Mike Minutes Mastermind 05/06/2025

Hello, Augusta Nation. Welcome to another Mike Minutes Mastermind. Let's get this show on the road. Unless you're in Colorado, there's snow on the road, and it is advised that you do not go out on the roads today.

In the middle of May. All right, let's go ahead and present. Jump right in.

Oh, quick announcement. I guess if you have been using Mike AI and you enjoy it, feel free to now add it on WhatsApp. So go to the Facebook group. I put it in there. You can now WhatsApp that same exact number. So the same number that you call, you can also WhatsApp message with it. So if you save as a contact, just know you can always call it and talk to it. You can also simply add it in your WhatsApp messenger and message throughout the day. So if you want to input reports, you do have to go on the web version. So Mike, it's mikeannies.com AI so if you actually have it digest like your financial statements or look at your coaching dashboard and analyze it, totally fine. But to do that, you do have to go onto the web version. That will not work from WhatsApp. Unfortunately, they don't have that support. All right, first question's from Garrett from Glendale, Colorado. What is your estimate on a conversion decrease when adding card on file to instant quote mowing form? We are in a spring growth mode and switching to profit mode in the next 4ish weeks when we hit capacity. If it's less than a 20% reduction in lead flow. Oh, it definitely is. I'd probably consider it. Even though we are in growth mode simply to reduce admin time to get the card on file after the first couple most. Thanks. Okay, so let me make this distinction real quick. Anytime you add any form at any complexity, ask for any more information, you will have some level of drop off. Here's the thing. The question is not a matter of should I add the instant quote mowing form or not. The question is do you require a card to be on file? Because if the answer to that question is yes, you will have less drop off than if you ask if you asked the card right when they're on the form versus emailing them and then have they open up the email, click on a link and then input their car information. There's like way more steps involved if there if you go the old route. So this is not really a question of like it. It will like you will have some people drop off the same way that if you require a card on file, there will be some People that you know in the past would have accepted the estimate, got on the schedule and the day before they don't have a card on file and you would have canceled them or had to call them a bunch to try to get a card and they didn't, didn't answer and you cancel their service or take the risk on them, you know, spoofing you after one or two visits. Right. And having a past due. So this is not in my opinion a matter of like does this hurt my, my, my conversion ratio? I can guarantee you it does not do make it go up but what it. I can also guarantee it'll do a better job if in the past you have required card on file and you've tried to collect that card via email so or text or anything because it is simply more steps to set for the customer to get that card on file if it's not right when they're except in the estimate. So just, just know like the same way in the past I would say if you require carbon file it's like another filter, you're going to reduce the number of closed estimates. That's true. This is also true for this Just know that if you've been doing it in the past via email and text, this will improve your close ratio. So because people will actually see the form every single time versus in the past they would have potentially not got the email. A lot of times that email is the number one like victim of spam because it's asking for payment information and it's also usually like your first or second email going to the customer. So.

Cool. Joel from Lafayette Would you recommend sending out surveys specifically to moen clients in addition to the Google review, email or text? If yes, what would you suggest doing or asking? Cloud AI suggested the following Initial mode checkpoint Week one brief message. How was your first mode with us? Reply with up or down. Okay, so I'll just, I'll keep reading this. My 2 cents on this is if you're going to do it via text, do it as a, as a personalized message. Because here's the thing, unless you actually create an automation thumbs down or thumbs up, this is going to come to you the exact same way. And the next question you're going to ask this customer is well, what was wrong? Right. And so in my opinion I would make it feel very natural the text message if you're going to do that. So I'm not opposed to this because the asking for a.

Review, depending on how you set up your automations could be every 60 days the first 30 days you have a couple check in points and it's more of a more of a survey text style. Totally fine. Just know that unless you have automation built on a certain thumbs up or thumbs down or certain word which is not inside copilot, you're going to be manually responding these anyways. So what I would personally do is just make a personalized message. Your response rate will go through the roof so you'll get more feedback. You actually get people answering.

And the same thing's going to happen. You're going to either give them a review link for a Google review or you can respond to a yellow slip essentially 30 day 30 day check in one month short 3 to 5 question survey focus on crew performance and communication. My input perhaps ask a question to follow up on ccs. What can we do to make your Augusta experience a 10 out of 10 question end of season survey Comprehensive feedback about the entire season. Include questions about potential add on services for next year. Perfect honor opportunity to request a Google review okay, so my two cents on this is anytime someone responds positively to a survey I'm immediately coming behind it with with a review for a review request. And I'm using the fact that if they give me one I'm going to give that a bonus to the crew. I think my, my only caveat to all this, which I'm a big fan of surveying is is a couple things. Number one first caveat, make it personalized unless it is somehow automated, make it personalized because you are going to personalize this regardless of how they respond. So you'll get way more responses if it comes across personalized like hey Bob comma just want to check how your first visit was today with the mowing crew and just leave it. No Augusta lawn care team. No like respond back with this. Just keep it personalized because you're going to be responding one on one anyways. The next thing I would say is as soon as you make a question like what can we do to make your guest experience a 10 out of 10 for example on text as a survey, not when they're calling in. So call versus text very different. Different communication style on a phone call. I have them as a captive audience and I'm going to get an answer almost every single time they give us a good answer on text you're going to get a small response rate on this question because they know this is a survey. What I would, I would say is use this as a secondary to their response on the first one. So for example if they're like yep, it was great. Thanks so much. My response that either A going to be asking for a review or B Potentially the 10 out of 10 question. In other words I'm glad it was good. What can we do to make it great? And then you might get actually some granular stuff like well actually it'd be really cool if you could do X, Y and Z and they're going to do it in a positive light.

And even that first one like that first question if you're going to do that and ask for that information I would really position that as like hey, we're always trying to, you know, you want to make it sound personalized. Right. So I'd be like hey Bob, we always want to make our service 10 out of 10. I just wanted to check in and make sure your surf your the first mowing at your property day was good question mark like it doesn't need you perfect. I won't do a ton of emoticons. I'd make it really, really simple. You'll notice in the upsell text messages those don't have emoticons and if they do there's maybe one but I'm 99 sure there's no emoticons in those because I want to see a very, very organic and one on one I need respond. I'd rather have a 30% response rate than a 5% response rate. And I do believe that diff that delta is created when the customer thinks you're texting them versus when they get an automated message. Right. So that's why like in some of the, the automations we actually say this is an automated message because when you do text them and you want them to respond, I don't want to put that, that verbiage in there. So really good question. Very top of mind. And I think we always want surveys. We want feedback from customers. Just know that if you ask too often it does go in deaf ears. It does water down your marketing efforts. So I would just put aside asterisks. Like very few people think about their lawn service and like I'm going to fill out a comprehensive feedback form. Very few.

So as, as, as a demonstration of this. Less than half of Augusta nations submit three questions when we spent quarterly surveys. Right. And that is simply people are busy, people got stuff to do. They're like it's good enough. Like I don't, I don't want to take the time to do that. Totally fine. So usually you're going to get the extremes. You're going to get people who are very happy or very mad. And that's fine. That's the function of surveys. So the reason I say that is because people inside of Augusta Nation were building businesses together, making hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars together and still half of the people respond to a survey on a quarterly basis. So to think that someone's going to respond to their mowing company if you're sending them surveys more than once or twice a year infrequent. So that would be my 2 cents. Usually when I'm asking for that feedback I like to just put it alongside the gate. Basically asking for a Google review by having the yes and the no in the email. So that one I like because I if someone's really mad, they'll click no and I'll get the feedback. And if they click yes, I immediately got them to a Google review. So.

And when someone posted in the Facebook group of this day is like hey, in the text message should I be putting the link to Google review? Great point brought up by Brian is like you actually don't want to because if you're making that part of an automation, what you want them to do is respond back to you like yeah, it was great, thanks so much. Then you give them the link for the Google review because we can't have the picture that delineates between good and bad feedback. So I would make sure that actually in your automation the way we built it is we don't have the link to the Google review. And the reason for that is because if that's automate an automated message and they are not happy, you do not want them clicking that link. So I'm going to wait for them to respond to me back to me one on one. Like man, that's a lot. Look, you're going through your text inbox anyways, it takes two seconds. I want them to respond and if it's negative, great, I got feedback and it didn't go to Google. If it's positive, I'm dropping in my Google link and tell them that the crew will get a bonus. So yeah, that was good conversation.

Tanya from Red Deer. Hey Mike. Our first year using Copilot for recurring services we bill monthly, we invoice on the 1st and payment is due by 15th of the month for 95% of our mowing clients. I'm working on scheduling Copilot. What would be the best way to do this? Create a template and quick dispatch for the mowing clients.

Or setting a visit and making it recurring for the season? Oh, I definitely do recurring for the season. The second part to that question is when? Okay, so let's stop here for a second. I would definitely not do quick dispatch. Quick dispatch is mostly used for chemicals. It's used for snow services. But I would definitely set up your mowing clients as a recurring service with an off season. And then like in your market, your off season can move so much, like two or three weeks in either direction. So instead of having to change every single recurring visit recurring service, you can just change the offseason and it'll add or subtract services out. So that would be my recommendation. The second part of that question is when I look at our KPI, is revenue stated all as project revenue? Probably because you are putting it on.

Would I need level begin level billing in order to make it recurring rather than project just trying to find the most efficient way to create routes and ensure our KPIs are accurate? Yeah. So it is looking at any revenue collected from recurring visits. So if it's not in a recurring series, then it is not considering that recurring revenue. So if like even a quick dispatch, we would consider that like a non recurring event. Because by definition, if you're doing quick dispatch, it's not happening on some recurring weekly monthly basis. I guess technically you could make this happen like you just quick dispatch every single week or every single month. But from how the KPIs are set up, that's not how it's working. We would consider that reoccurring revenue, not recurring revenue when it comes to. Because reoccurring means it happens frequently, but not on any sort of scheduled basis. And so that's the delineation there in terms of the KPIs. There's a lot of improvements coming to the KPI dashboard, by the way. We're making sure we do it correctly. We have someone on the team that is actually like their main job. Like, our lead of engineering came from Sprinkler, which is basically a data visualization company. They're publicly traded. And so we have a lot of things that we'll be doing to make that better down the road.

All right, great discussion on review stuff today. Good questions. Very, very good. These are. I love these questions. They're so fantastic. I love you all and I will see you tomorrow. Take care.