Mike Minutes Mastermind 01/22/2024

Hello destination. Hope you're all doing fantastic. Don't worry, this is not an urgent mastermind. Just watch it tomorrow.

I just landed and want to make sure I stayed caught up on questions. I did not fall in line.

And looks like there are six to go through so that's good. All right, YouTube this real quick.

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We have present share screen. Let's jump into some questions. All right.

First up got Kyle Turner from Madison, Alabama. Hey Mike, quick question about the instant quotes on our webpage. What does the process look like after a client clicks on accept or decline? Will they get an automated email quote with all their line items we do for the weekly and bi weekly services? Or does command center take that information and create a quote and send it to customer? The customer also they accept the quote. Would command center have to reach out to them to get a car and file or does it take prompt from their web page to get a car and file? They're trying to understand the full scope of the process. Yeah, so this right now is the one hole in terms of having a credit cards on file requirement because we don't have payment information on the form when they accept the quote. However, we don't want to make it where we have to call them and try to get in touch with them to get a card on file. Otherwise there's no point in having instant quote. They can't actually get the job. It's on the schedule. So right now the one way you can get through.

Getting a card on file from a customer perspective is do an instant quote, accept that Command Center. How this works with command center is that the form comes exactly the same as a regular asset request form, except it tells them hey, here are the prices and they were accepted command. Command center is still going to go create the estimate inside their account, set up their account. If they're brand new, send out the quote and have it marked as accepted. And when they mark it as accepted, you're going to get notified saying this person has a accepted job and put them on the schedule. And so either A, when you're putting them on the schedule or B, have an automation clean these up because you can have an automation that basically if a car, if a job is scheduled and they do have a credit card on file, if you could have an email going out to them asking that to get their card information on file. And that's what we've done in the past before copilot allowed to have the card on file requirement. So I would recommend having that on there. And I was like if someone accepts a job or accepts an estimate and they don't have a car in file, I would have that automation still in place. Again, they're not going to be able to do that unless they accept an instant quote door instant quote form on your website. So I would recommend that for everyone watching until we have copilot integrated with instant price forms, which I'll have updates on that on Thursday and timelines. Until then I would recommend just having a very simple automation that is when an estimate, if it is accepted and the customer does not have a card on file, send them this, this email. And that email is the one we've always used in the past to get collect card information. Once someone's accepted it's quote that is the one way for them to get through the system right now because we're not going to have command center call them and try to get a hold of them and get a carbon file because most time they're not going to pick up. And then now you've got this weird pending estimates accepted. But like we told them it's on the schedule, but so we're going to process it like an accepted estimate. And I would just recommend have for now have that automation ready to roll. You could probably make it, you could make it a text message too. Be like hey, you know, put a credit card on file, click here, get the form, etc. So that would be my recommendation. If you don't, what's simply going to happen is they're going to get on the on the schedule because as accepted you're like oh great, I'm going to put them on the schedule. And then you put them on schedule, you do the job and you don't have a card file. That's like the worst case scenario. So either a check when you are putting someone's schedule that they've put a car and file to double check that or to just create an automation either way.

Thomas, Littleton, Colorado can you walk me through the steps of how a website visitor would come across our instant mowing quote page? I cannot seem to locate on our website? Thanks. Yeah, so a lot of people keep mentioning this. They have to fill in the first few parts of information before it switches to the instant quote mowing quote. So a lot of people say, hey, it's not on my website. You have to fill in those forms, the information on top and then it unlocks the ability to see the pricing side of things. So if you have submitted it on the dashboard usually within two to three days we get it updated and you're not seeing it. That's likelihood it is. Otherwise the form hasn't been submitted. And if you submit the form and you fill out all the information, it doesn't start showing prices. Just send me an email franchisegustalongassurice.com I can take a look at it. But if every person that has said this so far, that's what happened is you got to fill in the first few bits of information and then unlock it. The reason we do that is because we don't want to have this massive gigantuous form that people see when we say get a quote right away. And they see this massive form when it's not really a ton of information, it just has pictures, it has all the terms and conditions. I don't want them to see all of that until they have put their information in and unlocks the next part and that unlocks the next part. And we consistently see the rate of completion of those forms is significantly higher when we do that. And the challenging part is to make that on the website where it loads quickly and doesn't slow down our websites. And that that's what we've been doing and we've been successful at it. Jeff from Sandwich, Massachusetts Mike, my top goal for 2024 is to maximize profit. A secondary goal I'd like to have is to build the recurring lawn mowing side of the business. Do you see these two, two goals in conflict with one another or can I build a recurring side with understanding x amount will be spent on marketing? Thank you. It sounds like when you say you are trying to build the recurring lawn mowing side of the business, you are assuming that you're have to spend money on marketing. I think that sometimes just simply by not but by cutting out other things that are distracting you, you will inadvertently focus more on the recurring side of the business. For example, your one click estimate emails will stay stay. You'll send three or four around mowing instead of one about mowing and a whole bunch of other things. So that's why like there's so many things it's hard to measure when it comes to like things like cutting out services and cutting out employees that are inefficient because it's hard to track what focus the value of focus and the value of focusing on certain like your core guys. Sometimes you can get more, more efficiencies and more profit out of four or five guys instead of eight or nine. Because now by limiting your lowest Perform going to have time to focus on your top performers. The same thing is true when it comes to.

Services. Right when you cut out several services, you start focusing on them. You start having to buy equipment and maintain the equipment for these other services. And you then can train your guys on just the core competencies. Your marketing is all centered around those core competencies or email one click estimate. Emails are centered around the core competencies.

The value of focus is hard to quantify. Very difficult. It's almost impossible. I've tried.

But it is, it is nonetheless extremely.

Impactful. I would say Hutch from Charlotte. How do you recommend getting a phone number, email or website when dealing with multiple locations? Our fertilization, weed control referral is going to add a small graphic at the bottom. Every estimate they send. That includes our info. Oh, that's great. What's his name? Lindsay. Cool dude. They're one their one location services. All our markets should I do email only drive it to one phone number. Trying to keep things simple for their office so they don't have to have to don't say to how it's trying to select the right estimate template with accurate information for applications. Yeah. Great call. So this is what's nice about having multiple locations that are close to each other because what you'll do is you'll know if command center sees that lead is from a different territory, they're just going to swap over to it. Now the thing is if they're calling, yes, those minutes will be charged to that.

Location they initially called. I would overthink that because Even if like 50 people do that in a month, the first phone call let's say is five minutes. Okay. Yeah. It's going to cost an extra 500 bucks. Like that's 100 customers. When I say 50. 50 customers. Like $250. Okay. So if I was you probably Connor, I'd probably put it on.

Mooresville just being that's the most profitable and the largest and then just know that yes, you're probably taking an extra 150 to $200 max per month because just the first call, after the first call you're fine. Because now they're in the system of the correct location. But that's what will command center is looking at first when a call comes in like it comes the address. So yes, there will be some of those. But I don't think you'd be complaining if you got 50 free customers right from our referrals. So I just, I wouldn't overthink that. I'll Be honest.

Jake from Rexburg, Idaho.

Another landscaping company in our area, subcontracted the sidewalk Snow removal for six apartment complexes to us. He now has about $6,000 unpaid on his account with the first invoice being sent about 40 days ago. I know that that terms for subcontractors often net 30. I didn't bug him about it until 30 days after the first invoice. Last month, I asked when he was going to get paid up. He replied with, yeah, we should have some money tomorrow. Today or tomorrow. Our commercials only let US bill every 15 days and they are net 30, so payment should be in.

Tomorrow. Oh, he said all this. Okay. He said all this. Our commercials wanted to listen. He said, okay, okay. That was one week ago. Still no signs of payment. This is about one fourth of our snow removal income. So it. It would be a tough decision to stop subbing for him. We've never subcontracted for anyone before, so I'm not sure how worried I should be at this point. How would you all handle the situation and when would you consider stopping services? Thanks, Mike.

I would stop services probably pretty quickly because it sounds like this is not normal behavior, but this is kind of comes in the territory when you start subcontracting because now you're getting paid after they get paid and all the rest of it.

I would probably, if you want to use leverage against him is wait until it snows like crazy and then like, hey, we're not going out into this paid. And like, you can use a credit card, but you have to pay right now. I would probably use that if I had to. I would also probably use the fact that you probably built a relationship with the property manager or the tenants or the someone on site, like an HOA person or something that you could potentially go and try to get around yourself, your contractor.

Another thing that you could do in terms of leverage, I would rather probably exhaust trying to get the money first. And so I think personally what I would probably do is wait until the next snow event and be like, hey, if this is not paid within the next 25 minutes, we're not being serviced, because then it puts them in a bad spot. And they will pay the invoice because they know that that's what the contract entails. And then if they don't do the service, you'd contact directly to the. The company, the contract, and be like, hey, they're not paying us. We're willing to work with you directly. Like, again, don't. Hopefully you don't have to get there. But if the gloves had to come off, that's probably where I'd end up going. But I do think that making sure you have some sort of leverage when you contact this person to get payment right away is going to be probably when there's snow on the ground and they're asking for you to do stuff, so.

This is Ben Collins from Arnold, Missouri. Hey Mike, thanks for all your efforts on the Copilot software. I know you're super busy with everything involved. We were wondering if there's any possibility of adding tags to the dispatch board for group emailing purposes. In service offbot we heavily relied on the ability to filter the dispatch board by tags when sending communication alerts as by other filter types such as service, status, resource. Sometimes you need all three filter types on one saved view. I notice the calendar view allows you to filter by tags but not custom fields. But there is no email feature on the calendar view. Sometimes we have to email entire routes of people regarding weather delays, but I'm not sure how this would work in Copilot except for doing it manually. Okay, one second. I know there's a way to contact everyone on a specific day. Off the top of my head, I don't know where it is to be perfectly honest with you. Contact ATC about this. I know from what you're saying here, like the tag part, you can't filter by tags in the dispatch board. I know that, but I know there's a way to. I forget which view it is. Contact everyone a given day that like wasn't completed and like email them. I'm just forgetting what which were how to get there. But in terms of your overall question is the possibility of adding tags. This fetch board for group emailing purposes. Give me one second.

Log in my account.

Dispatch board.

You can move these events. Let's see here. If you select those all you would be able to then.

Status you do it by that reopen, duplicate, send by.

Yeah. So from the calendar ve can I see what you're saying? Okay, yeah, you can put this in as a feature request. I'm not going to say like we're going to move mountains to do this the next two days for certain. But I know I can see the application 100%. I would talk to ATC because I know that they're doing this for someplace other that I'm not looking at right now. And I'm not going to try to do this in the moment from the calendar view, but we also use custom fuels constantly essay on the dispatch board. Especially when a 36 inch mower would break on route. We would remove all the lawns with that feature from the crews list or reassign them to a different crew. Are the plans to allow more filtering options on the dispatch board before spring rush? Things can get pretty hectic and confusing when mowing ADX 80 to 100 lawns a day, especially when equipment goes down or where the delays happen. Okay, one second here.

Sorry, I'm looking for a few things. One second here.

I see you're saying so on the dispatch board, unlike the schedule side of things, you can't filter by your tags and your custom fields. I got you.

Okay, so yeah, like on the calendar view, you can search by tags. So what you could do there, potentially, for example, if like. So I'm just. I'm going to give you like how you can make this happen. I can understand what you're wanting, like in the dispatch board, but I'm making this happen. I would go to your grid view or calendar view. Go either. Like today's schedule, for example, you could say, okay, anyone that has this tag and you'd be able to filter out by like a specific type of mower or whatever is there. You could filter by tags there.

I see what you're saying here.

Makes total sense.

Yeah, I see. Okay. Yes. Put the end as a feature request.

And we will see what we can do.

All right.

Do you think more people would fill out the instant quote form if they knew it was going to give an instant price? I wouldn't fill out a form to have someone call me back. Does it highlight in a title or picture? If they invest the time, they'll get instant price. So as soon as they put any sort of information in. Let me see. Because I think now our line is to be customized before I talk out of turn.

All right, I'm just having these load up. Okay.

Yeah, I'll show what I'm looking at.

Actually, the Bellingham one, for example, it's like, get it, get an estimate. The reason we don't say instant here is because we don't know, first and foremost if we can give them an instant quote depending on their property size. Secondly, if they're looking for anything besides mowing, it's not going to be instant. Right. So if I fill this information in, then it does tell me if I want mowing service. It is an instant price. So it only says that if, however, it is mowing. Because you got to be careful because sometimes you won't be able to get a mow into quote because these other Stuff like property cleanups, landscaping and then it looks much more like a regular form. But if they do that and they follow us then they get their pricing.

So and some people been asking why we make them do this extra step of submitting is because if there's been there was so many false positive people clicking accept just to see what would happen and we we needed them to say like hey click the submit button to complete this process. And the part that this week we are testing at my locations is once they click submit I'm not going to click it now because it will go to through command center. But once they click submit then the options for upsells will be presented. But that we will have already locked in their information, their pricing and the fact they accepted prior to presenting any sort of upsell information.

It could say 90% can get a mowing quote instantly. Yeah, well I was thinking is what we could probably do is make a special banner kind of like we do for leaf cleanups and other services that if you wanted to you could put the very top of your website and push like this sort of logic. But it has to be customizable. Like we couldn't do this across the board because some locations only 30 of their revenue comes from mowing and I would say maybe 10 to 20 of their estimates are are mowing and then mostly projects or chemical applications or snow plowing etc. So I just want to be careful with that especially during the snow season when a lot of people there is no mowing coming in. It's like 100 other stuff. So but you know, I agree I think like down the road just a banner would probably be the best thing like hey, really pitching like hey 90% of people get a quote immediately and maybe you only show that during like the mowing season and maybe it's just like now accepting new mowing clients. 90, 90 of people can get an instant quote. Click on the form below something like that. But just have to be fully customizable similar to what the like the other banners for services are.

All right everyone, I hope you have a fantastic rest of your Monday or Tuesday.

I will likely be on the road tomorrow but I will probably still have my hotspot so I'll try to do another mastermind. If not as always leave the questions, I'll get to them. Make sure you have your calendars up. Thursday the roundtable is 5pm Pacific Standard Time, 8pm Eastern Standard Time. So everyone should be able to get able to get on that's later in the day and so get work done and get locked in and ready for that will be great. So looking forward to it. Be lots of announcements around Fan center, the coaching program, cool stuff that's coming down the pipe that we've been working on for a long time and giving some timelines for all of that good stuff the rest of 2024. All right, everyone, have a fantastic evening. We'll see you tomorrow.