Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/25/2022

Hello everybody. Good morning. A couple things we'll go over and I got several questions I saw were in the Google form. Quick thing here. We are just launching this and so there might be a couple things that we have to iron out. But Zach has been working on creating a place where if you have a print design that you want edited last probably January, February, a few of you were like, hey, if we, if we want something changed, we don't know how to use Photoshop. We have to go find an editor, we have to go find someone, a designer to work on these. So we're trying to open it up to where if you want something very specific done, you can actually customize it completely and then submit it to us. And then it's just like a one time charge for a custom design. So you can give us pictures that you want, you can change text that you want, you can change the stamp, where it's at on the image, what services, like anything and everything on the postcard or flyer can be changed. Do you already have door hangers, Zach?

Door hangers, postcards and flyers. So if you go to lawn caremedia.com Augusta that will be up there. It's brand new and it's just a matter of if you want custom, completely custom, and what's in the pro shop is not working for you, then you can use that. And just a one time charge, you submit all the things that you want and the media team here will get the Photoshop files for you, they'll get the PNG or JPEG file for you. So you can just upload it to Vistaprint or whatever you're using and. But everything is customizable in that case, from the picture to the text to the services, everything, QR codes and everything. So feel free to use that if that's something that interests you. I know it's probably only one or two, you will use that, but you're more than welcome to do that. We're going to do it. We actually are building it for the public, but it'll be half off for all of Augusta Nation. Basically it's our cost. So yeah, check that out if that is of interest to you. Let's go ahead and open up the Google form. Several questions. I haven't seen these yet, but let me see. Share. Boom, boom. Okay, so this one's from Max. When I call an estimate the next day to follow up, I often hear this objection. I'm waiting to hear back from a few more companies. How can I counter this objection and close the deal? Couple things it comes back to, you know, bird in the hand. And ultimately, right now, if the customer is waiting on other bids, what you're, what you've got to play on is the fact that they don't know what those numbers are. They don't know if they're even going to get a bid, and there's no confidence on there and that they're going to be able to secure a time and a spot on the everyone else's schedule. So what you want to play off of is the fact that, hey, Mr. Jones, we got, we got your bid in. We know exactly what that number is going to look like. We got a specific day, we can get you on the schedule next week, and we're filling up really quickly right now. But next Thursday, I got a spa deal, I can get you on the schedule. And so the thing that you're now, you are now giving that none of the other people that they're waiting on is offering is a specific time. And this is why it's so important to know when you're booked out to. Because when you're talking about projects, it's a matter of getting that scarcity of, hey, next Thursday I get you on the schedule. We got a spot available and we can get you on the schedule. That is what you're trying to play off of on a phone call when they're saying, I'm waiting to hear back, because they don't know if they're going to hear back and they don't know what those prices are going to be. So they're literally just doing that as a precautionary because they want more bids. And so I would just recommend playing off the fact that they already have bird in the hand. They already have you, they know your, your bid, they already like you. And if they're talking to the phone, they've said that they, you're over those barriers. It's now a matter of just like closing the deal and.

Getting them to know that you have a specific date. Any of those other bids could come back and be wildly different in price. And all of a sudden they're four weeks on the schedule because you don't have that date available. So I would try to bake that scarcity in payments. We're filling up really fast. But I did have a available spot available next Thursday. That would be a way when we do it also, if it's a mowing job, it'd be a matter of we're filling up quick on your specific day, your route, your area. And so I'D love to get you locked in. So that way we can actually make sure we service you and you don't, we don't fill that route up. So using scarcity is what you're going to be able to use as leverage when you have a bid in and they're just waiting on other people. And also, you know, if you really get into a conversation with someone, it could also just use the fact that, hey, Mr. Jones, like we got the bid to you the quickest because we are on our game, we have systems in place, we make sure that we communicate with you effectively and efficiently and that's how you're what you can expect from us going forward. And again, you don't even have to tear down other people. But that's imply and that is if you're still waiting on someone days later for a bid, potentially probably not going to be happy with their communication going forward.

As requested, instead of estimate how long the first round of garden bed weeding will take, we're going to try it, sell it at a permanent rate, just like initial MO's. Yeah, so I really like this. Obviously there's a lot of positive sentiment on the Facebook group about this. I'm a big fan of it. This is the one difference though I see in terms of mows, initial mows versus initial weeding, and that is with initial mows, we already know the price based on square footage prior to showing up. The property is a little bit more difficult to measure square footage of beds and come up with an accurate number for recurring maintenance. And so what's the difference is with initial mode is you've already sold recurring maintenance and then you're doing a permanent price for the initial mow. That is a little bit different sales process than from the get selling someone just on a permanent price without giving them a recurring price. And so the thing is, for weeding you already have to be at the property in order to give them a weekly price or a recurring price. And so therefore it's a little bit harder of a sell to commit someone, hey, I am going to come charge you per minute and I'm not going to give you a price right now in terms of what you are going to be charged on a recurring basis. So that's the positive part about Boeing, is that we can give them the recurring price, sell that to them. And then we were just trying to get over the one bump of initial versus with the weeding service. If you're doing that, not only are they risking that first visit being long time, they're also risking the fact they might use you for that first service and then not like your price for recurring maintenance. So it's not to say that you shouldn't do it. I actually do think you should. It's great. I like it. I think that you're. It's a little bit harder to sell because you haven't solved their problem and that is long term maintenance. Most time people when they call for weeding or mowing are looking for a long term solution. And when it comes to mowing, we're able to give those long term solution and tell them hey, by the way, if it's overgrown there's this little bump called the initial mode that's going to be different. Whereas when it comes to weeding, if it's over the phone or just sending an estimate out and says first visit is per minute and then after that we'll give you a quote for the recurring maintenance that's a little bit harder to sell because we haven't solved their long term solution and made solve their long term problem giving them a solution. So I think that the close ratio might be a little bit lower on that, but it saves you a trip out there. And for a lot of people right now that are so far behind on estimates and just trying to get jobs done, this is not a bad strategy to prevent having to go out to the property. And then you just have to make sure that on that initial visit you're going to then give them a recurring price. But I feel like you're going to have a little bit more kickback because you're not solving the long term problem and the consumer is less inclined to go with someone that they are fixing it in the short term, the initial and not knowing that what that long term price looks like prior to that. But I do, I do think is a good thing. I think you should do it.

When a client is entered again or twice and accepts the phone mowing, what's the best way to remedy this? Can you merge or combine the two accounts or to schedule the weekly mowing in the old account and delete the new account, I would recommend deleting it. I saw this last week a few times when I was training people that someone would have an account for like two years ago and because it was incomplete account or there was no information on it, somehow it got through this system where it didn't try to. Usually if you try to enter a same address or phone number or name it, the system serves off like hey, just FYI this is a similar Property, this other one. You do want to merge these accounts and that's, that's usually the best thing and it catches most of them. But you can get through that sometimes by someone uses a different email address or they moved or they, they have, they have multiple properties or whatever it might be. But if it's the same property address and it's the same customer, I would delete the old account. Honestly, I would go towards whichever account has the most standing history with the client and has the longest timeline and use that one. I would not have two. I would definitely not have two because they're going to one click estimate emails that are going to look like duplicates. And there's a good chance, especially if the phone numbers match up and things that someone answer the phone at command center and insert new data into the wrong account because the names are the same, the address is the same, etc. So be careful with this too. Out in the field, there's a way to get around this as well. When you're entering client new client information from the field, it sometimes will not in service autopilot, it will not try to detect a duplicate. And then that's how you can get someone else's information in. And now you have two accounts that look exactly the same, but one has a job, one does not. And that's what gets really confusing. So I would just delete the account, to be perfectly honest with you.

All right, Nick, how many dollars extra per hour does Valiant pay employees who are training new employees? We do $4 per hour on top of P4P. Right. So again, you're always calculating your base pay plus overtime and you're calculating your P4P. We add, if they work eight hours in the day and they were training someone else, we'd add $32 to their P4P. And again, assuming that that brings it above base pay, they'd be making more money. But it also means that if they're super slow, adding 4 dol hour is not going to actually meaningfully affect their paycheck because they'd still be below base pay.

And you can move that higher. If you're really struggling with having trainers be motivated to train other people that like you're having a lot of kickback because they have so much downside on P4P. You might want to move that to five or six dollars, just depending on the skill level at which you're hiring new hires, as well as.

Just how much delta is between trainers and what they're usually making on P4P. You might need to increase that dollar amount. Honestly.

Where'S the best place to put your weekly recurring schedule for cc? Like Mondays, we mow this part of town. Tuesdays, projects, Wednesdays, mowing this part. Yeah, this would be in scheduling under your wiki. So 100% that's where you want to put it. Obviously, command center is not putting jobs on the schedule, but it is helpful when a customer calls in and asks a question about the schedule to have that. And that's going to be in your wiki, underneath your scheduling. And so, you know, you can put on there weekly or mowing. We do this area town on Mondays, this area 10 on Wednesdays, this town Fridays or whatever it might be. You can put all that information in there, plus or negative one day. And then for projects, here's the days that you do with them on, you can do that. Just keep in mind that they're not scheduling for you. And so if you move that just because of weather and things like that, that can be somewhat detrimental. So it's a good place to put it though, as a starting point for them to be able to look. If a customer has a question about scheduling or if they call in about an estimate and they say, hey, if I was to accept this, what day of the week would I get this on? If it's not clear what command center is trained to do is basically, as soon as you get that, as soon as you accept the estimate, we'll get an exact day for you if we just don't have that information. But you can put that information in the wiki.

All right, Ken in Fenton, can you talk about some of the issues that we were having with Zooper? Yeah, so there's several small issues. The one primarily right now that is actually a bug is the one that when they rolled out the recurring jobs, the ability to edit, bulk edit recurring jobs, the budget hours field was not in there. So they are fixing that. They have addressed that and they said that was a bug and they are working on fixing that and adding that in. But most of the things that I see people having issues with Zooper is operator error. It's the same thing, honestly, with service autopilot. Yes, service off has glitches and things, but a lot of it is user error. And when you're missing a step, you're missing a button to click, etc. And so what's the difference between Zooprint service all by is the fact that we have really good support. So please reach out to Siraj and Kevin. They're great at Support and they're very, very timely. And most of the problems when I click around there, I'm like, man, where is this? Like, this is missing, this is wrong. They literally will send me back screenshots like, this is how you do it, this is where you click. And I was just missing something. And then parlaying that with the fact that I have expressed this, then that is somewhat frustrating. There's a lot of basic stuff that we're just missing. And then we contact them and it's like, oh yeah, it's easy fix. And so they are working on some tutorial videos and some guides that similar to Service Autopilot where you can search a certain feature and it pops up information because most of the problems that I'm seeing right now are just we're missing clicking like a button, we don't know where it's at, et cetera. And those things can be resolved with better training videos from them. And they know their software a lot better than us and they're changing it and improving it a lot too. So we aren't necessarily the best, honestly. And this is why again, why we're somewhat merging away from Service Autopilot. I feel like half of our day at Command center is we are the support team for Service Autopilot for a lot of you. And that's just super inefficient because that's not our software, we don't own it, we don't have back end access. So same thing with super, but now we have dedicated support people that are really, really good. So I'd definitely reach out to them and they'll let you know if it's like, oh, that's a bug, we'll get it fixed, they'll let you know. Versus hey, this is just one click away and just didn't see something. So. And most of the times when I'm like frustrated by something in super, it's one click away. And honestly, it's the same thing with Service Autopilot. So just now we actually have some good support and if there are bugs, they'll let us know and they'll get them fixed. So please reach out to Kevin and Siraj. I think everyone can agree that they're really good at timely response and if there's an issue, they will let you know and they will let you know when they're going to get fixed. So I have no problem with people making mistakes. I just want them to be able to communicate with me. And that's what we have not. We've lacked at Service, autopilot. All I got for questions that were submitted on the form. Anything else, feel free to comment in the comment section and we can go through those.

I know a lot of people. I had several people on the weekend reach out to me that are just way behind on estimates, way behind on jobs, just drowning in work. And every single one that I that contacted me was in their second spring rush. So it's, it's consistent with what we talk about. And as your second spring rush is usually when you get the deluge of work. And so the step process of when you're overloaded with work, you cannot get work done, whether because of weather or just too much jobs are coming in or employees don't show up, you can't hire people, whatever it might be. And a lot of times right now, it's your second spring rush, you have a few employees and you can't find more. If you're running that problem, you've got to go systematically through how you're going to solve the issue, right? It's easy just to get caught up. And very quickly in a week or two, you can be all of a sudden, your weeks booked out, you're overload with work. Now it's unemployed and show up, and now you're out in the field, you have no time to do estimates, etc. All right? So first thing you want to do, turn off all marketing, all right? Turn off every. You should not be spending a single dollar on marketing. If you are weeks and weeks booked out and you're struggling to put jobs in the schedule because there's just no time and you're working 80 hours a week and you're burnt out. Stop all marketing. Every single thing, including Google local services, turn it off. Because there's no reason to get new leads. If when the leads come in, you're inefficient at getting estimates out, you. It's a bad customer experience because you keep shifting jobs and moving them away to stop that. Stop all marketing, all right? Next thing I'd be doing is I would be taking your large projects that you do have on the schedule, and I would try to give yourself some breathing room, all right? Breathing room is required when you're completely overwhelmed. You've got to create that immediate separation, okay? And so you've got to do that, otherwise you're going to burn out. And so what you want to do is take the projects that are big and just call the customer, brutally honest with them. We're way behind. I'm losing staff. I can't hold them on. I. I need. I want to do your project. I know we have you on the schedule for this coming Monday. I've got to reschedule for you in a week. And if you need a refund, if you don't want to do the job, I completely understand and extremely sorry. But. But we want to do the work for you. But I've got to reschedule you for a week out, two weeks out. Give yourself some good breathing room to go find an employee or two or three. Give yourself that breathing room. Same thing with weather. If you're like stacking up right now, try to get the big projects to commit to a couple of weeks out. Give yourself some breathing room. So this, this is immediate. Just like fix the problem of you not burning out. That's the number one thing you have to do, is prevent the burnout. Right? And so like we talk about, even with Command center a few weeks ago, like the, the first thing we have to do is create breathing room. And that means stop people leaving. Like, you have to create that separation. And so for you, you've got to prevent yourself from burning out. You got to prevent your employees from burning out. If they're working way too much overtime and they're starting to get worn down. You've got to create immediate separation by canceling the jobs or canceling, but trying to rebook. And if they cancel, then that's fine. You know, you're overwhelmed with work. So don't lose sleep over that. Create the separation, create some breathing room. And then now you're going to take that time and make sure you get employees you're going to go out and hire. And you're also going to, again, if you need to further escalate the level of separation required, you're going to email franchise gustaloncare services.com and we can turn off your in person estimates. All right? Because the last thing I want you doing is spending half your day running around doing estimates that you aren't even getting out in time that you don't really want. You're not motivated to sell and you should be actually just doing work at that point in time, being with the crew, training up new hires. So that would be the next layer. Like, okay, look, I turn off my marketing. Okay, great. Next layer is I cancel. I rescheduled large projects for a week or two weeks out and was brutally honest with the customer, just told them what was happening, said we're behind, we want to stay committed. This job, we want to get it done for you. And Realize that you might get one out of 20 that will leave a negative online review for you. And you just have to be brutally honest with them. But most people, when you're really, really honest with them, what's happening inside the company, they'll be okay with it. Especially if you just double down on your commitment to that job and making sure that they satisfied, that they're satisfied. Next layer. So we went from.

Move, stop all marketing, move all, move large projects off to give yourself breath room. Next layer is stop all in person estimates. Okay. And we can do that from your estimate calculator and then I'm sorry, estimate on your wiki. You can pay, hey, they're not doing any sort of in person estimates. We can put in your dispatch board and then we can also put it on the website where it removes the option for the customer to do an in person scheduled estimate. Okay? So this people can still get around that. There's always ways to get around this. People can still email in, they can do a chat and sometimes get around that. But it'll be dramatically less like 95, 99 less where people will not be able to do scheduled lessons with you. Giving you more flexibility to train up your crew and take those people that are new and get them up to speed because that should be the number one priority. Take your existing people and make them good. You cannot just constantly be burning through people, constantly. I was talking with an owner on the weekend and they have six, seven employees. The longest tenured one was two weeks. Like you cannot sustainably do work profitably if you're just burning through employees that quickly. And they're always new, they're always making mistakes. You're just chasing yellow slopes all day long, trying to do scheduled estimates in between like it's disaster. You'll never be profitable. So you've got to always constrict back to the existing crew. Make them profitable, make them efficient, train them up. And if you need the time in order to make that happen, you're going to schedule off jobs and you're going to cancel scheduled estimates. So it's only drive bys and only over the phone estimates. And I know some of you just turned back on over the phone estimates so you don't have to do all these drive bys. You had 20 or 30 of them stacking up on the weekend and you know, just we can burn through those in a day at command center over the phone. And it might reduce your close ratio, right? Your close ratio might go down a little bit, but at least you got to them because they got done. At least you had now the time to spend working with your crew to get them up to profitability. It should always be the number one thing. Existing customers, existing employees should always be number one. Then we focus on marketing, getting new customers, getting new employees, growth. Otherwise, you'll be unprofitable for a very long time because you'll keep burning through customers. You'll keep burning through employees. So cool. All right, any more questions? So, thank you all. Have a great rest of your day. See you tomorrow.