The $10M Mistake I Made in My Lawn Care Business

Hey everyone, it's Mike Annis. Today, as it says right here, I guarantee that the talk that I'm going to be having over the next several minutes is going to have a strategy that will outperform any marketing method you have ever used. I know that's a tall guarantee, but it's absolutely true. And I want to walk you through it. If you don't know who I am, my name is Mike Andes. I'm the founder of Augusta Lawn Care. We have almost 150 locations around North America and Australia. And. And I'm also the founder of Copilot CRM.com let's go ahead and jump into it. I'm very excited to share this with you today because what you can also expect from today's show is that you increase your close ratio by 40%. All right? So you can get a lot more jobs using this method. I can guarantee this. Also, based upon the math that we've done at Augusta lawn care over 150 locations, I expect that you'll be able to get a new job, a brand new job every 30 minutes without spending any extra ad dollars whatsoever. Now what I really want to title this little keynote talk today is what. What I really wanted to call it was Ghosting Me cost me over $10 million last year. And the reason this is true is because I ran them all the math on all the estimates that in Augusta Lawn Care across all of our locations, people had sent an estimate but never received a response. It's kind of like going on Tinder or on Bumble or something and you get ghosted and you expect one thing and nothing shows up or you, you do everything you can and no one even shows up to the date. That's exactly what's happening every single day to home service business owners around the world when they send out estimates and they never get a response from customers. I find myself quite often wanting to scream these three and a half words to all the members of Augusta Nation, Augusta Lawn Care across all of our locations, as do follow up calls. Honestly, if you've listened to the first two minutes of this video and you just do this and do follow up calls to all of your estimates, this is literally 80% of the battle. The other 20%, I'm going to continue in the rest of this episode to hopefully convince you just to do this one thing, and that is do follow up calls, they will completely change your business. And I'm going to prove to you why now how this presentation is going to make you money is. First off, we Want to identify two buckets for all the leads that are currently ghosting you, all those estimates you send out and no, no one ever responds. We're going to put them into two different buckets. Then we're going to identify four ways to get leads in both of those buckets to accept their estimates. Now, I'm not going to be talking about phone tactics. If you want those. I put some links to a really good book as well as a YouTube video about specific phone tactics because really, I think there are a dime a dozen. There's a bazillion out there. Honestly, when it comes to home services, I think that all unsold leads ghost you. In other words, you send them an estimate and they never get back to you for one of two reasons. Either one, they are on the fence or two, they want it cheaper. You can go read books about all a gazillion different directions that people try to give you lies or they tried to negotiate with you and all the rest of it. Look, I can put all of them in two buckets, either on the fence or they want it cheaper. Let's talk about someone who's on the fence first. Now, what they're going to tell you is like that they're going to get other quotes. They're going to talk to their spouse to say, hey, I'll let you know, I'll think about it. I'm busy right now. Now, in the back of their head, they're thinking other things like, well, the last contractor, you know, they didn't do a great job. Or is there going to be loud noises? I'm going to have to deal with loud noise. Are they going to lock the gate when they leave? Do I need to be home? These are all other costs associated with the job that don't actually show up on the estimate. And that is the things that they are thinking in the background. So how to deal with leads that are on the fence? All right, the first bucket. There's two different ways to deal with it. First is scarcity. This is really easy. It's a lot easier to use scarcity. Let's talk about it. So if we're using scarcity to get someone off of the fence, what we're going to tell them is we are booked out several weeks. But I had a spot came available next Thursday. So lock it in with a specific time and give scarcity to the. Hey, we got to get this estimate accepted now because we're filling up. But I have one spot available next Thursday. Now the question is if I'M going to give scarcity. Do I also give them a discount? It's very simple. There's two different directions you're going to go here. Either you're fat and happy, which means you're simply doing these follow up calls and using scarcity because you hate wasting your money on ads and all the time it takes to go out and do the estimates. So you're not going to give a discount, but you're still going to use scarcity to close the deal. Now if you're sad and skinny, in other words, you need to get more jobs in the schedule and you're trying to grow the business, maybe you don't have a lot of work on the schedule, then yes, offer a discount along with that scarcity. Close that. There's a spot available next Thursday. Now do it from the beginning of the follow up phone call because otherwise it's going to seem kind of scammy. If all of a sudden they say, oh no, I don't want to get the job. And then you say, oh well, I'll give you 10% off, it's going to seem a little bit salesy. So just right from the beginning, say next Thursday, I have a spot available. I want to get you on the schedule because we're booking out really far. And if you go ahead and schedule that job today and get that on the schedule, I'll give you a 10% off or whatever the discount is. Now let's deal with the next person that's also on the fence. They're not sure if they're going to take your service and they're going to have a bazillion different ways of saying that. I'll get back to you. Still thinking about it. Whatever it is, the next way is advanced. It's a little more difficult, might take a little more time to practice before using it. That's using conviction. And this is when you're going to say, Mr. Jones, has anyone else called you to follow up on their quote? This is specifically helpful when they say they're waiting on other quotes. It's like, hey wait, wait a minute, I know you've been getting some other quotes, but has anyone even called you back to ask you if you understood the quote or if you had any questions? After all the years of me doing follow up phone calls on these estimates, I have yet to have one customer tell me, oh yeah, I got all the, everyone else call me back. And they're also confirming the quote and making sure answer any questions I have. No one's doing this, so this is a way for you to step out and stand out from the crowd and have conviction that you are the best service for the customer. And this again, if you have conviction, you actually believe you're the best option for the customer in the best value, you can say, hey Mr. Jones, you won't be disappointed. You have my personal guarantee you will be satisfied with the job and we will take care of you. This type of conviction is not easy to really come up with. And sometimes what I see, owners really need to sell themselves on the value they bring to customers. That's a whole different topic because we get, remember we're not just selling, you know, if you're doing lawn mowing stripes, we're not just selling paint on a wall. If you're a painter, we're just selling boards stuck in the ground. If you're doing fencing, we're selling a lot of other things that are much more valuable. And to someone that's in their 70s and 80s, has three or four houses, their time is worth more. Their, they also are going to value things like time with their family, the ability to go play golf on the weekends a lot more than us that might be 30, 40, able bodied and very able to do the work. But we're in a different stage of life. So realize their value of them saving time is significantly higher than yours. And so conviction that you have a high value product and you're the best option for the customer. And because you care about the customer, it is your obligation and your duty to ensure they accept the estimate. Remember, the customer didn't actually want to get an estimate from you. They wanted to solve a problem and they're actually annoyed by the fact they have to go get five and six estimates just to get the job completed and the problem solved. Get them to the problem being solved as quickly as possible. That's the objective they have, not to get a quote. Everyone's like, well I got all my quotes done for the day. You didn't do anything. Like you didn't solve any problems. The reason the customer called is to get their lawn mowed, is to get the wall painted, is to get the fence installed. So solve the problem and until you've done that, you haven't served the customer. So use conviction if you really do believe you're the best option for the customer and you care about them and care about them making the right decision. Now again, they are on the fence. They're ghosting you because they still are on the fence. This is a great way to use this tactic as reserving their spot and this is great for voicemail. Or if they say they're going to think about and simply say, Mr. Jones, if you're leaving a voicemail on a follow up phone call, Mr. Jones, I've got your own voicemail here, but I know when I was with you yesterday you said it was really important that you get this job done before next weekend when you're out of town. I went ahead and made some space available. I'm going to go ahead and save your spot because we're booking out really quickly. So I got the spot reserved for you. Please give me a call back if that doesn't work for you and let's go ahead and get that confirmed for you that we'll get them to call you back if it's a voicemail. Also, if they say that they're going to think about it, say, hey, I understand you need to think about it. I also know we're booking out really quickly, so let's go ahead and reserve your spot and then just call me back and we'll confirm it later. But let's just reserve that spot for now so that way we don't lose that spot and you don't lose that. Because people are risk adverse. Because they are. They don't want to lose something. They will make sure they keep that reserved spot. Okay. Again, if they're on the fence, just agree with them on everything. They complain about the weather or politics or they're heing and hawing about their decision. Let's roll. For sure. Totally, absolutely. Keep the momentum moving towards solving their problem, not wallowing in the details of the estimate and competition and the weather like move them in the direction of solving their problem. That's why they contacted you. All right, so we talked about the customers that are on the fence and for that reason they're not getting back to you. Now let's talk about the customers that want it cheaper. That's why they are not accepting their estimate. Now again, this is what you're going to hear from customers. If they say if they want it cheaper, they say they can't afford it. They say they're on a fixed income, they say they need to go check their budget, et cetera. Now you can have things cheaper, faster, better, but you can't have, you can have two, but you can't have all three. Which one is most important to you? You can literally ask your customers this. If they say, well, I want it cheaper, I want a discount, I'm on a fixed income now Most people will not say that they want it cheaper. All right? Because if they. Because most people say, well, I want a good quality job because the last cus. The last contractor didn't do a fantastic job and he messed things up. Well, great. We aren't the cheapest, but we are going to take care of you in terms of the quality. We're going to do a better job. We're going to quickly, too. We're not going to take five weeks to do your little project. I know, Mr. Jones, that last time that contractor took a long time. We're not going to do that for you. But we aren't going to be the cheapest either. Now, if they say that they do want it cheap, guess what? We have two options. We can reduce the scope of work. That's the better side of the three options, or we can push the job off. Guess what? I will do your job for a much cheaper price, but I'll need to push it off three, four, five months down into my off season. So remember, even if someone actually does a fixed income, even if they do have a reduced budget, I. I can fit within their budget. I'm just going to either reduce the scope of work or I'm going to push the job off to the point where I'm willing to take a lower price in order to be able to do it in the off season. Now, most of us are in this spot of this continuum because you need to have things good, fast or cheap. What's impossible is all three right in the middle there. And so again, most of us are probably inexpensive and good. And the reason I assume that is because you're watching videos, you're trying to educate yourself, and you're trying to make yourself better. If you're using things like a software at Copilot, it costs money and it costs more money to be professional. And so for that professionalism, you're probably not going to fall into the cheap category. You're usually going to be faster and you're going to be better service. And for that, you need to charge a premium price. Now, there's not necessarily a wrong place on this continuum. If we're looking at burgers, I'm going to make this slide a little bit bigger for you. We're looking at burgers. We got the top here at Houston Bar. That top burger is $1,600 in the middle there. We could go to Walmart. You know, it's good and it's cheap. It's good food because, like, it's literally from scratch. But it's not gonna be fast. Cause you gotta go buy the ingredients, go to the store, come back, fire up the grill, do all this prep work. Or you can go to McDonald's and have it fast and cheap, right? So these are all the different places in the market and you gotta decide where are you in this continuum. So that way when some customer says, well you're too expensive or I'm on a fixed budget or I need it cheaper, you know, and I'm going to have confidence that hey, I am ones at some specific part of this continuum. There's no wrong spot. You can make money in any of these areas. McDonald's makes plenty of money. Walmart makes plenty of money. Houston Bar makes plenty of money. It's not about which one you are or not is better is being knowing which one you are so you can sell to your strength. And for most of us it's not going to be price. So sell on value. Sell on the fact that you're going to get the job done quickly and demonstrate that with how quickly you get the estimate to and from the customer. But also remember that you can give up concessions on price. Just realize that they're either going to have to delay the job or you have to reduce the scope of work. So a simple summary of today is that you're going to have two different obstacles. One, the customer is going to want it cheaper or they're going to be on the fence and they're going to be undecided. We have four strategies. We're going to have scarcity and we might discount in order to be able to get them on the schedule. We're going to have conviction that we are the best service and the best option for the customer. We're going to reserve their spot. Even if it's a voicemail. We're going to reserve that spot so we make sure they call us back. And then fourth is we're going to agree with the customer throughout that entire period. Now we're going to go through some math. Let's show me the money, baby. All right, this is all fine and good. Let's show you the money. If we do follow up calls and one out of three of those phone calls actually pick up the phone because a lot of people just go to voicemail and we assume that then one out of those people, one of the five of those people that answer the phone are actually going to accept their estimate. That means that we have to do 15 follow up calls in order to get one new job. Now let's assume it takes two minutes on average per call because some of them are going to go to voicemail. That'd be 30 minutes of follow up calls. And if you spent that 30 minutes, you would get one new job. And again, I promised at the beginning of this talk that we're going to, we are going to get one new job for every 30 minutes that we spend doing these follow up calls. Now if we do 60 estimates per month, right? Last month we did 60 estimates and we did follow up calls on twice for every single one. That would mean that we did 120 follow up calls per month. Now if we know, we know that we do 15 follow up calls, we get one new job. So if we do 120 follow ups in the month, that would mean that we get eight new jobs per month. Now you can look at this either one of two ways. Either one, you save $800 on marketing. If you assuming a customer acquisition cost of $100 per, we got eight jobs, we just saved ourselves $800 just by doing these follow up calls. You could also look at it as, hey, if I make on average $2,000 per year per client, and that's the average at Augusta Lawn Care, we make on average $2,000 per year per client. Well, if I get eight new customers per month, I'm adding $16,000 in annual recurring revenue just this month. If I do that over the course of 12 months, I got myself a really good growing business. Now let's assume that you had 1 3rd or 33% close ratio, which means that 1 out of 3 estimates that you send out to customers gets accepted. If we assume that, and last month, remember we had 60 estimates, that would mean that we would have got 20 jobs. But if we just close eight more jobs, so instead of 20 jobs, we now have 28 jobs. If we're able to do that, that means that our close ratio went up to, but went up by 40%. We went from 20 jobs in the month to 28 jobs a month simply by calling every single estimate twice for a follow up phone call. And by the way, your customer acquisition cost, if it was a hundred dollars before because we got all these new jobs for doing absolutely no more in ad spend, we, we would be able to bring our customer acquisition cost down to $71.42. Now a couple last tips that I have when it comes to doing follow up phone calls and making sure that customers don't ghost you. Number one, slow down, don't talk the way I'm talking to you right now. Which is fast and moving very quickly. What you want to do is take your time, slow down and almost speak at the pace that is uncomfortable because that is the pace that a lot of the older clients you'll be dealing with will trust you more if you speak at this speed. Going really fast and doing it. That reminds me of the old TV commercials when they spoke really quickly. At the end they said a bunch of disclaimers, don't talk like that. Just be nice and slow. Get reps is so important. And when I say get reps, I mean just do the follow up phone calls. You'll get so much better. After 50, 100, a thousand of these phone calls, it'll start to become second nature. Using the four strategies that we've talked about today. Last thing before you get on that phone call and to do that follow up estimate, here's the three things that you need to know before you get on the phone call. Number one, you know when you're booked out until because the customer potentially might actually want to get the job on the schedule. And you'll need to know when the next available date of service is or if you're doing recurring service, what day of the week they can get scheduled. Also, you got to know are you going to be flexible on price or are you not going to give a discount? Lastly, you'll need to have the estimate in front of you to be able to know exactly what the notes are, exactly what it includes so that they have any questions, you're able to answer them right on the call. Now I have a question. Do we have a leads problem or do we have a follow up problem? Because so often the times when I go out and do turnarounds on the Mike Andes YouTube channel, I go to these businesses that are struggling, they think they need more leads and most business owners think that they need more leads when reality I think we might actually have just a follow up problem because look at this. At Augusta Lawncar, I did a bunch of math on looking at estimates and what happened when we followed up. Check this out. We had a 30%, 38% close ratio when someone just sent the estimate and that was it. But when we, when we also did a three follow up phone calls to these estimates, it increased from 38% close ratio to 65% close ratio. So my question is, do we have a leads problem or do we have a follow up problem? Can we literally double the size of our business without getting any more leads, spending any extra money in marketing and simply following up on the estimates that have already been sent. They already are sitting in the inbox. The customer has already asked for the service. You've already gone out and visited with them, met the, met them at the property, gone over the scope of work, created the details for the quote, sent to the customer. All of that work has been done and yet we just let them ghost us. It boggles my mind. So use those four strategies to get the two buckets of people that are undecided or want it cheaper and make more money today. Go to the links in the description for more information. We'll see you in the next video.