Navigating Through Uncertainty Ep. 4 with Bill McGraw

So we're putting a big push on this week to do that. And also, you know, we raise money, which is a different animal, different part of the thing we do. That was the food bank. In fact, they were just trying to call me right now. We're fixing to do a matching campaign.

Oh, nice.

Food bank put up $25,000 matching money so they can go out and do a virtual food drive so they can bring in money, because they can do more with money than they can with canned goods. But that's something we also do.

OK. So what the other thing that we were thinking was that you could just talk about it and any documentation you have that you wouldn't mind sending to me, we could take that and I could create some slides from it. And then we can just put those— we'll do that. We'll put those two things together. And distribute a video, an audio, and notes on here's how you—

It's literally a one-page Word document that tells, explains how we do it.

Okay.

You know, and as far as scripting, the scripting is, it's a one-line, you put it at your appointment after you set an appointment for a sales call or service call. It's just a one-line sentence where you ask for their help and could you help us with this, you know, we're trying to do this. And we get a very good response. Because the only hard part about a food drive is you got to drive somewhere to, you know, to pick it up. Yeah, drop it off. And we do that for them.

Okay. So, so my question to you is just to be respectful of your time. Do you want to do this another time? Or are you good now to talk that through?

And then No, now that— now it's fine. I, I, I'm aside here, uh, um, and I just was running over on my previous conference call. I just had to jump off conference call to jump on this one. Yeah.

And then, and then kind of my part 2 on this is, um, what are you, you know, as somebody that owns one of the, the largest home improvement companies in the country, What are you thinking, feeling, doing, you know, during this time? So I don't know, do we want to tackle maybe that one first and then—

Yes, that's easy. That'll just take a few minutes, and because we just got off a call with 12 of the top water dealers in the country telling what they're doing to do this. So we're doing, We're probably the most proactive in doing what we're doing, but still, we're working on some stuff that I will be implementing on Monday that I really can't talk about yet that will hopefully help set appointments, help us get in better in the appointments, and actually help us sell appointments. But it's something I have to try before I talk about it. But it's mostly for the water industry, but anybody could use it.

Well, I guess basically you are not letting this shut you down.

You are— Oh no, we're having one of our best months in the history of our company, service and sales.

Great. That's great to hear. How are you thinking about this and then thinking about the people that aren't in your place, the people that are where you were 20 years ago when your company was smaller and tighter and, you know, it wasn't as big a machine as it is today. So what are you thinking today and then what advice do you have for young Bill going through this?

Well, the main thing is attitude. You know, you don't go into the complete panic of the media, but Have respect, be smart. And that's the whole thing as far as be smart with your business, make adjustments there, be smart with your interaction with people, with your people's, with your sales team, with your installation team's interaction with people, show respect to them in their home. And then we've kind of been proactive on how to get ahead of this. And whether you've got 3 employees or 200 and something like we do, I would just tell you some of the things we've put in place. We started looking at setting people up that can work out of home. We took 4 of our offices and a warehouse and combined them into one 37,000 square foot work— I mean, office warehouse a few months ago. So we have all our eggs in one basket, so that's not a good thing. So we've set up many of our employees that can work from home It's very simple to do technology-wise now. If they have— you have voice over IP phones, that phone will— you can plug it in anywhere in the world and it'll look like they're calling from your office and, you know, wherever your office is. Very, very simple. Your computers are the same way as far as if you have a database with all your customers, whether it's a call database or if it's a service database or just customers calling in for questions or things about a product you've already sold them, then those people, you know, it's a little different setup because they're at— but we have them set up where they can work from home. We do still have people working in the building. We've kind of spread them out. We have hand sanitizer when you walk in the door. We are having cleaning folks that come through twice a day before work and/or during midday and late day to spray everything down, all the phones, all the positive, all the door handles, everything that you touch. You know, so we're doing— and if anybody shows up with even the sniffles, and right now in Texas we have terrible, terrible allergies because pollen's going crazy right now. But if they're sneezing and coughing stuff, we have to send them home. Now again, we're doing some things to help them They're again, as far as being able to work from home, but again, they can, especially like our service techs, all those kind of people that go to people's homes. If they have any type of sniffles, they're not there, they can't go into someone's home. We're having to deal with that on a separate way. But the first thing we do when we walk in for a sales or service call, but especially a sales call, is we use hand sanitizer. We walk in, we sanitize our hands, we offer them sanitizers. You know, we are here to respect your your home and your property. You know, we're gonna be safe about things. We have booties on. We have, you know, some of the dealers are using gloves. We're not using gloves. We're using the sanitizers. We walk in. Anybody that has a cold, anybody that has a regular old common cold or real bad allergies and are sneezing and coughing right now, they are not allowed to go in someone's home. But we're just trying to work smart, I guess. So far, and again, you know, our, our number of appointments that we're setting are down. Our set rate is better and our close rate is better. Yeah, but we're having a good month in sales. But we are getting some of those people as well, you know, really not comfortable with having someone in my home right now. But we're treating them just like if it was the Christmas and New Year holidays, but they're always saying, oh, call me back after the holidays. Anybody in the home improvement business has gotten that excuse. And all we're just saying, we appreciate that, we appreciate, you know, we respect you and your home. We'll tell you what, we'll put you in our system and we'll give you a call back in 30 days. You know, good luck, you know, God bless you. And just letting, just kicking that can down the road. You will need those appointments 30 days from now, just like we do now. We are doing some proactive things that we'll have in place next week, which we'll be able to do things a little bit differently or be able to, overcome that objection somewhat on a very soft overcome objection. We're going to respect them. But setting appointments, that's what we're doing. When we're going to the home, we're very respectful. If, if we get there and someone in that home is not feeling well, a child or adult sneezing, coughing, we are— well, I'm not putting my technician or my, my sales rep in that position for 2 hours sitting at home with somebody sneezing and coughing on them. So they're politely said, 'I see you're under the weather right now with all, you know, stuff going on. Let me give— I'm going to get this back to my office. They'll give you a call in about 30 days. Let you get everybody in the family healthy and everything. And, you know, good luck, you know, God bless you.' And we step out. Yeah, so, um, that's just some of the proactive things we're doing. But the main thing is we're just giving very positive meetings, uh, not trying to sweep anything under the rug, but just saying, you know, guys, we're here. It's what we're doing. We're doing things proactive. Be smart. Again, we'll get through this.

We'll get through.

A lot of the issues we're having with people working from home is not that they're ill in any way or any kind of quarantine or any of that. That's nothing to do with that. It's just their childcare is shut down. They have children in school where normally, like in the summertime, they just put them in childcare or put them in, you know, summer programs and YMCA, and all those are shut down right now. So They have no place to put their kids so they can come to work. So now we're setting up so they can work from home. And pretty much most of your guys, if you have any type of CRM or, you know, customer thing, or if you have the IP phones that are recorded, you can see when they clock in, when they work, when they don't work. So you could say still pay them hourly plus commission or first, however you pay them. Most home improvement companies are set up to where they can monitor that in some way. I say that you're somewhat larger. The small ones, it may just be a trust factor. And you see, if they're not setting any appointments or they're not doing anything, then you just gotta, you know, you gotta deal with that however you can.

Yeah. You know, it's interesting, one of the things that was really interesting that you said was you're not getting as many leads, but the set rate is higher and the close rate is higher. And that, you know, that kind of makes sense. You know, if they're having you out there, you know, I would think that they're, they're pretty serious if they're going through this like everybody else is and they're listening to the same news that everybody else is. You know, these are people with good attitudes. They see forward into the future. I have a problem. I need that problem solved. This guy is here. He's saying the right things. Why am I going to subject myself to 2 or 3 other people?

Right.

Makes sense.

All right, so again, that's all we're doing on that front is just being very positive attitudes, very upbeat, uh, but respectful. And, you know, again, you know, where we had 80 people working out of this office last week, by the end of the week we'll probably have 15, you know. Um, but again, we now— but Like all our setters, all our setters, our marketing manager can see the appointments coming in, 'cause again, of our CRM, we can see the appointment. But if we have a setter that's not doing well, or as a group, all she has to do is text them, "Please jump on this call." If there's 5 of them she needs to talk to, she sends them a deal, they have a link, they click it, then all of a sudden she's sitting there on video just like you and I are sitting there talking. And she can do a little pep talk, get them fired up, get them excited, you know, get them back focused. Now get back on the phone. You can do that remotely. Our sales team, we're only having one sales meeting a week right now. We may cut that out. But we have several, we have, again, we have two large sales meetings a week and then some supplementals for the newer people in between. Those are now being done remotely where we just, the manager or the trainer sends them a link, they jump on, they do their interaction. And it's— they're doing it from their home. They're not doing it from coming into the office all the time. So that's one other thing we're doing using technology.

Wonderful. Do I dare ask you kind of what you are thinking in terms of the next, say, couple months?

It is a total unknown. Every day is— every week we're looking at it, every day, you know, again, they've shut down restaurants now where it's only takeout. Every day they're implementing new things. And we'll just have to see. Again, we have to keep working at it. You're gonna have people that show up and they're not gonna let you in their home. You're gonna have people that say, hey, call me, you know, said no, I really don't want anybody in the home right now. And you gotta respect that. Again, now we're in the water treatment and air business, so air purification business. So we're maybe in a better thing than a window, siding, roofing guy that can kick that can down the road. The roof's not leaking. We're not going to deal with it right now. With us, we're dealing with health. And we don't talk about health in our presentations, but it's just an underlying thing right now. People wanting to be healthy. Bottled water's scarce. They're buying it off the shelves. Well, our systems make bottled water so they don't have to go— they can use all the bottled water they want in their home and share with their neighbors if they want to. We make it. So there's, you know, they give them a little bottled water plant right underneath the kitchen sink, a little faucet there on the sink. Get all you want. We have some advantages over maybe some of the other home improvement companies, but as far as how we're dealing with it and letting people work from home and setting them up that way, respecting the customer when you walk in, if you're signing, you know, talking about the roof, the first thing you do should be walking in and using sanitizer and offering it to them. So if you're handing things back and forth, you're not putting your sales rep at risk. If someone, if your sales rep is ill, coughing in any way, They don't get to— sorry, you're on the sidelines right now. If they walk into a home, someone is ill, they step out and, you know, we'll reschedule another time. A sale is not worth someone getting even the common flu, which is all over the place right now. Yeah, common cold and flu season. So don't even give your guy the flu. So, you know, step out.

Yeah. Um, last thing I'll ask you about this, and then we'll switch gears into the to the other topic is, um, I know from what I know of you, you are a very upbeat, positive attitude guy. Um, there's more than enough abundance thinker. Um, what, how are you personally inside the conversation that's going on in your head? Um, how are you kind of checking that or making sure that you're keeping yourself at that, at that place of that positive attitude, if you will? I'm trying to find a way of saying it, but keeping a positive attitude, I guess.

I'm not sitting around listening to the news reports all day. I don't sit there and read every— if you looked up your local television station online deal, which is the only way I really get my news, my local folks there, 7 out of 8 out of the top 10 stories or something about the virus. Yeah, this is happening. It's no different than back, you know, 2009 when the, you know, the world was coming to an end and, uh, and all your media was putting out every day, worst thing since Great Depression, we're gonna lose millions of jobs. Oh, GM laid off another 5,000 today. That's all it was. They actually started boycotting all the national news stations because that's all they did was negative crap. Well, I don't I stay educated, but I don't get overrun. I try to listen to the people that are in the know, not the reporters. If they're having a deal and they have the head of the CDC and the head of this there, and they're giving, this is what we're doing, these are updates, I'm going to listen to them. I'm not going to listen to some reporter that has taken what they said, put their twist on it, and it makes better news if I present it this way. Right. Staying away from all the smoke. I'm just trying to listen to keep myself, you know, what is the government doing? The government's saying now they recommend not this, or they recommend that, or they're putting this type travel thing on. I'm listening to the facts that are coming from as close as I can the horse's mouth. And the media, they're here to sell advertising. I don't care what it— I mean, they want to get as much hype, as much viewership, as much— online viewership and stuff as they can, readership in their New York, whatever. I mean, that's what they— sensationalism sells, and they're doing very well. And it also hurts one particular party more so than the other at this particular time. It doesn't matter if the Republicans were out of the presidency and the Democrats were, they would be showing how the Democrats weren't handling it right. So it's just political thing. And so you got to take all the politics out when you just go straight to those main sources, and that's all you need to be updated on to see what the changes are. And then the rest of it, just get that crap out of your, out of your head. And, you know, don't sit around and watch CNN on all day every day, and your news stations. I didn't listen to national news for about 3 years during the, you know, the crisis of 2008, 2009, 2010, because that's all they did was negative crap.

Yeah.

Through those years.

You know, that's, you know, that's really smart, actually. I didn't even think about that because looking at the national news, oh God. But though, but yeah, I'm, I'm gonna, I'm gonna heed that advice. I'm gonna stop looking at that stuff and look at the more local stuff and see what's actually going around here, around town. All right, so, um, the other side of this conversation was about your, um, the food drives that you do. Is that the accurate way of saying it?

Yes.

Okay, so can you tell us a little bit about what that is and then how it's done?

Okay, uh, you know, being a home improvement company, we go into a lot of homes. So between service and sales, uh, we're probably in close to 1,000 homes a week. We're a large company, so we're in a lot of homes. And so years ago, we used to do— every quarter we'd do a food drive for a few weeks. And then about 5 or 6 years ago, I said, why are we doing this just every quarter? So we started doing a 6-day-a-week food drive. And because the only hard thing about a food drive is you've got to go take your stuff and take it down to a drop-off place. Take it down to the here or there, and that's the only hard part. So we're in hundreds of homes, and anybody, any home improvement company that does sales or service calls in-home can do exactly what we do, and it's so simple. All we do is after we set that sales call or that service call is, by the way, Mrs. Jones, right now we're doing a food drive for the local food bank. Would you mind helping us and set a few things out so the technician doesn't forget forget them when he's out there, or this sales representative or whatever you call your people are out there, so they don't forget it. If you could do that, we'd really, really appreciate it. And 98% of the time they'll do it. Then you got to get your sales team or your service team to remember to collect that when they're there. It's the easiest thing in the world. We collect a box load, a box truck load of food every few weeks and have to take to the food bank. That's the only labor involved is we bring them in, we stack them, and we put them in boxes. As they turn them in, they go on pallets. As we fill up the pallets, then we put them on trucks and take them over and they unload them at the food banks every few weeks. So that's the only cost there is on there. And right now the food banks are getting smashed because of kids being out of school unexpectedly. It's not like it's summer. Now we have an unexpected time. So all those children that were on free lunches and all those things, they're in need. So please, please, please, let's help out. That is the easiest, simplest thing to do, to bring in things and helping your community while you're making a living. And it'll make— and even if it makes your appointments hold up a hair better, they sell a hair better, that's just a bonus. Don't look at it for to do that. But I don't know, it may make our appointments hold up a little better, or they may feel a little better about letting us come into their home, or they may feel a little better about purchasing our products. They really do care about the community. That's just a side effect of it. Don't— you can't do that with that's in your heart is I'm going to go out and make money on this.

Yeah.

And you're doing it for the wrong reasons. Now, I will tell you, we put this program on steroids a few years ago because food banks can do way more with money than they can with food. Because with their buying power and with the foods they get from all the large grocery chains and things that once they get a certain age, they get a lot of donations there. But with that and some money they can put together, most food banks can provide 3 to 5 meals per dollar collected. 3 to 5 meals per dollar.

Meals?

Actual meals? Wow. 3 to 5 meals per dollar with the donated and the stuff they have to put with it. 3 to 5 meals per dollar. Our local food bank we work with is one of the most efficient in the country. They're at the 5. They can do 5 meals per dollar that we raise.

I didn't know that.

A few years ago, we went down and we had our sales meetings, our service meeting, everything at our local food bank in their meeting room, and we toured their facility to get everybody on board on what we were going to do. And our marketing team, our sales team, all through payroll legal deduction. They said, I want to donate $10 of every deal that I sell. The marketing department, I want to dial, you know, $5 for every deal, you know, depending on how you pay your people, whatever. We had people that just did $5, $10 a week, and now all that comes out. And then our— me as a company, I match that money. So we're bringing in money and we're matching money. That raised probably last year about $70,000. Wow. In that, between their money that they, they gave and the money I, I matched. Now the other way we do is, is for us, we offer gift cards to come out, talk to them about their water treatment or generator or tankless, whatever, closet, whatever we're talking about. And that, depending on the marketing program, could be a $20 gift card to Home Depot, the local, you know, restaurant, to $100. Gift card, uh, depending on what type lead program we have. It's right part of our presentation. It's about telling, talking about the food bank and what we do and how we do it. At the end, we offer them, here's, you can have a gift card for Home Depot, from, you know, this restaurant, whatever, or you have the option if you would like to donate that gift card back, the owner of our company will then match that, that gift card, and, and then they give them That if it's $20, that's $40 times 5, that's 200 meals we'll provide for the local food bank if you would like to donate that back. You'd be surprised at how many people, oh, just keep the $20, that's great. And so we now have that $20, and that's people that didn't even buy. See, that's money that we get. Now, they only get part of that commission, part of that override and all that stuff, that's only when they buy a product. Well, we close about 40% of the people we see. That other 60%, we get money from them and they didn't even buy anything.

Yeah.

Now, it's a commitment we do, but last year we did 522,000 meals for our local food bank. Over half a million meals by using this program between collecting food and then collecting money, which they can really do some stuff with. Now, let me, let me tell you how you can really get a bigger bang for your buck. This gets a little more common. When I, like right now, while I was on this call, the local food bank called me. They want to do a virtual food drive right now because they're hurting. And so that means they're trying to raise money so they can turn around and turn that into food. So we've collected money this year so far. So I'm going to do a matching campaign that they're going to put out on all social media, emails, letters, everything, that Quality Home Products of Texas is gonna match the first $25,000 that is donated. So now I've taken my, my $25,000, which only half is me, because remember I'm only matching people that donate back, or my salespeople. Now I'm taking that $25,000 and giving it to them in a matching campaign. So now I'm getting $50,000 bang for my $12,500 budget.

Wow.

So I'm double-double. I double-double my gift. I'm helping them raise money for my customers and my employees, and then I turn around and help them raise money, because people love doing matching campaigns. Yeah. If I toss something out for a charity that you really like, and I have a local company, or I have an anonymous donor, whatever, that's donating $100,000, the first $100,000 is donated donated, please help double your deal. And so when we do this, when they send this out from the food bank, they say, well, normally it's 5 meals per dollar. We're getting 10 meals per dollar. So 100, that's 1,000 meals you can do for $100 because of this matching campaign. And people go crazy over it. They raise way more money. And this is something I talk to the food bank. This is way more money than they've ever raised in these type events by me doing matching money. But as mathletes, we want to do 750,000 meals this year. So we pick goals, um, you know, we always— we take all our charity goals. Everything we do in our office is tied to some type of charity, um, and so, uh, we want to increase our charities. That means we have to do more appointments, we have to do— raise more money internally so we can then do more matching so we can raise more money. And we went in— in our business grows, we make more money.

Yeah. It's a, it's a beautiful strategy. It's a beautiful thing you're doing. So let's— so, and, and by the way, too, you know what I really like about it, especially today as we're talking about this, is that it gets— it goes back to what I asked you a few minutes ago about how are you not— how are you creating a positive attitude, or how are you maintaining a positive attitude? Well, part of what you're doing, at least from my perspective is you're thinking about how you could be of service to others instead of getting stuck in what's going on in your head. How can I be of more service to somebody that's in more need than I am? Because the reality of it is there's a lot more people that need a lot more than we do. And it's, it's, it's beautiful. Now we will take, um, all of what, um, Bill just explained about how they do this I'm going to ask you a few more little details, Bill. But just for those of you that are listening, if you go to— we'll post a link wherever you find this. We'll post this as a podcast, and we'll post it on our website. We will provide you with a download link where you can get all of this information on how to actually execute this yourself. So we'll take Bill's information that he just gave us. Transcribe it and build it. And then plus he has a system in his office, and it's relatively simple. You told me it's just one page.

Oh yes, very simple, very simple. I can— yeah, we'll take that and do all the matching stuff that we do and how we do that.

First, we'll take that and look for a download link wherever you're listening to this. Look for a download link to where you can get that. So just so that I now understand this, Bill, and the listener, First off, you don't have to be in hundreds of homes or thousands of homes like Bill is to be of service and to make this work. If you're in 10 houses a week, that's 10 people that will more than likely give you something. And at the end of the month, you're going to have a whole boxes of food and potentially money. So the way I understand it, Bill, is you set the appointment. And then you say, you basically say to them, hey, when the salesperson or the service person comes out, we are doing a food drive for— and you probably mentioned the food bank, right?

Well, we say our local food bank because our local food bank, okay, all runs around, but they all pull from the same first main bank in Houston.

Okay. And it's— and basically you say we would We'd like to pick something up while we're there. Do you give them something? Is there any collateral material around this?

All we do, it's very simple verbiage. Miss Jones, one last thing. We've already set the appointment, whether it's for services. One last thing right now. And again, the wording we're using right now, right now the food banks are really struggling because of all the children out of school right now. So we're doing a food drive for our local food bank. Would you mind helping us out? And would you mind setting a few things out so our technician doesn't forget them and helps with our food drive? We really would appreciate it. Very simple. And they'll, sure. And they say, if you don't mind doing that, just in case, you know, so he doesn't forget. Set them out on the counter, set them out. If it's— we're— if we're servicing their generator, set them on top of the generator so we don't forget them while we come out there. Make them try to get them to do it while we're thinking about it. So they don't forget, because they'll forget too, and then everybody's forgotten.

Yeah, simple strategy but very powerful. And we can help a lot of people as an industry. We can help a lot of people.

If we could get 10% of the home improvement industry, or the AC guys, the exterminator guys, anybody goes into a home— if we could get 10% of those businesses in the country to do this, the food banks would have to build more warehouses. I mean, we'd alleviate hunger in You could wipe out hunger in the United States. It's getting 10%. It would be a massive, massive number. I wanted to add one last thing, that I'm not an accountant, but you consult your own accountant. But this is what— when we give this money and matching money, and they put my company name over all these emails and on their website and on these letters and all this stuff that we're matching this money, it is no longer a charitable contribution, because in my tax bracket, I get zero write-off for for a charitable contribution. When I have my name plastered all over this, that we're using matching money, please donate, now it's an advertisement. It's a 100% write-off. So instead of spending $1.40, if I give a charitable dollar in my tax bracket, it costs me $1.40 to do that, 'cause I have to pay 40 cents on that dollar to give it away. If I write it off as an advertisement, it costs me 60 cents to give that dollar away because I can write that legitimately right off that advertising dollar.

Nice point.

All I'm doing, I'm not shorting anything, I'm not cheating the system. All I'm doing is I'm taking my tax dollars and I want to give it to the food bank. I don't want to give it to the government, let them work, you know, where are they going to get, where they're going to spend it. All I'm doing is directing my charitable dollars where I want them to go.

Beautiful, beautiful.

But consult your own accountant before you do that. But yeah, I've been told that's the only way to go.

I love it. Well, Bill, um, as always, I'm inspired and fired up after talking with you. And thank you so much. I just— from me, I really appreciate you doing this. Just for me to have this conversation with you, I feel a lot better. And hopefully everybody that's listening to this also feels better and a little uplifted. Thank you. I appreciate it.

If I can do it, you can do it. And I try to every time I get to talk. I got all these ideas and the things to do this and inspiration from a little paperback book written by Jake McCloskey, the founder of TOMS Shoes. It's called Start Something That Matters.

Tell me about that.

Yeah, you can listen to it for a couple hours on airplane. It's very Very simple. Tie your business to charities, whether it's the food bank, whether it's whatever you want to do, and say, for every sale, I'm going to do this, and then hold yourself accountable. Think about— make employees— your employees want to be part of something bigger. That's millennials. They want to be part of something bigger than just a job. That you tie everything— every job, every sale I make is tied to multiple charities, not just food bank, but multiple charities, and every employee knows it. Wow. We, we have a monthly report. We have newsletters that we send out to our customers that say— in fact, you'll be doing these newsletters now. We're taking up— you're going to be handling this part. Well, we talk about this is what we did charity-wise last month. Thank you for your help because we couldn't do it without our customers.

That's beautiful. Love it. Love it. Thank you, Bill. You're the best.

I appreciate you.