Mike Andes walks through an eight-step sales process for lawncare and home services. The key moves: a simple online form captures leads, an estimate portal lets customers accept quotes with one click, and automation collapses the whole thing into three or four steps instead of eight.
There are eight steps in the typical sales process for a home service business. Now, the very first one is essential. When the customer raises their hand and said I need service and they contact your business in some way, shape or form, put your estimate request form right at the top of your website. Most new customers are coming to get an estimate, so make it easy for them to do that and don't have like 30 fields and asking for their Social Security number and their shoe size on the form. Stage two is when your office or admin reaches back out to the customer once they've got that lead information and sets up the appointment for you to meet the customer in person. Step three is when you actually go out to the customer's property and assess what they need done on the project. In step four, when I'm creating the actual estimate and putting the pricing together, I want to ensure that I use templates and I have my pricing standardized. The fifth stage of the sales process is when the customer receives the quote and accepts it. Ideally, they're clicking on a link, they're inside of a customer portal, and within a click of a button they can accept the quote. They don't have to call you, don't have to email you back. Ideally. Now, the seventh step of the process is important because I want to get paid. I either need a credit card on file, which you might require if you have a recurring service, or a big deposit or a down payment on a large project. After the first seven stages, I can finally move to the eighth stage where I can put the job on the schedule and get the work done. There's a way to be able to reduce these eight steps down to three or four if we use technology correctly.
