Webinar - How To Achieve Exponential Growth

Hey, good morning, everyone. Let's get started. So thank you all for your time today and for being here. We really, really appreciate it. We know that the Apple Keynote is going on right now at the same time. So it means the world to us that you all have chosen to be with us here on our live webinar today. So first and foremost, I just want to say we have four amazing industry rock stars and guests and I cannot wait to introduce you to them. But before we do that, let me first tell you a little bit more about myself and Servicetitan. So I'm Madison and I'm moderating the panel today. I'm one of the business development managers here at Servicetitan. And Servicetitan was actually found eight years ago. Our co founders, Vahe and Ara, who both have fathers who are contractors, realized that their fathers didn't have the best software and they wanted to build something unique and special. So service titan quickly caught on and we have raised $18 million in funding from our top venture capitalists, Bessemer Group. And the Bessemer Group not only invests in tech startups that they believe are poised for outstanding growth, such as LinkedIn and Yelp, just to name a few. But it's amazing all the growth and the progress and opportunities we've had. Servicetitan is really the number one software platform for managing a home services business. It's powerful, it's to easy, easy to use. It combines scheduling, dispatch, invoicing, sales, marketing, reporting and much more in a simple solution in a mobile and cloud based platform. So let's move forward. Just some housekeeping real quick. If you see on the GoToWebinar, you'll see the control panel. Feel free to click that little orange arrow that says Minimize control panel so you can see the full screen. We want to make sure you can see our beautiful photos of our four handsome panelists. And then down below you'll see the box that says ask a question and type your question here. Feel free to type any questions as we're going through the webinar. We're happy to answer any and all of them and we have Reggie standing by manning all the questions to make sure everyone gets all their questions answered. Okay, so before we get started, I just want everyone to know that your time is valuable to us here and I want you to know exactly what you're going to get out of this webinar. So by the end of this webinar, you'll learn some best practices to growing a home services business. You'll learn how to build a company culture that encourages growth and collaboration. You'll learn about how much you should be spending on customer acquisition, how to plan and budget your marketing spending for the rest of the year, and recommended customer retention strategies from four amazing guests and industry experts. Also, please stay towards the end because we'll have a special Q and A and a very limited special offer for our attendees. So please, please stay till the very end. So I'd love to get started and introduce our amazing panelists. So I'd love to start with Eric Falconer, who is currently the General Manager at Dutton Plumbing and Reuter. So Eric Falconer got his start in the plumbing industry actually in 2007 when he was hired for an entry level position at Dutton. His duties included answering phones, filing and dispatching, supplemented with a healthy amount of goof and off. So Eric knows how to have a good time and today he's the General Manager and he's introduced and implemented initiatives that have helped the company grow to annual revenue of $12 million in profits exceeding 15%. Dutton Plumbing prides itself in having an unmatched family culture, a strong brand, and the highest performing employees. Eric prides himself on being a huge part of that. He has been able to grow thanks to a handful of mentors and the support of his management team as well as for the openness of all the other companies in allowing him to, quote unquote, steal their great ideas. Welcome Eric. We are so excited to have you.

Thank you. Super excited to be here.

Moving on, we have Josh Cook from George Brazil. He is the Operations Manager at George Brazil Plumbing and Electrical. So Josh is from Idaho and he went straight into the army out of high school and served for 10 years. He got out of the army in 2002 and got into the plumbing industry. He was a service tech for eight years before moving to Arizona to work George Brazil in 2010. Since being at George Brazil, he has been a technician, a plumbing supervisor, a plumbing manager, and now currently the operations Manager. He oversees approximately 60 employees and George Brazile has been in business for over 60 years providing plumbing and electrical services and currently runs 30 technicians. Welcome Josh. Thanks so much for your time today. Can't wait to hear about your experience since you've done so many things within the industry.

Well, thank you very much.

I'm glad to be here.

Awesome. Next up we have Mr. Wade Rusk who is the owner of Penguin Air and Plumbing. So Wade actually graduated from high school in 1995 and joined the U.S. marine Corps where his occupation was a refrigeration technician for the duration of his four year enlistment. So at the age of 22, Wade decided to start his first H Vac business with just enough money to get his license. Over time, Wade began to realize that having a good work ethic and being a talented technician wasn't enough to operate and grow his business as he had envisioned. So he was frustrated, he was tired and Wade sold the business. Seven years later, not waiting to sit idle, Wade earned his real estate license and pursued a career as a business broker. During that time, Wade decided to purchase a business of his own and invested in an income tax preparation franchise. Quite the entrepreneur, my friend. After finding little success, Wade decided to try his hand at working for someone else and took a position as a sales rep for a very large H Vac company. This is where he met his future business partner and in 2011 Wade and his business partner will formed Penguin Air. So over the course of the last five years Penguin Air has grown exponentially and has created a reputable name. As a former to be reckoned with, Penguin Air and their strong team aspire to be a major player in the Southwest market. Welcome Wade. We are so excited to have you and hear and learn from you.

Thanks for having me.

Awesome. Last but not least, we have Andrew Zhatkoff. He is the Director of Marketing and Business Development at Pipework Services. Andrew graduated from Elon and he studied Computer Information Systems and Business Administration. After college, Andrew actually worked for an irrigation company before being welcomed into Pipe Works family as a helper. It wasn't long before Andrew became a full service technician, but his career in the field was cut short actually by a very serious shoulder injury. Andrew then took over as an Inventory Manager and ran the warehouse for Pipeworks. It was in this role that Andrew realized the disconnection between Pipeworks dedication to customer satisfaction and their ability to track and monitor important customer service and sales KPIs. Andrew was soon promoted to manage PWS lead generation and marketing efforts and more than doubled their leads in just under a year. Eventually, Andrew took on an even greater role in the company and was promoted to the Director of Marketing Business Development. This position that he currently has. Pipeworks data and analytics are tracked and reported with industry leading levels of accuracy, integrity and transparency. Andrew has made Pipework Services a prime example of how to painlessly take an old school business into the 21st century by taking advantage of many tools available. Andrew, we can't wait to hear from you and learn more about how you've been able to do this. Welcome.

Thanks for having me of course.

Awesome. Well, everyone's super excited to hear from you four, so I'd love to get started with the first question. All right, so what was the strategy to reinvest in the company at the beginning stages of your growth? Andrew, what do you think?

Well, at the beginning, the key was really getting more leads. Right now we have an excavator, jetting truck and a bunch of specialized equipment. But in the past, it made more sense financially just to subcontract those services. You know, if the equipment isn't rolling, then we're losing money. From the beginning, it was just about getting in the home any way that we could. So we spent money on lead generation tools like HomeAdvisor and Angie's List, and also did a lot of online advertising and some pay per click as well as a lot of offline mailing and things of that nature.

Awesome. Sounds like you guys tried a lot of different methods from HomeAdvisor to Angie's List, the pay per click, and offline marketing as well. What about you, Eric? What has kind of worked for you guys in terms of strategy?

So for us, it was quite a bit different, I'd say. I think the biggest thing that catapulted our growth was people and specifically investing in management. We went from having one manager in the entire company one year to the end of that year. We added three management positions. And I think having those people and then investing in them is what really allowed us to have that exponential growth.

That's awesome to hear. I hear a lot of key growth is really investing in your people to be able to reach their highest potential. Awesome. Moving on to the next question, I'd love to hear from Josh. What steps would you recommend to growing home services businesses to best avoid growing pains?

You know, I wish I knew how to avoid the growing pains. Unfortunately, that's something that comes everything minimizing that for sure. But I think you have to find what you're passionate about, find out what you can be really good at, maybe the best in the world, and what drives the money. And once you've narrowed it down to that, those things, obviously market analysis and those other things, find out if it's something you're passionate about and if it lines up with all three of those things, then start exploring. Obviously you can test it and run it in the background and see what's going to work. But ultimately picking those little points and moving forward with them as much as you can and figuring out where to go from there, maybe not adding a whole new product or a new division to your company at first, maybe just picking a specific product or something like that and trying to push it forward with that would be a way of baby stepping into a certain area to find out if that's going to work.

For you or not.

Awesome. Some great tips and insights. Josh Wade, is there anything you'd like to add to that?

Definitely. Like Josh said, growing pains are inevitable to help minimize them. One of the growing pains we had from the beginning was hiring the wrong people. Rushing into hiring to fill positions and getting people, that really kind of slowed our growth. So we realized that was a problem and started investing in the people. Hiring the right people and branding the business from the beginning was key, along with reputation management. As we get bigger with all the online reviews and all that fun stuff, we have to put processes and systems in place so we're not reinventing the wheel all the time to ensure that we're taking care of people right away. We call it a one call resolution. So there's a few points there. But you can have some serious growing pains if you're not watching your reputation and hiring the right people.

I love that. Reputation management and having the right people on your team, I think that's key for tremendous growth. And it's such a tricky formula, such a tricky balance to figure out, but when you can pinpoint it and figure out, the sky's your limit. Awesome. Next question. Andrew, I'd love to learn what was the best financial investment you made to spur growth at your company?

Well, it's definitely going to sound like I'm pandering here, but ServiceTitan was actually one of our best investments. Prior to that. We knew the type of customer service we wanted to deliver and the type of tracking we wanted to do on our technicians and all of our customers. But without it all being interconnected, we just had a bunch of documents and folders and it was chaos and nothing really improved. So along with having the right people in the right position, we had to have the right infrastructure in place to move forward. So as hard as we tried to track tech bonuses and improve that program, nothing was really coming together until all of our data was in one nice place. So now with service site and we want to run a nice little report and shows us all the information we need, invoicing, marketing, everything. So rather than trying to connect the dots with 15 different Excel sheets, now everything is nicely packaged and we're finding having the information at our fingertips is allowing us to correctly navigate the market and make the changes we need to.

Thanks for sharing. Andrew. We really pride ourselves here at Service Titan to make life easier for everyone in managing a home services business. We know that you've got amazing techs you have to train and CSRs that you have to really inspire. So we really pride ourselves in being able to combine everything for you guys, whether it's dispatching, invoicing, sales, marketing, reporting to just make it seamless and easy. So thank you for sharing. Wade, I'd love to hear from you. What's one of the best financial investments you've made to really spur growth?

This one's pretty unique. The best financial investment we made was branding on something unique. So not sure if you've noticed, but there's a 30 year personality on the news here locally and he reports from a helicopter and we had an opportunity to sponsor the helicopter. Now, like I said, it's unique. Not everybody has that opportunity, but what I would suggest you do is find something very different, unique in your market that makes you different. Everybody can get on tv, radio, Internet, newspaper, and that doesn't really make you different. You got to find something that makes you different and makes those leads a more quality lead. I'm going to leave it at that. That's got to be the best investment we've made and it's paid off.

Can you tell us about how you decided the helicopter idea had a positive roi?

Certainly word of mouth. It's very difficult to pinpoint where the leads are coming from. Right. So people see you on TV and then they find you on the Internet and then you can ask everybody that calls you, how'd you hear about us? But half the time they're just making it up or they don't really know. But most of the time our employees are in the homes telling us that the customer is like, oh, the helicopter. You guys are on the helicopter. I'm buying from you today. It's pretty funny. It's just a very quality lead. And again, the numbers are where they need to be, so something's working.

Wow, that's amazing to hear. Wade, it sounds like you made such a big impression and you left such an impact that everybody remembers that. So exactly what you said. Something very unique that contributes to branding. A big wow moment that no one can forget. Awesome. Well, let's move on to the next question. Eric, I'd love to hear what is the best cost free change that you've made in your business?

So I was struggling to find the answer to this, so I started asking everyone around the company what they thought it was. And we just Got a bunch of laughs. Everything cost money. I don't think there is a single thing that's free. It doesn't cost cold hard dollars. It's going to cost you time. So I think first things first, get real that if you want to make money, you got to spend money. So just being open to spending that money, that's ultimately I think how we operate. But if you really want something that's low cash investment than just taking advantage of things like this webinar, taking advantage of the network of other people that are out there. I know when we first signed up for Service Titan we would abuse our success coach. And like every week I was on the phone with her saying what are we missing? What are we doing? What's the opportunity and how we can use this. Because I think she was talking to probably dozens of other plumbing companies all week and she had a much broader perspective on what was going on out there than I could possibly have. So just leaning on the people that are out there that are seeing it. So those are two easy ways I think that are cash free.

That's awesome. Thanks so much for sharing Eric. Our success managers are really dedicated to each individual customer and helping them grow and exceed. And you're right, our customer success managers are on the phone every day talking to folks, talking to our customers, seeing some of the best practices that certain customers are doing. If they can help share some of that information, if they can help guide you, they can help tell you about some missed opportunities. That's something that they are actually so, so excited to do. I'm so grateful and so glad that you've taken advantage of that, Eric. And I'd encourage everyone else on Service Titan to also talk to success managers. Get to know them really well. They're always excited to help. Before we move on to Wade, I'd love to just remind everyone, please enter questions that you have. We are so excited for the Q and A portion. We're eager to answer any and all of your questions. So please, no question is a dumb question. We welcome all questions. Please feel free to type them in at any point during this webinar. So Wade, we just heard from Eric. I'd love to hear in your perspective, what was the best cost free change you've made in your business?

Well, good point Eric. We had the same conversation. Everything has a cost associated but we did reflect internally and decide that the training needed to be ramped up and more of a personal touch as well. My business partner Will and myself have extensive knowledge in sales and more or Less sales and working with people. So we share that knowledge and do a lot of hands on approach with all of our employees. From weekly training to one on one training and again, hiring people you can train. If you don't have the right people, they're not trainable. So again, have the right people. But we spend a lot of time training and it's made a world of difference from reputation management to performance and production out there. So training, training.

Thanks for sharing, Wade. I know training is incredibly important in any industry, any field. Making sure everyone is up to date with the best practices and even attitude. Having the right attitude going into it I think makes a world of a difference. So thanks for sharing your best practice, Wade. Love to move on to the next question. Let's see. Okay, so this is for Josh. Josh, can you tell me how you inspire and encourage growth among office staff and technicians at your company?

One of the things that we try to do is the culture of the company. Everybody's got to love where they work and love what they do. So just besides working together umpteen hours a day, we do stuff that we spend time together outside of this place as well. Team building events, things like that. And when everybody gets along and understands the goal of the company, we do. It's very important to make sure that everybody knows what they're part of the whole total company is. And so we have goals set aside for call center dispatchers, technicians, and everybody kind of knows where they are and how they play into us being successful and because of the culture we have here. And not everybody's just a number or a technician or a csr. Everybody's a person and we have that kind of family feeling still, even at 60 employees, I think that helps us be able to incentivize, push and push our employees to get to those goals that we have set for our growth.

Awesome. Thank you for sharing, Josh. So it sounds like culture is really key. It's what is in the DNA of the company. Recognizing everyone for their talents and their strengths and celebrating them as individual people and still maintaining that family vibe, feel and culture really makes a big, big difference. I know this is something that we celebrate here at Servicetitan and I think it's amazing to hear that you are doing at your company as well. Eric, what about you? How did you inspire and encourage growth at your company?

Definitely all of that, I would echo all of that. That is on point. The family culture and having everyone part of something here and connected to the bigger picture. But ultimately what I reflect back to is When I started in a company and there's three people in the office, it was just a job for me. It was a part time job while I was in school. And I didn't see any possible way of this being a career or anything more than just filling in my time while I was going to school. And I think people now, even when they come into our companies, they see, okay, this is just a job. So showing them how they can go from a CSR to being the general manager, or in the case of our operations manager, showing them how they can go from a laborer to running the entire field operation. So showing them really how, how they can move up in the company, I think that's a big part of it because then people will start to self identify. The other side of it too, I think is just leading by example. If I'm not developing myself and growing myself, how can I expect anyone around me to do it? So I think those two things are the other two distinctions that I would make.

That's awesome. Thank you so much for sharing, Eric. It sounds like leading by example, you know, showing and not just telling, but really being that example and also just career planning. And in terms of like showing people the possibilities and the opportunities to be able to reach their full potential, I think that's incredibly motivating, incredibly encouraging, and it's wonderful to hear that you guys are doing that at Dutton Plumbing. Awesome. Let's move on to the next question. So this question is from one of our audience members. So it's from Jason Lockhart of Modernized Home Empowerment from Austin, Texas. Jason asks, what should we expect from a cost per acquisition perspective when attempting to acquire new clients online? What a great question, Andrew. I'd love to hear from you.

I split this one into three main categories for customer acquisition online number one is paid search or cost per click. Second one is direct lead generation and the third one is online advertising. So paid search is basically what it sounds like. Cost per click you pay. It's the advertisements on the top of Google. Every time someone clicks on it, money comes out of the your account. The important thing with that is the terms you're bidding on are going to greatly vary how much you spend. So if you want to just bid on your name, that cost should be somewhat reasonable. But if you're going to bid on something generic such as Rheem water heaters, there's a lot of competition, so the cost will be high. Online advertising, it really varies substantially depending on where your ad is placed and how you negotiate the deal. One Good tactic is you try and work out something of a pay per lead with the advertiser. Often they'll tell you, hey, we're going to get you 50 leads and all we need is 500 bucks. And you turn it around on them and say, tell you what, I'll give you $30 a lead. So if you get me 50 now, you're making three times what you asked for. A lot of times they'll tell you there's creation cost and then you have to negotiate, but for the most part, you can get a pretty good deal.

Awesome, Andrew. Thanks for sharing. So it sounds like there's three different types. Paid search, direct lead generation, and online advertising. And something important we should do is be able to negotiate with the advertisers in terms of how many leads are you going to give me? How much is this going to cost? Awesome. Josh, what do you think? How do we expect from a cost per acquisition perspective when attempting to acquire these new clients? What should we be expecting?

I agree with most of what Andrew said for sure. He definitely has it broken down better than I do. I'll tell you that. He's right. If you have multiple people out there bidding on any specific thing, it's going to drive and fluctuate daily and hourly. Our acquisition costs, we're down to about $45 per contact on pay per click, and our call center is converting about 85% of those into booked calls.

Wow. I'm sorry, what did you say? How much percent do you convert?

We convert 85% of those pay per click calls into.

Wow, that's incredibly high, wouldn't you say?

That's pretty good.

Wow. Congratulations. That's awesome, Josh, that you guys are doing that well. All right, so let's go to the next question. So we've had two questions submitted by the audience members, and both folks that submitted questions we've decided to include in this webinar presentation. So, audience members, if you have any questions, please let us know. We're happy to answer any and all of them. So this one is from Brad McGee of LBA air conditioning heating and Plumbing from Kansas City. So Brad asks, how do you determine next year's marketing budget amount? Is it a percentage of the previous year's revenue? That's actually a really great question, Wade. How do you guys do it over there?

I love this question as well. Marketing is near and dear to my heart. So if you don't really plan on substantial growth, then keep your advertising budget around 5%. That's what everybody says. But when we started this business here. We put everything into advertising. We spent 20 plus percent into marketing and advertising because the revenue number wasn't a big number. So we had to, we had some big competitors out here to compete with. But now as we've grown, we still keep it at 10% and we won't stray from that. So 10% of, to answer your question more specifically, 10% of next year's budget. So if I want to do, let's say 10 million next year, I'm going to spend a million into the market, 10% of next year's budget. Now, if next year doesn't pan out the way it is, I'll reassess it every quarter. But that's been working for us. So last year's budget doesn't have any bearing on it. We again, spend what we want to do in the market. And that's how you're going to grow in the market, is by spending more on marketing and advertising every year.

Thanks for sharing, Wade. It sounds like we can't be afraid to spend that money. Nothing is free. You got to put that out in order to get something big. You have to make that initial investment in order to kind of sew the seeds later. Congratulations. Sounds like it's working for you all. So awesome to hear. What about you guys, Eric? How do you guys do it over at Dutton Plumbing?

Somewhat similarly, we take a look at what we did last year and then what do we want to do different next year? That's kind of fundamentally how we do it. And I'm kind of like, wait, I personally want to keep my, my marketing under 10% of revenue with the understanding that some months are going to be higher, some months are going to be lower. And I think that it's a big mistake in our industry. People are afraid to spend money on marketing. But I don't remember where I heard it, but an investment in your brand is the only real investment. And so we can't be afraid to put money into a branding marketing campaign that you're not going to be able to track the return on investment because it's not a direct lead campaign. So we take a look at, okay, what kind of branding marketing investments are we going to make and then what kind of direct response marketing are we going to do? And so that's how we kind of fundamentally, at a high level, break it down.

That's awesome. I remember earlier in our conversation, one of the questions, I can't remember if it was Wade or Eric, but somebody said, hey, we need to get real. If you want to make money, you have to spend money. I think this absolutely applies. If we want to make more money and get more customers, we can't be afraid to really ramp up marketing efforts for the year. From what it sounds like, it sounds like it's worked in your favor and that is awesome to hear. Congratulations to you both. Okay, next question. Brad had another question. I'd love to include this as well. Brad from lba Air Conditioned Heating and Plumbing from Kansas City. So his second question is in regards to customer retention, how many times do you touch your customer base a year in print, email, digital or other? Andrew, how do you guys do it over there?

We end up touching our customer base about almost every month. For the most part. There's a lot of direct mail, whether it be a maintenance reminder or something along those lines. We had Hurricane Hermine came close. So we sent out emails to all of our generator customers. So depending on what people have in their home, the weather conditions and what we're trying to push, special wise people get different mailers throughout the year. But basically it's just about every month we get in contact with them one way or another.

Great to hear. Every month it sounds like, Andrew, at your company, you're getting in touch. I think I've heard in marketing that you're supposed to touch your customer at least six, seven or eight times in order for them to kind of have brand recognition and be able to remember your logo or your name or your brand. So I think it makes sense and I'm glad that it works for you all. Andrew, Eric, what about you guys over at Dutton Plumbing? How are you doing it?

I think there's a million different ways to do it, but what's worked for us is do four postcards a year. So once a quarter we'll hit them with the exact same postcard with the exact same artwork. We'll do four newsletters a year. So once every quarter again. And that's not so much a sale of the newsletter, it's more of just a hey, here's something interesting. We do two holiday cards. So usually Christmas and maybe Mother's Day. We do two. Oh, no, the phone's not ringing. We need calls, postcards. So we plan for that. We do a monthly email and pretty much everyone's going to get a phone call at least once a year.

Wow. So it sounds like Eric over at Dutton. You guys really try to really diversify your marketing efforts from your phone call once a year to your holiday cards on Christmas and Mother's Day. I love how you do it on Mother's Day, because I think that's very unexpected. You would think Christmas and Thanksgiving and sending out the flyers via direct mail and the postcards. Sounds like you have a very diversified base that's very creative. I just wanted to clarify, is the call every year a checkup call or what do you say on that call, Eric? And can you tell me how that conversation usually goes?

Yeah, we're doing maintenance calls just to do the standard water heater flushes that I think a lot of people do. So we do that. If we can't get ahold of them, we'll just leave a message, let them know we're trying to contact them. Either way, we just want to let them know what's out there. And the csrs will handle every call a little bit differently. So we just make the point to educate the CSRs on kind of what these maintenances are all about. And wherever that conversation goes is where it goes. And they do a real good job of booking them, but a lot of them inevitably end in leaving a message. So we might follow that message up with an email, a very specific email, or even a postcard about that maintenance. If we're not calling out on maintenance, we might follow up a direct mail campaign, just asking them if they got that postcard or if they wanted to take advantage of the offer that was on there. Just, again, to your point, get in front of them as many times as we can.

That's so wonderful to hear. Thanks for explaining. Would love to go to the next question. Okay, so let's see. Specifically, how has implementing Service Titan enabled your business to grow? So, Josh, would love to hear from you again. How is implementing serviceit helped grow? George Brazile.

I think one of the biggest things is the tracking ability and the level that we can look into specific jobs or specific job types, the ability to see what's happening with the technician while he's on the job, and then the alerts as well. I mean, being able to set up a text message or an email to go off when a certain job is booked, and being able to know so you can follow something through from beginning to end, which is critical if you're talking about growth and you want to know, hey, how many calls of X am I getting in? And not only that, being able to track your revenue down to specific tasks and being able to track those things. Is something selling better than something, or is there more success in one product over another? And do I need to focus more energy on those particular things? So I think Overall, what it's done for us is got us live. We're not five days in the rears anymore digging through paper copies of invoices, trying to find information that was possible to put together. Now it's live and at your fingertips, from work to iPad to phone, if you need it, 24 hours a day.

Thanks for sharing, Josh. So it sounds like the tracking capabilities has really helped you all at George Brazil. So being able to look into the job types and see exactly what is happening at a minute to minute level with your technicians, whether they're on the job or with your CSRs who are on the phone, you can even listen in on their call recordings and being able to get those alerts to know exactly, to follow through from the beginning of a job to the completion of a job, the text messages, the alerts, but also to be able to track revenue to very, very specific tasks and not having to worry about getting lost in papers, getting lost in the shuffle, but to have a copy that's seamless and digital and right at your fingertips 24 hours a day. Thank you so much for sharing, Josh. What about you, Wade? You know, how is it going at Penguin Air? How has implementing ServiceTitan really helped Penguin Air just grow and soar?

All right, so to be honest, I don't use, I'm not in Servicetitan. My general manager is in it all day, every day. So we have different perspectives. What I've noticed, because we've used obviously other softwares in the past and where we benefited using Servicetitan, from my perspective, is the lack of technical issues going down every day and the communication from you guys and the support from you guys has been phenomenal and customization as well. So if we have a suggestion or a concern or want something done differently, you guys are willing to appease us instead of saying it's noted and forgetting about us. So I asked Jay, our general manager, his perception on this and he is excited about the reporting and the tracking for the sales staff. That has obviously helped our training and which has helped our growth, as well as the office staff, the data that you get from them and what they're doing internally and then the selling tools. So like Amazon and some of these e commerce websites, the selling tools of tier selling and with the suggestions below what they actually are purchasing. So the presentation and I can attest to that too, that's a really neat feature.

That is.

They don't have to be the best sales guy in the world out there. This has helped them be successful because the presentation is internal. They're not walking in with some intimidating binder.

Wade, thanks for sharing. So it sounds like the lack of technical issues and glitches, which could be really frustrating with the different software, is something that you don't see. Your team does not see its servicetent. On top of that, it sounds like you're really excited about our unmatched support and communication as well as just customization in terms of technical product and Software. Here at ServiceTime, I know we're always very open minded, eager to hear from our customers, and we're committed to excellent and exceptional customer service. It sounds like your sales staff and your office staff are really excited about the reporting and tracking capabilities and metrics. On top of that, I love how you shared that our presentation of ServiceTitan has really allowed to empower your technicians to sell that you don't have to lug around a binder with a ton of different pages. And that does sound really intimidating. With that said, I'd love to be able to share with the audience a little bit more about all the great things going on at Penguin Air. So Wade and Will, congratulations. You are our Titan of the Month. So we are so excited and we're celebrating you and we're raving about you here at serviceitan because as you can see, they've been able to grow their revenue 37% in the first quarter of going live, compared to the same quarter of the previous year since they've gotten on Service Titan. So just let's backtrack a little. So Titan and Rookie of the Month are these mini case studies that we put together to help show how much Service Titan helps our customers actually grow. I know sometimes that's difficult to measure, it's difficult to think about, but we just are able to integrate with QuickBooks, so this data is incredibly accurate. So I'd like to go through just a few more of these to show you guys what actually happens once you go on Service Titan. How does this impact or influence your revenue before we move on? Congrats again. Wade, you and Will are our Titan of the Month and we're so excited to celebrate your growth and your achievements at Penguin Air.

Yay.

Thank you.

Awesome. So let's talk about our Rookie of the Month. So Home Climates. Nathan, they've been able to grow their revenue 93% month over month after switching to Service Titan after five months. So that's incredible. It's such a short time period. And Home Climates and Nathan, they've been able to grow so much. So that's Just one short example of someone else who's been able to really take advantage of Service Titan and hone in. We've also got the July Titan of the Month, Sam from Topline. They've done amazing. They grew their revenue for 44% in the first quarter of going live compared to the same quarter of last year. So they haven't been with us for that long, but they've grown 44%. Sam, if you're on this phone call, congratulations. We're so excited about your success at Topline. The next mini case study is our July Wiki of the Month. So this is Chris. Chris is at Preferred Home Services. It looks like they've been able to grow their revenue 83% in the first quarter of going live compared to the same quarter of the previous year. Like the other customers, they haven't been on for that long. They've only been live for five months. So I'm starting to see a pattern. I hope you guys are catching on as well. It looks like people that come on service site and our customers, they're able to really skyrocket their businesses and it is such an exciting time to be with Service Titan. So, Chris, if you're on this webinar, congratulations to you at Preferred Home Services. Our next one, real quick is our May Titan of the Month. So we've got Joseph Gianne or Gianone. I'm sorry, Joseph, if you're on this phone call, I'm sorry, I can't pronounce the last name. But you've been able to grow 60% in just the first quarter of going live. But you've been able to grow 60% in just the first quarter of going live compared to the same quarter. Oh, my goodness. Congratulations to you and your business as well. Let's see, the next one is our Rookie of the month. I love this. The drain surgeon, Kevin. Oh, my goodness. So 312%, guys. 312. This is an amazing number in the first quarter of going live compared to the same quarter of the previous year. As you can see, ServiceTeign cannot do you wrong, because everyone, all these mini case studies that we've studied, just for the quick two minutes, everyone has grown tremendously. So moving forward, why do companies grow on ServiceTitan? Well, as you've heard from our four panelists, from ERIC, from Wade, from Andrew, from Josh, you can see that ServiceTitan empowers you and enables you to have all the data that you need at your fingertips anywhere in this world with an Internet connection. So you've got missed revenue KPIs that show you how much revenue is being left on the table from unbooked calls. We never want that to happen. And now you can see that. You can see conversion rates of estimates to book calls by text and showing your best performing text which ones perhaps need a little bit more coaching, a little bit more sales training, which is a beautiful opportunity for improvement. You've got some conversion rates for calls to estimates by CSRs showing the same thing, but for CSRs and seeing their booking estimates. You've got revenue attribution to every marketing channel. Maybe you're spending a ton of money on those radio ads, maybe you're spending a ton of money on Google SEO. Maybe you're spending a ton of money on direct mail. You can see what marketing activities are generating the most revenue and not just the most phone calls. Those are two very different things. You've got a mobile customer experience tool for technicians that gives your techs all of the key information that they need to deliver an amazing and timely customer experience. I think Wade was talking about that, empowering his techs to be able to sell more easy, more seamless, so it's not intimidating. You've got intelligent dispatching that makes it easy for CSRs to dispatch each right tech to the right job almost instantly. We're out here in Los Angeles. If you're going from East LA to West la, oh man. And you have to sit in that traffic, you don't want that. So being able to use the intelligent dispatching is an amazing tool. You've got these real time reports that give you immediate access to many different kinds of actionable reports to help you make more data driven decisions to manage and grow your company. With that said, I'd love to tell you about our special offer going on today. So I talked to my boss and I said, hey, we're having this webinar today and I'd love to be able to give something away. We love giving things away. And to be honest, who doesn't love free things? I asked my boss what can we do? And he said to me, madison, I'm only going to give this to five companies. We really can't afford to do this, but I want to do this. I want to share with you the opportunity to win 5 free iPads when you get started with Service item. But this is limited to the first five new customers. So we don't have a lot of these iPads. And we want to empower you, we want to make life easier for you. So if you're interested, please let us know in the question box that you're interested in a personalized demo. We're happy to talk about service time with you. Answer any and all questions. With that said, I'd love to be able to move on, please. I know some of you have typed some wonderful questions in the question box, so I'd love to be able to share some of your questions with our speakers. So the first question is from Chris says, I'm a small business with only 10 employees. How do I incentivize employees with a bonus and commission while still having a good margin? Eric, Wade, Josh, Andrew, Would any of you like to take this question?

I will. Wade. Do I type it in there or the answer or I just say it right?

Can you share with us via audio, please? And please introduce yourself so we know who's talking.

Wade, with Penguin Air, you have to charge enough out there and build value in your price. And you can pay your guys very well and still bring 40 to 50% gross profit to any repair. So it's key to charge enough and obviously leave enough to cover all your overhead and bring a good amount to the bottom line. So a lot of people want to be the cheapest out there or listen to what everyone else is charging, and that's not going to help you grow your business at all. So charge enough and then just by training your guys to communicate the value in what you're selling will allow you to get away with your price. You will get a one off on occasion that complains about price online, but that's probably the, you know, that's the rarity. And don't let them dictate your price.

Thanks for sharing that wisdom, Wade. We really appreciate it. Chris, I hope this was helpful. I'd love to move on to the second question. So Bill has asked that he finds that one of his biggest challenges in New York is that everything advertising is so, so, so expensive. You know, Bill says that his techs are incredibly good on the job. They're great technicians, but he needs the phone ringing more. Any suggestions on how we can help him do that?

I'll take that one, Andrew from Pipeworks.

Really?

Yeah. Advertising, it's going to be expensive. But like the other guy said, if you're not spending 10% of your revenue from last year, then you don't have a shot to really grow. There's also, there are a lot of free sources out there. You can make profiles on Houzz and Thumbtack and use all kinds of different platforms just to try and get One off. Basically, any way you can get your brand in front of people, just do it. We find TV commercials. We've had a lot of success lately. It's expensive, and we were scared of it before, but we had to make the investment, and now we're seeing the benefits.

Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing, Andrew. Let's see, Jason. So Jason asked, what is the most measurable and scalable marketing channel in today's market versus what was around 10 years ago? What do you guys think?

Scalable. So this is Wade with Penguin Air scalable marketing. I still believe TV's scalable because, I mean, it is costly. But, you know, instead of hitting just one station, you can get on cable and hit all the primetime stations. And of course, Internet's scalable because.

You.

Can spend a lot of money and still not get on that front page at the top. So you can't go wrong with those two. You can do that for a long time.

Josh, what about you? Do you think there's anything else that we could do that's scalable? Wade, thank you for your feedback. That was very, very helpful. But I'd love to hear from you, Josh. I know you've had some great experience as well.

You know, again, it's your brand spending that money to create your brand and finding out where the best bang for your buck is going to be. You know, we don't consistently do the same things all the time. We try to change it up. Maybe it's a radio ad this month, maybe it's billboards next month. You know, we try to switch it up. Maybe we do campaigns over, you know, few years. If we can get a good deal with somebody to get our name out there. The more times people see your name, the less that money you have to spend on advertising. So I think ultimately that's what the goal is, is finding those things where you're going to get the most impact. And once your brand is recognized, then you can scale all that back, if that makes sense.

Thanks so much for sharing, Josh. That's super helpful. Phil from Hanson's Home Services, who's thinking about getting on service time asks, we are just getting on board. What should we immediately concentrate on when we start with service time? Any idea, my friends?

There's a lot of settings. I'll take that one on Eric. Yeah, I'll take that, if you don't mind. I think the biggest thing is, yeah, there is a lot of settings. There's a lot in there. There's a million different directions you can go. So I Guess I always say it's simple to use initially, but it's difficult and complex to master. So I think one of the big successes we've had is just empowering people to own their part of ServiceTitan. So our dispatchers really own the dispatch board and the functionality of that. And when there's new features that are coming out, they're the ones that are going in and figuring out, how does this affect me? How can I use this to do my job better? Rather than me, one person trying to push down and get everyone to use it, it's empowering them to own their part of it.

Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing. I really appreciate your response. There are a lot of things on ServiceTitan, but being able to focus in and zero in and really explore the software is incredibly important. It looks like we are one minute. We have one minute left in our webinar. I want to be respectful of everyone's time. So Josh and Eric and Wade, thank you. And Andrew, thank you all for your time. With that said, I would love to take one last question and also let everyone know, let the entire audience know that we have one spot left for the 5 iPad offer. So we've been getting these messages coming in and I just want everyone to know that we have one last spot and we'll stay on for a few more minutes to answer any and all questions about demo requests. But I want to respect Josh, Eric, and Wade in Andrew's time. I know they're running some big businesses, so let me end with one last question. So from Debian, she wants to know what are some of the best reports on Service Titan? Does anyone. Would anyone like to share?

Andrew, here you have the technician hourly production sales tracking detail, and really the technician big board gives you everything you could ever want about the techs.

Awesome. Sounds good. What about you guys over at Dutton? What do you think?

Eric, I'm personally a big fan of the Daily Hubble Report. I love seeing the pace for the year, the pace for the month, pace for the week. That, to me, is what I look at every single morning. That's the first thing I look at. And that's going to kind of dictate how I'm talking to the other managers because it may be a celebratory, hey, we're pacing well above budget. This is awesome. Or it might be, let's call it a coaching conversation.

Awesome. Thank you so much for sharing, Eric. So this concludes our webinar for today. Thank you. Reggie and I from Service Titan will be on to answer any questions about Service Titan and demo requests, but I do want to thank our awesome four panelists, Josh from George Brazil, Eric from Dutton, Wade from Penguin Air, and Andrew from Pipe Works Services. Thank you for your time today, your expertise, and for being so willing to share. With that said, we'll be sending out the webinar recording to everybody who has registered. So if you had to drop off early or something came up and you couldn't make it, or if you'd like to share it with your team, the folks that you're working with, or you'd like to share it with your family and friends, please look out for an email in your inbox sometime tomorrow. We'll be sending it out either today or tomorrow. Like I said, we'll be on the webinar just for a few moments to answer any questions about Service Titan. But thank you again. A big round of applause and a big thank you to Josh, Eric, Wade and Andrew. If there's any other questions, please let us know. We are happy to, but I want to be respectful of everyone's time. So thank you for tuning in into our webinar and we are so excited that we were able to share some of this information with you today. Please let us know if you have any questions about Service hung. We're happy to help everyone have an amazing day.

Thank you very much. Thanks for having me.

Thank you guys.

It.