Here's Your Sign with Laura Nelson

Hey, everybody, it's Jim Johnson here, your host with Contractor Radio with another stupendous, awesome, amazing episode. And today I've got one of my favorite people in Cannot wait to get her on and talk about customer experience areas. It's kind of one of those hot button topics. And we like to do this little tip of the week type thing, two minute drill each week. And if you haven't focused on customer experience, it's the thing that sets you apart from everybody else out there. It's the thing that the customer goes, wow. You may have heard the term of a raving fan before. It's almost like you do more than what's expected. This whole idea of promising silver and delivering gold, doing just that little bit touch more that somebody goes, wow, those guys are really amazing. And so what are some of the areas that you can do that you can obviously do it in your sales process by following up and doing the things that most contractors don't do, but you can do it in other areas of your business, administratively keeping communications with some support staff. You can do it in production by doing a little extra, you know, cleaning up really well, maybe even removing potted plants out of the way and putting them back. And in the end, you know, finishing with what we call a flourish and kind of wave the magic wand and pow. There's this cool thing that happens at the end. And what is that cool thing? That cool thing could be something that you've identified by working with that customer throughout the time that you've worked with them. So really listen, you salespeople, especially you customer service folks, really listen to the customer. When you hear something unique or you see something different about them, take a note on that. You notice a bunch of pictures of a guy that likes to hunt. Maybe he gets a subscription to a hunting magazine. Maybe you notice that they really enjoy their coffee. Maybe you get them a coffee of the month club membership. You see the thing that's important to them, you recognize it. And it doesn't have to be expensive, it just has to be impactful. I've given out baseball tickets, I've given out movie tickets. And our customers do the same thing to really just say, hey, thank you for being such a great customer. Thank you for the opportunity to work with you. And I recognize you because that's what most everybody's looking for, is a little recognition. So we'll take just a moment now for one of our amazing sponsors. We're going to get a word from them. That's what makes Contractor Radio possible. What A cool thing about our sponsors is is they're all vetted. We know them, we know that you can trust them to deliver on their promises. So hold on for just one second for a word from our sponsor.

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That was great. So happy to have the sponsors that we have. We are going to be talking to our guest now and this young lady is. She is amazing. Not only is she awesome at her job, she's an amazing artist. She is a leader in her business and she has continued to get promoted throughout time because of those leadership skills. I'm so excited today to bring on the marketing and customer experience guru, Laura Nelson.

Hey, thanks for having me.

No problem at all. Great to have you. As everybody can see that's watching the video. Those of you that are listening in on the podcast, Laura is with Signpost, which happens to be one of our sponsors that we are so thankful for. And this is one of our sponsor highlights. So we're going to talk a little bit about what Signpost does and this concept of customer experience. But before we do that, bring us up to speed. How did Laura Nelson get into what she's doing and end up at Signpost?

Sure. I don't know how far back you want me to go, but the reason I really relate to this contractor market is because my parents had a publishing business growing up and our main Customers. Our main advertisers in this publication were home service providers and contractors. So I have really seen throughout time how they've leveraged different tools to reach their target audience, the stories that they tell. And I really have come full circle from working my family business to this point in my career and at a technology company to leverage all of that knowledge and expertise. It's exciting to see what's happened in the market over the years. So a long winded way of saying this is an audience that is near and dear to my heart and one where I've worked in different capacities. A little bit about my background. I currently work at Signpost. I've worked at a couple technology companies before this in a very similar space. So I'm familiar with how these tools and technologies have evolved over time. I went to school for business at University of Michigan. So for any fans out there, go blue. And excited to have known you, Jim, for a few years now. And of course, excited to be here, too.

I don't know, I think I might have to kick you off. I did not realize that you were a Wolverine fan. So as a Badger fan, we are not allowed to like you. I checked. So, end of. End of interview. No, just kidding. No. I love the Big Ten. I love the rivalries of it. It's just. It's pretty awesome to. To be a part of that. So now I'm gonna. I'm gonna poke fun at you whenever I get the opportunity.

So that is quite all right.

I have a feeling you'll do the same to me. So what's your role there? What role do you play at Signpost?

So at Signpost, I had the marketing team. I joined the company just over a year ago. The team was in a bit of a turnaround, really. They didn't have strong leadership or any leadership with experience in this domain at all. And I saw this real opportunity to come in and create the team that I wanted with the skills and talent that I thought we needed to take the company in a new direction.

So I've been very fortunate to know you now for several years. I mean, what is it, four or five? Now that we've gotten to know each other?

Yeah, I think once since we joined the Catalyst Group.

Yeah. And that's. This is its fifth year, amazingly enough. I can't believe that thing's still around. I'm kidding. Of course it's still around. Great vendors in it. So this software that you do, I think a lot of people would term it as reputation management. That's kind of Term that's been around in the industry for several years. But it's more than that talk for a little bit, and it's really about creating this customer experience. Can you explain what you mean by customer experience and how that may have related to how I kind of open the show?

Sure. I think you teed that up so well in talking about what this idea of customer experience means. Right. Because I think if you just threw out the term and asked a dozen contractors, you might get a dozen answers. Right. It means something different to everyone. But overall, it's critical to think about this holistically, as a business and determine where you're going to make investments and make an impact, as you said, at different stages of that journey, that homeowner's journey with your business.

Customer experience to me has always been, it was actually pretty easy for me to understand. Customer doesn't say, holy crap, that was amazing. You haven't had a customer experience. All you did was satisfy somebody. Which satisfaction equals mediocrity. Or. Or what I like to call a C. If you're looking at grade point average and we wanna make an A plus, we want this. Like, we want them to be so wowed by the way we do things that they cannot resist telling everybody else. Like they, without any kind of prompting, they hop on Facebook and go, you won't believe what my contractor just did. Right. Like, that's what we want. So how does signpost facilitate stuff like that?

Sure. So we are one of probably several tools or processes that any contractor is going to incorporate in delivering this exceptional experience. What signpost does is help to facilitate the communication end of an exceptional customer experience. So we have tools from what we'll call the front end. So capturing leads. Or even before that, you mentioned reputation management. That's the domain that the company's been playing in for many years now. And you see a lot of companies playing in this space. Like, how do we make it easy to generate online reviews and get that great word of mouth about your business and about the job well done online? We certainly help with that, but we've seen over time that that's not enough. Right. You need tools to capture that lead. You need tools to enable your team to respond quickly, and you need tools to drive communication throughout the job. And, of course, loyalty or the opportunity to do business again after a job is complete. Right. That's the goal. Much easier to sell a prior customer than it is to pick up a new one.

A lot easier to get a referral from a prior customer, too. They have A great experience, and you send out a little reminder that says, hey, you know, we're giving out Amazon gift cards this month for any referrals you send to us. Boom. Guess what? I got referrals going. Yeah, if we have customer experience.

So why customer experience now? You know, it really is an evolution of that reputation management. Right. That market has evolved, the tools have evolved, and we are all consumers, right. We have become accustomed to the Amazon experience, to Uber, to having things immediate to communication being like, immediate and transparent. We're demanding that of home service providers, too. Right. I, as a consumer, I'll make a decision on a provider based on how easy it is to book an inspection, get that scheduled, communicate with the team if there's friction there, if I've got to pick up the phone call, if they're not calling me back, if there's any opportunity to drop off, I'm going to go to the other guy or gal on the list who's making it easy and meeting me where I am and how I want to communicate as well.

I got a great example. I want to buy a shed I'm looking for to put beside my house and hopped on Home Depot. And they didn't have them in the store, but I said I could get it shipped, right? But Delivery was like February 18th or 19th. I said, I wonder if they have this same thing on Amazon. So sure enough, they had the exact same thing. It'll be here February 6th for the same price, which was high. Right. My experience was better. And I think that's a challenge for all companies. It seems like right now is how do we make our customers as happy as clams as fast as possible because they're busy, they're stressed, things going on in their world. So with the. A lot of things I mentioned were fairly manual, right. Like I'm handing them something, giving them something, making a call with it, putting a potted plant back where it goes and that kind of stuff. But with what you guys do, you can automate some of those. How could we automate some of those things? Because that's a big thing for us, Automation.

Right? Right. So one example is through our web chat tool. And if you go to signpost.com you can see exactly how it works because we use our own tool for our own website, so we can, you know, show contractors how this works. But this is a perfect example of, you know, how you can get information and get bookings scheduled without requiring a human. Right. I hear contractors say all the time, well, like, you know, I do everything over the phone. Wow. That's only because you're only. That's the only option you're giving the homeowner.

Right?

You would have more conversations if you were enabling Facebook messenger, if you were installing chat, if you enable people to book after hours, right? If you put a text number up there and gave them some simple options to get in touch with you. This is all about opening more doors, letting the technology facilitate the conversation, and getting them kind of farther down the line of, you know, booking the inspection, requesting a proposal, and ultimately, like, booking the job. That's the goal, right?

Yeah. So I have a question. What do. What way do people like to communicate best? Do you guys know that?

Well, it's becoming more and more automated, right? Like, think about how many texts you send every day versus phone calls that you have. Right?

I kind of knew the answer. Like, seriously, I'm like, please, text me. Text me a question, text me whatever it is you need. I'll get right back to you. Because here's what I know. If I have a phone call, it's not going to be that, can I get two minutes for a phone call type thing. It's going to be 30 minutes exactly where a text is like that, I'm done and on to the next thing. It's not that I don't like you or I don't want to, you know, engage with you, but I got things.

To do and think about that. Like, you know, the majority of texts get read too.

Oh, yeah, I would bet more than 90% of text. I bet you it's 95, 96, something like that. Emails was like 2%.

Exactly. It's easy to ignore emails. I've got dozens that are sitting there. Not that I don't want to get back to people eventually, but because it creates this, like, longer task. Right.

You know, others people that have all the notifications on their phone. Are you like, you have like 700 emails that haven't been seen yet? Are you one of those?

I try to keep it tidier than that, but it's not zero, gotta tell you. And I know that's the same for most people, right?

Not me. I cannot have one of those red dots on there in any way, shape or fashion on anything. It drives me completely insane. That's why I don't even have notifications on my phone. I completely turn them all off because I set times now to go and check email or check my text and that kind of stuff. And I think more and more people are doing that as we're inundated by this idea of communication.

Yeah.

Like I said, we're all about automation. Somebody comes in, they do something with my chat tool. And then your chat tool does what?

The chat tool can do a number of things depending on how you set it up. Right. You can answer basic questions. Right. About like the materials that you offer, do you metal roofs, you know, what kind of shingles do you install, etc. Like show some of your work photos, videos and highlight other properties you've worked on in the community. You can plug in your booking link too. And that's really handy. Of course, I mentioned after hours, I mentioned getting people actually booked as opposed to waiting to human to kind of do the back and forth over email or call, etc. So those are just a couple really easy ways where people are asking kind of the buying or discovery questions. Right. And moving down the line of that sales funnel.

Yeah, those discovery questions are really important. We, you know, we have a chat tool on ours as well, automation stuff that goes with it and getting those discovery questions kind of figured out and then what to put them. Do you guys help with any of that with these guys to kind of give them a little bit of a start?

Yeah. They actually comes with a knowledge base for the industry. So you can take that portion, customize it, you plug and play with that immediately or you know, evaluate what's there. Everyone offers, you know, bundle of products and services that's slightly different. Right. And maybe do other exterior work as well. You want to plug in that information. Great. That knowledge base is a starting point. And you know, we encourage and work with contractors to customize that to, you know, what makes sense for their market, what makes sense for their business, how do they prefer to work with people, you know, all of that is highly customizable and easy to update.

Yeah. So you got like a quick start deal like, hey, you're up and running and then, hey, let's work on customizing this to fit your business and what you do specifically.

Exactly.

And I'm sure there's somebody that helps them out with that stuff as they get on.

Yeah, yeah. So although we're a software, we know that, you know, we've got to configure this to work for businesses. It's got to be used, otherwise this is not valuable. Right. We've got to get a return on investment on this tool. This is the same for any CRM job, Nimbus, Accu, Links, whatever. If you're not using it, it's not worth it and you know, you're not going to get the full value out of everything that it delivers. So this really is a combination of the tools, technology and also the humans and expertise that we have on our team to ensure that it fits with the sales process, production, with the ongoing after marketing or the remarketing that happens over time after the job is complete.

That led me to two questions. The first question is people have CRMs, right? And most of these CRMs have some kind of client portal. He knows anything about me. I help to get the whole ACCU Links thing off the ground. And I could see a contractor saying, hey, I got this way to communicate already with my client. They can log in, see what's happening, they can send an email to us, we can send an email to them, a message maybe, but. And so I would imagine that might be a hurdle whenever you talk with these contractors. What's different? How does Signpost like better than that?

Yeah, I think they're kind of in a couple different camps there. What we're seeing is I've got some of this functionality in my CRM and then it might be like a half step. It does some of the things I need, not all of them. And so like maybe I'll just do a couple tasks with what I've got, then they patch together another set of tools to facilitate some of the other aspects. Right. So, you know, they might use a different chat solution, they might use like a different kind of text platform or review gen platform. And then, oh, I've also got to append, you know, an email marketing platform to that as well. So you're looking at a, you know, a handful of softwares rather than your CRM in conjunction with Signpost. Right.

You're combining, right. You're combining all the different things. I can't wait to talk about. Those are going to be fun into one thing.

Correct. They may not be integrated either. Right. Like you want as close to a native integration as possible so that your contacts are synced across the system so that you know who is a prospect, who is someone you've done business with and how to send the appropriate messages to them at the right time too.

Yeah, appropriate message at the right time. We struggle with that here. We understand automation, we understand marketing campaigns and stuff like that, but segmenting out our list and getting them to the right people, sometimes we struggle a little bit with that.

That's everyone's challenge. Right. The data business is really messy. That's a struggle for us is we've got hundreds of thousands of contact in our database. Right. And we do the best we can to segment them across. You know, we have a good idea of who our customers are, but, you know, people otherwise are in a different kind of phase of the, the buying process. And it's an ongoing challenge. But even contractors struggle with this too. Right? You could buy a list of homeowners, like in your target market and know that at least a third of that data is going to be wrong and people are moving all the time. Contact information changes. You have a sense of who the homeowner might be, but that, that can change all the time. And, you know, that's the task. Like, how do you keep a clean and good list of who you're trying to sell to at all times? It's highly imperfect.

Yeah, it's, it's not easy. I literally have three people that are involved with that whole process of it's clean, ensuring that it goes to the right people, building the camp. Like, I had to hire people because it just got beyond more than we could manage as a, as a small team. So one of the other things, like the CRM thing, a lot of those tend to be fairly manual. Like, I gotta go in and write the email. It goes to the homeowner. Email, homeowner sends email back. And I do get a notification for that. But they're not like, okay, we hit this step, send that email, okay? And because they got that email, they get this email and this email and this email and this email right down the line. I would see that being like worth it in and of itself. Because that's manpower. Every moment of manpower costs money. And if I can automate those things. How much automation do you guys do?

Right? Yeah, I think that's an excellent point because overall, whatever business you are, software, you're in consulting, contractors, providing a service, right? You want to ensure that you are getting them. People are the most expensive investment that you make. You want to make sure that they're performing the highest value tasks that they possibly can and that technology is facilitating some of what we'll call the manual or lower level tasks. Right. And so what's really awesome about our platform is like, we help contractors classify, you know, who their customers are, who, where the others are in the buying journey, and help them send in an automated way, the right message at the right time. Right. In addition to that, we help pair them up with the content too. There are offer messages that you can send related to an inspection or maybe you've got a promo on spring cleaning or fall cleanup, whatever the case may be. However, we also publish Content every month and push that out very specifically by industry. So, for example, for roofers, there might be a piece one month about tidying up your house, specifically your roof for sale, enhancing the curb appeal. We know that content. It's a real struggle at the local level. Contractors struggle with coming up with what to write about, leveraging content as a way to stay top of mind rather than just constantly sending out promotions. And that's where our platform can really help with the heavy lifting. Much easier to go in and read the content, react to it, modify a couple things, and set up that campaign to go out rather than start from scratch.

Yeah. You just said you create content for contractors and I just like, made the hair stand up on the back of my neck out of excitement because it's. Last I checked, most contractors aren't good copywriters. Probably not the greatest of taking video. Don't understand headlines and things like that the way a marketer would. But it sounds like you could take this piece of content that you guys have wrapped up in, in this nice, neat little package and still put the flavor, because that's important. One thing about marketing that I would like to tell every contractor out there, quit wasting your money on these people that are going to say, hey, I'll get you 30 leads this month. Because they're going to do something that gets you 30 leads. But it's not going to be you. It's not going to be your Persona, your brand, your business. And when that's over, it's gone.

Yeah.

There is no more of it. And it doesn't last forever. Whatever they did to get those 30 this month will be 20 next month and 10 the next month and buy the next month. Because it's constantly changing all the time. Or if you build who you are through customer experience, brand story and all those types of things, your leads become a lot more consistent. One of the things that kind of tripped my trigger about what you guys do, too. This is a question I maybe should have asked you before, so hopefully I don't throw you off guard. But I got a list. I got a list of all these people I have. I got them all segmented out and who they are. Can I start there with you? Can I literally like, hey, I want to start this campaign now? And that starts driving people to my website to start doing the chat. And now this whole circle of traffic starts happening where most of them, they have the chat tool, they have the reputation management, stuff like that, but they're not doing anything to drive traffic to my website. I'M doing all that with whatever marketing I'm doing.

Yeah.

Does it work that way?

Yeah. Most of the businesses we work with, they're not, they're not brand new businesses. Right. So they have an objective in that in mind with respect to like, hey, I've got this list, right. And we do an assessment of, you know, have you, have you been following up with all homeowners to get those reviews online? Like, first and foremost, like, we've got to do that to drive new traffic to your site to ensure that you're showing up in a local search. And you're among those choices that a homeowner is going to consider when they have a need. But also, like, I think that, you know, I mentioned before, like, there is this long tail, there is this longer relationship that contractors want to build with homeowners and yet they don't invest in this part of the process. It's much easier to sell a customer you've worked with before than one that is brand new. Right.

Words of wisdom right there. And it's so funny, we always chase that new customer, but the one I've already talked to, even if they haven't bought from me yet, they know you. At least they know who you are, you've established a relationship. Hopefully they know you and like you. And you're trying to get them to trust you. And if you don't follow up with them, you don't do what you say you're gonna do, they tend to go by the wayside. But if you did, we found it takes about five contacts for somebody to actually truly engage with you. Five genuine contacts. Not just like, hey, I got an email, but five genuine contacts before they actually say, yeah, let's talk about buying. Right. Everybody talks about this one call close thing, which it does happen, but the reality is in most cases it's, hey, come back for whatever reason. That's pipeline management. And it sounds like signpost does a pretty decent job of that.

Well, we, we provide the tools that help with that. Right. And you know, it's really, it's up to the contractor to determine, you know, how, how they want to use it. Right. Everyone's process is slightly different. You know, we help with the automation, the review generation, you know, connecting the tools on the front of the process too. But it is a mix of yes, like it's gotta be a core value of the company too that, you know, we're gonna incorporate, you know, the human follow up along with the tools to get at least those five impressions. Right, right. They've got to keep driving that home each and every time because like yeah, no one's going to remember that name of the contractor after the first time unless something, you know, truly remarkable was relayed. And I do hope that is the case when an exceptional experience is provided. Right.

Yeah. Be rememberable. Right? Yeah, that's.

Yeah. I mean think about like have you ever talked with someone who has bought a car on Carvana?

I have not, but I've seen it. It was like this thing that went okay, they're buying cars online now. That means that somebody's willing to spend 30, 40, $50,000 and more on something that they haven't even driven yet or tested yet. They're going to start buying roofs online.

Yeah. So think about that. So what Carvana is for those people who don't know, it's just an easier way to buy a pre owned car. And you know, this market of course has been around for a long time but the experience has been the same. Right. You go to a lot, you might test drive it, you might take it to a shop, make sure it's in good working order and you know, work out the transaction. And of course like listings have gone online and you can first find out about the car online. But there's usually some in person experience we've seen with ebay, motors and other platforms like this has gone virtual over time. People are now more likely to buy or likelier to buy sites unseen than they were in the past. But with Carvana like they, they've really taken the customer experience up a few notches and made it seamless like through from the technology experience on their platform all the way to the delivery. And oh by the way, if you don't like the car, they make it super easy to exchange or return within a matter of time as well. That actually happened with one of my colleagues. He accidentally bought either a front or rear wheel drive car which we can't really have in Colorado. You need all wheel drive. He said they made it seamless, no problem. This is great. They brought it right to his place.

Wow.

Not just a Covid thing, this is something that's going to endure. Post Pandemic we've figured out ways to deliver an awesome experience with low touch but high quality. And now customers, consumers are becoming used to that and demanding that and that is spreading out to the local services economy as well.

Well, no sales guy wants to hear this but the truth of the matter is that homeowner doesn't want you in their house. I'm a homeowner I don't want to go meet my fencing guy and go through all the fencing stuff, have him come sit down at my table and go through his whole pitch deck and, you know, the same dog and pony show that we've always gone through. Why don't you just give me the details? All right. Like, I'll give you the measurements. I'm going to lay it out even on Google Earth. You give me what the different kinds are and how much they are per foot and we'll come to an agreement. Like, I'm. I think more and more people are moving towards that and that's going to be that customer experience.

Yep.

On the communication side of things, communication is super important nowadays, especially with the whole Covid thing and all that good stuff. How do you help contractors there?

We have a full. I mentioned chat, so I think that's super important. People are looking for that opportunity to visit a website. You see it on bigger companies and now they're demanding it of more local companies. Takes out the friction of picking up the phone, waiting for an answer or leaving a voicemail, etc. I think that one is huge. However, we talked about text too. Like there's more immediacy. They're easier to read, respond to, digest. You'll get on both sides from the homeowner and the. The business owner, manager or salesperson throughout the process. You know, it can really speed up the process. And. And so that is another service we provide too, that it's just becoming part of that communications mix. Email is a classic one. A lot of people do still prefer to receive maybe a receipt or something like that via email. It's easy to track down later. Of course, we have that email platform for review generation. Also for that loyalty marketing that I talked about as well. Kind of difficult to read a newsletter on text so that, you know, that format tends to perform better over email.

So I had the question. It was right there. And then you hit me with the email thing. What were you talking about right before that?

Text, chat, communication, phone calls.

Oh boy, what a bad interviewer. Right? I'm terrible. So this, this idea of get. Oh, I know what it was. This idea of getting reviews. We want more reviews. First question, how do you help people get more reviews? And then once you do, is there any way to control those? We might get a bad one here and there. Right. Like, we don't necessarily want that all over Google. How do you guys handle those type of things?

Yeah, so this is where automation is super important too. And our integration to the CRM or to something like QuickBooks is helpful. We think you should follow up with each and every homeowner and get feedback. Right. This is just part of tying off a job and ensuring an awesome experience for the homeowner. So a couple different ways you can do that. You can just send out a review request. A lot of people are using Gmail, which is great because Google reviews are the most valuable that you can get. However, we facilitate Facebook, we facilitate Yelp, BBB, you name it, HomeAdvisor, wherever you want those reviews. We recommend selecting some that really matter in your community and making sure you look great across all of those pages. The automation is critical in the CRM. The request goes out, boom, you have your review. This can also go out via text from our mobile app, too. So a couple different ways to play there. Another mechanism that you have. You mentioned negative reviews, and I know a lot of contractors are concerned about that and rightfully so. Right. That negative review stinks. Especially if it's, you know, a situation where there's a miscommunication or misunderstanding that can easily be cleared up. It feels a lot more permanent once it's gone online. So we have another mechanism simply called feedback. You can suss out the homeowner. If you're not sure, you can ask them for feedback first. Right. This is kind of just a simple survey tool. Where do they stand on a scale of 1 to 5 stars? And instead of going straight online, you know, this feedback comes straight back to you guys and you can determine what to do next. Great. Are they happy you send them a review request from there, or is there a lingering issue you need to fix? You've got that opportunity before it goes online and before your business goes on blast. The only downfall of that or drawback of that, that approach, if you're asking everyone for feedback, is that people may get review fatigue. They may feel like they've already given you feedback or given you that review the first time, so they're less likely to convert the second time. So we really encourage contractors to text that review or, sorry, text that review request, or just simply ask for the review outright.

Yeah, we actually approach that pretty. I think strategically we set that expectation from day one, decide they're going to be our customer. I set that expectation that, hey, Mr. Jones, if I do everything well and exactly as I said it was going to be done, you're going to give me a great review. Right. And they say, yes, I will. That allows you then this opportunity to send that text whenever things do go right. And then the other thing is that we follow that statement up with, if for some reason things don't go right or you feel they haven't gone right, will you make me one promise you'll call me first and let me make it right before you go and blast us all over the place and just be honest about it? And most people say, yeah, absolutely, I would prefer that to be honest with you. I'd rather just get it resolved. I've dealt with this myself with various providers and whoever I'm dealing with, with purchasing something that, hey, I want to get this resolved. Help me get this resolved. They don't, they don't, they don't. And then it goes with, all right, if you don't resolve this today, we're going to social media and we're going to resolve it there. And amazingly, things get resolved. It's really weird, but I'd rather have that opportunity, at least give me that much to give me that opportunity. And so is there a way that you could automate something like that as, like a message that, hey, somebody became a new customer? Here's the expectations. If we do a great job of give us a review. If something goes awry, hey, give me a call first. Here's the number.

Yeah, actually that's a campaign they could set up as soon as contact enters the database. And actually, I really love that idea of, here are our expectations on our side and here's how we want to earn your 5 star feedback. Right? And please, please stay in communication if your expectations are not being met. I love that idea because that verbal cue is so important at the beginning and then throughout the job. And by the way, we're wrapping up the job. We've completed the final inspection and, you know, we're going to send you a link for a review. This means the world to us. We'd love it if you took a couple minutes to let us know how we did.

Yeah, we actually coach contractors, to be honest. It's like this, hey, we're going to do construction on your house. It's going to be met. There's going to be shingles everywhere and be nails in the yard. You're going to think it's an awful, awful mess. Bear with us, we're going to clean it up. I promise it'll all be just fine. Before you go out and savage them, let us do our job. And so we set those expectations right, that as a matter of fact, like, one of the expectations we try to say is just don't be here, you're going to Enjoy life a lot more. If you're not here when things are like this before, you leave and then you leave and you come back and they're all like, way better. That's great. But if you watch the whole process, nobody wants to see how something is made, so let's not do that. And it just gets so much easier. And it sounds like with Signpost I could automate a lot of those things because I get tired of saying it. I don't remember to do it sometimes. And it seems like it would help with getting better reviews.

Yeah, I think I mentioned earlier, the more you can automate these simple tasks and take the human error out of them, the more likely they're to get done and then the more effectively you can use your people elsewhere.

Yeah, I always find it interesting, you know, we're not getting enough reviews. Okay, so what have you done? I've told my salespeople, I even like gave them a link and said, hey, what you do and how you do it, and we're still not getting reviews. I said, it's because it's manual. The guy's got to remember, the guy's got to ask for one more thing. He's got to put one more thing in his process. If you can automate that thing through either somebody at the office that it's just their responsibility or something really cool like signposts, you know, I wrap. Think about it. I guarantee your views go up like crazy. Everybody that we've implemented it with has had a significant increase in reviews and just the overall like higher star rating because. Good. What's the best example that you've seen of somebody implementing Signpost and reaping the ROI that you're hoping they'll get?

I think the best examples, really, I mean, there are many. Right. I think the best examples are that people are really using the full feature set. And I know every business is different and they may use, you know, a different tool for one, one piece, but the product works best when people are really maximizing like the end to end possibilities, the end to end features with chat, feeding into creating new leads, starting the conversations, kicking off those initial intro campaigns and letting the integrations do the follow up and taking advantage of the content for the long tail loyalty piece. Those are our most successful businesses. Right. Because you know, our product is only a couple hundred bucks a month. Right. So you know, if you're using that full set of tools, you're more than maximizing the value for your investment in this solution.

Most contractors pay that amount just for One referral that becomes a job. Yeah, like if you can get one referral, one job out of this, you're already paying that off to somebody anyway.

Exactly.

It's mind boggling to me that more people don't see the value in this. And then the other, like, I've done the whole software thing before, I know some of the struggles you're dealing with. And one of the struggles you deal with when you're dealing with owners is we tend to not want to do that. That's not our skill set. We don't want to set up something and build campaigns. We're like, great idea, we want a lot of reviews, we want this great customer experience. You should delegate that. And the way we usually suggest is find a champion that's going to be the champion of your customer experience tool. If you don't already have a customer service person, one of the best ways to start working towards that is to find somebody in your business that just digs technology and thinks it's cool and say, hey, would you like to own this thing? Let's see how well you can do it. Let's see how great of a job you can do it. And then that's the person that actually talks to signpost, gets all this stuff set up and goes, hey, check out what I did. Gets the big high fives. And if you're getting the results, maybe that person starts to step into this role of customer service and then they're just monitoring it, they're on top of it all the time. Really driving your business. Do you guys have better experience when you have like a champion that's in charge of it versus Absolutely.

I'm glad that you brought that up because you know this is not successful if it doesn't have an owner. Right. Sometimes it's the business owner, him or herself, sometimes it is someone in that role where they're, you know, customer service focus. Right.

These business owners.

But you know, if, if it's like, oh, we're going to all adopt this and I'll, you know, play a part in it, it kind of falls apart pretty quickly. Right. Someone has to be the point person. Someone has to know exactly what's going on with the campaigns and with the timing, with the automations, integrations, etc. Otherwise it's, it's going to be a half hearted effort and it's not hard.

You know, I've seen this software. We have something similar to it, we're just in a different business. If I use signposts, I absolutely would because I Think it's amazing. I think I've asked you about that before. You're like, and doesn't really work for you the way it does for, you know, type store. But when we. We give somebody ownership over it, we're like, hey, this isn't my skill set. You like this stuff, have some ownership over it, put some due dates to it, and lay out a little bit of a plan. It's literally like no time. Because this isn't complicated. This isn't right doing the work. And as that owner, if you're that owner that you like the idea of marketing, you don't like the execution of marketing, that would be me. You have your input into what it is that you would like to see. Like, hey, I'd like to see us do a campaign for a gutter cleaning, whatever it may be. You leave that up to the owner of that thing to kind of run with it. Go focus your time on the other things that strategically move your business forward. That's why I'm a big believer in automation, delegation, and elimination. Eliminate the crap that you don't need that's distracting you. Like, if I was trying to run the whole signpost thing, it would be a big distraction, taking me away from the strategic stuff that I'm on with our business. If I was trying to do it myself, it would take me forever to figure it out and get it done, because I'm not savvy that way, the way I should be. And so I would delegate that to somebody that has, you know, better ability. I just think it's. I think we lose sight of that sometimes as owners, that all these new ideas and these new things that come out, we all want to do them. Like, they seem cool and it seems interesting. But does it fit our skill set or not? Hey, I'll be honest. There was. When we were trying to get a piece of our software up and running, we didn't have anybody that had the skill set. I went out and found somebody that was like, people by the hour. You know, the contractor brought them in and said, set this thing up for me, because we don't know how to do it and make it work. And that person is now a part of our business. I went out and found them. They're a champion now. They're part of our business, which is amazing and propelling our business forward. Somebody I would have never thought would have been a part of our business before.

Hmm. Well, that's good to hear.

Yeah. So I would imagine that there probably is some experts out there. You know, obviously they work for you but there's experts in marketing, automation, content creation, those type of things. Those folks on platforms like People by the Hour Fiverr is another one that works really well.

Upwork, you name it. I think you know, especially now where people are becoming more accustomed to working remotely. You know, you don't have to have someone in the office all the time or you don't have to have them full time, right? You could find someone to contract with who's going to give you 10 hours a week working on these types of projects for you.

A few of those people.

You know, from an investment perspective like you're saving on benefits, overhead, it's etc for this type of person, you know, maybe you would have been paying them W2 before and you know, this becomes a lot cleaner arrangement and you know you can place your bets elsewhere or you could make investments elsewhere, right? Because like always with marketing and other tools and technologies like you have a mix, right? You're making different, you're placing different bets, you're constantly shifting your money around. By no means do I suggest that someone buys signposts and it's the only thing that they're doing for marketing. It's just one piece of this overall mix. You might be door knocking, you might be doing Google Ads. You know, you're doing a lot of things to get your brand out there and this is just one of the tools that's going to help you build that presence and generate more word of mouth.

All right? I think everybody now sees the value of automation, customer experience and that signpost is your answer for that. One thing I do know about Laura is she follows through and so does her team. So if you're looking for people that can help you with your marketing, your reputation management, those type of things that you can trust actually follow through because we have a problem with nefarious characters in our industry. I will personally vouch for Laura and her team over there. They will take care of you. We're going to pause for just a second for a word from our sponsor, but we're going to come back with Laura. I got three big questions for her and we'll close out the show.

Want more 5 star reviews from your customers? At Signpost, we make it easy for your customers to give you great reviews on Google, Facebook, Yelp and more. Our software connects with industry specific solutions driving even more reviews from your customers. Drive loyalty and repeat business by sending the right messages at the right times to your prospects and customers. Message your contacts from anywhere, anytime, using text, photos, and video all in one app. Check on progress with campaigns and review generation across Google, Facebook and Yelp. Visit signpost.com and get your demo today.

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All right, we are back everybody. Thanks to our sponsors for all their support. We love them and we know those commercials get in the way, but they're not really in the way. They're super valuable to you. You should listen to them. They're important. They can change your business and transform what you do. So Laura, we've talked a lot about assigned post, customer experience, what it can do for your business. We want to talk a little bit about you now. And so there's three questions I like to ask each person. Normally I ask them throughout, but I wanted that first part to really be kind of focused on what it is that you guys do over there. So I'm going to ask them to you in order. Okay? With that.

Okay, let's go.

You know, the first one. What's your. What's your greatest achievement? It can be personal or business, but not family.

Okay.

Get married, have kids, whatever that is. None of that. None of that. So we all know if we don't say that, we'll get in trouble. Otherwise. What's your greatest achievement?

I think, you know, if I exclude some family stuff and, you know, set the professional aside, there. There are things that I'm proud of and I'm happy to talk about, but I thought for this one, I would talk about my artwork and actually my ability to get back into art with the pandemic and much lighter travel schedule. I have a couple examples behind me. This one on the color one on this side is something that I finished in 2020, and, you know, it took me a long time. It's a pen drawing on surface called Clayboard and is a little abstract, but a picture of a petrified tree. And it was recently published in Artists magazine as part of their best of the best 2020 works. So I'm very proud of that. The other piece, over this shoulder, is something I did in high school. You can believe that when I was 15. And I like showing these side by side is just an evolution. Clearly, there are some similarities in how I've worked over the years, but, you know, they're nice reminders to have around the house.

So I've been fortunate enough to see your artwork before, and we've shared about that. I was hoping that's what you were going to say, because I truthfully do believe it is a massive achievement. I don't know if you quite grasp maybe the level of talent that you have. That's not easy. I know this because I have a little bit of art in my background as well. We've talked before, and the one that is the one in high school, that's amazing. High school, like this ridiculous. Great achievement. That might be my favorite one I've ever had. Because it's not the business thing. Our achievement being related to business, I don't know, for whatever reason, just doesn't sit right for me anymore. It's great to do good things in business and have a successful business, but if that's all that you're aspiring to, what does that say? Right. Super proud. That's awesome. Question number two. What's the best advice that you've ever gotten from a mentor or somebody that you look at as a coach or leader?

Oh, the best advice. Wow. That's a great question. My mom used to Always say if you and still does. She says if you. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Just chances are you are at first not going to succeed. So it sets the expectation that, you know, success is a journey and, you know, failure is okay. And I've experienced many failures, so it is something that I keep in mind when I set out to do something. Whether it's create artwork or new objective in business, chances are it might not go right the first time, and that's perfectly okay.

Welcome to the club on a failure. I've got plenty of those in my background, too, and I'm a believer. I think we learn through failure. It doesn't mean I want to fail and I'm not cool with it or anything like that. And if I can mitigate that failure, and what I mean by that is if I can find somebody that has been the path before, do that and at least get to where they are. So that whatever failure I make now is innovation and creation versus reinventing the wheel. Right?

Absolutely.

That's super cool. And that is excellent advice. Last I checked, nobody was able to ride a bike that very first time. But funny enough, most of us ride bikes, so failure is a learning experience. All right, last question. The big one. We only have so much time on this planet. It comes to an end at some point. And when it comes to an end for Laura, I would imagine it's going to be actually celebration instead of a sad moment. What do you want people to remember you for?

Well, we're going deep today, Jim.

I think if we're going to spend time together, getting to know you on an interview like this, these folks that listen to us take a good hour of their life out, let's give them some words of wisdom and really kind of understand the people that we're talking to. I think it's important.

Got it. Okay. Well, I think you mentioned at the top of the hour that I've worked with business owners for a long time, from when I was young and working for my family business and of course, in more recent years in different capacities with software companies. What has really been rewarding for me is getting to know the entrepreneurs that are making a difference in communities and being invested in their success. Even though I'm helping contribute to just one area of their success, it is, you know, excites me to see how I can help their businesses grow or, you know, I can help something, make something slightly better. So I do want to be remembered in that respect as a helper. Of course I want to be remembered as a good person, as a creator, as someone who hopefully made a friend or family member's life better and more enjoyable as well. I think that's a long winded, multifaceted answer, but those are some of the things that come top of mind for me.

I like it. Making somebody else's life a little better. We need more of that in the world, I think. And you do. From all my experience with you, it has always been that experience. So you're well on your way. Laura, it has been awesome. This has been great. How does somebody, like get a hold of you or signpost? What do they need to do there? We'll put, put all the stuff in the, in the whole listing and everything. But yeah, just for those that are listening, if they want to go right to it, what would they, what would they do?

Visit signpost.com they can email me. L. Nelson signpost.com super easy. We'll also provide a dedicated link for your show as well. However, which way, you know, hit us up on the website. We have a phone number as well, if you find us on Google. We want to keep communication, lines of communication open, you know, including say, Facebook messenger, if that's your jam. Find me, find signposts, and we will connect.

And so I cannot leave the show without saying, here's your signpost. Right? And it is, it's like, hey, I got this sign sitting out here going, hey, look at me, look at me, look at me. And this is the direction, because that's the way I always look at signposts, like they're doing for what I need to do next. And I don't know if that's why you guys named it that, but that's the first thing that came to mind.

I like that.

I also want to let you know there's something you're very good at because I'm terrible at it. Whatever's behind you, you're doing a good job of actually pointing at it. Because if I was trying to point at the one over my right shoulder, that would be over here. But that looks the opposite to you guys out there. And so I always get confused with which hand do I need to put up to say, hey, check out that thing?

I practiced that for you, Jim.

Well done. Well done, Laura. Hey, thanks a lot. It's been wonderful having you on the show and I'm sure we'll see you again.

Sounds good. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.