The Incentive Plan Problem Why Most Contractor Bonus Plans Fail

Cool.

All right, looks like we're live. So before we get started, I'd like you to drop what trade you're in in the chat and how you currently pay your team. Do you pay them hourly, commissions, bonus, combination of everything? Just let me know what you're doing now, and I just kind of want to get a feel for what's going on and, uh, where everyone's at today. So this is what we're talking about. We're talking about performance pay And, you know, most contractors want their technicians to think like owners. God knows when I was a contractor, I wish that that's what they did. And most companies pay their team, and it usually works against this the way they do it. So the company wins when jobs are done efficiently, and technicians win when they get hours, if you are paying hours only, right? And so this creates a big gap between what the owner wants and what the technicians want and what actually happens. So we're going to talk to my buddy Ron Williams from Benjamin Franklin, uh, Plumbing and One Hour. It's got two franchises there in Ocean City, Maryland. We're going to talk about performance pay. We also have Ryan with— Ryan Schenk with Share Willow. So guys, thanks for joining.

Hey, absolutely. Thank you so much, Bill. Um, and yes, before we get started, so it looks like there's a private chat and then there's the comments. So just to be clear, we should, we should all be in the comments section on the right side, right? So comments is sort of the public chat there. Um, so we see, you know, we have, uh, Chris with generators and electrical trades, straight hourly, looking at ways to add incentives and bonus pay. Garage door. Um, by the way, uh, I noticed that we had a, a lot of people registered here today. Um, and, uh, so anyway, yeah, and by the way, um, I'm super grateful that Ron was able to show up and, uh, and be here with us. I'm excited to just learn from you, and I think a lot of people in the trades, and, you know, a lot of people are hearing about incentive pay and performance pay, so I think they want to hear like the the good, bad, the ugly. How did you message it to your team? I think that's always a concern, you know. Are you seeing your metrics improve after, you know, switching? So I think we're going to talk about all of that today. And by the way, I do want to say, um, at the end we do have a special offer since Bill is so gracious to, to let us do this. So I wanted to like just give back there. So that's going to come at the end. But yeah, super excited to dive in.

Yeah, Ron, how's it going today?

Glad to be here, guys. Thanks for the invite, and, uh, always, always glad to be able to help my fellow tradesmen. So I'm here however I can. And Ryan, thank you, because, you know, I've been beating my head against the table for a long time now trying to figure out what the heck to do, from commission to performance to new comp to whatever it is, and, uh You guys definitely made it a lot easier for us.

Great, that's fantastic. Ron, can you—

awesome—

tell me a little bit about your business, your team size, how long you've been in the industry? And, um, I know you do plumbing and heating and air conditioning as well.

Yeah, so I've been doing this since, uh, as a franchise since 2002, bought and sold a couple businesses, and then, uh My current companies are down here in Ocean City, Maryland. We're projected to do about $5 million collectively, um, $3 million on the One Hour side and right around $2 million on the Ben Franklin side. Smaller size, but, uh, you know, still has its everyday ups and downs. Um, and, uh, what we've noticed for the most part is when we went over to the performance-based pay, incentive-based pay, and right now it's on the plumbing side, we've been doing it for about 2 months, taking a little longer to implement, but, uh, fine-tuning it. My plumbers are— their average ticket is anywhere from $1,500 to $2,000 now. We had what we thought was a good average ticket of around $800, $900 to $1,000. It's $1,500, $2,000, and they're spending more time on the job. And, um, you know, really, really educate the customer so that they can, you know, maximize everything for the customer, obviously, but then also for their own paycheck.

I'm just gonna jump in. That's incredible. So just to be clear, previous average ticket was $800 to $900, and now average ticket is $1,500 to $2,000.

Wow.

And it determines, it determines the plumber, right? We've got some guys that are still building on it and trying to, you know, get that options closed down and taking their time with the customer. And then we've got some guys who are really good at sales and, you know, were just craving for this and they couldn't wait till some sort of incentive-based pay came around. And really, we have a new plumber that came on board with us solely because it was an incentive-based program that he wasn't getting from his former company.

Really, that is so cool to hear. Um, I, I keep hearing that, you know, I think A-players want to be in a system that allows them to thrive, right? I don't, I don't want a ceiling, right? Like, I want to be able to, to win and, um, to do my best and to, like, you know, receive the upside from that. I'm curious, you talk about spending more time. I think a lot of people should talk more about that because I, I don't know if you've read the book Unreasonable Hospitality, where it's like you want the customers to feel a certain way and to, like, have these magical moments. What are they doing when they're spending the time, are they truly doing like a deeper diagnosis? Whereas before maybe they were rushing and doing some like, hey, here's the cheapest we could do it. Like, like talk to me more about like what happens in with the customers, with your end customers. Yeah.

So to back it up just a minute, one of my goals was to always take care of the customer to the best of our ability. And on hourly, it's difficult to do that because a lot of times you're just going to see the problem, fix it because that's what they're there for, and then move on. And then the other goal with this was to never have anybody ask me for a raise ever again. And I believe those two things were accomplished. Um, first and foremost, with now that it's incentive-based, they are taking their time, they're doing a walkthrough, they're getting in the crawl spaces because what we have mostly down here, and they're going over everything with the customer instead of just looking for that one little Band-Aid fix. And that's always been a problem on the hourly because they're, they're getting paid by the hour. What's the incentive? Yeah, they're good people, they're good guys, but they're going to take care of that one little problem, maybe a little add-on here and there, where they're looking at everything all the time because their pay is based off of that.

And you know, they didn't all of a sudden learn how to do that, to be very detailed and communicate really well overnight. They always knew how to do it. There just wasn't incentives there. And people respond to incentives, specifically financial ones, right? Incentive is not— you're not going to lose your job if you do good. The incentive is money, especially today. And, you know, the way that we operate as owners, we are incentivized to do a great job. Be efficient. That's— we're the ultimate performance pay, right? So how can we motivate our technicians, uh, with a different structure than that? So this just makes sense, and it's something that's been done forever, right? I mean, how long is it— have contractors been doing and talking about performance pay? All the way— goes all the way back to what, maybe the 2000s, Ron? Early 2000s?

Yeah, yeah. I think they talked about it for a long time now, and, you know, a lot of different variables came out, and we talked about this before. It's when it's too difficult and the guys can't understand it, they don't feel the buy-in and they don't have the belief that it's really there. When they look at their app on a daily basis and they can see, okay, I had this killer day, and tomorrow if I had that same killer day, it's going to continue to ramp up my pay for the end of the week. And it's simple for them. That's the driving force.

Can I dive into that? So, so there's a bunch of people here, um, who— and if you look at the chat, by the way, I think a lot of people want to move to this, but maybe they don't know how. They don't know how to message it. Um, I think like, like, and, and you even said, you know, you didn't know how to do it before. So, so you talk about simplicity, you know, what was the unlock for you where you're like, okay, I can digest this, like, this makes sense to me, I feel confident rolling this out, and how are you able to do that? Because like, you haven't been doing, you know, incentive pay for, you know, your whole, you know, for the whole time. So, so like, how are you able to, to really like roll it out and make it so that you feel comfortable that they're going to understand it?

Well, I think first and foremost, they have a, they have a fallback, right? They have an hourly that they fall back on in case somebody has a bad week. They have that fallback. They also have been trained to— we always want to be able to take care of the customer. So then we created, okay, what's a good percentage? What's the percentage that the company can live with and that the guys can be excited about? And then once we came up with that percentage, we worked with Danielle from your office and we built that plan and we tailored it to fit our company. And once we did that, we rolled it out. The guys understood it and it made it simple for them. I'm a simple guy. I don't like complicated stuff. If it doesn't work for me, it's not going to work for my plumbers and HVAC guys as well. So it had to be fairly simple, and that's what ShareWillow for me has done so far.

And talk to us about your plan. You know, I think some people hear incentive pay, they're like, oh, you got a nickel for this and this and this. Like, you know, talk to me about like what your plan looks like. You don't have to go into specific actual percentages, but like, what are you, what are you incentivizing on right now on our plumbers?

We incentivizing what they get a full percentage of anything they sell. So if their dollar amount equals X and they sell above that on their percentage, they get that percentage instead of their dollar amount. And we're shooting for an 18% labor rate, and so they get a percentage of that completely.

That's awesome. Yeah, that's totally— that's a great labor rate, you know. And again, for everyone like here, you know, the way that we think about this is you, you want to really reverse engineer, you know, like, what are you comfortable paying in terms of like a labor rate? Most people are hovering around that 20%, but look, I'm talking to people that it's ballooned to 30%, and they're like— and they're big companies, so they're like, every percentage I can get that down for these bigger companies, they're like, that's it's like $100 grand in profit for every, like, or something, whatever the numbers are. But like, it's material money.

So Ryan, were you saying that they pay the 30% or with hourly it ends up running into the 30% actual costs, right, with everything?

Like, it's balloon— yeah, yeah. So they're like, they'll come to us because they're currently paying 30% with hourly, so they're like, this has to change. Um, you know, guys are taking—

not the—

the guys are taking 2 times as long, right? There's going back to 30% of their jobs are getting callbacks, right? Just kind of like things like that that are like just eating away. I talked to this one owner, and, uh, then I'll stop telling stories, but I talked to this one owner and he was like, when I do the jobs, it's a 57% margin. When I give it to my guys, it like sometimes is unprofitable. And he's like, I just— he, you know, it's like the gap is crazy. So it's like, how do we fill the gap and make it so the techs are acting like owners? you know, on those jobs.

I'll give you, for instance, let me add on to that, Ryan. Yeah, perfect example is my plumbers would, they would ask for another plumber to give them a hand. Okay, so that's going to drive my labor rate up because now I'm not out there running other calls with them. Now if they ask for another plumber, they're going to have to share their compensation on the back end, on the completed side. So you know what they're doing now? We have one apprentice. They're asking for the apprentice or they're doing it themselves. So that's going to help drop my labor rate.

That's awesome. That's awesome. Talk to, talk to me a little bit about like, do these guys kind of like look at what everyone, what each other are having? Are they chirping each other? Is there a competitive spirit here? Like, like talk to me about like the dynamics of it because I think a lot of this is like psychology a little bit, right?

I didn't realize behind the scenes how much they were talking about it. They're, they are now constantly talking about, you know, where are you at, what did you get, how are you making out, what's your numbers. And even for themselves, they're truly watching their numbers day in and day out more than I ever could with— we were paying spiffs, we were paying spiffs for water treatment, we were paying spiffs for all kinds of products. This changes everything because now They know, and the culture is they can make as much as they want, unlimited. Yeah, just take care of the customer and make sales.

And for the tech that came to you because you had it, like, were you advertising? Like, I'm curious because I have seen it in some job postings. Like, were you saying that when you're interviewing, or like, how did he even know that you guys had it? Did he use friend talk?

This tech, the plumber that came on board was a referral from our biggest sales plumber in the office. We just hired an installer for the HVAC side from a friend of the ins— from friend of my service guys, and he came on board as well. He starts in 2 weeks specifically for an incentive-based pay on the install side. So we're going to give him a percentage, a commission on that. So he's like, I don't get that at my other company. And his other company was a much bigger company, so he's like, I can make more money over here on the incentive-based. So that's the next step for us to unveil to the HVAC side.

Do it differently on the, uh, for installers. How is that calculated?

Yeah, so we're going to take a percentage of— again, getting back to 6-7% of the sales should be going to labor. So I'm going to give the lead mechanic a bigger spiff or bigger percentage, and the second mechanic gets a little bit of a smaller percentage. It keeps my labor in check. If they go a little longer on that job, they make a little bit less per hour than they would have if they got it done in 6, 7, or 8 hours. Keeps my labor in check.

Yep.

How do you handle callbacks or recalls on those jobs?

That— completely honest with you, I don't have that plan yet. Yeah, we're still in the process of building that. Ryan should have a plan for me to—

yeah, so what most people—

the plumbers go back on their own stuff now. So if they have a callback, they're going back on their own, and they all want to go back on their own because they don't want to go on somebody else because that's money out of their pocket.

Yeah, usually it's a deduction is how we structure it, and how we've seen it is that like they get dinged for it, um, and usually it's like $50 or $100, um, and that's like the typical way. So you'll get a deduction for any callbacks. You could sometimes have like callback threshold, like anything over 2% or over 3% or 2%, you know, you could do it like that. But like mainly, like what most of our customers do is just like a $50 or $100 deduction that they claw back, um, for callbacks. What, um, so Ron, I'm curious, uh, about $5 million, like, like talk to me about, you know, are you gonna expand? Do you go into other services? You go on electrical? Do you go into larger surface area, or, you know, radius? Like, like, what, what's your plan?

We, uh, we have such a big territory down here, and I was a part-time business owner down here for a while now until I moved down 100% last year. Um, you know, we are on a 65% growth rate last year, and right now we're on a 69% growth rate. So this company, I want to see at least $15 million out of it in the next 5 years. That's, that's the plan. And I don't believe I could have done it without some sort of incentive-based pay. And private equity is kind of doing that now in some of their places, and we're just trying to keep up but deliver a better service, and we can do that here.

That's amazing. Um, sorry, quick follow-up question. So, and just so people know, are you— do you do mainly residential? Like, talk to us, I guess, about the scope Um, is it commercial as well?

A little bit of light commercial service and repair. Uh, we do not do anything big like that. We do absolutely no construction of any sort. So we are pretty much 85% residential, 15% commercial.

Gotcha. Um, I have someone right here in the chat. Strictly HVAC, smaller company, 8 technicians, 2 comfort advisors. Are you doing straight performance or combination of— yeah, that's a good question, Ron. Are you doing straight performance, pure performance, or hourly plus?

So with the state of Maryland, the best way to do that is if the guy works X amount of hours and he was supposed to get $25 an hour, works 40 hours, $1,000 a week, we pay him that hourly. And then if his bonus was $3,000, he gets a commission of the $2,000, of the difference. So this way we're in compliance with with our states.

Yeah, and we see that a lot. We see, we see that as a way to do this. Like, you, you kind of message it, you think about it as, you know, performance pay, that's what you're striving for, but there is this hourly, and then it's like, you know, you get the top up, right? And that way you're like, hey, no, there is an hourly, uh, there as well, which there really is an hourly. Um, but yeah, that's what we see, especially in California where there's like crazy labor laws and stuff like that.

Ron, did you get any pushback when you first tried to roll this out? Like when you just talked to the guys about it, what did they have any, you know, reservations about it?

We had two of the plumbers that were definitely very nervous. Um, I think for us we've built a culture here now that we communicate, we over-communicate. That's been one of my goals is to make sure everybody understands and then we beta tested it. I wanted it rolled out a little bit sooner, but we didn't. And we talked about it, and we had meetings every single solitary week to go over what we were doing. We had Danielle from Ryan's office in front of the guys educating and explaining to them, and we absolutely have no— no one complains about it. Nobody is giving us pushback. And like I said, the HVAC guys who aren't on it yet are like, when are we getting ours?

So the plumbers are sharing their success or talking about how they're doing with the HVAC guys? And absolutely, they get that.

Yep, we are very open here and everybody knows everything, so we communicate that. So they get, they, they get jazzed up for it now that they know, and they talk about it every week. Do you feel—

and like, I'm truly not trying to tee you up, but like, do you feel like this is like made the culture, you know, like kind of more like come together? You know, I, I feel like before it's a little like, hey, let me get the— let me get the— a raise, right? And it's them versus you. And I don't know, the way you're sound— you know, talking about it almost sounds like you guys are like really like one team now and you're kind of all like striving for this. Like, have you noticed just like a more macro like culture shift?

I, I, you know, I can't— I would say I built a good culture the last 6 months, and I think because I built that good culture, it's allowed me to keep everybody on board. I think if you had a little bit of a culture issue, you'd probably lose a couple people. Yeah. Do I think it's made our culture better? I can certainly tell you it's made our guys happier. I can tell you that They have plans now that they can say, hey, I can make this much, or hey, I'm going to do $750,000 out of my truck because I want to make this for myself. You see more of that than we ever did before. That's awesome.

What kind of increase percentages have they got as far as on their checks? Just, you know, is it like where they were getting $25 an hour and now it's maybe effectively $60 or something like that? That's what I saw when I incorporated performance pay. I started it with my HVAC installers, and they— his, uh, hourly rate effectively doubled, and that job's done quicker, and it was more profitable for us.

Our plumbers are seeing anywhere from about a $55 to $60 hourly rate.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, man, that's, that's about what we're seeing. Our installers should be seeing that same thing. Yeah, once we unveil it and roll it out to them.

I was going to show you, like, can you guys see my screen?

Um, let's see. I cannot. Uh, let me, let me add it there.

I think I'm screaming about now.

I think we're good now.

Yeah, yeah. So one of the things, speaking of that, I'm not going into a demo, don't— but, uh, speaking of that, you know, we wanted to surface the effective hourly rate, just like Ron was saying. You know, it's like, all right, you might have a base, but when you factor in incentives, and then you divide all that money divided by your total hours worked, your effective hourly rate. You know, it's like you want to show them because a lot of times they'll anchor, they kind of know what other people are paying in town, but we want to make sure to show the effective hourly rate to the guys, you know, week to week, right? Because it is, it'll vary. Um, and I think like they can, and then they think of themselves as that. They're not going to be making effectively $47 but base $30 and then leave you for a $35, right? It's like you're making $47 here. Um, yeah, and that's one thing we, we really try to talk to them about. Um, Ron, we had a question for you in the chat. Uh, so you have a setup where you pay performance on the labor they sell and not revenue? I'm not really sure what that means.

Yeah, no, so our performance is based off the revenue that they bring in. So we have a sold revenue and they get 9% of that, and then they have a completed revenue and they get 9% of that, which equals 18%. That keeps them wanting to do their own work and not pass it off. So not just, I sold $20,000 this week, I get 18% of that. No, I sold and completed. And also is making sure that they're going to try to get it done this week if at all possible so that it doesn't carry over to the following week, which if everybody understands is That's the most efficient way to do it, right? Get it done today, get it done as soon as possible. No buyer's remorse for the customer, and it's the most efficient way. Less windshield time.

They probably do better with their truck stock too, making sure their tools are there and all that.

Yeah, that's definitely a byproduct. They're coming in in the mornings and making sure that they restock everything on every job now because they want to make sure that they're as efficient as possible. Yeah, think about that.

Um, so Mike Mack and 5 Trucks Plumbing, is this based on revenue they bring in or gross margin? I, I would just say like you can structure it like with Sharewillow. We see mostly in our, in our, from our opinion, you want the techs to be in as much control. Like they can't control the margins sometimes, so that's why, you know, you kind of back into a percentage of the gross, um, which is, you know, 9% on sold by, 9% on completed by. But someone just asked, you know, is it on revenue or margin. I mean, either way, you either do a, you know, smaller percentage on revenue or a larger percentage on margin, but most of the time it's on revenue because that's in their control for the most part.

Right.

Um, cool. Oh, the other thing I was going to say is talk to us about the customer. So, so let me just have a controversial topic. You know, I've seen people comment on our ads and they're like, oh, performance pay is just getting to— every technician's a salesman and they're going to sell the customer things they don't need, right? That's like a huge misconception, I think, about this. Um, what do you think about that? How, how have your customers been feeling towards you guys post sort of rolling this out?

Uh, first and foremost, if anybody says that's going to make your plumbers or HVAC sales guys, I'm going to say that's exactly what they are. That, that is exact. Get rid of the— get rid of the short, narrow thinking that they're technicians or plumbers. They are salespeople. They're selling something to a homeowner that the homeowner needs. If they do something unethical and it comes back to us, they're not going to be around our company very long. That's not who we are. We have core values. We stand behind those core values. Are there customers that are complaining? No. Are there customers that are going to complain At some point, sure, but they're probably the same ones that are complaining about a service fee. They're complaining about a Level 1. So it's not going to matter what you charge them if you just go out and say you need this and this is how much it's going to be. You're not building the value. You're not going to sell very much anyway. In order to sell those big tickets, you have to spend time with the customer. We spend an hour to an hour and 20 minutes with each customer. Do we get every single one? No, but we have good close ratios with the high average tickets, and we have a lot of satisfied customers.

I love that. Um, I have a couple questions about that. I, uh, I saw some— actually, Bill, uh, I saw it in your group. Um, someone was talking about how, you know, when you— so, so turnovers, right, for HVAC, or when you go for a repair and you're able to like flip it or turn it over into a replacement. And, uh, Bill actually had this really cool chart about the age of the system and the cost of the repair. And it's like, hey, if it's over, you know, call it 5 years and $3K, it's like you might as well just do a replacement. Are you like using sort of things like that to educate the customers and also your guys on like, hey, like this is how we think about when we should recommend a replacement versus a repair? Like talk to us about like maybe some of those tactics because I also think like your techs are in the home and, you know, they're spending time, they're trusted then, right? And especially if they're now, communicating with the customer and walking them through their thought process on how they think about it. Um, yeah, like, talk to us, I guess, a little bit about that.

Yeah, we call them TGLs, tech-generated leads. And we, you know, as an HVAC company, you live and die by those. But also as a plumbing company as well with water heaters. We're on the coast, so you're pushing 8 to 10 years for an HVAC system that's sitting out there in the salt. Um, But there's a lot of companies that are out there saying, oh, they can fix it, they can fix it, they can fix it. Where we come in and say, sure, we can fix it. Here's what it's going to be. Here's our recommendations of why not to fix it. Show them that, hey, $3,000, $4,000 is way too much money to spend on a system. Educate them on what it's going to cost if you try to keep this thing running for the next couple years between efficiency and breakdowns, and let them know that it's in their best interest I was a tech back in the '80s and '90s, and we fixed everything. And I hated when I fixed something old and 2 weeks, 3 weeks, 4 weeks from now it came back in and it made me look bad because I tried to fix something old.

Yeah, customers will get upset with you for that too. They will. You think you're doing them a favor, and they, they actually would have replaced it if you would have given that option, right?

Exactly.

Okay, I am that customer. I, I'm in this office, we're subleasing it for like a year the, uh, boiler broke and they're like, oh, it's the subleasee's responsibility. I'm like, oh, the guy came in and he's like Superman. He's like, no, I can fix it. It's this old system. I end up spending $10K and he's like jerry-rigging everything together. I'm like, bro, and he's like proud, like proud of it. And I'm like, cool, like I love it, that's awesome, but it still doesn't really work. It like, I'm scared it's gonna blow up and I spent $10,000. So I totally get it. It's like Or, I don't know if you've experienced this, but I experienced that as a customer. It's like I felt like I just kept getting, oh, you're gonna need this. I'm like, cool, $1,000. They're like, they get it, they start, ah, you actually need this too. And I was like, I'm getting strung along. It's like always an extra $1,000 or $2,000.

Yeah.

And I just feel like that's not a good experience from a customer when I was the customer.

Um, yeah.

And after all that, you have to replace it anyway, right?

Now I'm just like, I'll just wait for it to get warm.

Yeah, you're not. And let's face it, if they come in and spend 5 minutes with you and tell you you need to replace it, you're never going to replace it. They didn't build any value, right? Yeah. But if they sit there and educate the customer, you'll be surprised at how well they accept that and realize that it's not time. It's, it's time to do the replacement.

Yeah. Talk to us, um, this is like a little out of scope of the performance-based stuff, but Not really. So talk to us about like your lead gen and, you know, like your funnels and stuff like that. Um, cause I'm curious about that because also some people are using incentives with CSRs. So, you know, are you doing anything there? And then yeah, just talk to us sort of about your funnel for customer acquiring new customers.

Give me more details.

Like how do you get customers?

Oof.

Are you doing Facebook? Are you doing content? I, we have this one customer, Good Guy Plumbing. I see his ad. He's like, I see his ads all the time. Like, are are you doing content? Are you doing HomeAdvisor? Um, are you partnering with realtors? Yeah, like, how are you getting customers?

I mean, at ours, at our size, we try to do, you know, we have enough budget in there to try to hit as much as possible. We have since really focused on locations closest to the shop. I've got 7 private equity companies that are in my area down at the beach now. Uh, all the big players are here, so I can't compete dollar-wise. So we watch our money, we spend it wisely, we focus on neighborhoods, we focus on local areas that we want to own as a business. So we go out, we hammer away with that with, you know, postcards, direct mail pieces and things like that, flyers, uh, everything that we can. We're also in the community pretty hot and heavy with, you know, billboards and things like that. Home shows are big down here. Um, and then from there really comes down to funneling it into our office, making sure that we connect with each and every customer making sure our call-taking staff takes good care of the customer, finding out how old their equipment is, making sure that we get the right guys out there, that if it is a tech opportunity or tech-generated lead opportunity, we get the right guys out there that can educate the customer that needs to be replaced.

That's awesome. And I want to harp on that just in case— I know you've said it a couple times, just so everyone here thinks about it— but TGLs, tech-generated leads, like you're in the home, you're trusted, you're the expert and you're able to, you know, maybe you went there for one thing, but you see other issues, right? So it's like, hey, if you see something, say something, right? And kind of like recommend that. I think that's such an overlooked way to just generate more business, especially someone like you who can cross-sell from plumbing to HVAC, right? And looks like some people here in the chat are, uh, looks like JD, by the way, uh, service install new construction for both HVAC and plumbing. Right? So you kind of can have pipelines, uh, feeding you. But yeah, the tech generate— what, what— talk to us, like, what does that volume look like? Like, if you go to 10 houses, like, how many tech-generated leads will you generate from those 10?

So we're looking to get out of new customers 2 tech-generated leads out of every 20, 1 out of 10. Um, and that, that sways up and down depending upon, you know, what kind of customer base you get in. The other thing we try to do is we, we cross-train our plumbers to look for HVAC problems, not to be fixers of HVAC, but to look for that system that's super old. They're smart enough to see that the fins are rusted out and there's nothing left to it. That's when they're going to do it, their cross-sell, and get the HVAC guy out there. Same thing with the HVAC guys getting the plumbers out for, you know, leaks in the crawl space or water treatment because things are stained or an old water heater. That, if anybody on this call takes anything other than Chair Willow, which is tops, is do it from inside, right? Train your people to look out for the other guys and to help them out as well.

Do you have any incentives for those when a plumber refers an HVAC guy in-house?

Yes, we do have a SPiF program, and, um, if they generate something, they get a percentage off of that sale. And we are actually in the process of doing something else called— well, it's a referral program that's coming out now as well. I think you and I talked about it the other— yesterday, trading game, just, just to try to help each other, help grow each business. We keep them as separate entities, obviously, with two different franchises. So we kind of played as two different companies even though we're all housed under the same roof. Help each other out, help your plumber out, help the HVAC guy out.

Ryan, I have a question for you. Have you seen, uh, where companies have implemented performance pay for CSRs? That was something I was never able to do. I wasn't sure even how to structure it, let alone track it. So have you seen that?

We get it a lot.

So, uh, what usually happens with us is someone comes to us and they're like, we're good on sales, it's like my service, it's like one department, right? That they're like, I'm only going to do one, maybe my installers, right? I want, I want to— something's, you know, maybe they're taking a little bit too long, something like that. And then what we find is they start sort of adding things and adding things and adding departments. So we have a customer, Clogbusters, um, that they're doing like $10 million in top. Look, they're like crushing it right now. Um, and, uh, they're— and they're using all the best tools, right? They're using ServiceTitan, they're using Chirp, they're Everlease, like all this stuff. Um, and yeah, so they're creating incentives for their CSRs right now. Um, I was actually about to just pull up— pull it up for a second. Uh, So CSRs, um, this is, this is like high level. Earns a percentage of total revenue booked plus incentives for reviews. Dispatcher earns a percentage of revenue completed plus incentives tied to review scores and complaints. Um, dispatcher responsible for revenue completed, on-time performance, job completion rate. So some of these people also, it's like, did you dis— did you dispatch to the right person or the best person? Right? So for instance, you might have in ServiceTitan, by the way, you might have in ServiceTitan tagged the age of system by customer, kind of like in your CRM, right? So it's like, if this person is like, you know, it's a repair and it's a 12-year-old system, like that's hot, right? That's probably a replacement and nice neighbor, whatever. Um, so it's like, did you send that to the right person or did they get priority? Um, so anyway, it's kind of, you can do it on those things is what we've seen and we'll, If it's more call center stuff, like the actual, like, appointments booked, like, we'll integrate with, like, a Chirp is, I think, what we're doing with them, um, or, like, the call center software. But yeah, we definitely see CSRs, um, get added. It's funny, they usually almost always get added later, uh, and they're like, I want to add it for the CSR. It's like this, like, afterthought. They're like, oh, it's kind of working over here. But we do see that a lot. People want to pilot it, right? I'm talking to a big company right now, and it's like they're not going to roll it out to everyone similar to what Ron did. It's like, that's the thing that I'm trying to figure out as a— as Share Willow. I'm like, how do we get customers to just trust us and just like go live? And there's things we need to do, right? We need to maybe show them the data and show, you know, pay simulators and just do like better stuff. But like, yeah, it's like a big— it's not something that you just can, you know, like if it's all these other tools, right, you can kind of like some guy in the business can kind of try it over here and hack AI and it's not going to mess up everything. But to roll out a new comp and incentives for everyone, it's like kind of a big deal. So, so yeah, so anyway, we see it piloted, but yeah, CSRs, we definitely see CSR plans.

Interesting.

And members, like member advisors or comfort advisors, we see that. Actually, I saw someone in the chat just talking about comfort advisor. Oh, Amanda, comfort advisors there. Um, So, okay, so Ron, so talk to us about like, you weren't doing it, you had been toying with it. I actually talked to another company and they were like, I've been trying to figure this out for so long and you guys finally did it. But like, like what got you over the hurdle? Like, you know, and, and what also prioritized it that made you actually like take a deeper look at it?

I've probably spent $4,000 or $5,000 on other systems trying to make it work, and every time I got to the bottom of it, it was just too complicated. Um, then I saw you guys and jumped on board, had a good conversation, good onboarding. And then I did a typical business owner and I tried to detail it around exactly what I thought I wanted it to be. And then about a month in, I said to Danielle, and I said, I'm tailoring this to be like our performance and incentive pay that we have now with spiffs and stuff like that. I'm like, stop. We need to simplify it. We need to get back to simple things. And once I did that, it was just easy to implement. Once I made it easy to implement, it was easy for the plumbers to understand. And, you know, maybe it's just my company, but when the guys can understand it easily and they can see what they can make, it just incentivizes them, jazzes them up, gets them ready to go.

That's awesome. Um, but, but just digging in a little bit more, like, so it sounds like you knew you needed to do this. What was the pain, I guess? You know, like, were you— what was the pain where you're like, I, I need to do this? Because some people, it's like, uh, maybe the pain's not there, or maybe the pain is really there and they don't know that it's there. But what was the pain where you're like, I have to do something? And, um, and it made you not give up too, right? Like, you were you know, kind of going back and forth.

My biggest mover was the hourly pay. I was just tired of hearing people come and say they needed the dollar raise, or new employees would come in and say, I, I'm worth this. Well, how do you know? And they all say they're worth more than what they really are. And until you get them in there, you're paying them extra money to go out, and maybe they're good, maybe they're not. At least now we can say, here's your base. If you're good and you say you can do what you say you can do, you can go out and make as much as you want, and you'll never ask me again for a dollar for an hourly wage. No more raises. That was the pain that I was like, I'm tired of it, I need to change it, and it's been bugging the crap out of me.

Yeah, yeah, I like that. Um, we— yeah, we hear that all the time. Uh, some— actually, uh, this one, this one guy who was basically like, you know, someone came to me, asked me for a raise, and he's like, yeah, awesome, let's get you that raise.

What are you gonna do?

You're gonna sell, you know, how are we gonna get there? And I thought that was, uh, I thought that was cool. Um, well, that's awesome. What, uh, Bill, what else, what else do you have for us? So I know you're moderating the group and, uh, Service Titan Max, 10,000+ members. Congrats, by the way, that's really cool. Um, by the way, if in the chat, if you guys can all put— I'm assuming everyone here is on ServiceTitan, right? Um, obviously, is that a fair assumption, Bill? You think it is?

I would think so, probably most of them.

Can you guys put, uh, the software that you're using into the chat right now just to confirm? Because I feel like we work the best with ServiceTitan. ServiceTitan, you get every single API, every single report, every— you get everything with ServiceTitan. Um, for us It's crazy, there's all these other platforms and it's like we just can't get like the right piece of data, you know, like they don't expose it in their API or whatever it is. So cool. Yeah, and one of the things that we did recently, and you know, we— you create the incentives like Ron was saying, you create the incentive that'll be completed by or sold by or memberships, and then you map that data to, to, uh, what we call datasets. Um, datasets feed into these metrics, and that's what you create the incentives on. And we completely have them linked, and we do a lot of logic because sometimes it's not the cleanest coming in this from ServiceTitan. And you might even need formulas for completed by revenue. It might be, you know, the technician assigned to it has to be the performed by technician and job completed and invoice equals zero, right? There has— there might be like rules behind it, and that's where I feel like ShareWillow figured it out in the last like 6 months, to be honest, because, you know, we've really figured out how to map everything correctly, how to get the data flowing in. Um, and with ServiceTitan, it's like our best channel, best partners, and we're seeing like, um, really good growth. We're seeing like some big companies too. Some of these PE guys are using us with their portfolio companies. And by the way, and also to you, Ron, too, and anyone here You know, like I'm talking, we're talking to so many companies, you know, if you're at $5 million, you're like, hey, I want to get to $10 million. I want to talk to a $10 million guy. I want to talk to a $10 million guy that grew this. Like, I'm also happy to make intros and just like connect people. And I just want to learn too, you know, from everyone and try to like just knowledge transfer. So I think that's cool. But yeah, everyone in the chat's on ServiceTitan, ServiceTitan, ServiceTitan, ServiceTitan, and Chirp. Yep. Um, Cool.

Nice. Fantastic.

So we're— yeah, I know we're coming up on time. We did have an offer. I put in the chat, but I don't know if you can click links in the chat, so I don't know if you're able to share it. But we did have— I created a special page, uh, with an offer, 50% off of our setup fee, which we call plan design fee, for all webinar attendees, which I think is pretty good because it's very like white glove, labor intensive on our part. Oh yeah, right there.

Um, still don't know if you can click it, but that's the link.

You can click it. sthacks.sharewheelo.com. ServiceTitanHacks.sharewheelo.com.

I will send it in the replay, uh, email. Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then, yeah, look, I, I wanna firstly thank Ron. Thank you so much for coming on. I know this is like tons of your time and I appreciate it. I'm really grateful. And honestly, I probably should have called you way sooner cuz just hearing some of those things is one helpful and also is like good to hear, uh, but I also think there's some learnings that, you know, we can do. If they are sharing, how can we make it so they can maybe interact with each other on the app and better leaderboards? I just think like I'm always trying to make the product just better and more engaging. And, you know, I want to own all of technician pay, uh, hopefully soon, where they not only can see the pay but they can get the pay. Um, and but so yeah, so I'm like super Thankful. And I'm— and by the way, like, for you and anyway, maybe even some of our— I actually saw some of our current customers were on the registration list, so I don't know if they're here too, but send feedback too because we're moving fast now. Um, and you know, we can build really good product, but at the end of the day, we want the techs— like, we feel like if the tech's behavior changes, everyone wins. Your customers win, you're gonna win if they're engaged and they're doing things like, hey, I can make more money not by running up the clock and logging more hours and flipping into overtime, but I can make more money by Completing the job faster and getting a review and selling a membership and flipping a, you know, it's like that's super aligned with the business. So we're trying to just like win the techs right now, win them, show them that they show them a path to make more money, um, and deliver a better customer experience as well. So anyway, like, yeah, thank you guys so much. Like we're building, uh, we're listening to customers. I'm trying to just be in the trenches with everyone. We do sites. Danielle actually went to a customer in Rhode Island yesterday. We're trying to just be with customers all the time and just learn. And, you know, if we're not doing the best, like, we'll just fix it and, you know, build better products. So yeah, I just want to say thank you though.

Hey, can I add on something real quick, Bill? I will say for everybody out there dealing with Sharewillow, Ryan, you guys have been super fabulous with tailor-fitting it to my business. And I don't know that anybody else is going to do something like that. Danielle and I worked very closely to make sure that it worked for the company, and you guys made some changes on your side, which was phenomenal. So I appreciate that, and thank you for that.

That's awesome to hear. Yeah, she's— she's— that's all her. She's an absolute rock star. Um, and yeah, that's, uh, no surprise there, uh, as you can imagine. But yeah, she's a stud. Um, so awesome, great to hear.

Awesome, cool. Great. Anyone else have any questions or comments for Ryan or Ron or myself?

Anything?

Cool.

We're gonna send an email. Bill will send the email out recap.

Yeah, perfect. All right, well everyone, thanks for your time today. Ron, thank you. Ryan, thanks.

Thank you guys. Yep, and have a good one. See ya, bye.