5 Video Hacks to Explode Your Home Service Sales

Today I'm going to share with you 5 secrets to use video in your home service business so you can take it to the next level. My name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care and I scaled from zero to $50 million in annual revenue by using these five tactics.

Every home service business is made up of sales, operations and admin. In other words, I get the work, sales, I do the work operations, and then admin, I get paid for the work. Now these video taxes I'm gonna share with you today allow you to be able to scale up sales and grow revenue, getting more customers and getting your existing customers to pay you more. It allows you for operations to be more efficient, it allows less callbacks, a higher customer satisfaction rate, and you can actually get out of operations and run the business remotely. And from an admin perspective, you'll get paid more often, more frequently, and customers will pay you a higher price when you use these tactics. The first way that we use video, grow the business and make it much more efficient is estimate videos. Now, if you're tired of doing project walkthroughs for all your crews every morning and you're doing one time jobs, this is a game changer. Now this actually came as a result, we were around a million dollars in revenue and we were doing three to four big projects every day. We have three to four crews go out and we actually had to stagger our start times like 6:30, 7:00', clock, 7:30 and 8:00' clock every morning. And I just spend the first couple hours of my day driving around the county showing the crew the project. I just look at the job notes and then I'd just be showing them. Do this. Yep. Do this, do this. Yep. Park over here. And then I started to realize, this is insane. I'm spending two, three hours every morning just showing them the job. And furthermore, the last time I was on the job site was six to eight weeks ago when I met the customer and they accepted the bid originally. So I was already, you know, fuzzy on the details and forgetting things from the past. So instead, what we do after every single estimate, when I'm done with the customer, Mr. Jones walks back inside. I am now going to shake their hand, say goodbye, and I'm going to make a video on my phone. Now in the past I would attach that to WhatsApp or to YouTube, but now inside of Copilot from the Field Force mobile app, I can take that video, attach to the customer's profile and make sure that when the crew shows up at this job site, they get that video. This is a great way to actually end the conversation with the customer. Especially if they're a big talker. You can say, hey, thank you so much. I'm gonna make a video of the property. I'm gonna get that to the office and within 24 hours they'll get you a quote. This also sets the expectation that I'm not gonna be on the job site again. Cause here's the problem. When I'd come back on the job site in the morning and show the crew the job, guess who the customer would wanna talk to? Me. Cause I had already been here as the estimator. And that meant that when I left and there was a problem with the job, who they want to talk to me again. So by making the video and making it clear to the customer that it's going to be handed off to the crew leader or to the crew themselves, they will talk to the crew instead of calling me or wanting me on the job site throughout the entire project. So here's an example of what exactly an estimate video might look like for a project. Right after I'm finished meeting the customer, I attach that directly inside the Fieldforce mobile app. Hey team. We're at Mr. Jobs House and today we are going to be installing a whole bunch of new edging along the front flower beds. They said they can clear out the driveway so we can park right on their driveway. They asked that we do not park on the road because they're hoa. So you can see here they have this brick and these pavers. And honestly, they just get all catawampus messed up here. And so we're gonna tear them all out and then just create a nice defined edge. They want it low maintenance. And we'll make a nice solid edge here. Take rip out all the brick. We are going to have to take this brick probably to the dump. They don't know of anyone that wants it. You can see it follows the entire perimeter of the lawn all the way to the side here. So we'll take out both the flat one and this one. They're really not too hard deep inside the soil. But you might want to bring a pickaxe just in case and a shovel just to wedge them out. It is going to look a little ugly. So bring a little bit of mulch just to kind of feather it down and make a defined edge. I also noticed over here that the beds are kind of higher up, which is going to cause a bit of an issue once we remove this so fortunately we have a little space. We should be able to feather this down with a little bit of mulch, create a nice defined edge. Bring the stick edger as well. And then make sure we have a couple bins because you will probably need to dig out some of the turf to create the defined edge. So it's this side as well as on this side of the driveway. They have a little bit more. You can see also it's in this front bed. They want all this brick out. Just gets really messy. It's also allowing the mulch to fall back onto the driveway. And so now on this side of the property, same thing you can see just not looking good. We'll tear out all the brick. And then this again was want to kind of create a bit of a trench so the mulch can sit up against the driveway and doesn't fall onto the drive like it's doing now. So that's the jobs property and that's it. A quick video like that will save me the morning of having to show that to the crew. It also makes sure that the crew, when they show up, they know where to park, they know access points and what tools to bring, what supplies they're going to need. So there's no more going back to the shop because they forgot something or because they didn't come prepared for the job because it wasn't in the job notes. Between the job notes and the video that I just made, they should be able to come do this job from start to finish without me ever being here. Another reason the estimate video can be super useful is if the customer ever refutes the invoice or says that we were going to do something else and we promised something. I can have the estimate notes that say, hey, that wasn't included, but also a video that I made right after meeting them and make it very clear that that was never mentioned or brought up at all.

Another way to use video in your business if you have project based work is what we call project check ins. So there's times we're doing a retaining wall or a paver patio and we might be on the job site for a week or two or three. As the project manager, I don't want to have to be going and checking on the crew at the end of every day. Also, sometimes our customers are out of town and I want to give them status updates. So what I do, I just tell my crew at the end of every day, make a quick video, attach it to the job and then we'll also make sure it's visible inside the customer portal of copilot for the customer. So even if they're out of town, they can get an update just like this one. All right, so we're just wrapping up on day five. We just need to put some poly sand inside of the joints, and then we're gonna compact the whole thing. Also, you can see today we got finished up the retaining wall. It curves around the front, and we also finished the one right over there. So that's the update for today. A quick video like that saves me as a project manager from having to come back on the job site and also documents the entire job. So it's great for social media and making sure the customer is up to speed. One of my favorite use cases for video is to use it for upsel. Now, personally, I incentivize my crew that when they're on the job site to just find other ways that we can sell more services to our existing customers. Why I would rather give my crew $50 than Facebook or Google to go get a new customer, and I'd rather sell existing customers more services because they already know, like, and trust me, I already have their credit card on file. It's easy to do business with them. And it's amazing to me that people won't do upsells, but they'll go spend money on Facebook ads and Google Ad and run door hanger campaigns and a bunch of flyers when it's like, just sell more of what you currently offer to your existing customers. For example, this customer here, we're about to mow their lawn. It's like $80 per week. I might make $1,500 in the year from this customer. But if I can sell them one or two other little projects like a leaf cleanup or a mulch install or a little landscape project like I'm about to now I'm able to take that $1,500 annual customer value and turn it into $3,000. I can double the size if I do that without spending a single dollar on marketing or getting new leads that have never done work with me in the past. So let's go ahead and record a video. This is a mowing customer. We're about to do service for them, but we're going to go ahead and pitch them on this side project here that I think could be a quick, easy five, $600, no problem. All right, so we're just on the side of the Smith house, and I noticed that these plants aren't doing so hot just because the shade underneath this side of the house doesn't get a lot of sun. So what I'm thinking is removing all of these nine bushes and then we just put fabric down and rock that way. It's low maintenance and I'm thinking maybe a yard and a half of cobble rock and maybe 60 to 70 square feet of fabric is all we need. So quick access right from the front here in terms of the truck to haul these all out of here. A quick video like that could mean a 6,700dollar job that I can get accepted right away. Because of my crews out on job site, they don't know the cost of the cobblerock or the road fabric or how many budget hours this might take. However, they can quickly attach that video to field force, it can get compressed down and then I can view that video from the office, make a quick estimate, and now send the estimate directly to the customer instead. In the past I have to come out to the property, look at it myself and that time alone from the office to here is 15 minutes and then typing it up versus just seeing a video immediately sending the estimate to the customer and saying, hey, here's the price. Do you want to accept this bid? Another use case for video that's super powerful is initial service walkthroughs. That way every single time my crew gets on this job site, they know exactly what to do for the scope of work. Also, it means that if a customer calls in complaining, my admin staff could just see the video what's included for that job and the customer, the admin and my crew are all speaking the same language. So right here for example, we have this split rail fence and our responsibilities on a monthly basis to trim back the blackberries and the brush by two feet. Now, we are not responsible for this entire hillside. And so I kind of can see after the first service that that could be a problem down the road. A tenant or a property manager might complain and that's not our responsibility. So what I'm gonna do, I'm gonna make an initial service walkthrough, attach it to this profile for this customer inside of copilot so my admin team can see this all the time. Here we go. Alright, we're just wrapping up the first service here at the back of the property. We are not responsible for any of the lawn and we are not responsible for any of the hillside, any of the bushes or any of the trees. The only thing that we're responsible for is 24 inches off of the split rail fence and we're Trimming this back once every month. So anything in here? No spraying. Nothing on this side. Only on this side of the split rail fence Is what we're responsible for. A quick video like that can save a lot of confusion, customer complaints, and make sure my crew knows exactly what to do when they're on the job site. Another great way to use video in your business Is equipment maintenance and repairs. One of the worst things when you're doing operations. Is you get on the job site and something's broken. And you have no record of what happened, why it's broken, and when was the last time we did maintenance on it. Now, if in the perfect world, Everyone would make notes on every single time they did maintenance on this piece of equipment or they did a repair. Awesome. What we do here at augusta, we have what we call these red tag systems. Where we mark exactly what is broken, what's wrong with it, and we put this little red tag on it so it doesn't end up back outside. But one of the problems we had Is still the fact that we don't really keep track in the office of what's broken. Now, using copilot, we can have a video attached of every time there's maintenance done on a piece of equipment and store it inside the software so that an operations manager or the admin person. Knows exactly what's going on with the equipment. Also, if I'm out of town and someone's doing equipment repairs, I can order parts, talk to my dealer, or make sure that there's a backup if needs be. So, for example, let's go ahead and fix this piece of equipment here. And just make a quick video of what exactly is wrong with this and what I did to fix it. I'm going to attach it to a to do inside of my field force mobile app in copilot. Okay, so this one had a deck height that was broken. The lever right here. Basically, I just need to replace the spring. So I basically replaced it with this one right here. And it should work now just fine. So I'm gonna take off the red tag, and this one's good to go. It's gonna go back into P7 and should be rock and rollin'. A quick video like that attached to that to do. Then, as the manager, Even if I'm not present at the facility, I know exactly what's going on, what's broken, what was repaired, and when maintenance was done last. Those are five ways you can use video in your business. To streamline sales, operations, and admin and make a lot more money. It helped me tremendously in growing Augusta Lawn care to over $50 million in annual revenue. Now in the past we used to use WhatsApp or YouTube or Google Drive to upload the videos and then we'd send links to the team. But now inside the Fieldforce mobile app and inside of Copilot CRM, all the videos stay with the property, they stay with the customer, they stay on that visit and it makes it really easy to be able to keep track of videos in the long term. You can download the Fieldforce mobile app on Android and Apple devices and it's available to all subscription levels, including our free version@copilotcrm.com the other cool thing about the app is available offline. So even if you're in spotty service areas, I can still see all my job notes. I can still upload videos and once I hit the cloud then the videos get uploaded, then my job notes get synced. My clock in and out times on the job also sync once I get back in service. So go check those out. On Android and Apple devices, it's all available for free.