Mike Minutes Mastermind 11/01/2024

And we're live. Welcome everyone, to another Mike Minutes Mastermind. Couple quick announcements. Switch this over.

All right, first off, we have several locations in Augusta that are wanting to do Christmas lights next year, but not this year. And they we have built your website@augustalights.com that's fine. I know you're trying to rank for next year. The problem that's created with Command center is we're getting a bunch of people calling, getting leads, etc. And causing problems for them because they getting leads from a customer and they don't know what to do because there's no information about it in your account. So what we are doing, we're going to allow it still. However, the phone number is going to be removed and then any estimate request forms that are filled out will go to you. They will not come to Command center because you know, like, you know, you're like, okay, I'll put them in the back burner. You can respond to the customer, say, hey, we're busy for the rest of the year. That's fine. It's totally on you. Putting those leads at Command center makes everyone confused. They're not used of getting estimate request forms or people calling in saying, I'm looking at your site and it's saying we can do service and you don't do service. So we want the sites to rank. We want people to still show up there. We want that to be an option. But there's about five to eight locations that have the site but are not offering the service and we need to tidy that up. So again, the phone number will be removed. And secondly, the leads from the estimate request form will come to you. There's a whole bunch of new Augusta Lights Ad Creative Copy and Canva templates inside of the dashboard. Yesterday, Zach linked to the Christmas Lights folder. Inside of there there is images, but then if you go to the the Ad Creative part, there's actual images that have a screen over it or like a.

What's the word I'm looking for a skin over it branded with Augusta Light stuff. Also, those skins can be completely customized inside of Canva. So there's a file on there that you can click on and open up a Canva document and change everything you want. So if you don't want to say storage of lights because you want permanent lighting, that's fine. You can change the words. There's also text templates and email templates in there for text blasts as well as one click estimate emails. So check out the folder. It's all in one spot. Now with the new dashboard layout there, every single service is broken up and when you go in there there's gonna be images but then there's gonna be the ones for actual Facebook ads that you could use because they've already been edited etc. So you can use the raw images and make your own or you can just use the social media posts that we've actually created with the correct skins using a Gusta Light branding etc. So those are the two major updates. Augusta Lights, if you're not getting leads, how that's going to rule. And secondly, yesterday a lot of creative pictures and options for Augusta Lights in general was released. So that's all in Canva again. I also would recommend a couple weeks ago they released a whole bunch of stuff on the pro shop in terms of in instant quote, door hangers for lights, a lot of lights, stuff that's new on the pro shop in terms of printing stuff off business cards etc etc so feel free to check that out. I know yesterday Connor said sent out a mass text through Copilot, got 20 customers wanting an estimate for Christmas lights. And so I took that template that he shared modifications and that is in that folder as well. It's basically offering 20% off to your existing customers. Anyone in your database is an existing customer and when someone replies back yes, you know you got yourself a solid lead. So in the perfect world they've gone to your website and pre qualified themselves with the pricing. So your close ratio on someone just be like yes, I want lights probably pretty high. I'm sorry the, the amount of people who want lights high when they go to your website. The nice part about having the ranges there is it kind of pre qualifies them. Make sure they're not getting this thinking it's like 100 bucks when you're like we start at 800. So.

Yeah, shout to Connor for that text he had shared and then I made a few modifications to it, put it up in there as a template inside of that folder and.

We'Re rocking and rolling. Let's hop into questions.

All right.

Boom. First question is from Colby from Daphne, Alabama. Number one, why do we call the slow season winter services? My opinion, when a customer hears winter service from Command center, emails, etc. It sets the cell up wrong for the continuation of service. Generally landscaping is not needed through the winter, but we are a landscaping company trying to convince someone you can trying to convince you to stay during the winter. Seasonal services or some alternative verbiage would keep the customer focused on the short term. Needing One more mow or leaves cleaned up for the location that offers snow services. Winter services seems to fit. For those that have mild winters, not so much. I may be overthinking this. Any thoughts?

Okay, so I see your point. I think if you definitely, if you are mowing year round, this is definitely something to think about. Only about 10 to 20% of Augusta Nation continues to mow year round. So like when we talk about the five tracks, you can still keep mowing. Most, most of us can't in terms of locations. Right. So I, I think for someone like you, seasonal services might make sense. It might be something too Colby, that you want to just put in your instant quote verbiage or in your estimate verbiage like, hey, we, we provide services 12 months out of the year. We switch to seasonal services during the months when the grass doesn't grow as much. You could do that. The, the, the struggle for the vast majority is like winter services. Everyone know exactly when, when that's going to happen. And most of us don't, like most customers don't anticipate that we are going to service their property around because they, they think grass and we mow and that's it. So when that stops growing, they cancel. And so what's really what helped this year is like by selling it as winter services. They're like, oh, they keep coming all year round. Like if I can get through winter and they keep coming, I know I can get them next spring. So I'm not opposed to this. And you could definitely, in the Canva documents or email templates, change it to seasonal services if you wanted to. I would definitely, like I said, put in the verbiage of your estimates in the bottom part and yeah, there's a huge win if you're able to keep mowing someone's property even monthly or bi weekly during the off season. For most of us, which is the off season, it is the best way to be able to scale. Like I generally, I'm going to talk a little bit about conference. Like if you can continue mowing during those months, I would really, really look at what's my customer acquisition cost during those months. It will go up because demand is going down. But if I can make sense of upselling a customer to other offers, I might be able to actually make sense of it pretty quickly. And spending a higher customer acquisition even it's 150, $200 for a customer. But if I do an offer where I'm getting say 600 or $700 as a cleanup and Then they're starting mowing during the quote off season. December, January could be really valuable. So not opposed to you changing it. Feel free to the vast majority of customers. What I've seen. So the reason I say this is because when I very very start, started August at the very very beginning, I, I did this package deal thing and I had like, it was birdie, par and bogey, no par three, par four and par five. And because it was working off the whole Augusta thing and it was kind of weird because with golf you want a low score. So it didn't really work. People got confused. Anyways, my par 5 package was.

Like all inclusive for the whole year. And I tried to not say the word winter and just be like, hey, like there's four seasons and we just come to your service all the time. And people could never understand, like until I just said it's winter, like it's winter services. And that's actually when it started. I started using the verbiage winter services. It wasn't until several years later we actually created winter services. But again, in my market, people see frost, they see lots of rain, the grass stops growing for four months of the year. So feel free to. Feel free to change it. All these documents for winter services are customizable in Canva. If you wanted to change it Colby, I think you might get a lot of questions because people don't know what seasonal means.

They just understand winter services. But in your market, if you're like, there is no winter. We don't see anything. It doesn't get colder, no one even thinks about winter. That's definitely something to think about. Number two, change the opt out button on the seasonal service update to opt in to monthly service. The email will be the same as usual. Explain what we are expanding our service offering from mowing to include a list of other services, service performed bi weekly and both the bi weekly rate. Etc. The last sentence would say thank you for your continued support. If you do not wish to participate in the above offering, we understand monthly services required November to February.

Oh, okay, I see. Please click the link below if you do not. If you do not wish to stay in the bi weekly schedule, opt in month. Yeah. So opt in monthly service. Yeah, you could totally do this because you, you continue to like they need the monthly service.

Regardless. So you basically have this cool thing where it's like, hey, everyone kind of needs monthly. I'm trying to sell them into bi weekly. Whereas most people doing winter services, like I want to show up bi weekly. The alternative is nothing and so what's nice for you, Colby, is you do have that down sell into the monthly. I think it's a brilliant idea if you is downsell them in the monthly instead and just assume they're gonna stay on the bi weekly. I think that's a great idea. You just have that third tier that most of us don't have, which is the grass will still need mowed probably once a month or like some service done, things grow. And so that's like a huge opportunity. And I would 100% agree with this premise. And that is instead of downselling into opt out of services, downsell into monthly.

So again, in most of our markets, people either see the need or they don't. And so if they don't do my bi weekly, I usually won't do my monthly. And what I've seen when it comes to winter services, if someone goes to monthly service during that period, we never have enough time to get stuff done. And because we only are going to do like three visits. Well, the three visits, I could have just done two property cleanups and made way more money. So it doesn't really help me with my continuance and the recurring nature of what I want, at least biweekly. So we've never really offered monthly because the properties don't look good enough. It doesn't really fulfill the need for the customer for that property to look good year round. And then I find that customers are a little bit unsatisfied because of that big gap. But more importantly, I can sell them to property cleanups. Let's just call it four to $800 a piece. Whereas I'm trying to give a monthly service. It's just going to be. It's tough, it's tough to get on that recurrence. I was skeptical last year with winter service email when I received virtually no complaints of those who stayed. It changed my perception. Even if we don't hold a whole hard line require monthly, if a customer complains, I do believe participation would increase. We could potentially lose some to monthly who otherwise would have stayed bi weekly. Thoughts? Yeah, I think it's a great idea. Colby, this is a great, great point here. And that is if you can mow and like people, things still grow during the winter downselling from. Instead of downselling from have winter services to nothing, I would be okay, do you want to downs go from biweekly to monthly? And you just assume everyone wants monthly. And I would assume if you did that less than 5% of people will contact like, hey, I actually Want to cancel for those two or three months or like pause service. So I think it's a great idea. This is better than nothing.

And so I would just be careful with the fact that if this is. We're talking about two to three visits here if they've switched to monthly. And sometimes people aren't satisfied with the service because we never get through the list. Whereas I know if I can get, you know, 7, 6, 78 services throughout the winter, I can usually get the property that list done and it's dialed in by the time I usually hit Christmas. So that's the only thing I'd be careful of, especially if things are growing and there's quite a bit to do that might be one thing to be careful of. But from a sales perspective, downselling into making some revenue, still better than nothing.

All right, Mr. Anonymous, I have spoken to a neighboring Augusta location that's interested in doing lights. What would be a fair deal to have them send the one click and we do the installation on the lights. Oh, that's interesting. Okay, let me think about for a second.

So keep in mind, because of their territory, they might get the leads coming to them. So as long as they just forward them over to you, you're good. So let me think about it for a second.

Okay, so what I would do if I was you, I would just be like, hey, if I go get leads from a different service and it's costing me 100 or $200 per lead, I'm willing to give you that. If you send me the lead now, the lead coming where someone come from an Augusta site is gonna be much higher in terms of close ratio than a random Facebook ad or even a lead service that someone else has generated and then just handing off, hey, this customer's interested in lights, higher close ratio. So I would value it more, but I'd probably just offer the same. I'd be like, hey, even if you. I think a fair number would probably be a hundred bucks. I know there's several services that franchisees are using that paying between $100 and $250 as a per per lead. And so if you're able to do it for 100, I think it's good for you. It's awesome for them. They do absolutely nothing.

They don't pay anything besides clicking the button on the dashboard. So good deal for them. If you get five or six leads, they make five or six hundred bucks. I think it's a big win for them. And then you get lead that you're gonna have a high ability to close. And they're not surprised because, like, they came to an Augusta site. You shut up in Augusta. It'll be fine. The handoff will be really simple. So I like it. That's actually a really good idea. Like, if you have someone next to you and you don't mind them coming into your territory for it, you can just send them the leads, set up some sort of situation like this. Not a bad idea. We will build the site for anyone that signs up for it on the dashboard. So.

Great idea. Actually.

Making money. All right, everyone, I hope you all have a fantastic November 1st, awesome Friday, and a great weekend ahead. Love you all. We'll see you.