maybe one individual is running the shop they’re doing the maintenance they’re gassing the equipment they’re doing quality control and training and maybe more so obviously at that point you’re gonna realize that person is probably overburdened with too much work and then the compensation for that individual needs to be aligned to that so that’s for the first part of the compensation. Now that we have all the roles defined and who’s sitting in them in the existing business if we’ve got say maybe four more positions on two two-man crews and we got gentleman and lady that need to be put on those crews we need to go and figure out the existing wages on our team so in the office and in the field now you’re fixed general administrative cost for the office is going to be fixed projected into next year long as nothing changes so that’s the place I would tackle first figure out your fixed cost if you make one saleor a million sales it doesn’t matter your general administrative costs your in labor producing labor is gonna be the same. I think this is where it dives into the question that was being asked is now that we have our organizational chart in our existing people with projected raises are plugged in there we’re gonna put those on a thing that I call a average wage sheet now if you’ve seen any of my videos where we go in and do a budget overhead recovery it is the first sheet we go over it’s the average wage sheet we’re gonna break the average wage sheet downpour division of the business so a basic example of average wage sheet per division in a lawn care industry would be landscape maintenance, hardscaping and maybe irrigation fertilization weed control those are significantly different overhead models that are gonna have to be addressed as far as wages now we don’t care about the overall overhead of the business but the wages and compensation may be significantly different from a maintenance crew to a hard scape crew or fertilization crew so we want to break it down per division and at first we really don’t want to put their names on their we’re gonna put technician one crew leader one technician three and break it down per crew and break down the pay levels and then we can pencil in the projected employees for that year. Now that we’ve got say five mowing crews and we’re adding crew six and seven we have projected average wages that we’ve budgeted for now on the below that what we’re gonna do is average all of them to get an average wage across all of your crews so let’s say your average wage is fifteen dollars and thirty cents so then we know at that point no matter who’s out on those crews on average that’s what it’s costing us and some people have more seniority or experiences their pay is gonna be higher but we want to know on average what that’s gonna cost us then we’re gonna figure out our average overtime so our average overtime that we’re paying per season so maybe it’s 5% 5% of our payroll for that reason is gonna be over time so we’re gonna figure out our average wage with average overtime so maybe that bumps it up to about 18 bucks an hour so we know why on average now whoever’s in the field based on our seven crews that we’ve projected with future hires is going to be say $18 an hour whether it’s straight timer overtime it’s on average that’s what it’s gonna come out to be the piece below that that most people miss is labor burden now labor burden is going to be your FICA unemployment workmen’s comp holiday pay vacation pay any of those things like that the need to be plugged in in it’s usually if you call your payroll company you can find it as a percentage of the dollar so what you’re gonna do now is multiply your labor burden times your average wage across all your employees in each specific division so it needs to be done per division now this is probably a long answer to this question but there’s a reason why we’re doing this. Now we’ve got each division we’ve got an average wage with projected over time and labor burden. The gentleman or ladies question was how do I go out and predict payroll increases or replacing individuals throughout the season in a quickly growing business so this is how we tackle it non emotionally. Now we have a hard copy on an excel sheet or Google Doc and we know based on the projected two crews that we have a technician in there for say $14 an hour a crew lead at $18 an hour that is what we can pay for those individuals so the gentleman that was running Callahans when he would make those moves I said I don’t really care what you pay the individuals but on average that crew has to cover that average wage so the the delta of the 18 and maybe the $15 an hour guy when that comes out per hour that neat for that screw that has to be taken care of and if you’re gonna go fire let’s say Dave, Dave doesn’t show up he’s a no call no show we’ve gone through the process in the handbook and he is gonna be either coached up or coached out when we replace Dave you have exactly what Dave was making within the budget now if Dave was only making 13 bucks an hour and the applicant that we found was probably needed 16 or 17 then either when I was running the business or the gentleman who ran the business for me either had to take some money out of some other areas in the budgeted wage area or maybe it’s coming out of his pay but that is what you have to work with within your budget. The idea is we want to create a non-emotional budget that dials out your projected wages with overtime and labor burden and once you have that into place that’s your roadmap for success and that’s your hiring guide. I would always tell the manager the gentleman running business like hey if you need to give this guy an extra $2.00 hour it’s got to come out of somewhere because that is our budget and that’s where we’re at now obviously there may be some exceptions if we find an individual maybe in a management position or someone that you know usually takes three or four years and they walked into the door and they’re the perfect applicant but then when we go back to the average wage sheet we’re gonna add that number in there and see what does that projection of the extra two to three dollars an hour with overtime and labor burden do to our overall budget does it move that percentage of projected profit so much that it’s not worth getting that individual in there? Those are the non emotional decisions that you can make once you take it out of your head you project where you’re going in the next 10 to 15 years break it down to yearly goals and at a bare minimum you got at least projected budget for the year in advance and then that is your roadmap to a fast evolving company with non emotion you know your wages your average wages your projected overtime all budgeted in and you can track it weekly. If you haven’t seen our KPI she definitely something to check out but this is where we track all of that after it’s been documented in a standardized budget so average wages each person that goes in your putting their pay rate in we’re projecting how much overtime so we have average wage across each division with overtime and then labor burden and now we have a non-emotional roadmap to go out and hire to the budget what we’ve projected. Comments or questions drop them below but I want a big shout out to Megan definitely dropping a lot of knowledge on Megan at the PPP and accounting right now and everything that’s going I want to say what’s up with Bobby Follet direct competitor in my local market for years great guy Tony Douglas, Chase Holmes, Todd Goodrich another great guy in the Rochester upstate New York Keith, Taylor and everybody else watching and Charles Clark obviously as well what’s up buddy didn’t see up there. The goal is if you haven’t done it we’re going into the end of Q2 you’ve got six months left in this year get an average wage put together how many projected hours of production are you gonna have for the rest of the year create a budget and stick to it and create daily and weekly accountability and once you’re comfortable with it bring your team in and show the wins and losses and get them to tie into and buy into that accountability and budget. Comments or questions drop them below. I thought I’d make a quick video- how do you go out and set a budget and stick to it and have a basically a road map how to go out and hire new employees and stay within that budget because the worst thing you want to do is go into season grow more than you projected and start hiring up and outside of that budget so we need to track it and stay true to whatever we put down on that paper and if we can’t stay true to it i need to run the numbers before we do that to make sure that it’s not eroding our bottom-line profit most lawncare and landscaping companies net margin nationally I believe is about four to six percent net in my opinion it’s not worth putting a crew out for less than ten percent net profit so from what I’ve seen most people we work with Simple Growth most companies start out fifteen to twenty percent projected net and it is these mid-season shifts unpivoting that we are desperate for an employee and we pay way outside of what it’s been budgeted and we project everything in there but it’s that non-billable drive time and accountability that we don’t track so we just think it’s gonna come out in the wash and it doesn’t. Hopefully that was helpful but go out figure out where you want to be in the next ten to fifteen years back it up to yearly goals and then create the projection of a an organizational chart with no names which is important because we’re not building the position around Bill, Joe or Bob or Susie we’re building it around the position and then we’re gonna train to the skill set so if we hired and built a position around someone that’s gonna be really hard to replace that position. A lot of things that we’ve gone through in my company and learned the hard way so I thought I would share it but build the position to the position mark down the responsibilities don’t put names on it and then make it another version that organizational chart put the people’s names in there you’re projecting to have in there for the year and then take those people put them into an average wage sheet per division so basically landscape maintenance design build irrigation fertilization those are probably all different ones and well if you’re doing snow removal in the Northeast that’s definitely a different division because those pay rates can almost double some cases triple so that’s gonna be your financial basically roadmap to hiring and firing and what pay you have in the budget and if you don’t at least my opinion it’s eroded bottom-line profits a lot quicker so it’s a good non-emotional benchmark especially if you’re growing and scaling your business and you don’t want to do the business owner having to make all decisions and hire and fire you can give that document to whoever’s there and hold them accountable to it and now when we build that out hopefully the beginning of the year you brought that you may be your gentleman in when you build that out so they have ownership and they have ownership of the numbers or on that page it’s not you dictating to them what they can pay they have had a 50% input of what the average wage is gonna be foreach position. We’ll see again with Callahan’s Corner you ask the questions we answer in live here on Facebook

Mike Callahan here with Callahan’s Corner- Where you ask the questions we answer them live here on Facebook. Had submitted questions on one of the Facebook groups that we are in gentleman or lady wanted to know, its a lawn care example but it really applies to any industry, is should they fire their existing client because they’re not using all their services? What happened is the german pulled up to mow the lawn and a competitor was there mulching the grass and the business owner wants to know should they fire the client because they’re not using them to mulch the grass as well as mow the lawn. I’ll be honest my first needric reaction was like that’s kind of a crazy question but the more and more I got to think about it it’s a pretty legit question because what we’re trying to do in most businesses is try to expand our service offerings to excrete a higher lifetime value. Where I’m going to kind of add some context to this is that A- I don’t think you should fire the client but the second question I want to ask this individual did the consumer actually know you provide this service or did you ever even reach out to the consumer to provide the service yourself? One of the things that we’re all guilty of as is industry owners or business owners is we get so busy that we forget to actually tell our future consumer the services we actually offer. One of the biggest things we’re seeing right now in the spring-time especially a lot of people that we’ve been working without doing a systematic process of selling so they’re going out through three to four different communication based on the timing of the year and upselling their services such as mulch installation and what we’ve seen with several the people we’re working with they’re getting sixty to seventy sometimes eighty estimate request of the first three to four hours of going out and upselling. I wouldn’t fire the client but is it possible they didn’t know you offer that service or were you not top of frame of mind because you forgot to go out and upsell the service based on the time of the year and the urgency and I’d recommend a month to month and a half before that mulching season happens. As we’re goin into the winners or the summer season here and we’ve got grub control coming up are you proactively going out and upselling grub control or flea, ant or tick to your clients that may not have it if you do pest control. So don’t fire the customer take that into mind that maybe you didn’t communicate and you weren’t clear enough with them that you offer that service or it’s the appropriate time to have that service done. Another great personal example is just teared the personal residence I hadn’t asked him that first design build around my existing pool in the backyard and it was interesting so I went to the contractor I know him well work to him several times great guy but what Kyle did was really interesting so he brought the blueprint with the pictures and he showed us the design build for around the pool up next the house and in front of the house for the paver patio walkway coming in and redoing the landscape but I had never actually thought about building a secondary structure with a bar and a fireplace with an outdoor TV and a fire pit on the opposite side of the pool so he had phase one what I asked for and he gives some different options to upsell in down cell which was played perfectly Kyle obviously is an industryveteran at 25 30 years in the industry and highly sought-after nationally but it was interesting Kyle not only sold me and told me and quoted what I wanted from my request but he had phase number two and it was interesting and phase number two had a couple pictures of whatthat outdoor living area could look like with the the bar and basically the four pillars structure with the roof on it and that I believe sold my wife before she even saw the design. Good for Kyle we may not only be in for hardscape design at the home for this year but it’s very likely that Kyle sold an additional equally as much if not more hardscaping for next year as phase 2. If you’re not telling your clients about phase 2 and you’ve only gotten in for the lawn mowing of the fertilized but you do additional landscape maintenance don’t fire your client maybe the solution is to go out and communicate and get property specific pricing just like Kyle did on the design build. Kyle did a hell of a job and he’s not only sold himself phase 1 but now he’s also got another very large size job booked up for next year for phase two as well. The idea is we want to go out and sell as many of the services we offer to our existing client base but a lot of times they’re not thinking about it they’re that time top frame of mind, so we need to go out to educate and get property specific estimates when it’s appropriate before the need actually hits and obviously with COVID it may have been a friend or family member that may just need some extra cash and they’re doing it and that’s that’s okay too especially with these weird times we’re living in right now. The idea is go out educate and upsell and don’t fire your client because they didn’t hire you for an additional service you have and take a note out of Kyle’s notebook for design-build estimate yesterday put phase two in there because the consumers may not even be thinking about the additional upsell and value that they could have so until tomorrow Callahan’s Corner- you ask the questions we answer them live right here on Facebook.

Mike Callahan back again with another installment of V3 updates for Service Autopilot. We’re breaking down all the new features of Service Autopilot and one of the last things we have left to actually go over is installment contracts or contracts themselves so they are going to shift from contracts into the V3 version and we’re going to show you how to actually convert those V2 contracts into the installment contracts in V3. First thing I’m going to do is open up my screen here and break it down so what we’re gonna do is actually take a look real quickly at version 2 and then how to convert that into version 3. The first thing we’re gonna do is go under contracts here and hit add a contract so as that opens up I’m going to scroll down and you can see right past the picture there in the bottom right hand corner I’m going to add a contract so this is version 2 now we’re gonna show you how to convert these contracts into V3 and you’re going to want to do this to avoid double billing and make sure the process is streamlined. I’m going to go over the V2 really high level and then how to take this contract we’re building and convert that into version 3 so what I’m gonna do is first thing I gotta do is go in and create a contact name so I’m going to just call this the test contract version so we know which one it is and in V2 if you still haven’t built these out obviously you want to put a start and end date so I’m just going to say that this contract starts February 1st and runs all the way through November 30th and the line item is what actually ends up on the invoice description so these are the invoice line items so I’m just gonna put test invoice line item just to show you proof of concept you get the green plus icon that’s going to drop it down obviously if there’s different ones you can manipulate them with the up and down arrows and the X deletes them. We’re gonna grab a default service so maybe it is now in this test account usually we use something under like landscape maintenance something like that but I’m just going to call it the default services the awesome service. Going in from February I’m gonna say it is a thousand dollar month contract we’re going to autofill that in here now obviously January is not appropriate so we’re gonna delete that out and I’m gonna go in to December delete that out make that a zero but for speed and efficiency in V2 we can autofill that now I’m gonna select the building date of the month I’m gonna say it’s the first and we’re gonna build one month in advance and payment type is going to be a credit card we’re going to auto generate included active and include any sub properties. Now in V2 what you’re gonna be doing is going in and adding contract items so I’m gonna put a couple items in here so you can see how this transfers over to the V3 version and once again this is important that we convert these V2 contracts into V3 otherwise we could have two new ones if you built a new one to V3 and left this you could create a double billing scenario so this video is going to show you how to convert subsequent videos going to show you how to actually build up brand new ones in V3 but I thought this was most important before we drove into actually how to build them we better convert them so we don’t double bill. Comments or questions feel free to drop them live here or in the recorded version. I’m going to go in and put in lawn care maintenance here and I’m gonna say it’s in here and we can do quantity and visit so now the overages will transfer over in V3 for what we’ve seen but if they need to be updated they need to be updated in V3. For this example I’m not going to have any quantity or overages and I’m gonna add one more service here and let’s call it shrub pruning probably have that in this instance so we’ve got long lawncare maintenance and shrub pruning that’s gonna account for $1,000 a month contract billing the first of the month and we’re gonna bill one month in advance so we can do our overages here but in this example I’m not going to but if you do they should transfer right over to V3. Once we have this contract in V2 the point of the video is how do we take this contract in V2 and automatically transfer it over to V3 well you can’t automatically do it but with a click of two or three buttons it can happen. This is the interesting part here so we want to go to accounting and scroll down to contracts so up to the header accounting contracts we are inj ust for clarity we are in version 2 V2 so we can see a new version of contracts is available try it out we don’t I repeat do not want to go there so for this example I’m only going to select one here and this is that awesome service here now if I wanted to convert all of them I can do them all at once for this example I’m going to go in and just grab our awesome service we just built out here and click on it and so actually this is just want to make sure grabbing the right one here it is so here is our test number one so we’re gonna go and pull that in and go interactions and convert installment plan so that is going to convert it and we’re gonna convert and that’s gonna suck that right off so you can see now it isn’t there so actually I did miss it so the contract conversion I’ll also pull that one in and hit actions convert installment plan so that now automatically swinging it over to V3. The next step that you want to take is go in a new version of the contract is available and we want to try it out so that’s going to swing you into V3 now the UI or the user interface is significantly different obviously I’m really like what SA has done here in the development team and support and everyone else who had a piece of this one heck of a job. Now we can see that it is in here and we can go in and take a look at that contract now in the version 3 area. It’s going to load in all the installments we didn’t have January everything as advertised is loaded in here now I’m not going to going this video how to build this out but that’s how we convert them but under advance actions we can go in and take a look at job notes attachments and view history here so that will allow us to go in and we can also go in and edit it that’s going to give you some granularity so start and end date bill in advance so everything is pretty similar it just looks a little bit cleaner and we’ve got the whole annual value. What is going to change in the next video when we talk about this is we can go in and add more granularity around these services and there are additional advanced options here as well but that is the process to take a V2 contract and convert it into now an installment plan in V3. Next video we’re going to be putting out is how to actually create the installment plan in V3 if you don’t have a contract in V2. Once again Service Autopilot here as a Certified Advisor to help you navigate the conversion from V2 to V3 so we’ll see you again on the next V3 video.