ServiceTitan Vocabulary: The Foundation of Accurate Reporting |Podcast Ep 89 |Mastering ServiceTitan

not every call is a good call. I think our number is 20% of all calls are leads. And so that's something that's major for our marketing team to see. Whenever someone calls in, there's only a 20% chance that that call is actually a lead of someone requesting service.

Welcome to Mastering ServiceTitan, where you get expert advice from power users. I'm your host, Josh Liu. And today I'm here with Sydney Biancardi, the COO at Iceberg Home Services, and we are talking all about ServiceTitan data. And, uh, Sydney, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

Yeah, I know we've got a lot to cover, but before we dive in, I did want people to hear your story and your background and a quick little intro because, uh, you have a pretty epic journey into where you are today.

Yeah, it's been quite the journey for sure. I, um, have a background in retail management and did that while I was going through college and getting a business degree and kind of learned how to analyze a P&L and how to look at the back end of business. And then starting, you know, into the career world, I landed as a CSR at Iceberg Home Services about 5 years ago. And that was— Iceberg was a different company at that point. And so there I helped out with pulling permits. I offloaded shipments with the forklift and kind of did a little bit of everything at the CSR, but As we began to grow, really fell into the lane of just, you know, taking calls and picking jobs and helping to dispatch and things like that. And so pretty quickly, you know, I was able to learn the software service titan. I was able to learn the customer service side of everything and realize that I really love the operational aspect of the businesses. And so I used that experience and that learning and that exposure to kind of climb the ranks, I guess, and really touch every role in Iceberg over the last 5 years or so. I kind of started taking more overview and insight into marketing and even into the accounting aspect of batching and posting and service tagging. So I've had my hand in a lot and I think as I, you know, when I started in 2021, like I was saying, I started with a completely different company. There were only, I think when we looked it up, there were like 9 employees. And so everyone did a little bit of everything. But as we've grown, you know, now we're up to about 60 employees and that's something where if we didn't have anybody to fill the role at the time, but we needed it, I was the one that stepped in. So it's been a really fun ride. And I think, you know, landing in a lane of operations is what I am passionate about, what I enjoy. And all of those kind of lanes and exposure into different departments and things like that is what has led me to kind of learn my passion. Wow.

I am so impressed because typically people, they kind of think of themselves, they stay in their lean-ish, like my background's in sales. I went to marketing. I'm kind of like on the side. And then in my head I'm like, oh my gosh, I would never touch accounting. I, I, that thing is so intimidating.

I would try to get an audience. That's the worst part.

Sorry to all the accountants out there. Your job is tough.

Um, but I'm just, it's way, way too tough for me.

I'm just so impressed that you even got in, you know, into the nitty gritty of like all those aspects. And so, Service Titan data, it's a big topic. Maybe before we dive into some of the common vocab and misconceptions and how to get set up, maybe we can speak a little bit to why it's so, why this topic is so important. And actually I am curious too, why you're so passionate about it.

Yeah, I think data is, I'm not a very emotional person, so I know a lot of people like to make decisions off of feelings and things like that. And I think I'm the person that I don't really operate that way. And so I've always been the person that says, what do the numbers say? And so I've been the person that kind of always defaults to say, does the data prove that we should make this decision? If not, even though, even though I feel that way, you know, that's not really the right choice. And so as you know, these last several years that I've worked here, the, the main important thing was, yes, you need data to make decisions, but if the data's not clean, then you're making decisions based off of kind of just random numbers. And so that's kind of what sparked the passion is, you know, when we're trying to figure out numbers or make these decisions, if I'm not the one that's like having these gut feelings or feelings of like how we should move and operate, you know, if I'm the one that needs the data, then we'll need to make sure that the data is clear. And so obviously with that, you have to understand how ServiceTitan works and its intricacies and all that information to be able to spit out the clean data and actually use the software the way it's intended.

Right. So I feel like there's, in our listeners, there's probably different buckets. There's probably some people who maybe their data is pretty decent, other people who are like, oh my gosh, I really need to clean this up. It's a mess. It's been a mess for a long time. And then there are those who maybe are starting fresh on ServiceTitan. Maybe we start with that last group first, just to have a clean slate.

Yeah.

If you're joining ServiceTitan for the first time, or maybe you're in implementation right now, what do you think is like the, the biggest, uh, common vocab that people really need to know when it comes to real life residential service and replacement? And then what ServiceTitan calls it and how their data's structured.

I always say ServiceTitan's like learning a new language because verbs that you feel like should mean one thing in the real world, sometimes in ServiceTitan mean something different or just There, there are other words that you can compare to it. The way that ServiceTitan works in the workflow, obviously you have a call, you have a lead, you have a job, you have an opportunity. Those are kind of 4 things that can be used interchangeably kind of in, in the real world and in, in the trade specifically. But in ServiceTitan, you know, it's a call that comes through. It's anything that comes through inbound. A lead is something that's classified as someone wanting service. A job is when that, you know, lead turns into being booked. That's a job. And then an opportunity saying that it's something, you know, that is something's able to be sold on that job. And so that's kind of a workflow that we've all had to understand because when our call center and our marketing team are talking, our marketing team, you know, our call center is saying we had 2,000 calls yesterday and the marketing team's like, that's great, we did a great job. And it's like, well, of those 2,000 calls, only 20 of them were leads. So obviously that's an extreme example, but that's something where marketing obviously has to be focusing on leads. And then ultimately they need to focus on opportunities too, because just because the job is booked doesn't mean we have the availability to sell something on that job. So that's kind of one kind of, you know, workflow that I think is very, very important to focus on. And then we know we go into sales versus estimates or sales and estimates versus revenue and invoices. So sales and revenue, I know can be used interchangeably in the real world as well. But as ServiceTitan, they're literally the complete opposite side of the same coin. And so obviously, you know, if you're looking at what you've sold and what are on estimates, then you have what you have in revenue and what you've completed. So that's something that I think is very important to you as you're learning the workflows is just because you've sold something doesn't mean you've completed it. And just because you've completed it, it might not mean that you've sold it the right way on an estimate. So those are kind of two paths that I think are really, really important to know.

Oh, can we dig in a little bit more into the sales and revenue one? Because I think that's probably a very common one. And even in my head, I'm like, wow, it does sound very smooth.

I'll use our example. So when we first started ServiceTitan, we didn't do anything on estimates. It was, everything was revenue. We added everything directly to the invoice. And so obviously when, you know, you're a technician, there's a process of whenever you're completing the job, you can click perform work now, or you can click perform later. And so that's something on an estimate that was very important for us because obviously we weren't using estimates in the first place. But when we did, the perform work now is this kind of work, or it moves everything to your invoice for you. So that's the process we didn't do. So going back to what we did wrong is we would just add items directly to the invoice every single time. I don't think we generated an estimate for probably the first 6 months that we used Service Titan. And so obviously it was learning how to use this platform. So I mean, for everyone that knows what I'm talking about, we would just create an estimate job and add the equipment directly to the invoice and then add an additional appointment to that job for the installers to go to. So when I look back at old estimate or old invoices, I'm always like, what in the world are we thinking? Because nothing showed a sales. And so it was only showing its revenues. We might have, you know, $800,000 in revenue, but $0 in sales. And so I think for a while we were like, well, it doesn't matter because revenue is the same thing and sales is the same thing and it's not at all. And so I think that's something where, you know, once we learn that correct process, that goes back to when you do create an estimate, that's something where that goes towards your sales, but then it gives you these options of perform work now, perform work later. When you perform work now, that's instantly turning everything from sales into your revenue. When you perform work later, that's where it shows up on your follow-up tab and really gives you a good work in progress. Tab and as to follow. That way you're able to keep track of what you sold and what you haven't installed. So that is a workflow that when I talk to a lot of other companies too, it's just not a common knowledge, but it's absolutely crucial in your data, but also your sales, your revenue for your job tracking, and just making sure things are flowing the way that they're supposed to through service items.

If someone's listening and they just heard like, wait, that's how we do things. We put it directly on the invoice. What's, what's so wrong? What's so bad about that? Uh, um, could you maybe share a little bit about what they may be missing in terms of the reporting downstream or some of the decision-making that they can do better?

Of course. So I mean, that workflow from the beginning, if you're adding things directly to the invoice, you're not closing that job. So if you're looking at your close rate, ensuring that you haven't sold anything and so it's showing that you're not closing any jobs. So that doesn't give you access to a close rate. Next is you're not able to get a full scope of what time was spent diagnosing the system versus what time was spent installing the system. And then also for job costing, so that's something that's major. If you're putting all of the cost of the equipment on this job, then you've got, like I said, you've got your estimate diagnostic, your estimate or your diagnostic, you've got your installers, you've got the equipment there, you have that they change any parts in the diagnostic. So it's kind of grouping these two things together that should not be grouped together for a couple of different reasons. And so a ServiceTitan gives you this kind of separate layer of projects. And so if you have that AC diagnostic job as itself or an estimate job as itself, You're able to kind of get a full scope of what that job entails, and then you're able to book a second job for the installation that you're able to kind of get an idea of what that job costs. But all of that lives under a project. So it's kind of linking to the two jobs together without it splitting on the same invoice.

Got it. Okay. So to me, it sounds like, um, correct me if I'm wrong, but it sounds like if you just throw everything on the invoice at all these different stages with all these different people working on it, it's just one number and you can't break up where that number came from or how much time or—

Right. So you'll have $1,000 total. You'll have the however many hours are on the same job. You'll have one payment across everything and that will all be because you'll only have one invoice. So that's not getting you access to multiple different invoices for that job.

Got it. Is that because, um, a lot of people think, you know, a typical residential service and replacement job, let's say most of their jobs are done right now. That's why they just like threw it on the invoice. Like, oh, we don't really need to complicate this in a way. Is that what—

Right. And I think that it was easy for us a lot of times, you know, at that point it was the salesmen's like, okay, I'll just add it to the invoice and are in charge of going out next day. And so it's, you know, two appointments on the same job. But like I said, those other things that are taking into account of John's not closed, you don't have anything in sales, or in a worst case scenario, say that they add the equipment to the invoice, but someone forgets to add that appointment. There's nowhere that's living in limbo. And so say it's a part or, you know, equipment that we have to order and it's a week out. No one's really looking at that job. There's nowhere for anyone to go to be able to see that this is kind of an in-progress job. And so that's where that follow-up tab, that's where that comes into play. Because once you have the estimate and you sell it for later, it lives on the follow-up tab until you're linking that estimate to a job saying that, hey, this is scheduled, this is done. So there's a couple different kind of potential caveats that it could go wrong.

Right. Yeah. I can imagine just things slipping through the cracks, getting late. And whatnot. What was it like when you discovered this at the company and then to start to change the whole process?

It was actually my call center manager now. She was a CSR and she really dove into, you know, the Academy has like 500 videos. She, when we were slower, you know, just would watch videos. And she came to us one day and she's like, hey, there's this thing called a follow-up tab and we don't use it and we probably should. So I think at that point we're like, oh, that's how you're supposed to use it. I think like we had made it work, you know, And so like literally for 6 months it worked for us, but it was like, there were some issues, you know, the issues that I presented. And we were just like, yeah, I guess this is how it is. Like, we'll just, we'll, you know, we changed our processes around it. And I think when she brought that to us, it was more so, you know, like, oh wow, like that, this is how the system's designed. Like that makes so much more sense. And so that is really what allowed us to start unlocking some numbers and data to actually use the system the way it was designed.

Right. And then, uh, what was the first step? Like, how did you get technicians on board and what was their, the new behavior that they had to learn to, to fit the system?

So, um, our team's very, very, very good at implementing things because they're so used to change. I mean, we implement things literally all the time. I think it's something that luckily for us, our techs have gotten used to. So I think usually for us, it's getting the office staff on board, making sure we knew exactly how the process is supposed to work from beginning to end. We're very big on SOPs. And so we'll go and create a standard operating procedure for every role in the company, know where one person leaves off, where the next person steps in. Then technicians, we have a meeting, go through the process, kind of go step by step, walk them through what it looks like. And then it's on the managers. And I tell them they have to be the naggy wife. And that's why they have to do that forever. Not forever, but you know, for a first week or so. But it's all about implementing, it's all about creating habits. And so if they have to do call by call management, and say, hey, you didn't create this estimate like you're supposed to. They do that for every single job for the first week or so. And that's what creates the habits for our technicians is just getting everybody else on board and then just staying on top of them constantly for a while. But then it becomes second nature. And I think that's what's been exciting is that's a process we taught, I don't know, like 4 years ago. We technicians now, we're not even having to teach them the process because it's so embedded in what we do. And that just becomes standard with, you know, everything new that we're implementing.

Right. I heard you have to like micromanage them now or else you'll have to micromanage them forever. So that, that first week or seems very, very crucial. And so the new behavior for them, was it pulling up to job and then making sure to do an estimate first? And if they do the work now, they just immediately convert it to an invoice.

Right. And so that was a new process is whenever they were creating this, they weren't, they weren't ever creating estimates in the past. And so they would just, I guess, talk through options and then whenever the homeowner decided, they would just add it to the invoice. So whenever they started presenting estimates, I think our salesmen were very excited because they were able to, you know, present 4 to 5 different options that the homeowner can see pricing and see what all the items are. And so I think they got on board pretty quickly and it was more so, you know, when they're, when they're talking through options, create all these estimates in your job and then you present them. And then when the homeowner agrees with one, you sign that estimate. And then that gives you the options for perform work now, perform work later. If they perform work now, yes, that goes instantly to their invoice on the job right now, turns it into revenue, and then they can, um, collect signatures, collect payment, all that kind of stuff.

This is such a great example of like working the system the way it's supposed to be worked. And then now you're really clearly illustrating the reasons why it's not just the data, but now there's opportunity to increase sales, increase close rates. Your average ticket as well. Uh, cause I know people, some companies measure like how many options per estimate I think that they want to see and they want to see that number higher hopefully. Um, so that way the technician's not just putting up one option in an invoice and like basically saying it's this or nothing.

Right, exactly. Yeah. So using estimates actually gives you insight to your sales team so you can see, are they closing? What are their options per opportunity? What's their average closed sale? What is their average opportunity? And so all of this isn't possible with revenue. It's only possible if you're using the estimate and sales version. So, you know, going back to vocabulary, if you're just focusing on revenue and you're, you're saying, you know, revenue is the same thing. Well, in ServiceTitan, it's not. It's a very, very, very different workflow, very different understanding, and gives you very different, you know, datasets as well.

Such a good illustration because at first when you said it, I was like, oh, why did ServiceTitan do that? It seems like you split it up. It sounds the same. It seems complicated. And then now, like a few minutes later, I'm like, wow, that makes so much sense.

Makes sense once you get it. Yeah.

Yeah. Do you have any other common misconceptions or vocab that people get mixed up and then maybe we could do another demonstration of?

Yeah, I think, you know, the first example that I use of a call versus a lead, you know, that turns into a job, but a call is ever any call that comes in inbound, but a lead is someone, a call that someone's requesting service. And so with your call reasons, you can actually automatically classify them as leads or not. If you know, if a follow-up call is a call reason or call classification that your CSRs are using, that's automatically marking your call as not a lead. So the moment your CSR selects that classification, it's saying this is not a lead. They were just asking a question on our invoice. So that's something that's big too, because like I said, if your marketing team is just looking at calls that are coming in, not every call is a good call. And so your, I think our number is 20% of all calls are leads. And so that's something that's major for our marketing team to see. That, you know, whenever someone calls in, there's only a 20% chance that that call is actually a lead of someone requesting service. And so that's something, you know, that once you figure that out too, is you can set up some rules and do some, like I said, automation of once you set your call classification, your call reasons, all that can be automated for you. But that helps our marketing team substantially.

So when you first started at Iceberg, what was the situation like? What were you guys just not tracking leads or was it just—

we were not—

no.

Um, so we didn't start tracking marketing probably until 2 or 3 years ago for ServiceTitan. So it was more so we would track our booking rate, um, but you need to know your lead count to see what you're booking as well. And so that's something where you need to first, um, you can't have any abandoned calls because every abandoned call that's not classified that's over a minute, they count as a lead. And so I, we, you know, our booking rate was around something like 17% or something crazy. And so we were just like, yeah, it's not accurate. We don't look at it. So we just never have like a true capture of our booking percent. And so I think what a lot of companies that I talk to, you know, run into and what we are running into too is you don't know where you're losing the lead. Is it because you're not booking it? Is it because it canceled? Is it because the tech didn't sell it? And so without all that information, you have no clue. You're spending money on marketing and saying we don't have enough jobs on the board, but you don't know like where to pinpoint what's going wrong. And so that's why all these kind of intricacies and distinctions are super important because you have to know. What your leads are to know what your booking percent is, to then know what other booking percent is canceling, to then know what of your jobs are you closing. And so all those things kind of pile up into one to figure out, are we spending too much in marketing and we're just not closing in the field? Are we not spending enough? We're not getting enough leads in the beginning, or we're not booking? And so that is what's giving you insight to make these decisions and what department kind of to dive into.

That phrase that you said is, ah, that's not accurate, we don't really look at that. It's a subtle, um, have it, but at— but behind that is like there's so much opportunity, right?

And that's like, oh my gosh, that I'm so passionate about ServiceSite in general. Like, and I told you before, like, even when I talk to other companies, they're like, you— they'd probably pay you to talk it up. I'm like, no, seriously, it's a great platform, I'm telling you. But I think it's just tough because you need someone to know it and learn it to use it. Once you have that person and you're able to actually utilize everything, it's a complete game changer into your business, especially, you know, as a leader. I'm able to pinpoint exactly where if our close rate slightly too low, that's why we're not hitting sales. Or if we didn't get enough leads, that's why we're not hitting sales. And then even leads to opportunities, that's another KPI that we started tracking this year, uh, which is a very new process for us. But we wanted to know, like I was telling you earlier, that lead turns into a job, but then that job's classified as an opportunity or not. And so just because we got 100 leads, we might have booked 90 of them at a 90% booking. So 90 jobs, but of those jobs, we're only closing or turning those into opportunities like 45% of the time. So that's what, 38, I don't know, 40 jobs of the 90 that is an actual opportunity that we can sell. And so that is a really good example of a marketing lead quality KPI that we have never had before. And so that's something that's been very exciting for us for marketing.

I'm getting excited as you're talking about it. It, it, it, this is really illustrating like once you figure out what things exactly mean and you have the right workflow, it it truly unlocks so much knowledge. Maybe we start from the beginning from a call. So you mentioned years ago, you guys weren't really measuring it. The booking rate was all off. Then what did you have to change workflow-wise and tracking-wise? And then how did you, how'd you do that?

Yeah. So like I was saying earlier, it goes into call reasons. And so anytime you're classifying a call, which was something that we kind of had to get into our normal practice, was classifying every abandoned call. So an abandoned call is a call that you don't click the call bubble when it rings in. So if you don't have Phones Pro or Contact Center Pro, you have to manually click it. So if you have those pro products, it clicks it for you. See, even if I answer on my phone on Dialpad, it will actually click it for me in Service Hub, which makes it a lot easier. Anyway, slight plug. But we had to go through and classify every abandoned call because like I was saying earlier, if it's not attached to a CSR and not classified, it counts as a lead if it's over a minute. And so they could be a follow-up call, it could be, you know, not looking for service, can be out of our service area. So things that aren't leads, but they were counting them as leads. So the first thing we had to do was get into normal practice of everyone has to classify every single abandoned call no matter what. I mean, we get it, you close the day, at the end of the day, there should be zero abandoned calls. And so that's something that, you know, transformed our call center because there were times where we had 80% of all of our calls weren't classified. They weren't attached to a CSR. And so that's where that booking percent came in. And we were like, well, that's not accurate. So we don't really care. And so all of that. And so once we started classifying those calls, then you go into your call reasons and make sure that it's clicked as is a lead or is not a lead. And so all of that's automated now. And so our CSRs are used to classifying abandoned calls every single time it comes through. They close out their shift and it's abandoned. The first thing they do when they come in in the morning, there's zero abandoned. So that's what they've gotten used to. But then you go into, like I said, your settings and set those things to make it second nature so that all they have to do is keep doing what they're doing and it will fall into a lead or not a lead kind of automatically. Got it.

Okay. So no wonder people always say, click that green bubble. Yeah.

I mean, it's really important because you'll have to go back later and clean it up and be done.

Right. So first step, click that green bubble, reduce your abandoned calls. If you do have abandoned calls, classify them and then your call reasons. Those you set up and then depending on the reasons, it can automatically classify as a lead or not.

Correct. Yes. So in your call reasons, you can go into and it's called is a lead or is not a lead. And so you can set that up. If it's a hangup, if it's a spam, a vendor, if it's a follow-up call, you know, if it's looking for, if it's out of your service area, all those things you can leave as a classification. So when your CSR selects those, it's automatically saying that's not a lead. It's not real, but you can also do, um, call reasons of things that aren't leads. Or that are leads, I'm sorry. So whether it be they didn't like the dispatch fee, so just because you didn't book it doesn't mean it's not a lead. And so that's something where, you know, they have to talk to their husband or wife. That's something— those are real call reasons. That means it is a lead. Just because we didn't book it doesn't change that factor.

Got it. And so now with all this, uh, the new workflows implemented, you're seeing leads better. What are the conversations like, Mark, with marketing now?

Like, how have those changed with all this new data? Yeah, so I think, like I said before, it— there was kind of this like filtering, I guess, that went into place. So first thing we looked at a couple years ago was calls. You know, we were getting 10,000 calls in a month, and that was like, we're doing great, marketing's crushing it. But obviously we know of that 10,000, probably, you know, 1,000 is actually— maybe even 500 are leads. And so that's something where we can kind of dial it down to say, okay, we have 500 leads in, in the month, that's still pretty good, that's what we wanted, and so marketing looked into that. So then, you know, about a year ago we looked into just because we're getting the leads and we're getting the jobs, how do we quantify the quality? Because it's very hard to do that. And that's how we added in the labor opportunities. And so if someone calls in with a 1-year labor warranty and that's technically a lead, we don't count that as an opportunity because we can't sell anything on it. And so that's something where now marketing is filtered down even more to say, okay, you had 10,000 calls. Now you have 500 leads, but in all reality, we only had 200 opportunities that month. And so we have everything backed into numbers. And so now they're shooting for an opportunity goal, not a lead goal or a call goal, but our marketing team has an opportunity number that they're shooting for. Wow. Which has been a game changer.

That, that's huge because a lot of times the marketing person, hey, look, I got the lead. Like you guys go figure it out from here. Right, right. Yeah. So, so now it's like follow through all the way to getting closer to, um, the sales and revenue actually happening.

Right. And now we're actually taking it a step further too to say even And then within the opportunities, what are the job types? So are they a demand call or are they a non-demand call? And that would be, you know, a maintenance versus a diagnostic. And so kind of just figuring out ways to drill down even farther to say, now just because it's an opportunity, do we want that opportunity or do we want something better? And so doing all that, you know, obviously within ServiceTitan and filtering it has been really good insight for us. Wow.

This just so clearly demonstrates The power of like the fundamentals. You just get these fundamental foundation things right and it goes so deep. Okay, let's go to maybe, should we go talk about, dig into lead to job or should we talk about job to opportunity? Which one should we do?

I think job to opportunity is very important, especially with close rate. So we're at about a 45%, we call it LOP is lead to opportunity, but that's our, you know, our KPI. So we're at about a 45% LOP, but that is, is a lead turning into a job turning into an opportunity. So obviously, from a lead to turn into a job, you have to book it and it has to not cancel. That's the first step. So you can kind of backdate some, some data with your booking percent and with your cancellation percent to say if you have 500 leads, you're booking at a 90%, but you're canceling 5% of those, you're obviously going to be getting 85% of leads to jobs. Then taking it further into your opportunities, that's something that is based on your job type. And so your job types, you marked as— there's a little checkbox on your job types that say no charge by default. So if that's selected, that will not count as an opportunity. So we do that for our recalls, for our labor warranty, for our part install jobs, anything that we are not expecting to sell anything on those jobs. And so obviously we're losing— what is that, 55% of our jobs to those no charge by defaults. And so things that would be opportunities would be your diagnostics, your maintenances. That's pretty, you know, mainly obviously drain clogs for plumbing, things like that. And so that's kind of been the flow of everything is you're, you know, turning your job into an opportunity. That's what we want is more opportunities. But then your close rate and your average sale per opportunity is on the base of opportunities. And so if I, you know, my salesmen, my comfort advisors, I should not have to count numbers against them if they're running a recall. Like that shouldn't count against their close rate. And so close rate, it does not factor in on opportunities. It only factors opportunities. And so that's what's been important to get your close rate accurate is to make sure your job types are defaulted to a no charger or an opportunity.

Okay. So, um, what happens if it's a no charger, it's checked, and then they do find something and then create an estimate or like—

So it actually turns that into an opportunity for you. So ServiceTitan is pretty good, the smart. and it says, okay, you did sell something, we'll go ahead and mark this as an opportunity for you. So it'll do that for you in that process of won an estimate, sold, it will, um, you know, count that.

Got it. So is it the creating an estimate that triggers it to become an opportunity or do you have to sell that?

Only if it sells. And I will say another distinction is on the job types, every job type should have a sold threshold. So for example, our diagnostic fee is $79, so our sold threshold is $80. Out on a diagnostic. And so if they'd only sell $79, we don't count that as closed. And so for maintenance, we have, you know, a special maintenance for $49.95. But so our threshold on the maintenance is $50. And so we basically say, if you just sell a diagnostic or you just sell the promo maintenance, we're not counting that as sold. And so that's something to note too for your close rate is they can sell, you know, $79, but that's not going to go towards our close rate specifically. But a part install, the sold threshold is zero. So if they sell anything, even $20, that's counting it as sold.

So that means years ago when you didn't do estimates at all, none of this was possible.

Right, right. That's what I was saying. We had zero insight into our sales team because we would basically just say like we sold this much and this person sold this much and it wasn't even sold technically, it was revenue. And so that's kind of what we were going off to, but it was also tough to figure out you know, right now, now we're using revenue to, you know, capture install performance. And so how many jobs are they installing or what's their total revenue that they installed? And so, yeah, years ago it was our top salesman had more revenue than our installer and it was just a little messy and it didn't make a ton of sense.

Got it. So once you fix the estimates and invoicing, then it opened up the opportunity to look deeply, more deeply into opportunities.

Right. I feel like every year, so my CFO and my business owner, we always go, um, you know, on a budgeting trip, or, and we do our budget. And every year I feel like we dial more and more into data. And my CFO is very good at like pushing the envelope on what, what number, like, have you thought about this number? And he's never stopped service height. And service height, he's always been able to pull out that data. Good thing is I, I have learned how to pull the numbers. But every year we are like adding more layers into data. Uh, like I was even explaining with marketing into opportunities, that's something we've never done before. And I'm already anticipating you know, at the end of this year, we budget for next year, you know, more insight that we can provide. So I think that's what I love about ServiceTitan is that every aspect of our business from the call literally being recorded from our CSR to the technician in the field to our accountant batching and posting invoices and collecting payments, all that is within one platform. And so whatever data we want to come up with, we can pull that and, and do some, you know, analysis into that, which is really cool.

Wow. What's— and it's, it's crazy that we've only just talked about like the main core workflow and there's inventory and job costing and price book. There's just so much more.

Oh yeah, there's a lot.

Um, what is the next number that you're like, ooh, I can't wait to get that number or, or that you're working towards next?

I think we're all diving into marketing quality. And so that's kind of what we're— I touched upon a little bit earlier, but we're figuring out like now we're using a star system to rank our leads or our opportunities, not our leads, I'm sorry. We're trying to figure out, is it a 1-star opportunity, a 2-star, 3-star, 4-star, 5-star? And so my sales manager now is actually reporting just because we got this number of opportunities, were most of them 2-star and below or were they actually 5-star opportunities? And so that's kind of the next thing that I'm trying to figure out a little bit. I've really been kind of leaning on AI to do some analysis for us. And I don't know if anyone has used Manus, but that's like my new favorite AI platform. Um, just in being able to analyze data, but that's something that we're doing now is just now diving deeper into marketing and figuring out of the opportunities, what is the, the star rating or the quality of those.

Very cool. And, um, I was going to bring this up, but I don't know if we'll, this is like a whole separate, uh, podcast topic. Maybe we'll have to have you for round 2 one day. But, um, a lot of this feeds into your reporting dashboards, how to schedule those. Could we maybe give people like a little sneak preview of like what's possible?

I can brainstorm. Yeah.

If you get your data right, like this is what's—

Yes.

Like the dreamland.

For sure. So dashboard is what I use for live tracking. So you can log in any time during the day, get live data up to literally that minute. And so that's what I like about dashboards. Every department of ours has their own dashboard. So I have sales manager, our call center, our marketing, our inventory, purchasing, our procurement, and our install. Every person has their own dashboard, even our dispatch, you know, dispatcher. So that's what I love about dashboards is it's customizable by person. Reports I like because I can schedule them ahead of time. So if I'm wanting, I don't have to pull these reports manually. If I'm wanting the technician performance or even what payments have gone through and what haven't, I can schedule those to where they're emailing me at 6 AM every Monday or every day. And so that's what I like about reports is just more so data being fed to me that I don't have to pull the report. Reports versus dashboards, you know, I can log in and they're prettier to look at than reports to you, obviously. So if I'm wanting to look at, you know, a donut of what number, what type of installs we're installing, that'll be dashboards. But if I'm wanting to look at our actual project costing, I would pull that in a scheduled report. So I'm getting kind of that distinction between, you know, our install department.

That makes sense. And yeah, we can go dive into all of that at a future time, I'm sure. Maybe last question. You went from CSR to COO, obviously very passionate about the operations. If someone's listening to this and they're also finding themselves that this is also what they're passionate about, and maybe they are a CSR as well, any advice on how to grow their career and lean into the operations side of the business?

Yeah, I think I have always just been game for anything. And so wherever the, like I said, there was a hole in the company, I was just ready to jump in and figure it out as I went. And that's something that I think has allowed me to not only show my buy-in to the company, but also learn so much. And so I obviously liked operations previously, but I had, I never thought that I'd be at an HVAC company, like diving into data, being super passionate about it. Like I would've never thought that. And so I think that's something that's really allowed me to learn and to expand my knowledge is I think a lot of people kind of get boxed into their role and say like, that's not for me, that's someone else. being game just to be like, yeah, sure, I'll order parts even though I'm CSR. And you're really just expanding your knowledge and insight into your industry, into your company, and then showing everybody else, like I said, your buy-in and dedication to want to do more.

What an epic story. And thank you so much for coming on to, to share this. At first you think of it, it's like, oh, it's ST vocab, what's right, what's wrong, what misconceptions? And then you dive in and it's like, wow, this goes so deep.

And, uh, it's for sure there's like, and I mean, I feel like I, I didn't think I'd have enough information, but as I'm talking, I'm like, there's so many more things that they don't have to do, right? There's something so intricate. And so I think that's something that, you know, once you start diving in, you're realizing that there's just, it's fully encompassing of absolutely anything you could dream up in a company.

Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on today to share your wisdom. And thank you all for listening. We'll catch you on the next episode.