How to Win the Contractor Lead Gen Game in 2025 | Eric Peschke (Ep. 244)

You're not going to get your canvassing cost of marketing to like 10. That's wishful thinking. I also think that one of the things that you have to look at as a $2 to $5 million business is lead costs are going up. Finance declines are at an all-time high last March and April. They've come down since then, but they're still not anywhere near what they were back in 2021, 2022. So you are going to be spending money on lead sources where it's a finance decline. And unless you have 3, 4, 5 lenders that you can use in the house to try to get somebody qualified, It just might be a dead opportunity.

Hey everybody, Brian here. Welcome to another episode of the Wealthy Contractor Podcast. With me today is Eric Peschke from Zintax. Eric has been a client for years and years and years, and, uh, finally I'm getting around to interviewing him. He is really one of the smartest marketers in our industry, and so today we're going to talk marketing, we're going to talk lead generation, and what you guys are up to, what you're learning, and whatever else comes up. So Eric, welcome.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. Appreciate the invite.

You don't like me saying that you're a smart marketer?

Oh, it's just, you know, just setting, setting high expectations. So I'll try to deliver on those today.

All right. Well, all the focus is on you, my friend. So tell us, give everybody your, give everybody kind of the, the, 2-minute version of who you are, what you do, your background.

So I've been in the home improvement marketing space since 2011. I started at a small family-owned and operated Renewal by Andersen dealer in Wisconsin and actually had the opportunity to move over to a larger Renewal by Andersen dealer that was located in Indianapolis that had multiple territories. I had an opportunity to move closer to home 'cause I grew up outside of Chicagoland and took a job with BCI Acrylic and was there for 5 and a half years and then wanted to get back on the retail side and found an opportunity with Zintek. And I've been with them, it'll be 4 years in March. So I would've never thought graduating college with a degree in like TV and radio broadcasting and a minor in marketing that I would, that, that I would be in the home improvement space. But here I am. I really enjoy and, and love what I do and it's been a lot of fun.

Did we originally meet at BCI?

I think so.

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. Because I think you came in as I was, because I was only working with them on a contract basis for, I think, a year or so. And I think you were the one that came in like after and you really did some really cool stuff there.

Yeah. I mean, fortunately, coming from the Renewal by Andersen network, I mean, there's not a better network to learn marketing across the board.

I couldn't agree more.

So being able to then work on the manufacturing side and be able to bring some of those things in to help generate more leads for all of their dealers across the country and be part of the team that built, you know, their, their corporate call center lead gen program, you know, that, that was very beneficial. And then being able to take what I learned on the manufacturing side, seeing the other side of the business and be able to go back into retail and, and take some of those things as has definitely— I've seen both sides of the coin, and it's been a lot of, you know, a lot of fun, and I've learned a lot of things.

Can you give us a little bit of context on Zintax? Like, how many jobs did you guys complete last year?

About last year, we ended up having a little bit over 3,300.

3,300. Okay, so 3,300 jobs. And you guys sell— what are your products?

We only sell bathroom remodeling.

So it's now it's only about— weren't you doing— were you doing windows before also?

Yeah, we were doing windows and we just— we were only doing windows in the DFW market. And as you know, it is such a competitive market for windows and we just found that our, our profitability and our ability to generate more leads and be successful with it on the bathroom side, it was like we were robbing Peter to pay Paul. On the, on the windows ROI and cost of marketing that it just didn't make sense to continue. So we made the decision to basically, you know, stay with bathrooms and look for other opportunities to be able to expand into additional markets in the bathroom space.

So you've got to push out. So if I'm just doing a little bit of math in my head, you've got to push out just for context about how many leads issue, how many leads do you issue per day?

About per day right now? We're— I mean, since we've just— we've added so many markets, you know, last year we added 10 new markets. This year we've already added 4. So we're up to 31 total. We're probably pushing out in the neighborhood of 80 to 100 issued appointments a day. And, and that's— I feel like we should be able to do better than that. So we're, we're making a couple different changes to be able to, uh, at least on the marketing side and the call center side, we're making some changes to be able to grow the amount of appointments that we should be able to issue every day.

Here's what's interesting, and I don't want anybody listening to take what I'm about to say the wrong way, but Eric just said they're pushing 80 to 100 a day. Are you guys running 6 days a week?

Yes.

6 days a week. Okay. Some people in the industry have a hard time pushing that many in a month. And they'll say, well, there are no leads and it's so hard to get leads. And where, you know, where do I go to get leads? And then there's companies like you that are doing, you know, 80 to 100 a day, 20 a day, 50 a day, 100 a day. What do you think? Like, because you have the manufacturing side experience, so you worked with a lot of dealers on the ground. What's, what's the difference between somebody that's doing, you know, barely trying at getting 100 booked or issued leads a month versus somebody that's pushing 100 a day?

The biggest common denominator that I see is, is that those dealers are not focused on their call center. They, they are forgetting that the first person, the first potential, the first person that the potential customer comes in contact with is either somebody in your office on the phone, a canvasser, or somebody working the events and shows. And they are probably not staffed up enough. They probably don't pay well enough to get some of the better call center agents, canvassers, events and shows staff members. In a lot of cases, when I've talked to people, you know, being on the manufacturer side and finding out like what they're paying, they're paying a non-net revenue generating metric. They're, they're paying, their pay structure is set up incorrectly to where I always want to try to pay people on the marketing side based on what I want them to generate. And on the marketing side, our job is to generate demos. We can generate all the set appointments in the world. We can generate all of the confirmed appointments in a world, but unless it becomes a demo, then we didn't do our job on the marketing side. So that's, that's the way that we have things set up within our canvassers, events and shows team, as well as callers, is everybody gets bonused off of a demo. Now, the dollar amounts that we pay off of the demo are different because obviously it's way harder to go out and knock doors than it is to be on the phone all day or be at a event and show. So the comp plans are set up a little bit differently, but at the end of the day, we look at when we set a sales goal for a month, I can back the math out based on our average revenue per demo. And I can say, hey, this is how many demos we need to produce in order to hit this number.

Now, you have a pretty sophisticated marketing organization over there. How many different lead sources are you counting on in any given month?

So we're at the pace that we're at right now, we're running close to just a little bit over 10,000 leads through our fresh leads through our CRM every month. Um, depending on what my budget looks like, because, you know, this is another thing that I've talked to multiple dealers about, is not every month of every year should be equal. You do not take your total net revenue sales goal and divide it by 12 months because there are peak seasons, there are slower seasons. We all know that December is a month that we're fighting the holidays that typically ends up being the lowest sales revenue month of the year. So my budget is different in those months versus a, we're getting ready to go into our peak season, March, April, May, and usually September, October, November. So between Labor Day and Thanksgiving. That is when I want to be able to have enough money to step on the gas and figure, okay, as long as we've got enough callers, sales reps, and installers, we are going to be able to strike while the iron's hot. And then in some cases during the summertime, you'll have, you know, 2 months out of the 3 might be really good and 1 month might be mediocre. It's tough to guess sometimes when that, you know, which one will be the mediocre month, but The way that I've got everything structured is trying to plan ahead, you know, 2 to 3 months ahead of going, okay, I know these are my core lead sources. This is typically how much I'm able to spend and get with them. That money is then slotted in. And then based on usually 2 weeks before the month starts is when I kind of get my final budget number of like, hey, don't go over this. Then I'm able to fill in the gaps with all the other lead sources. But to answer your question, I mean, I've got, man, over the years now, I mean, it's, it's probably somewhere between 30 and 40 different lead sources that, that I can, you know, go to. And that's not including TV, print, you know, obviously canvassing events and shows that we're doing, and then being partnered with a couple different manufacturers in, in Exclusive Markets, you know, their lead programs too.

Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about make and take marketing. So it sounds to me like you've— well, in order to get where you are, you've probably got a pretty robust make marketing plan. What percentage? Well, first off, why don't you describe the difference between make and take? And then if you wouldn't mind, what percentage about what percentage of your, uh, lead gen is make versus take.

You know, the difference that we look at is, is like, we never want to be set up to where we are a lead baby when it comes to manufacturers. Like, you know, we look at every partnership that we have with the manufacturer as their leads are good, or if we have to take their leads, we have to account for that. We never want to just say like, okay, well you know, the reason we didn't grow this month or the reason that we didn't hit our sales goal is because we didn't get enough leads from our manufacturers. We're always looking at it as we want that to be a, you know, no, no more than depending on the manufacturer, but no more than 20% of our overall lead volume or net revenue should come from our manufacturer. In some cases, one manufacturer has a better, you know, lead gen program than another, but I never want it to be a large chunk of, of what we generate because while they have great programs, you're relying on somebody else to hopefully do their job so that you have enough leads. As we've grown and added more markets with certain manufacturers, I've had to kind of balance out a little bit based on their volume of leads or quality of leads. Like, okay, what other sources am I turning on and spending money on in those particular markets. And, you know, now that we have 3 manufacturers that we're working with, it can be a little bit of a juggling act because you, you can't control the dial. It's like, oh, okay, all of a sudden this week I'm getting hit with an invoice for this much, and 3 weeks from now it might be something totally higher or lower. So we try to operate to where we have The amount of lead sources that we are spending money on is, is staying consistent and growing. And then there's always the testing period that I go into where my mentality, and I learned this from somebody at Renewal, is, you know, with every month not being the same, you're going to have your peak months set with a higher sales goal, which also means you're going to have a higher marketing budget. Well, if I have a higher marketing budget, and I want to set a new source up for success, I want to test it in the peak season. So I try to commit to at least a 60 to 90 day test period to where I'll commit to that time and see like, okay, at the end of 60 or 90 days, where is this lead source's net revenue, cost of marketing, and is this something that I feel like I can continue to use throughout the year? With us going into the peak season right now, I've got a couple sources that I'm going to be testing out. And one of the things that I look at is, is that another, another, a glass half empty view of the testing is if it doesn't work in the peak season, right, it's probably not going to work any other time of year. You know, like I've talked to dealers where they're like, oh yeah, I'm getting ready to test this lead source starting mid-November. And I'm like, what are you doing? Like, give me half the money and I'll kick the you-know-where and call it a day because you're trying to test something in the wrong time of year. So having a structure set up and being able to kind of stay within that structure, I mean, there will be sources that I might test in the summertime, been able to negotiate some rev shares, you know, where it's like, okay, if it's a rev share, yeah, turn it on. You know, let's see how we can convert. But I think our call center and ability to scale number of callers as well as the number of sales reps with the amount of markets that we have, you know, that does play a part in how much I can spend, how many sources I can turn on, how many I can set, because it doesn't make sense to go and spend the money on new lead sources if you don't have enough callers to convert them. So your conversion metrics are going to be lower. Or if you don't have enough sales reps in those markets to be able to run the leads, you're just burning money on the front end. And that's been the thing that since we've gone from 4 markets in Texas when I started in 2021 to now 31 in 9 different states, that has been the big learning curve for me is how do I balance this out as well as then stay within the overall budget. Right.

So let me, let me ask again on the make versus take. Marketing. So make is we're going out and we're making our own leads. Take is we're relying on others, like you said, the manufacturers, aggregators, PPC, website, all that stuff. Even print is like take marketing. It's you're waiting for an inbound, whereas with make marketing, you're doing canvassing, you're doing shows, you're going out of your office looking for leads. What's the breakdown for you guys right now for make versus take?

I'll answer that question by also saying that if I was asked, hey, where is your biggest exposure or where is your biggest, you know, threat or problem that you look at, is that we need to get even more better on the making part of, of leads. So like we have a canvas team that's in a couple markets right now. We want to be able to expand that into potentially all markets at some point. You know, working with different retail big box stores, that's an opportunity that we can make our own leads in. And then obviously doing specific events and shows. I mean, I live up outside of Chicago, so I know how big the home shows and the events are during the summertime here. In some of our southern markets, it's completely different. Like, people don't go outside to a let's shut the town down for a weekend type festival in Texas when it's 110 degrees, you know, in the summertime. So we have to be a little bit more creative and test with certain events and see, well, what will work, what will bring out enough people when we go there? Are these, are these the type of homeowners that we want to be in front of? And if not, let's see if we can spend that money elsewhere. But I think that from, from 2024, you know, the lesson learned when it comes to higher lead costs, relying on certain sources and them not being able to necessarily scale up as much. We took a look at that and said, hey, we've got to get back into the more making while we still continue to get good or better at the taking part.

Yeah.

So it's probably, it's probably 20, 25% making and the other side taking. And I'd like to see that get closer to, you know, 40-60, you know, 50-50 would be, you know, you're really just based on the number of digital lead sources we have, you know, we would have, we would have come a long way on the making part to get to 50-50.

Let me ask you this. Let me take you back to, you run a, a pretty sophisticated, large marketing department. Let's go back and talk about the smaller contractors. Let's talk about contractors that are maybe in that $2 million to $5 or $6 million space, because I think that's a lot of our listeners are probably in that space. And what's interesting, so what happened was, you know, I mean, 2020, March, we got shut down. All of us were like, oh crap. What the hell's going to happen now? Then a month later, 2 months later, all of a sudden it starts to go gangbusters. I'd been in this for 30-something years. I had never seen anything like mid-2020 to about the end of 2023-ish. I'd never seen anything like that before. So it is a boom time for our industry. What ended up happening with a lot of these smaller companies was there was so much demand. There were so many leads, it became too easy. It became too easy. Exactly. And they, they started to rely on aggregators and digital marketing. And a lot of companies almost like abdicated marketing and just said, you know what, I don't need to think too much about marketing because we've got so many leads coming in. But you and I both know that's not the reality of this business. And so what happened in 2024 was we went back to reality because by 2023, about the end of 2023, most companies had run out of backlog. And so coming in and then 2024, we got hit with interest rates and inflation and election year and all kinds of madness. Companies like yours thrived during that time because you knew what it was like before. And so what's happening now in 2025 is in order for companies to really not just survive but really thrive, they've got to get good again at marketing, at lead generation. So if I could take you away from 10,000 leads a month and go back to, you know, We're trying to issue 100 leads a month.

Yeah.

What is your advice to those people? What are some of the things that they need to be looking at in terms of making leads? What does their call center need to look like? And what are some of the KPIs that they need to be managing to?

And I would say that even though, you know, we're bigger than the $2 to $5 million contractor, there are a lot of very similar things that we have to continue to get better at, continue to analyze. Because this— what's happened in the last 5 years has been like a violent mood swing, like twice. I mean, it's basically been like, okay, everything's getting shut down to all of a sudden everybody's got a boatload of money and they can't spend it on vacations. Sporting events, entertainment, and in most people's case, their home is their largest asset. And they're like, well, we got, we're stuffed. We, we got a whole bunch of projects that we need to do. And financing was low. You know, the, the interest rates were low, financing was available. Everybody was taking advantage. Everybody that either had money or had access to money, they did their projects, which kind of created a little bit of a void in the market. Then you throw on inflation, left discretionary income, then you throw on higher finance, you know, higher interest rates and not as many people doing it. So the, I think in maybe 10 years somebody will write a book about this time period and go like, man, it was great and we wish we would've like raised our prices crazy if we knew it was going to last that long. To now all of a sudden it's like, yeah, it's gotten really, really hard. I mean, our, our overall cost-to-marketing numbers were great and growing at that pace. And then all of a sudden now it's like, man, I'm at 17, 18% lead costs. We grew 40%, you know, last year to the year prior. But you're starting to look at different metrics in the fact that everything's costing more. So to get back to your question, you know, for a $2 to $5 million company, I go back to when I first started with Renewal by Andersen and they were doing $2 million a year out of Green Bay, Wisconsin. And it was basically like, okay, we've got this many people in our database and we've got this many existing customers. Now, depending on what kind of product you're, you're selling, you know, windows, there's always repeat customers. Roofing, there really isn't. You're relying on, on referrals basically if you're doing roofing.

You know, and radius.

Yes. You know, bathrooms, it's kind of in between. You know, it depends on how many bathrooms somebody has in their house. So like one of the things that we have our sales reps go through and fill out every time they result a sold lead is how many bathrooms were in the house. Ballpark. You don't have to go through and look at all of them, but how many bathrooms are in the house? How many did you sell? In a case where there is one bathroom in the house and we sold it, there's no other opportunity for me to generate any other revenue. So we have a referral program through G4 that we're using to try to squeeze dollars out of that household, but it's from a referral. When we were doing Renewal by Andersen, a lot of cases with window replacement and patio doors, you know, customers might only replace one side of the house at a time. So you had that other repeat business to where all the windows would match at some point. And at that time, that house was considered like, okay, if we've done all the windows and we've done all the patio doors, then that house, we, we really can't generate any more net revenue out of that specific location. So I, I think a lot of times the boat is missed by not having repeat and referral programs or using a, a, a company like G4. I mean, we use two other referral and repeat companies, so I've got three companies that we use. To continue to stay in front of those customers when it comes to repeats and referrals, because I'd like to see that become a bigger part of our, of our overall, you know, lead gen pie and revenue pie. So I think you got to start there because you've already paid for those leads. You've already paid for those houses. They know you. You know, that's a big part of it. I think that having a good website management company And making sure that you're able to generate the leads that you need off of your own website through SEO, through PPC, you know, that's really key. And then, in, in some cases, when I look over the course of my career of, of the last 14 years, you know, it's definitely changed where it's gone more heavy digital. Everybody's got a, got a smartphone, everybody's on it all day long. You've got iPads, you've got, you know, laptops, PCs. I mean, everything. It's like people are searching online. I want to make sure that I'm online. And if you said, hey, you know, what's, what's one thing that you feel like could be a potential threat or something where you're a little bit more heavy in, in something, it's, it's still the digital lead gen. Just because, you know, just because we've got to still go out and make the leads doesn't mean that I want to take away from being able to take the leads. Meaning I still want to be able to spend enough money online where people are going to read reviews, do their own shopping, do their own research. I still want to make sure that I'm in that space because the internet's not going away anytime soon. So I think that, you know, for a $2 to $5 million company, you've got to be doing the home shows and events depending on where you're at in the country. There's different results from that. We saw that when I was working at BCI at the manufacturer level, that some areas of the country would just kill it with events and shows, others it was a little bit harder. I think that, you know, canvassing is definitely something where, yes, you are going out and making your own leads. It is the most difficult form of marketing to be able to do. It is. So you have to understand that it requires a very, very good canvassing manager. Um, it requires a lot of dedication, a lot of heart and sweat and blood and tears go into doing canvassing. And usually if you get your cost, your lead cost of marketing on canvassing under 20% or around 20%, it's a win. You're not going to get your canvassing cost of marketing to like 10%. That's wishful thinking. I also think that one of the things that you have to look at as a $2 to $5 million business is yes, lead costs are going up. Finance declines are at, you know, they were at an all-time high last March and April. They've come down since then, but they're still not anywhere near what they were back in 2021, 2022. So you are going to be spending money on lead sources where it's a finance decline. And as long as you have 3, 4, 5 lenders that you can use in the house to try to get somebody qualified, it just might be a dead opportunity. You've still spent the money on it. So we've looked at it as how can we become more efficient with our money in other departments to be able to continue to spend on marketing and withstand and have a 17 or 18% lead cost and grow, but still hit our profit margins. So, you know, I think that in smaller businesses, you know, you have to be able to look at You know, what are we paying on financing fees? You know, is there an opportunity to work with a couple other lenders that might save us a little bit of money there and have enough lenders in the house to get somebody qualified? Because you, when you start slowing down your marketing or your spend, you are going to hurt months later. So we try to take the approach of we want to continue to be able to spend the money. We have to maybe pull it or look at how we can be efficient with it in other departments. To then keep that going. Now, if we run a couple different campaigns and, you know, I'm testing out a new source and it's like, hey, this just, this isn't going to work. You know, this, we've, we've done everything we can, the communication back and forth with that lead gen partner is there. We're sending them the report, which I do want to mention the one thing that I found surprising from working with our lead gen vendors is the number of companies that will not send their disposition reports back to the lead vendor from their CRM. And I'm like, how can you as a lead gen company optimize and provide them better leads if you don't have any data to go off of? And why would somebody not want— why would a company not want to share their conversion metrics? Is it because they're not good? Is it because call center can't convert, sales team can't sell, like whatever the reason is, it's like you can't expect these lead gen partners to all of a sudden over the course of a 60 or 90-day test improve the quality of leads and get you better leads if you're not willing to share that data back. So I think that that's, you know, putting a lot of time into their, their call center, uh, from a $2 to $5 million business. I mean, when I started at Renewal by Andersen, I was the call center. Any phone call that came in that was for an appointment got transferred over to me, and I was— my title was the marketing director, so I was doing all the marketing stuff too, but I was the one setting and then calling and confirming those appointments. And I was working directly with my sales manager at that point to result the appointments, get the feedback that was necessary so that I could do my job better. And set them up for a more successful demo in the house. I've always said this anytime I got offered to, you know, speak anywhere. Marketing needs to know their role. And when I, when I'm— what I mean by that is, is that we always train our marketing people to where the sales reps are the leading scorer on the basketball team, because if they don't sell and generate revenue, We don't have jobs. So yes, everything starts with a lead, but if they're the leading scorer, how can we be the leading assist getter? You know, how can we be the John Stockton to their Karl Malone and set them up to where they know what they're walking into when they walk into the house by providing good notes, by qualifying the appointment, and by asking that the customers set aside 60 to 90 minutes. And that all homeowners attend the appointment. And if we do our job and our demo rate, like right now this month, our demo rate's like 89%. Usually we're striving for like 85. Wow. That's strong. Our call center, our, yeah, our call center and our, our confirmers, they've done a good job of getting our reps into sellable situations. And I think that, that when you take that mentality of, hey, we've got a team of flat out closers because of our VP of marketing, Brian Kemp, and what his team does to train these reps to where when we, when we open new markets, I'm not worried about, hey, we're going to generate a boatload of demos and you guys aren't generating net revenue. And that's why my cost of marketing's off. It's like we hit the ground running and they start selling. That's a great thing to have. I mean, in most cases, every month, our sales team makes our marketing team look good. Because they generate the revenue.

Yeah, it's interesting. I always say the core of this business is the selling system. If you have a selling system that consistently closes at whatever X percent you've benchmarked for your business at the right price, then you can spend and spend and spend to feed that machine leads. But if that machine doesn't work well, then, and your marketing, even if your marketing is delivering great leads, you're still not gonna perform.

One of the things that I did at BCI was I was, you know, training the owners and their marketing managers or directors, like, how to read their marketing report and find the problems. You know, I kind of laugh sometimes where it's like, I, I, Sometimes I, I, I can come across as a, as a glass half empty kind of guy. And I'm like, I'm used to running these reports and I'm always looking for the problems when something's going great. It's like, hey, great job. Keep it going. I'm trying to figure out how I can fix these things. So a lot of times it's teaching them how to read their marketing report where we normally read left to right. It's teaching them to read it right to left.

I know what you mean by that, but, but the listener might not. So can you talk a little bit more about that?

So in most of the time in your CRM, when you're running a marketing report, you're going to start on the left-hand side and it's going to show your sources. It's going to show how many leads. Then you go to how many sets, how many confirmed, how many issued, how many run, how many demoed, gross sales, finance decline column, rescission column. Net revenue, spend, cost of marketing. So when I go through and look at a marketing report for whether it's a month, a quarter, a year, it doesn't matter. I'm always starting on the right-hand side and I'm going, okay, which one of my sources generated the highest volume of net revenue and the cost of marketing was in line or lower than what we're looking for? That's a source where I want to continue to try to step on the gas pedal and see where can I get more leads from this source. Then as you look from the right side and you're looking through your cost of marketing, if that cost of marketing for that source is too high, then the question becomes, is it a closing percentage problem as you work your way from right to left? Is it a call center conversion problem or is it a, I didn't get enough leads or the leads weren't very good problem? And if you can identify those very quickly, so an example would be if you're trying to hit 15% lead cost and you run through your marketing report and you go, Well, there's a source here that's at 19% and the revenue's good. It's okay. How can we trim a little fat off of that 19% cost of marketing? First I look and I go, well, where's my close rate? If I'm trying to hit a 30% net close rate and the close rate is lower than that, having that higher, that's obviously gonna lower the cost of marketing. Let's say that the close rate is 30% and then I go and I look and I say, well, How many demos are we generating? How many run appointments are we generating? Okay, that looks in line. Then I get to a metric where it's like, whoa, the, the, our normal set rate average across everything is like 30 to 32%. That set rate's only 16%. So to me, that's the problem. Now the question is, is, is it my call center or is it the lead source? I'm always somebody and everybody in my department, my call center manager, Benson shows canvassing. We point the finger at ourselves to investigate first and go, okay, what's going on here? Are we calling these leads within the law? Obviously the amount of times we need to every day. Are we making the amount of contacts that we need? Because you can make all the calls, you know, in the world, but if you're not talking to people, that typically would tell me like, maybe this lead source might not be the best in the world. If I can't get somebody on the phone, or text or email them. So those are the exercises to try to make sure that you go through to where if you see sources where your cost of marketing isn't in line, it's a matter of finding out what is the issue. Is it sales, call center, or leads slash marketing to determine, well, what can we do? And I always try to change what we can control first with that source. Before I then have that call with that lead gen partner and say, you know what, we've taken this many leads, we're on pace to do this much per month or per year. I've talked to my call center manager, I've talked to our VP of sales, like, here's the disposition reports, because they're receiving those every, every week. Like, I don't know if I can spend more money on this source and, and see where they come back.

So everybody listening, And for some people, what he just went through— and again, please don't take what I'm going to say the wrong way. There's never any judgment or criticism or disrespect meant here. But what he just went off and did for the last few minutes is the business. And to be an effective leader of this business, that's the way you have to look at this business. Now, people— some people will listen to what you just said. And as you're going through this, I'm thinking, The $3 million guy, $5 million company, woman, man, whoever's running it, they're the marketing person. They're the one that's responsible for making leads. But they're also— they might also be outselling. They might be having to deal with fires in the office. They may be the production manager in their office as well. And so when you're talking about all of these metrics and all of these KPIs and these things that— and Talking about the call center and analyzing whether or not the call center and how it relates. People are just like, how in the hell am I going to do all of that?

Let me make it, let me make it very simple, please.

Because this is what you used to do.

Yeah. This is the way that I would do, do it. And I would say, before you look at your marketing report to analyze your data, you need to make sure that your data is correct. Meaning if you're not, if your call center or your person that's answering the phone or your sales reps, when they ask in the home, how'd you hear about us? If you're not getting that information and changing those lead sources in your CRM, you are going to be looking at incorrect data. So the first step is you always need to make sure that you are, as I always say, it's like a poll, you know, hey, they're plus or minus 3%. It's like every lead needs to be put into the system as close as you can make sure it is. So that you're looking at the correct data. Because otherwise, if the lead isn't put in properly and it turns into a $15,000 sale, that source that's getting credit for it is going to look better than what it's actually performing. And some other source might not look, look as good. So here's the 15-minute exercise that an owner that's going out and selling needs to do. And this is as simple as setting up a weekly calendar invite on your calendar. You have got to dedicate a certain amount of time to look at where you're spending your money, where the best ROI is, and where your cost of marketing is. And that's gonna, that's gonna make you more efficient with your dollars that you should be able to then spend more money. So the 15-minute exercise is basically pulling your marketing report and whether this is, I don't usually dive into my marketing reports within the first like 7 to 10 days of a month. Because it's brand new. There's, there's a lot of stuff going on. We haven't run as many appointments yet that month. So I usually do this 10 days into the month, 15 days into the month, and 20 days into the month. So first third, first half, two-thirds, because I can do the math and I can see very quickly, here's how many leads I'm projected to get from this particular source. Here's where we're on path to either hit goal sales goal or not hit sales goal. So the simplest thing is you run your marketing report and I want to take a look first at what sources are generating the most amount of net revenue out of the pie, out of the whole thing. Where am I at? First question should be, if the cost of marketing is in line, can I get more leads from that source? One of the biggest mistakes that I see is I see somebody going out there bragging about their low cost of marketing on this source. And then when I'm like, hey, what are you spending on that source? Oh, I'm spending $3,000. And I'm like, well, is that a source where you could spend like $6,000, $8,000, $10,000? So I do what I call find the ceiling. And what that is, is that over the course of multiple months, I, with a source that high net revenue, low cost of marketing, I am pushing that spend up to try to see, well, If I spend $6,000 instead of $3,000 and I generate $60,000 in net revenue instead of the $30,000, I keep going. Okay. If I spend $9,000 and I generate $90,000 and my cost of marketing is still at 10%, I keep going. I keep going on the spend except for December where I, I see that, okay, all of a sudden now the cost of marketing has risen higher than I feel comfortable with. That's the ceiling. And you try to be more efficient with your dollars to where if I say, I've had this other source on for 3 months now, their cost of marketing is 19%. If I were to either turn that source off or I peel some of that money away from that source and I put it into the one that's doing the best, if I can spend more, I'm going to get a better ROI over, over, over course of time. So doing that, it should, it should not take longer than 15 to 30 minutes a week to be able to look at those specific numbers. Now, I'm fortunate enough that I have the time to where when I set marketing budgets and spends, they are not a set it and forget it throughout the course of a month. Like there are certain sources that I have where I can either ask for more leads, I can keep it the same pacing, or I can slow it down or turn it off in, in a course of a month. And that's something that I've negotiated with all of our lead gen partners. And the reason is if I see something going hot and I see something that is not doing well and I'm not in a testing period with them, I will email them and say, hey, we either got to jump on a call, or in a lot of cases I've had so many calls with them that I basically email and I say, hey, I need these leads turned off in like 2 days because this cost of marketing is out of whack. I've looked on my end to see what we can do. Something's going on on your end. Turn it off. We'll revisit it. But if I've got sources that are going hot, I want to be able to move that money and that spend over to those particular sources.

Yeah.

So to me, that's the video game. Like I was, I played Mario Brothers when I was growing up. I was never a big video game guy, but to me that is the challenge is, okay, I've got all these sources. And even if you're a $2 or $5 million, you know, company, you can't not test. You, you, you, you can't say, hey, these are the sources that I'm using and I'm sticking with them because eventually One of them will not be able to produce, you know, enough leads, enough sales. You get a bunch of finance declines, whatever. The cost of marketing will fluctuate. But, you know, I've got a couple core sources that I say like, hey, I'm spending every dollar they can possibly send me. After that, I'm testing. I'm, you know, like, okay, maybe I'll give this source X amount of dollars every month. Let's see what they can do. but you, you have to be able to dedicate the 15 to 30 minutes a week to analyze it. And what I would say to the, to the dealers that I was talking to is like, hey, if you don't wanna do it, that's fine, but it's your money.

Yeah.

So don't, don't call me later, you know, and say, hey, well, I got a problem here. My cost of marketing's through the roof. Okay. Did you do the 15 to 30 minute exercise that I asked you to do every week? Well, no, I got busy with this, then I got busy. Okay, fine. Set up a calendar invite on a day every week where you say, hey, I am in the office. And when that thing comes up, then it's time to go through and run through your metrics and see where everything's at. Because if you can make changes, it's gonna help you generate more net revenue or it's gonna help you save more money either way.

So look, man, we could keep going for another 2 hours. Can I have you, because I got still, we got other places we can go, but I think for this episode, this is enough. This is one of those episodes I always strongly recommend. There's some episodes, go back and listen to again, because some of the stuff that he said, he said it quick, but if you go back and you listen to it again, you're going to understand his thinking process and how he's organizing this and how he's thinking about these things. And it'll be super, super valuable for you regardless of what size you're at. The only reason he can do 100 leads a day is because he started at 3 leads a day. And it's just a matter of he just built and built and built. And that's how all these great companies are built, like their company, like your company. That's how it's built, little, little, little at a time. But as the owner, if you're in that, you know, $1 to $2 to $5 million range, this is what you got to be doing. This is the most important work that you can do. This business is very formulaic. And so anyway, so Eric, big ask, can you come back in 2 months and we talk more? Because there's a bunch of other places we can go with this. And I think that, yeah, because you have a very unique perspective in that you dealt with on-the-ground dealers that were startups to millions and millions of dollars, but also now you're running a pretty big sophisticated marketing department. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna have you scheduled again for a couple months and then we'll, we'll have another go around with this because I think this, this 2025 is really all about leads. We're back there again. It's all about leads. You know, at Accelerate, I think it was '21, '22, and '23, we didn't really talk about leads all that much. We were talking about other stuff.

Every lead was great. Yep.

Every lead was great. But a lot of them, you know, this year we started to talk a lot. We just finished it last week, and we talked a lot about leads. So I'd love to have you back again. So thank you so much for being here. Really appreciate you. I'm sorry I waited so long actually to have you here, but you're here now, and, uh, you'll come back again. And to everybody listening, hope this was valuable for you. Please go back and listen to this again. This guy knows what he's talking about, and so you can learn a lot from him. So until next time, this is Brian Kaskavalciyan, and this is the Wealthy Contractor Podcast.