The Strategy That Doubled My Plumbing Sales in 90 Days

I just bought a business and in the first 90 days we doubled their sales. None of these changes are revolutionary. I went in and did kind of the basics. This was just making a few key decisions that had big impacts and we were rewarded with 100% growth. My name is John Wilson and I'm the CEO of a $40 million home service company in Ohio. Today we're talking about how we doubled a plumbing business this year, the steps we took, what went right, what went wrong, and how you can do it too. Now, the important thing to note is that this company wasn't broken. This company was functional. It was extremely profitable, but it was small and it had some really low-hanging fruit. So some of the low-hanging fruit was how they were investing in their marketing, what they were using for their tech stack, how they were pricing their services, and how they thought about hiring new technicians. And if you know what to look for, there's a couple really easy changes you can make in a week or 2 weeks that can dramatically impact the outcome of that business. So that's what we did. We didn't overhaul everything. We didn't break the business and rebuild it from the ground floor. We took a functioning business that was operating profitably and we made it better. To give a little bit of perspective, here's what the business was doing. The business was doing around $100,000 in December, and when we took it over, our first month was January. We did $120,000. In February, we did $140,000, and in March we did $170,000. This wasn't luck. This was just making a few key decisions that had big impacts. The first big change was marketing. As you think about a business of this size, the way you should be thinking about filling your board every day is very lead-driven and high-contact marketing. So that's going to be investing in Google, investing in Angie, maybe Meta Leads, calling your customers, texting your customers. And if you try to make it, hey, let's go do billboards, or let's go do TV or radio or whatever it is, we're probably on the wrong step. We have to be focusing on filling the board every day, and we have to be focusing on delivering leads for our technicians to go do their thing. And that was probably one of the biggest impacts that we had, is we just came in and we started focusing on filling the board every day, and we changed our focus from a brand over time. Now eventually we're gonna have to add that branding advertising back in, but over the next couple years we're gonna be able to probably get to $5-10 million of revenue, and we will be able to afford that branding while still keeping our boards full. So that's probably the biggest change and it only took about an hour. The second change was adding speed to lead technology. Now, speed to lead technology is something that you put in place and it's in between your marketing source and your CRM. So the way it works is I go to Modernize or I go to Angie or I go to HomeBuddy or whoever and I buy leads. Those leads would go to my call centers and email as a contact form, something like that. And we call them as soon as we see it. Now, the problem is that there's often a pretty big gap. There might be an hour gap or 20 minutes gap or whatever it is between getting that lead and contacting that customer. And that amount of time is where you lose the lead, because whoever responds first to the lead typically gets the lead. So speed-to-lead technology automates that and you can add it into a business relatively quickly. Now, there is regulation on TCPA and it It takes a week or 2 to add this in for approvals to be legal. TCPA is a series of regulations around when and how to contact your customers via SMS. So there's a governing body that says yes or no to what you're allowed to do. Once you get the ball started, it can move pretty quick. For us, that was a week 1 change where we had to begin that integration as fast as we could because we knew it took a week or 2 to get approved by TCPA and we could as soon as possible add the speed to lead. The third change we added was 24/7 phone coverage. When we bought the business, they only had a part-time call taker that was picking up calls as they came in and then responding to a lot of voicemails. Very similar to the last one that we talked about. Hey, if you're not picking up that phone, if you're not booking that lead, someone else is. So as soon as we could, we added additional humans to the call center. And then we also added backup support with our AI call center partner, Avoca. Before, we were getting missed calls, we were responding to voicemails, we were checking emails, and now every call is answered 24/7. The schedule is easier to book than ever because we're constantly on top of those calls. Change number 4 was a pricing adjustment. We adjusted pricing by about 15%, so wasn't a huge overhaul. Probably going to do another one here shortly, but they were on the lower end of the market and we just did a little bit of market research to find out What are other people charging? What's a water heater charge? What's the hourly rate for this market? So we called around, we secret shopped a little bit, found out that we had frankly a lot of room. So they were about 20 to 30% below market. So we raised it up to $15 to be a little bit more competitive with what all the big boys were charging. Price changes are one of the fastest ways to improve your net profit. There was no additional cost. Our closing rate didn't drop at all. We lost no customers at all and the revenue just went up. I actually think that pricing adjustment took me about 10 total minutes. Downloaded the price book, applied a 15% jump, put the price book back in, done. Our 5th change was our tech training. Now this business was functioning and functioning at a pretty high level. They were doing a great job and they were already doing very consistent technician training on objections and how to talk about price and how to talk about options and how to present. So they were already doing a really good job. We started at second base instead of home. All that we did there was ensure that it was consistent. We supplied them with a little bit more of our internal resources, things that we've built over the past 10 years. We supplied them with more scorecards to help them, and we just really helped their leader, their service manager there, be better educated on what he was doing so he could provide a better experience for the techs during training. What we've found over the years is the more you invest into the leader that is leading that team or leading that company or branch or whatever, the more that that leader is going to pour into his team. It is an endless bucket. As much as you can give your leaders, they will be able to give to your team, and that team will be able to give to your customers. So you'll be happy the whole way around. Change number 6, we changed their commission structure. We made it slightly juicier. We were able to up compensations because they were slightly below market. We were able to make the commission a little bit more enticing for these technicians. So now they're making more money, which is awesome, in addition to better benefits. So it was a net win for those field professionals. The 7th and final change is we removed the admin work from that branch. This might be something that you're not able to do, but for us, because we were buying this company and making it a branch, we were able to take on all of their administrative burden. We took over their accounting, we took over their marketing, we took over their call center, We took over their dispatch. We made it so the thing that they had to focus on every day was presenting great options, closing sales, and having happy customers. That alone allowed our team to focus and grow revenue. None of these changes are revolutionary. I wasn't a mastermind or extremely creative. I went in and did kind of the basics. I bought leads, I booked those leads, And I help technicians sell those leads. Now, there's a few other steps. There's a little bit more nitty-gritty, there's a little bit more detail. But at the end of the day, all we're doing is the basics of what we should be doing as business owners. And we were rewarded with 100% growth. This is the kind of stuff I love because the bigger the business gets, the more I realize how it really is just the fundamentals over and over and over. And if you could focus on those fundamentals like we just focused on those fundamentals, you can also be rewarded with fast growth inside your business. There's a book that I love, Only the Paranoid Survive, and it talks about the reinvention of Intel. So Intel is going through this dramatic reinvention and they're trying to figure out how do they navigate this new world, which is similar to how we're feeling every day with AI and private equity and consolidation. And every day is a new world for us. And the sentence still hits me. I think about it almost every day. If I was fired today, What would the new CEO do? So if I walked into your business tomorrow, what would I do? If you liked this content, make sure you check out the podcast Owned and Operated. We just broke 300 episodes and we've been talking for the last 5 years on how to grow your home service business. Thanks for tuning in.