Should I Switch from Service Autopilot to Copilot CRM?

Hey everyone, my name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Copilot CRM where we transact a million dollars plus daily.

For our home service business owners.

Today we're going to be talking to three different business owners and they're trying to take their business to the next level and grow. The first one's doing $200,000 in annual revenue, the second is doing $800,000 in.

Annual revenue, and the third is doing.

A million dollars in annual revenue. Currently they're using jobber and service autopilot and a couple other pieces of software and, and they're trying to make the decision as to whether or not joining Copilot and making the switch is really worth it. We're going to talk about the pros and the cons of the switch from their current provider over to copilot because there are downsides and upsides of the decision. We're going to talk about more specifically in their business, how they can use features like the upsells, automations, deposit threshold and the ability to mass text inside of copilot to be able to grow their business and take it to the next level. Let's go ahead and dive in. This one's really good. Take notes because it's not just about software, it's about business too.

Let's go. We've been doing this thing recently.

Where instead of doing one on one calls, Christian's doing groups of three people just because as you guys know, this is the time to switch CRMs. There's a lot of people trying to join. So I wanted to hop on this one though and just kind of get to know you guys, make sure Copilot's a good fit. Um, but if we could just kind of start off, I'll just kind of go around the room real quick and if you could each just introduce yourself, tell us like a two second snapshot of size of the business you're at right now, maybe what you're using right now in terms of software and then we'll jump right into it. So I'll just start off with Avila. Is it Avila or Avila?

Avila.

Avila. Got it. Maybe just give us your name, give us like a 2 second snapshot on what your business is currently at and then we'll just go around.

All right, so my name is Jose Avila. I own Avila landscaping and hardscaping. We do landscaping and hardscaping, as the name says. I've been in business since 2014. Located in Jackson, New Jersey right now and using service autopilot right now as a Software. Yep.

Cool. Did I miss it?

What was your current revenue like? What are you kind of shooting for for this year?

New for this year. We are on the 800.

Awesome.

Good stuff.

Perfect.

Andrew, you want to go next? You don't mind?

Yeah, yeah. I'm Andrew Atkins. I'm in Barrington, Illinois. Sorry, I'm driving right now. Almost back to my place.

We are landscape lawn care. We do some construction and then we have a maid service too. So we have three different divisions. Really started going heavy on the business this year right around the million dollar mark. Right now we're using service autopilot but we've kind of made this starting to make the switch to copilot.

Cool.

Good stuff. And last one. Last but not least.

Go ahead.

Lugo. Carlos. Business since 2021. Let's see. I still work full time and then run my business on my days off I'm. Last year I did 112. So 112,000. Still a little baby. And I've bounced around. I've used jobber for about a year and a half and then went to work east and currently still with workies but have also element what drew me to that was the budgeting side and then business is rig hauling dump services and I do junk mobile dumpster rentals and this year is our first year getting into snow and we are. That kind of led me into the lawn care side to get some stability or consistency. Junk removal is pretty sporadic and a little bit on the dumpster side as well. So early sporadic. So that's what drove me to lawn care and snowmobile is either that or get into the the weekly bins that waste management does. But that's fairly pricey to get into. So that's where I'm at currently and looking into going going to be going with co pilot based on the information I've gotten from Christian so far.

So cool.

Well if you look I. I apologize. What was your first name? I. I missed it.

Sorry I missed it. Again, my apologies.

Jose. Jose. Got it. All right.

We got you.

All right.

Let's rock and roll.

Sweet.

So maybe maybe Jose. It's just kind of like outline maybe what you're currently.

Obviously using service all we use service autopilot in the past we used it for about seven, eight years. So why what's kind of the current thought even switching Is there a pain point? Is there something you're looking to change or is it just a matter of when to switch Softwares.

Been trying softwares like for three years right now. I started with Joist the only billing and estimating and I still have those for clients like commercial properties that they want their invoice as a PDF.

I mean service autopilot does it but it's a little bit difficult for me and because I know you're in the industry and I follow up follow you since like forever and I just want to see what your program can bring me the two I like that the two way text.

Advertisement and I want to see the I want to change into pay for performance.

Got it. And so so in terms of pain points now in service off pie it's mostly just around the PDFs for the commercial side. Is that kind of the current pain point or is it more a matter of want the new aspects of like the marketing the SMS stuff and pay for performance.

Just said just the payment method. I, I, I can deal with that. You can skip doing can still keep doing the the joist. I don't have a problem with that. It's only like four clients that require that you have to send the invoice as a PDF.

It's just three minutes of work that I have to do once a month.

Cool.

Okay. So really it's like can we use the texting, the two way the mass emailing and P4P to actually see all the business. Cool. And in terms of the P4P side Jose, is that something you're already using Budget hours. I know service autopilot allows budget hours. So have you already started that process?

No. Basically what I do is I paid my drivers for hourly rate and my, my other workers I pay them daily.

Got it? Yeah.

Like have you already. Have you. So you probably haven't instituted pay performance at all yet. Have you looked at the P4P university just to understand how that all works?

I, I start to look into it but I didn't win like far into it. I just want to see what's because I saw one of your interviews and it says that it's better and faster if we're running the company through your system. So that's why I'm like if I'm running the program then probably will be easier for me just to do the switch.

Yeah. So Basically Copilot and P4P software integrate and what's nice is the guys will just go into clock in the copilot. It'll automatically make their time card inside P4P and then what's cool is they can go in the P4P app and see based upon the jobs they complete in Copilot exactly how much they're earning for the day. So they'll show up to the shop in the morning and it'll say hey, you can earn $348 a day. And they'll see all their jobs stacked up on thermometer and then as they click complete in copilot it'll fill them up and it gives them like a live speedometer of how much they're earning per hour. So it is pretty motivating.

Yeah. So that's basically what I'm looking to like to just give them a question so they can be more, more effort into do the job right, do the job fast, do it correctly. So I don't. So that way I don't have to be behind them. Hey, you guys take too long. You guys miss this, you guys miss that. That's basically what I'm trying to do.

You know, 100% cool, I'll come back to that one Jose. But Andrew, on your aspect, your end too like you know, obviously service all part it's a great platform. We used it for a long time. What's sort of the reasons you're even thinking about maybe switching.

Automations and then that was kind of like the main driver for the switch.

We I have friends that use Bonzo. I work with realtors and mortgage brokers a lot. That's how we kind of broke into the market. It's just saturated here. So that was kind of like the lead gen side of it. So when looking at Bonzo, a lot of those automations that they have in that software I'm like man those are super useful but like they don't have all the other stuff like service auto high pilot has but you guys are kind of like the merge between the two. So I was like okay. And the credit card on file was a big one before an estimate's accepted. Like that was a huge selling point because trying to after this stuff is sold and getting people to actually get on this stupid client portal and do it.

Well the hard part is usually your first email to them is asking for credit card information and so it gets caught in spam a lot. That's the reason we got frustrated is because like then we're calling them trying to get a credit card or deposit but it's because our first email is asking for money. So it gets caught in everyone's spam folder.

Yep. Yeah. Or they're like oh well we'll get to it, we'll get to it. And it's like okay man, like I'm. You said that you want to do this job and you want it done today. But like I don't have a card on file and like I don't want to just trust that. So that was a huge selling point. The automations was a huge selling point. Being able to set up all those templates which is kind of what I'm working on right now with you guys. It's like setting up all those automations. We kind of have a version of P4P that we're doing like on our own end that I was doing personally for the guys. But like actually want to integrate P4P stuff next year.

And the reason we went with service autopilot last year is just because it was one of the quickest ones we could get into. But then after they started piling on all the extra fees for everything else and the routing and all that, it was just, it just ended up being like 500 bucks a month for everything that you guys are offered for 279. And I'm like, there's just, it's stupid to be spending that much and it's just, it's cumbersome. And all the processes are double the amount of time to get, to get the estimate out. I've got to come in and go in and send it five times. Like it's just, it's a painful process when it doesn't need to be.

Have you, have you used their two way texting at all Andrew? Or like mass texting at all?

A little bit.

It seems like the big thing was with the two way texting that I was having issues with was it was getting sent different places on my phone and it wasn't like showing up where it needed to go. And I was like, man, like I'm, I'm checking six different in, in incoming messaging spots. Like okay, I gotta text my regular.

Phone number, I gotta check my email.

I gotta check the service autopilot. Like it was just, I just wanted all in one place to kind of mitigate all that time that's wasted on that side of it. And right now time is money. Cause we're getting to a point where I can't, I can't be sitting here doing all that crap.

Totally. How many people in your current database, Andrew? Like inside of service autopilot?

Just like contacts, Contacts.

Not that many. We're probably at like 50. We've done a lot of stuff outside of it just because it's been so cumbersome and I was kind of just testing the waters to see what they could offer and it was just At a point where I was like, man, this isn't going to help me very much.

And I was just, I tested it.

With a small client base.

In terms of the business as a whole though, like all your contacts then just even outside of service, how many you think you have? Like a thousand.

We're probably at like 6:50.

Because of the realtors and stuff. They give us clients but they're usually one off jobs. I mean it's clean, we do the house cleaning, we do the lawn care landscape, get it all up to date and then we can hopefully sell it to the new homeowner. But a lot of the times when the people move out, it's sometimes a hard sell to get the new people.

To do it because a lot of.

Them are trying to do it themselves and save the money. At least right now it's market.

Yeah, yeah.

Like what's interesting, it sounds like you're, you're already thinking about the enterprise. So like you have the ability to send the mass text out. And the reason I'm bringing it up for your size of business is like once you have 500, 600, 700 contacts, like you have like we've been sending out these mass texts and we're getting like for example, yesterday we're doing Christmas lights, we sent out a mass text. We got 20 new jobs yesterday. But the text has so much better penetration than the email. Like the ability to be able to mass text is just obviously it's like making sure it's conversational. It's not like click on this link. It's just like, hey, it's Andrew. You know, we're looking to do this service. We got an extra spot this week. It's 20% off. He wants it like it's really, really helpful. So that might be also a good spot because in the inbox on inside Copilot, it just all the text will come back to the same inbox and it literally acts like an email. And that is like open, unread, completed and you can just type in from there.

And so that's one of my favorite things in terms of the marketing side, it's even outperforming our one click estimate emails. Honestly, we've always sent out emails where you hey, click here, get an estimate. But right now, as you're seeing with the email side, it's so hard to get through to people's inboxes if you have links, if you have pictures, if you're doing a mass message. And so Hex has really just been our go to since People feel like.

It'S more personal too. Like that's, that's the biggest thing is like the selling point of like it still feels personal even though it's at a larger scale. So yeah, that was, that was a huge selling point versus a lot of other softwares that don't want to integrate the sms. So. And I've been following you for the last, I don't know, 18 months. So it's like I've been watching your content and been like, okay, like if you're, if you're in here and actually the one behind it and like okay, how are we going to improve this? I can't get that same improvement out of service autopilot because they don't want to improve their software any. Like it's just kind of stagnant at this point and I've, I've told them that multiple times.

So yeah, I feel your pain.

That's why we started. We had to do our own thing.

I love you but not that much. Sorry.

Oh.

Oh man. Okay, cool. Carlos, I know you're on a little bit smaller size in terms of the business but like you know, Jobber has an excellent user interface and it's great on especially on their mobile app. What's kind of are you thinking about switching over? Is it, is it really scale?

Yeah.

What led me to, to leave Jobber is essentially so on a dumpster side is I started off with three cans which was just fine. Inventory tracking is one thing that initially wasn't that big of a deal because I was small. I can remember where my three cans were at. Right now I'm up to seven cans and it's. I can see it when they're all out that I have to really think a lot harder to find out where my cans are at and who has it and when is it due to pick up. Besides scheduling on my Google Calendar, that's what led me to leave Jobber because besides that it was kind of like an Apple phone. It's like super easy to use your user face type thing. The workies offers inventory tracking. It's not as. It's not fine tuned dedicated specifically for. It's a little bit of a workaround and it's not as clean of a setup so to speak.

And that it's working for me right now. Work uses. But some of the things making me want to leave that and why I'm kind of with Element right now but getting ready to drop them as well. What led me to Element was budgeting because I'm newer to the business never had a business before and budgeting and doing stuff like that. That's initially what drew me to that. And I think they hit the nail on the head with with that based on little information I know but and then also being that I was tapping into new industry I'm not that have have that much experience with which lawn care is normal. They had a feature where you can be able to industry standard rates are typically what you should be producing or what they typically production rates essentially that I can let's say it's a lawn or snow that I've never done before A certain size I can click the measure it add it in and then it shoot me a approximate time it should take. So then at the very least it gives me a a marker where I should be at. So that's one thing I do like about that. But where they're dropping the ball on is because I'm in the field is the app. So user if you somebody calls me I'm on the field I need to be able to add a customer create an estimate or send those type of appointments. You have to basically get on the laptop or iPad and then like go into like mobile site versus just on the app and do stuff like that. So that's. And then their automations or any type of.

Mass text emails, calls. There's no calling or anything like that. There's messaging but you only get 500 text messages essentially which would if you did any automation that would go through like nothing. So that's the main thing. I'm still not satisfied with the element side besides the budgeting and initial startup with the new service and that's gone. Yeah.

Do you think that new service will fit inside copilot like in the inventory side. Have you looked at the kind of like where to keep track of things will that work?

Christian ran through some stuff with me as far as being able to mark and I I'm probably not this is like I've been on co pilot maybe three times so far and last night was like one of them. So I added some some stuff on there last night like some drunken mobile how I price it out. And then he kind of showed me a map view where I can do color points for each type like to say dumpster rentals and then it'll show me where those jobs are at and if they get extended out I could just go in and extend those days out. Kind of a little bit of a workaround on how that would work. And it made sense when he showed me I Probably just not explaining it as good as he did.

Yeah.

One thing Carlos, I think will be helpful. We are rolling out master routes early 2025. It'll be really beneficial on the bin side because you do keep. You want to keep the same route the exact same way every single time. We're similar with lawn care. It's like, hey, like, usually we want to keep the same routes, but then we add in services like you would add in bins. And so we are adding in master routes so you can lock in a route in perpetuity instead of right now. It's like each day you would need to optimize the route, but having that master routes will also be beneficial for you. Also, Carlos, I just want to say thank you for your service. I know I was talking with Christian, everything you've done, and I really appreciate it. So appreciate it.

Thanks. Cool.

So I guess I want to spend this time really, just to kind of for each of you just make sure it's like, you know, I think that in terms of a fit with Copilot, it might be good, but, like, where your business is at currently, I think all of you are at kind of different stages. Like, at that 800,000 to a million level, it's very much like, I've got to save admin time with software. That is the objective because I cannot be clicking on a bunch of stuff. I can't be chasing emails or invoices or estimates. Like, it needs to be in one spot. And even for yourself, Carlos, like having in three different spots, I don't want that. Even if it's not switching to Copilot, you can't be going to three different softwares to get what you need in your day. And so.

Like, for you guys, for the business going forward, it's like, how can we actually save time here on admin side and then actually use it to actually get more customers? And this is why, like, at Co pilot, when we started, I said, look, look, there are so many other softwares out there. Each of you have mentioned softwares that I've used, and they're very good and there's lots of highlights to them. It's a matter of, like, if we cannot grow the businesses of the members that are joining Copilot, we don't even want their money. And so that's why you might have seen it might not. We have a basic. It's called the founders guarantee, and it's over the next 365 days if you don't grow your business or you don't grow your profits. Like you literally just give me your tax return things and we'll give you the money back because there are a bunch of softwares out there and they're going to promise a gazillion things. I do not want any of your money unless we're actually going to move the needle for your business. And so when we make features like the mass texting, likes the deposit threshold requirement, like the credit card on file, I'm always asking myself, does this actually make more money for the owners? And so like behind me this is Command center. We have about 60 to 70 people here in the office serving Augusta Nation, which we have 150 locations. So like every single day when I make a tweak in Copilot, I can see live at a very large scale the impact it's having. And so if, if we're not making more money for you guys, like Copilot is not needed, it is not required. There's a lot of other softwares that will do features and buttons and clicks. And so you've seen probably even now I'm not really even showing the software because the software, there's a lot of other softwares out there. They're going to have you keep track of your clients, you collect money, you optimize your routes. It's pretty basic stuff. And so my main point though is how do I get you guys to the next level in your business? And so whether it be going from 800,000 to a million or doing 800,000, by the way Jose, kind of not a bad spot to actually optimize in terms of profitability, right? Like instituting pay for performance, actually starting to make sure you track your efficiency scores. It's a great size of business because once I found between 800,000 and 1.5 million, there's almost as wilderness of profitability. And the reason for that is because you have to add more overhead people. So I'm sure Andrew's feeling is now is like you got to either add a full time office person or an estimator. Well, as soon as I have 2 or 3 full time admin people that are complete overhead, I have to grow the business an extra five or six hundred thousand dollars just to warrant having them on payroll. And usually they're going to be salaried and I'm going to have to pay them throughout the off season. And so if we can't get you to 1.5, then we've got to optimize the business at 800,000. Optimize it at A million make it very profitable. And so.

I just really am in here today. Like, I just want to like, hey, what is the next step in the business? Whether or not copilot's a part of that? You know, we can talk up. The Christian can help you through that. But like, I really just want to know what your goals are, how we can help and like, when anyone signs up for copilot. I do the onboarding now. And so I will see you guys at least twice more once you sign up. So even like if you, if you have signed up this morning. I know. Or even if you sign up the next four hours at was 11am my time in two hours. I do the onboarding for everyone that signed up this week and show you the resources and how to contact support for zoom calls and phone calls, etc. But then the part that I'm really interested in, especially for the three of you, is like, I think you're all at three different crucial parts of the business is the goal session. So you recently had this. And I will go through your next three years and we'll create projections, we'll create a budget. It's not going to be a budget like you might seen in LMN on that, on that side, Carlos, in terms of like every single line item. But we're going to actually, okay, like, if I grow this, I am going to need X amount of trucks. I'm going to need to hire X amount of people. Do I have enough cash on hand to make it through the off season. And then we're going to break it down to quarterly goals. So actually creating a budget, creating projections for your marketing, for your hiring, et cetera. And so, you know, that's what we care about at copilot. Like, I genuinely believe that there's like the software, there's a bazillion of them. I really don't care. I want you to be able to grow your business and I want to take the coaching that I believe in to get you to that next level and say, hey, I. By the way, there is a feature that will do this for you. Like, I know that text will get you a lot more leads. I know your response rate is like 90% in terms of open rate, your response rate much higher than email. But like, I've got to actually create the thing inside Copilot. Like, we have to be able to mass send it out to all their customers. The deposit threshold, massive pain for us as well, Andrew. Like every single day we are spending over $3,000 in labor just to get and collect deposits, get credit cards on file.

Like, that's crazy.

And so. And so it's just a matter of like, we've got to create the feature. So the feature, the buttons, those are all, like, things that we'll figure out. But my focus is like, what is the bottleneck in your business? And so that's what we'll identify on that goal session call and really create a plan for the business going forward. So I know I've talked a lot and I know, I know you guys are thinking about joining Copilot, so, like, is there any questions I can answer that you kind of like, right. Come kind of top of mind, you're like, hey, is this in there? Will this serve me anything like that I can answer. Just fire away here. I know we're somewhat limited on time, but I'm happy to help it wherever I can.

I've got one for you. The Service autopilot has the rate matrix for the snow depth per push. Do you guys have that in the software?

Yeah, so we have the rate matrixes inside of there. It's also linked with the job costing. And so I would say, if you're coming from Service Autopilot, actually seem pretty, pretty decent in terms of your learning curve. I would usually say to people that have never touched rate matrices, it's going to take a learning curve. But if you figured out in Service Autopilot, we built it basically to take what we were doing in there and make it simple. We have some plans for it to make a little more simpler. But if you've used theirs and you're like, I got it, you'll be okay.

Yeah, okay, that's fine.

Yeah, that.

That was. I think that's the only thing that I was like, okay, I don't know if it's. It's in here or not. Because I was watching the old videos when you guys are like, okay, well we're going to release that in early 2024. And I'm like, I don't know where it is. I can't find it. But I'm still getting into the software, setting up templates and stuff like that. So I'm already in with you guys.

Yeah. Like, what I would recommend, maybe Andrew, is book a zoom call with one of the guys on the team. ATC is air traffic control, and they can actually walk you through it or.

Even if you give it a shot.

Like, hey, a couple things aren't making sense. I just need someone to show me.

This book a zoom call.

They'll Hop in there. They can see your account as well. Anytime.

All right, sounds good.

Cool.

Carlos, you had your hand up. Go for it.

Yeah, mine's reference to probably should have been done before this. But learning as I grow, right Budgeting or like creating a. Like writing down, obviously writing down your stuff. I do a personal budget. It's a little different than for business, I think and learning what to charge for different types of shirts that involve different equipment or how to like let's say I have two dumpsters, they get rented out so many times a year.

How.

How do I break down that how many hours or what I should be charging for that for the daily side and same thing for lawn care and anything else that I do as far each service requires different type of equipment. So I guess creating a budget business wise and then also breaking down what I should be charging versus questioning myself. I made decent money or I barely made it by or totally.

Yeah.

Like the challenging part with something like this is software actually will not fix this problem because budgets in general are react like you can throw a number in a spreadsheet and it'll pump out whatever you want. So like the only two things that will really fix this is a coaching that is have someone tell you because they've done it before. And secondly, looking at your numbers and determining what do I need to raise this number, this number to in order to make X amount of profit. And so there's two things I'll point you in direction of on this one, Carlos. One, from a networking perspective, I really recommend reach out to cop Brad Bear. Highly recommend. Good friend of mine, he's starting his whole bin business now. He has 150, 200 customers. We've been helping him a little on the marketing side reach out to him. Secondly, I would say the mic minutes ma the masterminds that I do on the weekend. So every single, every single member inside copilot, we do a mastermind every single Saturday and sometimes I go an hour plus long and I'll answer all these sorts of questions. So I would recommend is once you get into the Facebook group, go to the very top, there's a pinned post and, and you can just have a.

Put a.

There's a form there and you just put a question. What I would do in this case is I would put like your cost per bin, what your numbers are like you can even attach a spreadsheet to it and then I will go over it in detail and break it down and I can do that as much as you need as you Scale the business. So there's usually 20, 30 questions in there. I do it every weekend with all the members. Again, the reason I do this because I've seen time and time again where there's the one button that someone's been spending two hours a day working, doing a workaround and it's like one button would have fixed it. And I've also seen where they have all the great features and the buttons and features and everything's locked and loaded. And it has nothing to do with software. It is a business principle, It's a pricing issue. And so when it comes to Copilot, I, I, I like software, I love software. I believe in this stuff. But it's also a matter of like, we need to give you the, the coaching to use the tools. Like it's like if I give you an excavator, cool. But if you don't know how to use the thing, it's not going to serve you well. And if you don't know when to use the thing, it's not going to serve you well. And so the masterminds would be a great place to put some of your actual numbers. And then I'll just, I'll just give you like, hey, I think your prices should be this based upon your growth rate because I'll ask you things like, hey, what's your close ratio like based upon that we need to adjust the pricing because if you're closing 80% of these jobs, we have lots of price to be able to move up. And so definitely the masterminds would be a great, great point there.

Okay, thanks Jose.

Anything jumping out at you kind of questions about like the, from just the software side for now?

No, I'm just listening to you guys and I think I, whatever you answer, they were also my questions. So I think you answered most of the questions that I have.

Cool.

Well, if any of you do join or if you haven't got the email yet, like today, literally in two hours, I can do orientation call. So feel free to hop on that and then from there we schedule your goal session and that's when we'll go for about an hour and a half about like more in depth stuff. But I wanted to spend the rest of the time just really answering any questions I can about your business. So anything I can help with? Like I know Angie, you followed the conduct for a little bit. Is there anything I can help with now? Like I usually hop on these sales calls, but is there anything I can help with whether it be sales, hiring, marketing, anything like that whatsoever. I'm happy to help.

Probably marketing, honestly, we do door hangers. We haven't done it every door, direct mail. The average home cost in this area is well over the 500, 000 mark. It's bougie, it's, it's. I don't know, it's a little uppity for like my taste. I live in it, but like, I'm not that way. But yeah, it's the marketing side of it and kind of I, I did door sales from like 12 years old. Like that's how I sold picnic tables. When I first started out selling stuff, I went and knocked on doors. So like I'm comfortable with that. And maybe it's just I need to do more numbers of it. I know how many I'm getting every hundred and how many hours I got to put in to get a client. Right. Like I know what my customer acquisition cost is and maybe it's just I need to go more ham on that or maybe I'm missing something else. We're doing a lot with the realtors, right? Like we go in, we're sponsoring events for continued education for realtors. We're going to grand opening events for mortgage brokers. So like we're getting in front of all those clients and they give us a lot of other clients. Um, but like if I get the leads in, like, again, like I love the equipment and all that kind of stuff, but like the shiny new toy syndrome, it's not going to get me more money in my pocket, right. And it's not going to help me grow. It's the sales. And I just got to keep going at that. But I'm wondering if there's anything else that I could be doing maybe on the sales side to help grow it bigger or faster.

Totally.

Quick question for you, Andrew, of the like let's call it 900,000 million in revenue you're doing this year.

What percentage of that is coming from the realtors?

Oh man, probably.

35 to 40% right.

Around that, that point.

I think you're at into your state size of business.

What I see a lot of people.

Do is because you want to get the next stage, your turn of just natural attrition, people moving, people unhappy with service, whatever is so high. There's this, this. The immediate thought is we need more leads to fill the churn.

And, and I agree, like in order.

To grow you, you, you'd have to get more leads than what are currently walking out the door every day because of churn. I would really Encourage one aspect and that is increase the annual customer value. And so I would track this religiously at your size of business and that is how much revenue I produce per customer. And you can do it based upon, you know, realtor, homeowner, however you want to track that. And then I would be asking myself when can I upsell and cross sell this person? At every single interaction.

So for example, the big selling points on here was the upsell stuff. And like my guys are like, well how can we do this? I'm like, well now this software will actually, you can go in and you can do it right there. You see that they need we service. Send them a text.

Yes.

Like I would, I would probably make.

A text and email template for your top four or five upsells. I would then create a program around.

It for your crew.

Hey guys, I'll give you 50 bucks if you literally just click on this button and then I approve and it goes to the customer and so you.

Can have it where it goes right through.

I would probably only that for your crew leads or you know, maybe your, your higher level technicians. But then the other setting is where you have to approve the email.

I saw that in here on the automation side of it. Yep, I saw that.

Yeah. Another thing is like people talk about automations. One of the things I think is super underutilized when it comes to upsells and cross sells is before the job is even done. And there exists so at every single stage of the life cycle customer, I can upsell them and I can cross sell them upsell. Think of it as like if I am selling someone a Ford XL version of the truck versus the King Lariat. Like you know, I can move our King Ranch versus in Lariat. Like I am trying to sell more of the same thing. Upsell, cross sell. I'm trying to sell them different services that I offer. And so, and that's, that's what we're.

Mostly doing is that cross sell because we offer so many other things. Like we do decks and barns and all that kind of stuff and I'm, I'm having to do a lot of that. But I think we're slowly moving out of that. So it's like, okay, we can't, we're not going to be able to cross sell if we focus heavy on the maid service and the lawn care. Like we're not going to be able to cross sell. Oh well, we can do your $20,000 deck. Like we're not going to be doing those left and right like so we want to go heavy on the recurring stuff.

But I, I haven't played that game before. Right. I've always done the cross sell because like we, I have background in construction.

Yeah. And, and you can just like if.

You look at say for example when.

You send an estimate, that is a point when you know the customer's gonna look at the estimate. I can put other services on there as optional services. Another thing is like when you do a walkthrough of a big project, I would have three upsells in your back pocket. I'd have three cross sells in my back pocket. Because when you solve the pain of a customer in their highest point of activation to buy again because in three.

Weeks, as you know, they're like, well, the deck is a little wobbly in this one spot.

I didn't like this like right after the walkthrough. That's the highest point of activation. And so what I would personally do, especially beyond the big project stuff, Andrew, is I would set up a job as the walkthrough. And then on that job allow the person that's doing the walkthrough, the crew leader, if you go back or if an estimator goes back from there, that's when you're determining what other upsells I'm selling this person. Now the challenging part with one time job, is someone really going to do another $20,000 job if I just did another 20,000? Potentially not.

Then what?

You're actually thinking that how can I convert this from a one time revenue into recurring revenue?

Yep.

And so when I do the debt.

Can I also sell a annual package.

Where I come back and stain it? I beat any, any nails that come out, I fix those up, that might be 150 bucks, 200 bucks and then I get them. When I come back on the annual service, I'm selling them for other things.

Yeah.

And so one of, I think one of the biggest benefits of one time jobs or big projects is the ability to sell inspections as a value add, but then also as a way for you to come back and sell them more stuff. So like.

100% later. Today there's a handyman service that's going up on the YouTube channel. They have like 2.4 million in revenue. And the number one thing that they're going to do is literally just do annual inspections for all your customers and.

You'Re going to go back, it's going.

To be a free service and they're going to pick up five things. Oh, that leak. Oh, the gutters. Here we got to change this out. Oh, you want to move the wall. Like there's so many opportunities. It's just a matter of can you actually make sure that upsell dropdown is meaningful? Seen some use. People use the drop down upsell. It's like very lame. The emails aren't written correctly, the text messages. So even if you make those, Andrew, feel free to throw them on the mastermind. I can look over them because I really do believe. It's like every time I sell a.

One time job, I'm trying to cross.

Sell them into recurring. Every time I sell them a lawn care or cleaning, a maid service, I'm constantly looking to ways to upsell them into a one time big project. Yep, yep.

And that's, that's what we're trying, we're trying to move more towards the recurring stuff and just kind of focus on that and try to get out of the project based stuff because man, it's, it's difficult. Like if it's slow season, you're not getting those extra things. Like all my other customers, we're still doing leaf cleanups and all that kind of stuff on the lawn side. But like with decks and stuff it stops because we get snow.

Yeah. So yeah.

One of the guys I was talking to like the Hammond, I said hey look, all your inspections are going to be during your off season. And now instead of you going and spending way more on customer acquisition cost.

You'Re going to go visit all your.

Customers and find all the problems that they have with their property. You're going to go back because you're.

Sitting there doing nothing anyways.

100%. Right. And so it's basically like, you know, property inspection free to them. They're happy you can look at as a warranty visit. Right. You can actually sell this with the project. Like hey, this includes annual, an annual inspection for warranty.

That's awesome.

Just a thought, just a thought because like I've seen time and time again.

People were like I need more leads. And they have like a fifteen hundred dollar or two thousand dollars annual customer value. I'm like, look, if you just get that 3,000, we'll double the business without getting any more customers.

Yeah, exactly. So yeah, that's awesome. Okay, yeah, I'll look into that stuff and we'll start moving on forward on.

That you got man. Anything else Jose? Anything I can help with or thought you've been thinking? Business, Anything. Just really anything.

Just same thing. Advertisement I do a lot of handlers flyers like I have right now. I have two, two guys put in. I, I print like 20000 flyers just for cleanups and.

Like snow removal. I do for commercials only and township so we don't serve that for residentials but we do like pavers, concrete. We also do asphalt, but we, we don't do it on winter. So just advertising. Like I want to know more about the two way text, how that works on advertisement because I do emailing but I get result. But I have probably like on my platform that I use, I can send 500 emails at once or. And then I get emails back. So I get some results from emails but I'm not getting as much as I can, you know, totally.

How many, how many people are in your database, Carlos? In terms of like all in service. Autopilot.

I apologize. I apologize.

Yeah, so like you're getting that size where like I just genuinely believe getting new customers is like selling a cold audience that never knows who you are. Like it's so expensive. There are people, 1500 people that have done business with you have at least asked for service. You gave them a quote and they said no, but they demonstrated the need to buy. Like that is a warm audience. That is a. You have their contact information. I would rather go knock on someone's door that is in the past asked for my services than go knock on the door of a stranger that I don't even know if they need my services. And so like the, the, the, the email, the texting side of things like we talked about in the Mastermind recently. And that is like the emails, when you do mass strip out the strip out images, take out links, make it very conversational. Hey, it's Jose. Was thinking about you. I know it's leaf season. We had a big windstorm last week. Do you need a property clip this week? Question mark. Sincerely, Jose. Boom. No signature, no logo, no pictures. Make it very, very personal. That will convert way more, way more.

Than a bunch of pictures, a video.

And a link to your site and fill out this form. Same thing with text, right? Like text text will 100% at 1500 customers, you send in a property cleanup text at the right time, you'll get between 15 and 25 leads immediately. And these are people, you already have their contact information. You've probably already done a job for them in the past. You probably have their card information. It like boggles my mind. Like I get pretty worked up about this stuff because like I see people spend all this money on Facebook and Google and door hangers and all these third parties when it's like inside of your system is warm leads and we will go spend money on a billboard or wrapping our truck and we're trying to get new customers. When there's customers in our database that have plenty of likelihood to buy, they have a credit card on file for us to charge and we're not going after them. And so like I generally believe that the money saved in marketing goes in your pocket. And then we simply get more strategic about how often and when do I give offers to my customers, an email and text message or knocking on their door. Like if it's slow during the season I will go knock on customers door and just be like, hey, it was great installing your deck. It was great installing that paver patio. Last year I wanted to drop by just making sure you're good, making sure you're happy. There's a high likelihood they have four other projects you can get done and same thing when you text them, right? So I would really look at, okay, I have 12 months of the year, what is my email and my text message going to be for every single month? Because my whole goal is how do I create season specific offers or season specific services. So when I look at 12 months I do not send the same email out.

I don't have like some people have.

I've seen their automations in Copilot. They'll build like onboarding sequences for new customers. And I'm, I'm like, that's great in theory but no one needs a fall cleanup in the middle of spring rush. I want to be able to pitch them the service when they need it. Sorry, go ahead, Jose.

So that's the idea that I, that I tried a couple of times to, to do it. But like I think I always, when, when I do that I feel like I'm a little bit late and when I'm ready to like send like let's say for right now for four cleanups. I, I was trying to do it like four weeks ago, but I didn't do it because I thought it was too soon to send it. But now that I'm doing it right now I think it's too late because most of the houses are clean.

So yeah, here's how you get around that though, Jose. You just tell the customer like, hey, we have upcoming, we have leaf season. We're going to book out five, six weeks. The leaves are going to be crazy. I'm letting you know now because you're an existing customer to get you on the schedule and give you priority if you want to get on the schedule. So you don't get locked out of the schedule. Hit me up. That will get a huge amount of response. And now the customer feels good about getting your message. So I saw this yesterday. One of the our franchisees that were sending out a text for Christmas lights, they said, hey, we're getting 20% off for anyone that responds to this because you're an existing customer. And we want to make sure we fill our 50 available spots with our existing customers first and give you priority.

Nobody opted out.

I was able to go on the back and see not a single person opted out of that text. And they sent over 3,000 people. And the reason is because that message showed personable and priority for being an existing customer. The reason people hate mass messages because you constantly are talking to cold traffic.

Fill up this form if you're, you.

Know, if you want to be a new customer, stop. Like just message the people in your database as if they're existing customers.

Yeah.

Start to do is sell the whole season package from spring up to fall. Because we don't do winter for residentials and for commercials. We do the whole year around. So basically we start charging a monthly fee, but we take care of the whole thing just on the snow. We put a limit of snow if it's. So we have a minimum and we have a maximum of snow and salt.

Got it. And so is all of your customers on 12 month contracts.

But your goal, you're trying to get.

Them to that, right?

That will be my goal. But not everybody wants to do it. So I have customers that they only wants to do one time cleanup. I have customers that they want to do four times cleanup. So that's where my issue probably is sometimes.

Yeah. Well, this kind of. Let me show you this real quick. Let's see. Can you guys see my screen?

Yeah.

Yeah. So this is one thing I've been thinking a lot, a lot about recently when it comes to this. Let me make this a little bit better for you guys.

Is like, you know, you got customers coming in the top, right. This is your traditional funnel.

I like to think of it as.

The other way around and flip the funnel. So I like to think of it as like, okay, I got customers coming in the top.

Up here is going to be my gateway service. It's my lowest customer acquisition cost is how much do I have to spend to get them in the door. For example, for you on this one is probably like moe. Probably a single service or a weekly or biweekly schedule. Like everyone needs their grass cut. I can Get I got you. Then it's like, well, how do I increase the value of this customer? Well, if I could get them on a property cleanup or you know, take care of their beds plus their mowing, that'd be cool. Because now I can take what otherwise would have been an annual customer value of let's just call it $1200. And now all of a sudden I can turn that into let's just call it. If I do one or two property cleanups, some bed maintenance throughout, let's just call it 2500. Cool. And then what I would say if you actually build this out, I would imagine for you on this one down here is your full service.

Maintenance program.

And so then what I would do is I'd be constantly thinking about how do I just grease the wheels to get people further down through this funnel. And so every single mowing customer, I would be having them on automation. How do I get them on into bed maintenance? How do I get them into another service? How do I get them into snow? You know, you can put snow here, for example, like, the higher the value.

And then the goal is always to.

Get them to here. And if you market to them in that way, now when you present these offers via text or via email, we have a real reason and a goal. Like our goal is to get the mowing customer to become, to get bed maintenance. Right. And so I would really be thinking about from that perspective, especially because you very clearly have like my highest value customer. The one I really want is a full service maintenance contract. And then I'd be okay, what percentage of my current mowing customers are that okay? 15, 20, whatever it might be, how do I increase that number? I'm going to be trying to get them into one service. Well, once I get them to one service, like bed maintenance now, it makes a lot of sense for them to get a third service. And then I'll make this discount so good for full service maintenance and then I'll pitch it. So, for example, we do the same thing, Augusta, like we pitch people into winter services and we show them the price comparison. Like, hey, look, if we come to your property twice, do a property up, it's going to cost like 1500 bucks. Just let us come every two weeks and we're going to do this whole list of things make your property look at all year round. It's only going to cost you $750 for the whole year. Like, but I know I can sell it to 90% of my mowing customers and increase their value from $1200 to over 2000. And so I would really make, make it, make the funnel. And then your goal is to be able to use value, I.e. price as a way to convince people to get further down. Because if you get them into one or two services it's like hey, this is an obvious choice. It's full service. You're saving this amount, you get this priority. And there's a lot of things that we, we don't assume is value that is really important to the customer. Like if there's a storm, you get 24 hour service. You can sell these as intangibles. I insurance like we all pay home insurance and unless our home gets burnt down or there's a flood, we never see any of that money. And so when it comes to a project install especially larger jobs, it's how can I sell thin air which in this case is insurance. Peace of mind. Like that's the type of thing you can tap into and get them further down that funnel. So just something to think about.

Yeah.

Okay, cool. Well, I know we're coming up on our time but I just want to say thanks guys for hopping on. I look forward to seeing you guys on the Facebook group on the mastermind. If anyone did join today, I guess I'd probably see your onboarding call here in about an hour and a half. But we'll schedule your goal session inside there and really start figuring out what is the budget, what are the projections for hiring marketing. And I generally believe most people spend too much on marketing because they're not using the text email the automations correctly, they're not upselling and so that's something we'll dig into pretty heavily in those calls. But I appreciate you all.

Thank you man.

I'll see you.

Yeah, absolutely.

I'll see the community and I really appreciate you guys joining co pilot. It'll be a lot of fun. Can't wait to see in the mastermind and I know Christian will stay in touch with you guys and follow up with you as well.

So take care guys.

Have a good one.