How I Used Video to Explode My Lawn Care Business

Everyone, it's Mike Andes, and today we're talking about how video can completely change your business. You might have used text messages, emails, pictures of job notes, but video can absolutely change the way you do sales, operations, and admin. I'm going to talk about four ways video can be used in your business to reduce the amount of time you spend working out in the field, make sure that operations run much smoother, and ensure that your customers are much more satisfied. So. So the first way is estimates without walkthroughs. I remember back when I was running about an 800,000 annual revenue business and had a few crews going out and doing projects every single day. And we'd usually DO projects between 3,000 and $10,000 in revenue per job. And what we ended up actually doing is staggering. The start times for my crew, we have people start at 6 o', clock, 6:30, 7 o', clock, 7:30, 8 o'. Clock. Why? Because I need to start three to four projects with different crews and show them what to do. So they get their job notes. And then they would show up at the job. And a lot of times they'd forget a piece of equipment or a tool or some supplies simply because they didn't know the full scope of the job they just showed up with based upon kind of the job notes from what they saw inside their app. And the problem was that I was spending two to three hours every morning just driving around our service area showing jobs to the crew. And what's really bad is I'd show up to the job. And the estimate when I did it with the customer and did actual walkthrough with the customer was like five, six, seven weeks ago. And we were booked out so far. Now, a month and a half later, I'm supposed to remember all the fine details of that job that was not in the job notes. And so what you can do with video, and this is what we started doing out of a need for. The fact that I was tired of doing two to three hours a day of initial walkthroughs with my crew is I just made a video of every single project right after doing the estimate. So I'd talk with the customer, walk around the property, understand the full scope of the job, say, Mr. Customer, I'm gonna get back to you within 24 hours. I'm gonna make a video for the office and for the crew. So when they show up, they'll be able to do this job exactly the way we talked about, and you'll get the estimate to you within 24 hours. And so that video can now be attached directly inside the Copilot Field Force mobile app that we that was just launched, you can directly link it inside of there. It'll compress the video file down and attach it inside the app. Now, in the past, we had to use WhatsApp or YouTube or Google Drive to store the video files and then link it inside of Copilot, link it inside of our software. But now with the new app, that walkthrough that I do after talking with the customer, I just attach that video file directly into my job. It compresses it on the back end so that it's under 50 megabytes and it's still very easy to view. And then that video from inside the software, I can drag to the job once it's accepted for my crew to see. And even back in the day when we use WhatsApp and YouTube, this saves me hours of doing these random walkthroughs. And here's the thing. I would do the walkthrough and as soon as the customer saw me, they would come out and talk to me. And then what that mean? Every time they had a problem, they'd see me for the estimate. They'd saw me the morning of with the walkthrough, with the crew, and so they would want to always talk to me. When anything went wrong on the project, they wouldn't talk to the crew. Whereas after, once the crew had their job notes and the video, they were able to watch the video the night before. They're able to get all of their materials, all their supplies, all the tools, and not forget stuff. And when they show up to the project, they now do the walkthrough with the customer having all the information required. Nothing falls through the cracks, nothing is forgotten. And most importantly, if the customer has questions or problems throughout the project, they'll talk to the crew because they understood that the handoff went from the estimator to the office. The office now puts the crew in charge by having that video in their pocket. So no wasting second trips to the job site. The estimator, after they do the estimate, make that video and send that off to the office, they should never have to go back on site. And now they don't have to also link that video. Like how we used to do it is we'd have a separate group called Estimate videos inside of WhatsApp. And every time we made a video of a project, we would put it in the WhatsApp group. It, it would compress it down and we'd make the name of that video the name of the customer, and then five, six weeks would pass by. They would get accepted, put on the schedule, and the night before, the general manager would go look in that WhatsApp group and say, oh, there's Billy Bob's video. It's named after Billy Bob. I'm going to go now send that Forward over in WhatsApp to the crew. That process is janky because after five or six weeks, some people might have left the company. I no longer have the video. The video got deleted or somehow got lost. And most importantly, I don't have that video inside the software. But now that's all changed. With Field Force and Copilot CRM, you can now take that video directly inside the app. It compresses it down and attaches it inside of the software. It's a huge win. Saves you a ton of time as the estimator and allows your crew to take over the project with all the information needed to get it to completion. The second way that video can change your business is daily project updates. If you have a job that's a week, two weeks, three weeks long, maybe it's a 50, 60, $70,000 project. Instead of asking for just pictures, now inside the Field Force app, the crew can just take a quick video of the project at the end of the day, attach it to the dispatch board, attach it to the job, and you're able to keep very good record using video of exactly what's happening with, with that customer's project. And if you want the customer to view it from their customer portal, because they're remote or they're out of town, they can also see that video right from their customer portal. Another way to be able to use video is instant upsells out in the field. And so in the past, we would have it where right from the Copilot app. They would be able to tap on upsell, choose which service the customer needs, and upsell the service very quickly. But now the ability for you as the estimator to do 10 times as many estimates is absolutely possible because the crew can now attach a video of what's needed and then you as the estimator immediately know what the price should be and then send the quote directly to the customer. In the past, my crew would tell me, oh, this person needs a property cleanup. Oh, this person needs a bush trimming. They might take a couple of pictures, but like, I wouldn't be able to see everything in high detail. I wouldn't be able to see all the Access points and where I could take the debris and how far down I need to trim the hedge and where I needed to dump the mulch. I couldn't see all that. So I have to go do a drive by estimate. Whereas now my estimators can do twice three times as many estimates in a day because they just tell their crew to make a quick video, attach it inside the Field Force mobile app, they open it up, can watch it and send the estimate immediately. This allows upsells to be way more powerful because instead of just asking the customer, hey, would you like an estimate for your mulch install? Our crew was there today and realized you might need it. Now instead of that, we can actually just send them the quote and say oh, here's the price. Our crew was at the property and noticed that you needed the service. But because the video is now attached to the service, I can give them that detailed estimate without having to go visit the property. The fourth way that you can use video inside of your business is right from the very first service, require that your crew make a property record for recurring work. So for example, we sell mowing over the phone and via instant quotes from our website. And that's awesome. Are you tired of paying Google and Facebook a whole bunch of money and not really seeing any leads? If you want a custom website built for you in the next six weeks, go check out HomeService web design.com we get way more leads and it reduces the amount of admin time. No one's calling on the phone. If they do an instant quote form, we can get their credit card right from the form goes right into their software right inside of Copilot. So immediately we know that this customer is accepted the price and we can put them on the schedule. We don't have to wait for their card information, we don't have to wait for deposit, none of that. And so that's nice. The problem is I've never seen the property. And a lot of your first and second and third visits to a customer's property is where all of your callbacks yellow slips, mistakes are made. And a lot of times the reason people will do in person estimates or drive by estimates is simply to get a lay of the land, see the property and be able to make better job notes for the crew to not mess up those first couple visits. What we do is on the very first visit of a recurring series, we just tell the crew, hey, when you're done, take your camera out, put to 0.5 lens, so nice and wide lens and Just walk the property one time. It might take them 30 to 60 seconds to walk through the backyard gate, walk around the backyard and come around. But now that video, that property record can be attached to the property forever. Now the admin team, when the customer calls in, can actually see what they're talking about. They see the entire property. They can see the left gate versus the right gate. They can see the backyard hedge. They can see the entire property and have full scope into what the customer's talking about because that initial, initial property record was made. No longer you guessing are you asking the crew to send you pictures. Just on that very first service, we're always going to take a video of anything on the property and it's going to stay with that property forever. It helps the admin team and if the customer ever calls and asks for something like a mulch install or ask for their gutters to clean be cleaned out. You don't even have to look up on Google Maps. You just simply look at the video and have a very, very high fidelity, high quality way of being able to get a very accurate quote to the customer. Those are just four ways that video can change your business. In sales, getting more upsells in operations for project updates for admin to be able to make sure you have a property record on file for every single customer's property. Very valuable. It'll allow you as the business owner to run the business even when you're not there in person. There's a whole bunch of other ways that members of Copilot CRM are using the Field Force mobile app on Android, Apple and iOS to be able to make sure they scale operations, grow their business and make more sales. I'd love to see in the comments below how you are using video in your business to unlock growth and make operations run smoothly.