Master the Upsell, Triple Your Home Service Biz Profits

Regardless of what home service business you're in, you can use these. So let's open this up. So cure. So there's five cures the off season that we go through in the book. And cure number two is selling more and better. More being getting advertising and better, better jobs. We're going to increase the amount of money we get from the customer. So what I want to go over there are. All right, here we go. There are 11 options or upgrades to increase customer lifetime value. All right, the first way to boost customer lifetime value is to give discounts for increasing frequency. All right, I'm just skipping. You can see here how I built these. You can skip from the highlighted portions and just read the main parts. So the first way is to boost customer lifetime value is to give discounts for increasing frequency. All right, the next one, the second way, we went over this earlier in today's live stream. Second way is to increase lifetime value through upgrades is to sell supplements. Okay, you might say I don't sell health supplements, I sell home services. In this context, supplements are products that customers must use on a regular basis. They get used up or dissolve. For example treatments for lawns, odor enhancers for carpets or chemicals for pools. These small add ons upgrade the service experience and increase customer value. The third approach is to increase the quality of the products that you use. All right, so this could be like the type of mulch, could be more nicer, the type of paint that you use, type of chemicals that you use. These are all things that can be better, higher quality. Someone put put it on podcast app please. Yes, it is on the podcast. The book is completely free on the podcast if you want to listen to audio version. I'm going to turn off comments on the main page cause I get distracted. The fourth strategy is to sell tiered packages. So good, better best model. The fifth strategy is to bundle services. Each of these I go over in depth on the in the book. The sixth approach is to sell optional service on every existing quote. The seventh strategy is to set up a bonus program for your technician so they are actually incentivized to upsell. Also consider selling follow up services. A lot of us think that follow like going back to a customer or callback is a negative thing because you know something bad happened. Why not package a follow up visit into the initial estimate for the customer so that way it leads to less callbacks. And when customers are unhappy about something, they know you're coming back so it's less high risk for them. What else? We got a selling Limited time or lifetime warranties is another powerful approach. The tenth strategy is to sell personalized recommendations. This could be like a property inspection, a 21 point property inspection. Finally, you can sell premium access to Support things like Get24.7 emergency text concierge service or a fee receive services from specific technicians. That's premium access to support. These are all ways to be able to upsell your customer. All right, now I have a couple notes on things I want to discuss when it comes to upsells. So inside the book on page 62, there are three different ways to grow your business. All right, let's go to page 62 inside of the book. And this is what I call aura. See a little graphic here.

Boom. Aura is O R A stands for for onboard retain or ascend. So onboarding is getting new customers. And this is the one most of us kind of know about. In order to be able to grow the business, I will get more customers. I will onboard more customers. In order to grow the business. Yes, you can absolutely do that. That's the first step of growing your business. The first way to be able to scale is onboard more customers. The second way is to retain more customers. You're like, well, how does retention actually help me grow the business? Well, by retaining more customers, it means I can sell them more services in the future. And it also means I don't have to take new customers to replace customers that are churning. That's retention. The third way to grow your business is ascension or Ascend. So again, back to our onboard retain and ascend little graph situation inside the book. I truly believe that the vast majority of our time in growing our business spent on onboarding, getting more new customers. And that's why I named this chapter more and better. Because instead of focusing on getting more new customers and onboarding more, you know, we spend so much time on that and that's good to extent, but we spend very little time on retention. How do we actually reduce churn? How do we improve the quality of our service? How do we have checklists and trainings that our crew is efficient and and does a great job? Every single time we answer the phone, we have great customer service. That's retention. But then ascension. I think that the vast majority of home service business owners spend almost no time thinking about ascension. How do I take a customer and get them to pay me more? Ultimately, what an upsell is doing is saying, hey, if you're buying this, if you're buying this, like why don't we go ahead and get some more? Why don't we get some more of what you're already getting? And so an upsell in a different retail sense would be like, hey, if you're buying a 24 inch TV, why not buy a 42 inch TV like it's so much bigger and better. And here's all the reasons why that's an upsell. I'm taking something you're already buying or you already have and I'm selling you more of that thing, a better quality version of it. That's upsell. We'll talk about cross sells down the road. Which cross sells is I'm selling something that goes along with your purchase. So for example, if I am doing, if I'm selling that flat screen and I'm also bundling it with something like a PS station, PlayStation or a controller or video games, those would be cross sells and do different things with the tv. But if I'm trying to upsell, I'm taking the person from a 24 inch TV to a 42 inch TV and I might even be selling a warranty or a guarantee, some sort of warranty around the screen itself that would be a better version of the product that they're buying. I truly believe we as home service business owners get so wrapped up in the next shiny customer and getting more customers that we spend very little time and retention and almost no time whatsoever on ascension. We are in love with onboarding new customers. And so again, upselling is a better version of what you are already buying. Cross selling is, hey, you might also like this, hey, I know you're buying that 24 inch TV. You might also like this PlayStation and these video games. So upsells cross sells. When it comes to like trucks, we get upsold all the time. When you go to Ford, they have the XL version, the XLT version, the King Ranch, the Lariat, the Raptor. These are all ways to get you to spend more money. And immediately a lot of us think that oh that's super salesy and you know it's going to lead to customers turning me away because they are being upsold and that people don't like that. Look, the biggest fans of Ford do not own the XL version. They spend more money with the business and get a better product. And so if you want to reduce churn, if you want to have better customers, if you want people that are big, your biggest fans, you solve more of their problems and you upsell them into more of your services and you get them to pay you more money, your best paying customers are your best Customers, your lowest paying customers are the ones that cause you all the pressure and pain. And so the same way that Ford is going to try to get people to upsell into higher versions of the truck, you want to upsell your existing customers and do better versions of the services that you're selling them. And this can be done in so many different ways. We just mentioned 11 different ways that you can do upsells inside your business. Highly recommend this. Do not make your upsell messages super salesy. Like, dear customer, we have noticed on your property and I'm like, hey, hey, hey Bob the crew that your property noticed the bushes were overgrown. Join an estimate. I can get to you tomorrow. Make it really, really simple. We don't include pictures in our emails. We don't include links in those. We don't say signed off. The Augusta lawn care team, we just leave it like they know where it's coming from. Make it really, really personalized and they will respond at a higher rate. The stance on upselling is what I'm looking for. Is every aspect of the business geared in a way to be able to sell the customer more stuff? If not, we are conf constantly going to spend money on onboarding new customers. We're constantly spending more and more money on onboarding more customers. And we're never going to be able to turn off the marketing funnel. We're never gonna be able to start spending money on every single lead. You start making money in home services when leads start coming to you without you having to spend money on every single one. And so the number one way for me to do that is upsell and cross sell services to my existing customers. And my job, my ultimate goal is that I wanna also turn every one time job into a recurring revenue job. Downsell big one time jobs and do reoccurring services. If someone can't pay for a $30,000 roof replacement, suggest regular repair visits for leaks instead. This is re. Reoccurring service is cheaper than the one time job. You could downsell further. So like man, people are price sensitive. Great. This is the time to downsell. Instead of having a $30,000 roof replacement, I'm just like, okay, great, we're going to be coming and we'll do roof, roof repairs. That's reoccurring. There's no schedule for it, but when there's a leak, you're going to come fix it. You could downsell further by offering a cheaper roof checkup. This recurring maintenance would prevent leaks before they cause damage. These monthly or quarterly inspections can Help keep their roof in good shape. All right, so there's just so many, so much opportunity to be able to take a one time job and downsell it into a reoccurring job like a repair usually. So usually I think about installs as one time jobs, repairs as reoccurring, because when there's something broken, I have to fix it. And then maintenance as recurring, which means happens on a weekly, monthly, bi weekly, et cetera basis. And the reason this is so important, I keep pulling up the book, but this is what we talk about in the book. The reason it's so important, especially during times of economic recession, is recurring revenue is much more stable during economic turmoil. And people really noticed this back in 2022 when all of a sudden interest rates spiked up because all of a sudden massive projects just stalled out. The amount of people that were actually going forward with 50, 60, $70,000 jobs really slowed down when interest rates spiked up. But from a recurring perspective, in terms of maintenance, everything just stayed the same. Now when it came back to Here it is 877. During the 2007, 2009 financial crisis, new vehicle sales dropped by 42%. I think of that as like a one time big purchase, like it's one time big install kind of thing. Meanwhile, the aftermarket sector repairs and maintenance experienced only a 1% decline. Again, I think of repairs as reoccurring rep and maintenance as recurring revenue. During tough times, people delay buying new cars, but they still take care of their current vehicles. This requires recurring. Sorry. This requires reoccurring repairs and recurring maintenance. Brake pads need to be swapped, oil changes need to be done. Another reason to focus on recurring revenue, recurring revenue doesn't depend on having an exceptional salesperson present at all times. There are so many reason to try to get someone into a recurring service. So the question is, how do I upsell them into that? And use the 11 strategies at the very beginning. You're going to create the packages, you're going to create warranties, you're going to create guarantees, you're going to create tier levels of service. You have a good, better and best model and package that you sell people. And a great time to do that is once the job is done, especially if you do one time big projects. My goal is to upsell them into a recurring maintenance package. My goal is to upsell them into a warranty that I will come back and fix anything in the future. I want to upsell them on the initial estimate that hey, they spend an extra $5,000. I will guarantee this project for the next 15 years. And I'm simply like, well, what happens if it breaks? That's what insurance is. And that's why insurance is such a great business model and has been around for many, many years is because you're selling thin air. You're selling reassurance to customers. And when you can get away from being a commodity service in your home service industry, where you're just selling like everyone else is and said you're selling peace of mind, you're selling insurance, you're selling thin air. And that is the work that we do. We will stand behind. When you sell that and you're able to mark up for that and upsell customers into that higher level of value, that's when you'll make money. That's when you'll be profitable. Instead of always thinking about price and we got a discount. How can you actually increase the price and upsell customers by taking away all the things they're afraid of. They're afraid of you doing a lousy job. Okay, great. I'm going to charge them more and give them a guarantee or a warranty and I'm going to bake that into the price. And so, for example, planting trees, a lot of times people don't water their plants. So what am I going to do? I'm going to upsell them. Hey, look, I will guarantee these plants as long as we install the irrigation for them. What did I just do? I just upsold them from a planting job into a irrigation job into a warranty. Oh, and by the way, we will replace them at no cost as long as we do maintenance on them on a monthly basis. This is how you upsell a one time job and do recurring revenue over and over and over again.