Mike Minutes Mastermind 04/26/22

Good morning everyone. I'm going to start a little bit earlier this morning. I have an accountants meeting here at 9:30 in 10 minutes. So I wanted to make sure I get this in. Though I did see some questions come in. I don't have any big updates necessarily, but I will go ahead and answer these questions. Let me pull this out. I haven't looked at these yet, but let me go ahead and pull them up. Share screen. Boom.

Right. See here, zoom in. This is from Smyrna. Jason, on the monthly max matrix, I was wondering if you could put how many locations are each stage of growth? Like how many locations are a hundred thousand, fifty thousand, twenty thousand, ten thousand, a hundred thousand less? Thinking that would be a good thing for us to know. Okay. Yeah, we're going to be working on this a lot, especially next year once everyone's on Zooper. Right now I'm on Zooper. Someone service Alpa. It's a. It takes us days just to get max metrics put together right now, but it's something we can do right now. Obviously we're sharing the averages but we can see if there's something else we can do. But definitely next year we'll get more in detail in terms of sharing metrics and ranges and averages and percentiles and what percentage, what percentile you are in on each metric. That's what we want to do, but I would rather us take some time and wait till next, next year when everyone's on super and just a little more straightforward because all of that is manual process right now and it takes us literally days and days to figure out max metrics. So I'm just trying to prevent us from spending time unwisely. Max, here's another common objection I face when calling clients to follow up. I just need to speak with my spouse about it and get back to you. Do you have any strategies to close these people while you have them on the phone? Yeah, so there's some more, more aggressive ways to deal with this one. Like if you talk to a professional salesperson that's training you, they're probably going to say the following. They're going to say something along the lines of asking the customer what their, their significant other spouse. Do they not support you getting the lawn done? Do they know that you're here today getting your, your lawn estimate in a quote? Do they know that? Yes. Do you have the power to go and make that call? Yes. What's the worst thing that can happen if they say they disagree with you on this topic? We just cancel service. Why don't we just go ahead and get you set up? And if you talk to them and you don't want to, that's like, you can definitely do that. That's a tough conversation to have. And if you haven't really kind of flexed your sales abilities and, you know, exercise that muscle, that could be a hard conversation to have. But that is the conversation to have, and that is, look, we don't have any contract. Does your spouse or significant other know that you need this service done? Do they know you're looking for quotes? And why don't we go ahead and get you set up with this? Do you have the power to make this decision? And would they support you if it is the right decision? And what. What today would make you think that this would not be the right decision? Or is there anything I can answer to, to. To make you feel satisfied and guaranteed that this is the right decision and the best option for your lawn care? That is one way to do it. That's tough. You really got to know your stuff to be very confident.

An easier way to probably do this is a matter of why we have a limited amount of time on the schedule, and schedule is booking up. Why don't we go ahead and put you on the schedule, you talk to your spouse, and if they have any objections or any questions or don't want to get on the schedule, let me know. So pushing just to get them on the schedule is what I would be saying. And to do that, you're going to create scarcity. Scarcity is the simplest, most. Just the easiest way to be able to sell something, because if it's scarce, then you shift all the power from the buyer back to the seller. And so this is why I always talk about when you're three, four weeks booked out and you have momentum, you start selling more because all of a sudden you can create scarcity. That's real. So how do we artificially create that usually is what gets you over a lot of objections is by saying certain deadlines or time frames or certain data is available or their route is filling up, that you're almost booked out for the season. And even if it's promoting, look, if you have four guys and you have 150 lawns, you're hitting capacity. And yes, you know, you might be able to hire someone next month, but that's not guaranteed. So you are filling up. So creating that scarcity is important to. Just about every objection can be solved with scarcity. Honestly.

If we edit postcards ourselves or have Zach edit Them then go to vistaprint. We won't be able to get Pro Shop discount. That's correct. Unfortunately we can't upload random designs into Pro Shop. We have to use templates and, and standard ones. So yeah, if you want one, like I mentioned yesterday, for anyone that's not not aware what's happening right now, lawn caremedia.com Augusta is going to give you the ability to basically recreate any postcard you want and you'll be able to see it live and it'll send something over to the media team and they will put it all in Photoshop and revise whether you want a different picture or services or fonts or like you want the stamp for every door. Direct me open a different spot of the it's basically customizable 100% and you know you get the designers to make it for you. But yes, you're 100% right. You can't use the Pro Shop discount which I know stinks, but they're only going to allow us to upload templates and not custom orders for you. So I know that stinks and I apologize for that.

But it's just a matter of we couldn't do that for every single one. They would kick us out.

Winter Garden can we have CC check for invoices pending payment? If a customer calls during month and has not made payment on invoice I had a client call CCS about switching to weekly and an invoice still pending. April Payment for April would have been nice if CC would have collected payment over the phone. Okay, can we have c check invoice pending payment?

Yeah. So the thing about this is even if we, if we see one one invoice outstanding, typically we're just going to roll with them because it's especially if they're paying with check which this would have to be the case then you know, being one behind is not a big deal because you're only two or three weeks behind technically. So what I would recommend is make it part of your follow up process that you, you know, maybe a tag is added or an office note is added if you want specifically people to not be allowed to do anything in their account. Like this is the bottom line if, if they call in the fact that you would say well we're not going to change it a weekly until you pay. No, that one's tough. So it's really just a matter of what you're saying is just when they call in trying to get that payment. The thing that I would say is why won't we have a car on file anyways. Right. And just charging their card. So that would be part of like the onboarding process and trying to get that a little more persuasive to get their card on file. We are working with Zooper to make it where people cannot accept even the lawn care estimates without accepting putting a credit card on file. We already have it where if they cross a certain threshold, they have to pay the deposit prior to accepting the bid, which is great. That way you're never waiting on 50% downs. And like even the local shop recently, the day before they realized that the person still hadn't paid and they had to move the job off until that was paid. So those are annoying. But we are working with Zipper to be able to make it where it is like physically impossible for them to even accept a lawn care estimate if you want the setting to be there where they can't. So a card is always on file. And so that's, that's going to be great too.

All right, let's see here. This is all for today. Let me go ahead and take this off. And Tyler's got a question. I tried staffing up a lot this spring, but without ads I'm booked out five to six weeks and have 20 driver estimates on the board bidding high now. So we can come in really profitable. Should I just keep booking cleanups out far? So cleanups are tough to book out far because in five to six weeks that, that it could be twice as much work. So the local shop is also booked out four, five, six weeks now. And you've got to really ingrain into your estimators or if it's you that hey, in, in four, five, six weeks this cleanup is going to take twice as long. A four hour cleanup becomes six, seven, eight hours very quickly in the spring rush. So you got to keep that in mind. If you have a whole bunch of drive bys that are mowing and you're booked up like this, I would really recommend getting over the phone estimates from command. Even if your close ratio goes go down a bit, they'll knock them out in a day versus you spending an entire day driving around. But furthermore, even if these are all drive by estimates for cleanups, definitely keep in mind that it's not like you're bidding these out to be profitable. You're bidding these higher because in six to eight weeks or five, six weeks, it's going to be twice as much work. So definitely for cleanups you got to want like excuse me, first thing you want to prioritize in spring rush when it comes to scheduling is first time mows, because they have a ticking time bomb of like a week or two and then they're overgrown even more so. So initial mows, getting people on the schedule, getting those overgrown mows cut is important because you can keep that customer for years to come if you can just lock them at the beginning. So initial mows, then spring cleanups, then projects. Right. So I'd be looking at those five to six weeks and asking yourself, potentially, if there's not cleanups, are there large jobs that can be pushed off if needs be to give space for those more time sensitive property cleanups, getting those on the schedule. So that's how I'd say first time mo's very, very important. Getting them on the schedule, lock them up, then property cleanups. And that's why I always say projects that are like molts, like that, those are the ones I'll be trying to book out as far as possible without losing the client. And if you lose the client, you're not too concerned because you're so far booked out. But you've got to bake into your schedule over the next couple of months that you're going to have first time mows and you're going to have cleanups that you got to jump on and they can't wait weeks and weeks and weeks. So that's how I'd kind of prioritize things. I got to cut day a little bit short just because I do have to hop on this call with the accountants. But we can dig more into these tomorrow if needs be. But there's no other questions, so feel free to submit it on the form and hope you guys have a great rest of your day. Take care.