Mike Minutes Mastermind 05/03/2022

Good morning, Augusta Nation. Let's go ahead and jump in. Before we get started, I did say mentioned yesterday we were going to talk about the roadmap. I had mentioned it in yesterday's update, the longer form video that emailed to everyone. But let me just go ahead and go through it really quickly here because I had mentioned yesterday we would do that. So this is kind of the roadmap and the focus for the next 12 months or so. And again, I went over this yesterday, so I'm going to go through it a little bit briefer. So April through June, as I talked about in the roundtable, my main focus is getting Command center really solidified, catching up, retraining people. We've let several people actually go in the past couple weeks that were just even though this right now, the way the labor market is, you don't want to let people go, especially if you've trained them up and they're, they're being profitable employees. But if they're not going to be able to be trainable or they're going to be bad for culture, we have to cut them out. And it's unfortunate, but we had to do that for several people and it was a matter of we're finally getting back to the point of being able to do that. But now we got we're hiring more and like many of us, that's the, the big struggle right now. And so through May and June, still continue to focus on this. Getting the inbox zero on a daily basis today through Friday, July, creating the fac, the Franchise Advisory Council Board of six elected franchisees. I'll have more information on this in July and it'll be where people can.

Volunteer to be there and then that'll basically put them on the ballot and then we can all vote on who we want to have in that board. And I will be actually a voting member just like everyone else. It has nothing to do with who I want on there. It'll just be simply up to the all of us as franchisees. June through August, we're really doing a super feature crunch. There's several big items that we're really working on in addition to several smaller items. A lot of the things that we've been working on so far have been smaller and a lot of them have honestly just been things around Command center in terms of being able to track the time every time we go into someone's account, every single command center operator being able to be tracked inside of the software, things like that. Then some smaller features that we're Just trying to copy that Service auto has that we really like and trying to make that transition easier. But the ones that are big are dispatch board, chemical and snow. The dispatch board is okay right now, but when you have 10, 15, 20 employees, Zooper right now is not. Doesn't look the prettiest. And it's one of the strongest features, I believe a service autopilot is their dispatch board. So we want to try to emulate that as much as possible. Again, we do not control super, but we can give feedback and really get, you know, features changed and things like that. So September through October, once we have achieved 50 people solidified at command center, that's when we'll start creating departments and silos. I explained this a little bit yesterday, but anything prior to then becomes where you have a vulnerability. Because if you only have two or three people that are in an apartment, it's very possible they could just be go for a day because they both got sick or they're both on vacation at the same time. And all of a sudden that's a massive gap. And so right now we've always really trained generalists just because if you only have 20, 30, 40 people, it's very hard to split up into 15 different groups without losing redundancy. And so we focused on that in the past and up until now. But middle this year we will really start departmentalizing and I feel like it's become much better instead of having to train people up on so many different aspects of service autopilot. Super different aspects of training, you know, phone calls, answering web chats, emails, sales, the whole nine yards. So that will become better as well. November through December, we're going to start prepping for the super transition, which will happen at conference. That week of conference is when we'll do it all together. And again, there's quite a few that will already be in super. But for those that are not that transitional happen, we'll be preparing for that, creating training around that and making sure that it's as smooth as possible. It's going to be choppy. There's going to be roadblocks. There's going to be issues for every one that's transitioning over. And so we are no longer anyone going forward that's coming is is always gonna be trained on Zooper. We will no longer train anyone on service autopilot going forward. And so it's just a matter though of moving everyone over from service autopilot to super the larger locations that have been around for a couple years. And so we Got to make sure that we prepare for that and are ready. January, obviously, is when we'll make that transition. We'll have conference, and then we'll be moving into the new headquarters to get things more organized. February is when we're really again, be training up for command center to fill those departments that we are creating this summer and then create redundancies inside of each department. And then obviously before the spring rush in March, our goal is to get some of the bugs that will inevitably be in zooper out of the system by spring rush. So that's just kind of my focus, is kind of my personal roadmap, what I'm focusing on. And I just wanted to share that with you guys. I'm going to go ahead and jump into the questions because I think there was like quite a few that I saw came in. Let me just go ahead and stop that. Share this.

Boom. All right, let me make this a little bigger. This one.

Oh, there's. Okay, let's see here.

Nick, this is number one. Okay. When calculating efficiency score, is it okay to calculate efficiency score for a month by including projects and mowing together? So last month for me, 432 budget hours divided by 585 clocked hours got me a 74% efficiency score. And that's combining projects and mowing. What are good efficiency scores? I know 75% or higher is ideal. What percentage is losing money? What percentage is break even? It's not so much about breaking even or making profit. That efficiency score is actually telling me mostly whether or not P4P is being effective. If you're under 60% efficiency, your guys are probably never hitting P4P. Actually, it's almost guaranteed they're never hitting above base pay. And so P4P is going to do very little for the culture of the business. When you start getting above 60% is when they start hitting above base pay. When you start hitting above 70%, 75%, and if you hit above 80%, that's the impact of P4P becomes more and more and more evident because there's enough delta between their base pay and what they're earning to actually be meaningful. And that's when the culture starts to change. So that efficiency score, in my mind, is not about profitability because if you charged enough per hour, you could be very inefficient on a budget hours versus actual clocked hours basis, but still be profitable as long as you're charging $150 an hour. So it's not really about profitability as much as P4P effectiveness and whether or not it's actually moving the needle in the business. If that starts sliding under 70%, it becomes like only a couple dollars difference between their base pay and what they're earning. And that's usually not enough to drive results. If it's under 60%, they're usually not earning above base pay. And so that's the main reason why that number needs to be tracked here. In a few weeks, you'll be seeing that Trend line on P4P where you actually see that number over time. And employees will also see that number for themselves personally over time as well, which should hopefully impact that.

Performance.

Is it possible to make it required that a customer must put a zip code in an estimate request form? Through our website, we service three towns that are all connected. We estimated a job and completed a job and address in Bloomington. And the customer lived in Hudson with the same street number and name. Brutal.

Yeah, so what you're referring to is on the estimate request form having a zip code. This is the second time this has ever came up. And in the past I've tried not to do this simply because of.

Mostly.

I'm just thinking as I'm talking. Sorry. Mostly I haven't done this because it makes the estimate request form longer. However, as I'm saying that, I'm thinking we might as well just have the zip code and not the city name. Right? So if you look at the estimate request form, you might as well just not have the city name. I don't think we have the city name. It's just address. I'll take a look at this one and see what we can do. The bottom line is the estimate request form is getting pretty long and it's. The longer that form gets, the less inclined people are to fill out their information.

So let me give some thought to that. Let me look at the estimate request form and see if it's something that we. I don't even think we have. I think it just says address right now. And the goal in that is just trying to reduce that much of size as possible. Like we already have on there. Like what type of estimate do they want, what kind of work is being done. If that form gets too long, you're going to reduce the amount of.

Lead. Click through that. People that actually submit an escrow request form. But I'll take a look at that one. Let me just make a note. Actually.

Let'S take a note. But yeah, it really comes down to the length of that form. And then I will parlay that with the fact that if we do have the city name, which I don't think we do, we could put this zip code instead.

Local Florida super question I know I brought up in a previous mask right and spoken to Kevin a number of times about it, but any update on estimate reminders being triggered based upon creation date? Of course we should be calling and following up to try to close these, but as you have stated, 90% of the time that will be a voicemail. Yeah, typically most automations are going to be based upon an action and it's not the creation, it's usually when the estimate is sent. Largo, if you want to send me some more information on this, what you're kind of trying to state here of why you would want on the creation date and not the set date, let me know because I bet there's actually a way to do it already inside of zooper. Just got to change the workflow.

Is it a yellow slip of Command center schedules estimate for a lawn well above your desired size according to my estimate calculator. So take a look at your estimate calculator. I've noticed on a couple people they have two like they have the the graph down below and then they have the part above and one of them goes to a higher range and the other one goes to a lower range to double check that one. But even if that's correct, it'd be unlikely that they would be able to sell anything above because it should give them an error. So make sure your estimate calculator. When they type in a certain number over certain number it should say an error. It should say like estimate estimate required in person estimate required to ensure that's happening. If it's not just email estimate gustalongareservices.com and they can get that revised for you or can you change what that threshold number is because they can't really sell above that number unless they're literally pulling a number out of thin air. But the only way to bring that number up and actually sell it is to put it that square footage in there and it pop up. What potentially could have happened and this I could just be going off base here. What potentially could have happened is they measured the property and did not include a certain square footage or part of the property and therefore that number was inside of the range and actually produced a number and then they sold it. So that's going to happen 11 out of 100 just because they don't see the property lines or whatever it might be. But it's just A matter of making sure that be the first thing I'd be looking at is the range, making sure it actually gives that error message inside of your estimate calculator. And if you need help with that just estimate GustAlongerServices.com and they will help you with that. How do I get my cell phone number off of clearance receipts? So I do not do clearance checks for full service. I have not done that specifically myself. I don't know exactly where to do that. I know it's in clearance but if you send this message to your full service team Kevin on connecteam they check these usually like mid month to make sure that things process through clearance and at that time they can make sure that your phone number removed from there. The same thing happened to me.

Several years back at the local shop and I think it was because like when I filled out my the annual PCI compliance and they asked for your number, I put my cell number and I think they just automatically started using it on the receipt which is annoying. So definitely feel free to connect. First of all look in your clearance, look into your settings but if you can't find it there, that'd be the first place I'd be looking though. It's got to be on there. I'm just not looking at clear it now but I would imagine it's in the settings of Clearant and underneath your user information. But definitely feel free to let commands in and they can dig around in it inside clear it. But I remember that was that was harder changed than thought. I don't remember if I had to call them. This is years ago. Sorry. But I remember the same thing was happening on my cell phone number was ending up on the receipts that are automatically sent into Clear it.

Lately my Google Local services have been very slow. It went from four to five calls per day to one, maybe two per day. I haven't updated anything since the beginning of April. Has Google changed something that needs to be updated on my end? Not to my knowledge. We're seeing all sorts of variability in different markets of how Google Local Services is performing. We're seeing some markets just tons of calls coming in and then quite a few where there's way less calls than last year, significantly like a third or less calls on Google Local services. And this is kind of what we've talked about for the past few years and that is there's going to be more and more contractors getting in on that deal and it's going to be harder and harder to get a good click through cost as well as just number of leads. That's the thing, not the cost, it's the just number of calls are not there because there's so many more contractors that those leads have to be split up against. So that would be the thing I would be focusing on.

See here. Connor, how often should we be calling customers back to follow up on an estimate? So obviously at the five day marker there is an automation and command center calls them back and tries to follow up with them. You can change that to yourself if you like. I know I was talking with.

Who was I talking with?

I forgot a couple of weeks ago. And what they're doing is they added the automation to a day call the day after and you can just do this manually too. If you're trying to follow up with with estimates is just call everyone the day after, make sure that they got the estimate, ask them if they have questions and then just let them go into the sequence of automations. If they do not answer and most people don't on follow up calls it just goes to voicemail. But you can definitely go ahead and do that and just add another layer of automation, another email to yourself that reminds you you could also.

It really comes down to honestly the fact that if someone comes ask you to come to their property or give you an estimate, give them an estimate. I really feel it's like almost kind of rude not to say anything back to the contractor like at least haggle, at least tell them that you don't like the price, at least tell them you're not going to go with them or whatever, you're going to do it yourself. And so in my mind there's not really, not too many, too many times you can call someone back just to get a yes or no from them. And so whether that be the first time clarifying that they got the estimate. Second thing like asking for any sort of questions secondarily using the scarcity close like until I get an answer from someone I'm not really going to call it a lost lead because they haven't given me an answer. Now obviously on mowing quote if it's three weeks later you don't really want that estimate because it probably overgrown by then. But it's just a matter of really in my mind getting an, getting an answer. So the automation is going to send them an email out day one, day two, day three and then a phone call on day five. But you can absolutely add in a phone number automation to that sequence on like day two or day three and just double up on it and call them right away. That'd be totally fine. And I am going to, in June have another automation that people can add on if they'd like to. And that is basically going to make allow Command center to do more of a more phone call, phone call follow up process. Instead of just the emails in day one, two and three, it's going to be doubling that up with Command Center's phone calls, which would be a much more aggressive follow up strategy. But we're just waiting until June for that one. So. Cool. All the questions. Let's see here. Any other questions came in? No. Cool. All right. We'll go ahead and call it a day. Feel free to use the form to always submit more. And we'll see you guys tomorrow morning. Take care.