#236 How Our Team Sells MORE With AI

Because AI, next week you can add like a game-changing feature and you can do it in like a few days with AI.

It comes down to, is this a person that is willing to work in a team that's wanting to get better?

I think you have some results of how we've done.

Yeah. So on the conversations where your team is mentioning financing options first, they are typically able to handle those objections better.

What the difference is?

It's $2,000 higher per ticket.

Yeah, that's wild.

Why do you think that is?

If we sum everything up, it's always the lead.

My short answer is no.

Welcome back to Owned and Operated. I'm your host, John Wilson. During the day, I run a $30 million home service company in Ohio, and on the side, I have fun running a podcast about how to build a home service company. Today on the show, I have Tal Shub with me, the CEO of Craft. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, dude, this is gonna be fun. This is gonna be fun. We, We started using you guys, I think June or July, I guess. Correct me if I'm— it was June?

Yeah. Uh, end of May, early June.

Okay. End of May, early June. And, um, I think it's been good so far and you're here at our workshop. So yeah, this will be fun to sort of dive into sales and how to like get sales better. So I'd love to start us off with, could you talk to us a little bit about like, what is Craft? What's the problem you guys are trying to solve? Are you still using a clunky phone system for your service business? OpenPhone is the modern business phone platform powered by AI that helps you stay responsive, connected, and never miss a call. With shared numbers, call summaries, 24/7 AI CSRs, plus deep integrations with Slack, HubSpot, and more, OpenPhone keeps your team aligned and your customers taken care of no matter what time. Start your 7-day free trial at openphone.com/owned and get 20% off your first 6 months just for being a part of the Owned and Operated crew. OpenPhone, no missed calls, no missed customers.

Yeah, so Craft is, uh, AI sales engine for home services. Uh, so you can think our, our AI, it's really, it's listening through across your entire customer, uh, interactions and then For your service professionals, it's capturing those interactions, giving real-time coaching opportunities, and then helps you recover those revenues from each and every one of those opportunities.

Yeah. So recovering revenue, like we didn't close when we were out there, there's some version of a follow-up to support either that salesperson or someone in the office.

Yeah, that's right. So if, If the opportunity doesn't close on the spot, then this, we take the context from that conversation, provide it to your team, work alongside your inside sales or follow-up team, and close that customer. Okay.

Yeah, cool. And then I think you guys are like, you're sort of an emerging company in the space. So how long have you guys been around?

That's right. Yeah, we're a younger company. Started this last year. All right.

Hell yeah. Yeah, that's sweet, dude. All right. So we're focused on like following the salespeople, helping close up the sale. And I mean, AI sales engine, I feel like that's pretty unique. Like, I don't feel like I don't really know anybody else doing that in the space. I feel like there's people that are trying to solve for different parts of it, but that sounds different.

Yeah. And so a little bit about My background, I, I, yeah, or had a, have a finance background, uh, but first job outta school, it was actually, uh, in sales. Mm-hmm. Joined a, one of the, joined a startup as one of the first, uh, employees in the US, and we were selling software to chefs and food suppliers across the US.

Okay.

Uh, our go-to-market was all door-to-door sales. Essentially going from restaurant to restaurant.

Yeah.

And trying to get chefs to download our software.

Yeah.

And as we were scaling really rapidly, company was Choco, billion-dollar company now. We were having a lot of time out in the field with our reps actually coaching them and, you know, spending time out in the field, as you can imagine. hard to be at a lot of places at once. And so, um, had the idea to start, um, actually recording the reps to be able to, uh, coach them remotely. But fast forward to last year, uh, met my co-founder Alex.

Mm-hmm.

His background, he's, he was, uh, building products at Rippling, one of the largest HR IT companies. Uh, and then before that was also working on products at Tesla, uh, worked on self-driving cars. But when, when we got together, uh, we, we wanted to do something in AI. Uh, AI is, is, uh, all the, all the rage, but we wanted to focus on an industry that wasn't sitting behind a computer. We were researching for a while and, um, we stumbled upon home services and kind of realized that there was not only, uh, a lot of demand for home services after COVID, but also in terms of AI and technology, you're—

It was historically underserved.

Yeah, historically underserved, but also AI isn't going to fix your plumbing or your AC unit, but it is going to fix your customer conversations. So we were really focused on, okay, let's focus on this industry. Realized after talking to a lot of folks that actually the sales component is something that there's a lot of high demand for just because it's easier to train a technician on sales rather than train a salesperson to become a technician. And so we realized that there's a lot of demand, really big market, a lot of opportunity here and the technology is there for this to become a really substantial improvement for coaching. But we realized that the existing tools that were in the market, they weren't real-time and also they weren't focused on the entire customer journey. And so that's where we started and set off for Craft.

Yeah, yeah, that's cool. Do you think that the industry now Just like as a whole is still technologically underserved?

My short answer is no.

Yeah, I don't think so either.

I think that 5 years ago.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and from my experiences in the industry, uh, you know, even compared to some of the food industry where I was before, people were very against new technologies here. People are very, very excited when I introduced them to Craft or talk about technology and AI.

Yeah. The past, you know, few years, I, I, a lot of people, I think, rode the ServiceTitan sort of train. Like it started, it IPO'd now. So like big. Yeah. It's, uh, it feels served, uh, which I think is good. Like it, as a user, it's good. I think one of the, I think probably everyone's feeling this right now with AI is just like, And this is something I'm trying to get better at as we pick AI tools. The features are important of a new product or a new AI partner that you're going to work with, but increasingly it's more like the team behind it. Is it a good team that you think can design product and adapt with you? Because AI, Like it moves. So like next week you can add like a game-changing feature and you can do it in like a few days with AI. Does that make sense?

Yeah. I mean, team is everything in, in any industry, right? Uh, with AI, uh, speed, speed is everything. And to have the speed of execution, you need to have a really great team.

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. All right. So we've been using you guys for a couple months. I think what's been fun for me And I've, I said this off camera too, but, uh, there's been like very little resistance, which has been good. I, I think part of it's product, like easier product to use. And we started off with just our electric team mainly 'cause they were the most receptive. I think we went electric, drains, plumbing, HVAC, if I'm remembering right, or maybe like plumbing and HVAC swapped. But Mm-hmm. I know the fir— I know the first 2 were, uh, No, I think you had it right.

Yeah.

Okay. Nailed it. But yeah, almost no resistance at all, which was, I think, really interesting. And after the first team, the other team started asking for it. It could have been positioning, could be more people are just open to AI than when we first started deploying AI tools into the field. Because the first time we deployed AI tools, we lost people. Have you dealt with that with any Like onboards, just like heavy tech resistance.

Yeah. And I typically, people are saying like, oh, I don't want to start recording my conversations and, uh, it's invasive. And it really is. Uh, it comes down to, is this a person that is willing to work in a team that's wanting to get better and improve?

Yeah. We, we had, we had somebody like quote Morals back to us the other day on this. We had one person give pushback and, uh, and it was just like, hey, this, this feels wrong. Like, I, you know, I don't— they came up with whatever and it's like, we have to know what you're saying to this customer. Like, we don't know how you're presenting us. We don't know what you're saying. We have to know how this is going. Like, and you fighting it this hard is sort of like red flag to me. So like, yeah, it was, it was kind of interesting. I don't think people need to take as hard of a stance as we do these days, but nowadays it's sort of like. Here's the process. I don't know, go do it. But yeah, it's been good for the first couple months. The techs are excited about it. We're using the platform. I think we're trying to encourage higher usage because we have enough data now that some people have 70 conversations and some people have 10. So trying to drive that in. Any tips on how to drive more conversations?

Yeah. So And this is key to the product itself is, uh, what we saw is really low adoption in the industry with some of the existing tools. And so really, we really focused on how can we make this as useful for service professionals as possible so they want to use it.

Yeah.

And so one of the key things is, uh, that having that, that real-time AI, it's our checkpoint mode, which, uh, I know Paul was very excited about when, when we got that rolled out, which is Uh, in the point, in the middle of the conversation during the breakaway, uh, service professional can tap Craft and get a full summary, AI insights, even, uh, options, suggestions based on everything that's happened at the beginning of the conversation.

Yeah.

Up until to that point.

Yeah. 'Cause we push for this for, 'cause we run call by call.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so it works really well with that. You can take those notes, add them into ServiceTitan technician for them makes their job easier. They don't have to spend all that time writing out those notes.

Yeah.

So really from a productivity angle, but then also something that we're really excited about and starting to work with customers initially is getting the conversation to the hands of inside sales teams or follow-up teams to take the context of what's actually happened in the conversation to help with closing any open estimates. And so then from a usage standpoint, the team is dependent on the technician recording that conversation so that they can use that to be successful in their job.

Yeah, that's interesting. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know that we've been big fans of ServiceScalers. One of the things that they just dropped that we are really excited about is a pay-per-lead program. So what they help you do is they help you directly gain access to leads And scale up your lead partner program. Go to service-scalers.com and say we sent you. Yeah, forces it really. Like, and not forces it in a bad way, but like peer accountability. Like, hey, I have to follow up or— yeah, that makes a ton of sense. I know the stop and check was really helpful and like the live update was really helpful. Because I think with, you know, we had used, we had tried some of the other tools and I want to say it was like 10 minutes after the call, or it was something like that. Like, call finishes and then it uploads. And, um, I don't remember when it uploaded, but 10 minutes sounds right to me. And yeah, you— yeah, I actually didn't know that preloaded options, that's pretty sweet. But yeah, being able to like stop and like take a breath is, is cool, especially just like for somebody looking in like the way we do call by call. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, they— it's like they're there with the service professional in the field.

Yeah, that's wild. That's wild. I think you have some results of how we've done.

Yeah, I would love to hear it.

I would love to hear it.

Let's do it.

Let's do it.

Yeah. So granted, for the, for the listeners, this is after a few months with rolling out team by team, like you said. So still, still early results. But because—

Yeah. So HVAC's only been on it for probably like A month, if that.

3 weeks. Yeah, I think that sounds right.

Okay. But electric and drains have been on it the longest.

Yeah. Electric. Yeah. Electric and drains. Yep.

Okay. I'm ready.

All right. So did you know that your guys are telling the company story only 12.9% of the time?

No, but that sounds right.

But dude, did you know—

have we improved since we started?

Uh, hard to have the, the full picture.

Yeah. Yeah.

But What we do know is that from the conversations where they are mentioning the company story, average ticket is higher by $285.

Oh, that's interesting. I wonder if it's a causation or correlation here, because the people who bring up the story might have the better process. But yeah, that's interesting.

And typically there is a correlation there as well.

Yeah, yeah.

If they're following the process, they're They're likely to higher close rates, higher average ticket.

Yeah, that is interesting. Do you have other insights?

Yeah, a couple others. So you guys are running into price objection the most, which—

Well, the data was really helpful because we've been working on, we've had a declining average ticket in plumbing this year, but rising material. So we're trying to figure out like, hey, what's going on? And it was really helpful having the live objections basically. Because for us, all that told us was, hey, we're not working on— we can see it here, but we're not working on value building. And maybe some of that's the company story and maybe some of that's value behind the options, but it is our biggest objection. But it was interesting to see the chart for it.

Yeah, it's your biggest objection and it is one of the harder ones to overcome, but it's really affecting the average tickets that you have on those, those conversations where price is coming up. And so what we're also seeing is on, on the conversations where your team is mentioning financing options first, they are typically able to handle those objections better.

Oh, really? Like first, as in like early on in the call? Like, what do you mean by first? What does that mean?

As the part of the options presentation, presenting the financing options first.

Interesting. I know it's just notes, but do you have what the difference is?

It's $2,000 higher per ticket.

Yeah, that's why.

Or per job.

That makes sense. I mean, that does just make sense because half of the price objection is they're thinking about what's in their checking account.

That's right.

Yeah, that just makes sense in general. That'd be interesting by trade because I bet we're really good at financing in HVAC, Because the average ticket's like $12,000. Like you always go in locked and loaded, but I bet we're not as good in finance or in like plumbing, you know, $200 to $2,500 average ticket.

Yeah, we can run that report for you.

Yeah, I'm really, I'm curious. I'm curious. That's interesting.

All right.

Do you have another one?

Yeah. In general, your top performers are asking a lot more open-ended questions.

Okay.

So if they're asking more than 15 open-ended questions, more likely to Be a win.

15.

15. Yeah.

Yeah. Are they the same? Like, how long have you lived in the house? Or like, is it the same, like 15 questions?

Uh, no, right now we're just tracking, are they open-ended questions?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's interesting. I mean, I feel like that makes sense. That's a part of the, you know, if I'm breaking down like the 6 stages inside the home, like one of them is the greet, which is going to be the company story. One of them is going to be the explore, which is going to be like physically exploring, walking around, looking at problems, but also open-ended questions. I think the next is present, which is options, and that's the financing. So I think these, yeah, these make sense. For us, it depends on the team. Some teams are really strong and some teams are just not as strong. But what has been good for us—

Which team is not as strong?

Well, on process, on driving process. So I don't think plumbing is very strong at process.

Mm-hmm.

Whereas electric feels pretty solid. Like, this is just my anecdote. You could probably tell me, I guess. But, uh, so electric feels more dialed and most of it's like, are the— is the manager that is leading those trainings, and this is our current project using, uh, Craft, but is the manager leading those trainings, is he dialed in and locked in on the process? And plumbing just wasn't like, it just wasn't a focus of his. So, uh, what's been good now is we brought on a, like a sales trainer maybe in January or February, something like that. And then he's using, like, I think I even walked by him and there he was game planning using like Craft and a whiteboard or something on the way over. But he was, we're doing this like train the trainers thing.

Yeah.

So when we first brought on a trainer, the idea was, okay, the trainer's gonna be working individually with Craft and the technician and like, hey, here's what you did and here's what you didn't do. But we really, uh, now understand it's the service manager that's driving this thing into the team with like their twice or 3 times a week training. So like we have to be— our sales leader really has to be training the service leaders or the sales, you know, managers and at that level, and then teaching them how to use the tools and sort of like multiplying our effort. Does that make sense?

Yep.

Yeah. But yeah, that, it's been, um, it's been good because then it sort of forces a second set of eyeballs, not just the manager but also like the sales manager. And then we can look at a, hey, your team as a whole is not driving, you know, options with, uh, financing.

Yeah, and dial in on that.

Yeah, it's, but it's been a great tool for us. What are, what are some like tips that you've seen? Like you guys are a year in, Uh, what are some tips you've seen on like best in class?

Yeah, I think, uh, a lot of the results that we're seeing just initially is from a performance standpoint, you really see the top, the top performers in each company. They're doing a lot of following the process, but also a lot of the things that are really core to building rapport and building trust with the customer. So, you know, making sure to establish a connection, making sure to, uh, really finding a strong need. And I think what's also been interesting to, to see from some of our customers is we've had customers where they're onboarding a new sales rep that is maybe an experienced one with 15+ years of experience.

Yeah.

But it's in a new industry. And so they're able to, uh, to actually see how to ramp them up faster in a new industry where, for example, we had a customer where their, this rep came in and their ADL tripled after realizing—

What's ADL?

Their average dollar per lead.

Okay.

Yeah. So it tripled after they realized that from seeing what they were doing in Kraft, that this rep was very familiar with selling a want, and that is now selling a need, uh, is not really asking for the sale, which is pretty straightforward, uh, for, for most sales. But here it was, uh, really something that was a realization that helped them.

Yeah. Well, it's a huge gap. I mean, that specific thing, like I've done a pile of ride-alongs and it is funny. Like people just don't ask. They're like, all right, $1,600.

Yeah.

Like, can we proceed? You know, it's like, it's that simple. But I did a ride-along in January, February of this year, and like, he walked out and he's like, dude, I really thought they were going to buy that. And I was like, yeah, you didn't ask. Like, just go back in and ask. Like, they will buy it. And they did. And it was like $4,000. But yeah, it is kind of funny, some of the simple stuff, and you don't even notice it unless you're either relisting yourself or someone else is there to like, hey, yeah, you didn't ask for the sale. Like, you just walked out for some reason.

That's right. Yeah, it's very powerful once you see it.

Yeah. Do you have any other notes on there for like Wilson?

Those were the main ones.

Yeah. And those were some good ones. The financing one's interesting. I'm really curious by team now. Yeah, we'll dive in. Yeah.

What do you— what are your guesses?

Like, my guess is we don't bring up financing on plumbing and we do bring it up on electric. And HVAC, probably 100% of the time. Drains, 50/50. But I think who's used to selling the biggest tickets? So in HVAC, the average ticket's $14,000 or $12,000. They have to bring up financing, otherwise they'll never close anything. Most of our install revenue is financed in HVAC.

How are they bringing up the financing? Are they sort of weaponizing it as part of the options that they're—

It's a good question. I would imagine, and this would be something that would be interesting to flag, I would imagine that it should come up a lot. Like, should, whether or not we do this, I don't think we probably do, but the people who probably close the most bring it up. So if I was walking into the home, In the first 10 or 15 minutes, I would make a point to bring up a financing promo or something that we have. Like, hey, yeah, this, it's a big job or whatever. We have this current promo. We can talk about that when we sit down. But I think probably the more you bring it up, you're sort of helping prep to that close. I think a lot of sales is how do you close objections? before you even get to the objection. And like a price objection is like, I don't have the money right now, an objection. So like that could be something you just close with financing at the very beginning of the call. Does that make sense?

Yeah. 'Cause you don't want that price objection to even come up, right?

Yeah.

If you can already—

Well, and people don't know what to do with it. So, you know, someone will get, so someone will do like an incredible job building rapport, And they'll build rapport for like an hour, and like the customer loves them, they're ready to go, and they're like best friends. And then they get to the price, and it's like, well, that went from all friends to like, oh, we love each other, come over for cookies sometime, to like, what the fuck did you just present me? I see this, this is how I get rated explicit on Spotify. Uh, but like, what did you just present me? Like, this is crazy. And you And it's hard to make that immediate switch, but they didn't spend the whole time preloading price. Like, yeah, I've seen a ton of these jobs. They're anywhere from $10,000 to $30,000. But don't worry, we have financing and our team's the best. Sort of like closing all the, can I afford it? Is this the right partner? Will they stand behind their work? How do you close all the doors along the way?

Mm-hmm.

So we see that a bunch with new salespeople where like they really focus on the rapport, but they miss objections along the way. But it'd be interesting to like, hey, if these are the 5 objections, like price or financing or whatever, it'd be interesting to like flag like, hey, they brought up financing 5 times, they closed the sale. Like there's, there's correlation there.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And, and the cool thing is when you have all this data is you can You can really pull out all of these insights over the course of time as well. So, uh, what, what we've been seeing work really well is as you start to see these insights, you can actually take action on them.

Yeah.

So like if a service manager sees this come up on, on their team, yeah, they're, it's getting flagged, focus on that in the training over the next week and then look at the progression over the next couple weeks.

Mm-hmm.

And see the difference.

We've been working with wesupplytrades.com for the past 10 years, but most importantly for the past 6 months as our primary vendor for HVAC supplies. And that's going to be generic as well as some OEM. They have been a huge partner for us in our HVAC for restocking trucks, for getting packouts done on time and getting quick deliveries when we need it. Their free pro membership is going to give better pricing, It's free shipping for orders over $99, and you get access to a team of world-class experts that know plumbing, hydronics, and HVAC like the back of their hands. Like, these guys are incredible. As a savings to our audience, they offered 20% off your first order if you use the code OWNED20. O-W-N-E-D-2-0. So click the link below or go to wesupplytrades.com/ownedandoperated to find out a little bit more. Yeah. I think our industry is probably good because it's going through a heavy tech renaissance or whatever right now. And I think it's good to get locked in on it. I do think it's kind of funny. We've interviewed a ton of people from roofing and windows and bathroom models, and they are so locked in. All of these other home service industries are so locked in on a process And for some reason, plumbing HVAC just like isn't. I mean, yet.

Yeah. Well, why do you think that is?

Well, I think it's the lead. Like every— if, if we sum everything up, it's always the lead. So in— there's no such thing as a hot lead for windows. Like no one's like, hey, all my windows were just stolen. Like I need to do a $50,000 job real quick. It's all warm leads that you bought for $200. And you have to, you have to turn that into a want. You have to turn that want into a need. And that, that requires a process. Like, it's complicated. It's more complicated than, hey, my water heater broke. Who's the first person that came out? And like, the price didn't seem crazy. And that's what plumbing is. Or, hey, I don't have power and my switch doesn't work and I need lights in my bathroom. That's electric. So I think because of the lead, You can build a big business on break-fix, same as like a mechanic shop. Like a car mechanic needs broken stuff in order to really run. So what do they do when they get like, like no one's bringing in their car just to do like, hey, I think it's perfectly fine. Can you take a look at it and give me options? Like it doesn't really work that way. Uh, so I, I think it's because the lead is always warm. You have to have a better process. So we'll typically, like we've brought in a bunch of window and remodel salespeople and they're really talented and they're talented because they like locked in on this 6-step process. They know how to solve the objections. They talk about financing early. They, you know, sort of handle it better. But it's a real retraining for plumbers or electricians or HVAC guys because they think of themselves as technician first and then salesperson. So they're not thinking about objections, they're just like, here's a water heater.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I mean, the technicians, as they're— they are the experts, right? And so from a trust standpoint with the customer, that's huge. And as they improve on their customer conversations with training and just repetition, it's really Great opportunity.

Yeah. Cool. If people want to, uh, sort of like check out Craft, how can they look for more information on this?

Yeah, they can check us out at craftflow.com. That's C-R-A-F-T-F-L-O-W.com. Uh, or shoot me an email, uh, tal@craftflow.com.

Awesome. T-A-L.

T-A-L. That's right.

Awesome. Cool. Thanks for coming on today, dude. This was awesome. Um, I, I, Craft's been a great partner, so we're really excited to see where this goes.

Yeah, thank you, John.

If you like what you heard, make sure you check out ownedandoperated.com.