The $1M Home Service Blueprint Competitors Don’t Want You to See!

If you're a home service business owner and you're trying to get more sales and more customers to grow your business, this is the video for you. This is gonna be a masterclass sharing the secrets I've learned in sales over the past 17 years of owning a home service business and that has resulted in growing Augusta Lawn Care, my business, to over 150 locations around the world. This shares all the tactics, strategies and secrets around sales.

The number one most important thing when.

It comes to improving your sales in.

Home services is selling yourself.

And if that means looking in the.

Mirror and convincing yourself, that's fine. Because ultimately, the reason a lot of times home service business owners can't sell their services is because they are not the target market. So if you sell H vac services, if you sell landscaping services, you probably would do those services yourself.

In other words, you think it's mind.

Boggling when someone's willing to pay $800 for a property cleanup or spend $1,000 for a tune up on their heating and air conditioning and you're right for, for you, that would be crazy. Cause you are 40, 50 years old and can do the work yourself. You have the intelligence, you have the skills, you have the equipment, you have the training to do the work yourself. But you're not the target market. And so the very first thing I want you to do when it comes to improving your sales is sell yourself on the fact that your product and service serves the need for the target audience, not you. And you are not the target audience. You can get on a ladder, you can fix the H vac, you can handle a 200 pound machine an 80 year old can't. And furthermore, they're going to value their time a lot more than you. If they have three homes and they travel around the world and they have four or five years left of life to live, they're probably going to value their weekends a lot more. They're going to be willing to spend a lot more for the extra two or three hours you save them. And by the way, them getting on a ladder and trying to manhandle that machine could, could potentially put them in the hospital. You are not the target audience. And in order to be able to sell your services, you'll have to believe in your product and service. You have to believe that you are the best option for the customer. If you don't believe that, then you will shirk away from when they give you some sort of like, oh, it's too expensive or when they tell you, I don't know I gotta try out a few other providers, get a few other estimates. You'll just cave right in because you and your mind have not convinced yourself you're not sold yourself or on the fact that you are the best option for the customer.

And if you're like, well, honestly, I.

Don'T do a great job, well, then fix the product, fix that first so you can have the confidence to be able to sell yourself to the customer. You got to remember, we're not selling stripes if we're doing lawn care. You're not selling a couple screws and a couple tightening on an H Vac system.

If you're doing H Vac, fill in.

The blank for your home service, that's not what you're actually selling. What you're selling is insurance. You're working on likely the highest value asset they have in their portfolio. And if they're retired and they have a million dollars of net worth racked up in equity in their house, you are taking care of their retirement assets. And it is a form of insurance to make sure the H Vac system doesn't burn down the house and that the overgrown lawn doesn't lead to a bunch of pests intruding into their house and causing tens of thousands of dollars of damage. So you're selling your insurance, you're selling time, potentially the most valuable commodity that they have. If they're older, you're selling time with their family.

You're selling time to go out shopping, you're selling time to they go on.

The golf course and do things that they're passionate about. And those things are much more valuable than the stripes in the lawn and a few screws that you turn on.

The H VAC system.

You're also selling pride of ownership. This is potentially, even if they're a working class family, their most valuable and proud possession that they have because it's their first house and they might be doing a tech job and they're younger, so they don't value time as much. But they have a lot of pride of ownership because this is their house. This is the first one they've ever purchased as a family. You're also selling status because some people in an hoa, for example, in a gated neighborhood, they just want to have their neighbors see you pull up to their house in a nice truck and a nice uniform. And now they become of high status in their local community. So remember, you're not selling the actual thing that you're doing. Stop focusing on the features and focus on the benefits you bring. Cause they're much higher value. And remember, you are not the target market.

All right, let's throw in the jersey. Let's head to the client's property to.

Do an actual estimate.

Of course, we're going to be hopping.

In a decal vehicle with either vinyl decals or paint.

Something looks professional, and it's going to be telling every one of their neighbors.

That I'm here to do business.

Another way to get great sales. But I'm going to take a couple of things with me, one of which is going to be either a folder like this or some sort of cardstock literature.

The basic thing is I'm going to give this to the customer at the end of the estimate, and I don't.

Want to be easy to throw away. So I don't really like business cards, and I don't really like having a really flimsy flyer. I either have cardstock. I've seen some people like wood or.

Metal postcards, or I have this folder.

Where they can actually put inside any.

Sort of information about the actual estimate or print things off about a project.

If you have a lot of project notes, these are the type of things.

You'Re going to want to be taking with you.

Now, some people will make their work.

Truck an actual office, and they might put in a laptop or an iPad.

You might even need to bring a.

Measuring wheel or some other device to be able to measure something on the property or make sure that's all in your vehicle and it's super accessible.

You don't want to be hauling things.

In and out of the office.

You don't want to be making your estimate vehicle where when you jump in.

You got to get, like, all these.

Other tools out or super dirty. Try to keep, if at all possible.

When you're growing the business, one vehicle dedicated to doing your estimates. You have plenty of literature. You might have a box where you.

Keep it all organized.

You have your laptop, you have your iPad, and you can go straight to the estimate from here.

All right, so now we showed up at a customer's house. I'm going to approach the house with.

A smile on my face, with a.

Lot of confidence, because if you just come up and you're, like, all afraid and nervous, they're going to feel it. When you approach the house, keep everything in your left hand so your right hand is ready to shake. I know it sounds simple, but it's.

Really awkward if you're juggling things around.

Before you give them a handshake. Now, ideally, when you're approaching the house, you already know the scope of work. When someone's collecting lead information from your office, you want to be knowing kind of what they're looking for. So if they're looking for bush trimming, as I'm approaching the house, I'm actually looking when what bushes would need to be trimmed. I'm also looking for upsell opportunities. Like, do they need mulch? Oh, they have some weeds.

I'm already looking for upsell opportunities and.

What the scope of work is based upon what my office has told me.

All right, so now that we're approaching the actual doorway, we're going to knock on the door, but I'm going to be making sure that I don't stand really close to the door.

Back in the day when I first got started, I'd be like this. Like, seriously, if they open this door.

They'Re going to be right in my face.

That's awkward. All right, so knock on the door.

Stand back a little bit. Be at an angle too. If you're like confrontational, shoulder to shoulder.

That'S not what we're looking for.

Nice 45 degree angle. Use your left arm. Being closest to them, not your dominant hand is also a good move.

45 degrees, set 4 to 6ft back.

And then when they open up the.

Door, they're able to cautiously open it.

And make sure that they're safe.

Remember that sometimes you're speaking to the wife or the female of the house and they're going to be pretty cautious.

About opening up the door to a stranger.

So you're going to say, hi, thank you. And then we're going to head to.

The handshake with the right hand. The next step is trying to get them outside. Especially if your services are on the outside, like lawn care landscaping is. I actually want them to go show me the thing. I don't want them to be like, yeah, around back.

Go look at X, Y and Z.

Like the whole point of me being here in person and meeting them is for them to show me. I could have done a drive by estimate and not met with the customer if all they were going to tell me is just some more requirements of what's going on in the backyard.

Keep in mind that the customer doesn't.

Do estimates on every single day multiple times. They don't know the next step of the process.

So once I shake their hand and.

I address them, I'm going to tell them we're going to walk the property. I'm going to take a video, I'm going to send it to the office and within 24 hours we'll get you an estimate quote.

Now they know what to expect and they're not like kind of like aimlessly wandering around their property following you, not.

Knowing what's going to happen as you're assessing the property and whatever project they need done. Try to match their energy.

If they're just like really quiet, don't be super loud and boisterous. Agree with them about what?

I don't care about politics, I don't care about their favorite sports team.

I'm going to appear interested because this is all about the customer.

I'm trying to make them happy and I'm making sure that I match their energy.

If they're super mad, if they're like super into things, I'm going to get that same way.

I'm going to match their energy.

Right now I don't care about being right. I care about serving the customer. And so I'm going to agree with.

Them on basically everything. The reason I'm doing this is because.

I want to be able to ask.

The customer the right questions.

And the right questions are really a.

Matter of like, what's their budget?

And also asking them, have they tried other vendors?

Have they tried someone else? Why were they unsatisfied with their last provider? They're not going to answer you those questions if you haven't matched their energy and if you're being all loud and boisterous when they're quiet or vice versa.

So match their energy, allowing you to.

Ask the right questions and get the responses you need to actually get the quote accepted. All right, now that we've wrapped up the actual in person meeting with the customer, we need to wrap things up and take a video of the job. I think of this as a three step process, literature, expectations and video. The first thing I do is give them whatever literature I came prepared with, whether that be a flyer, a business card, a packet like this, I'm going to give that to the customer. I'm going to shake their hand. So that's literature, then expectations. I'm going to tell the customer what to expect in the next step of the process. And most of the time that's going to be they're going to email or text message giving their estimate and their pricing details with the scope of work. And then I'm going to take a video. Now this allows you to be able to get the customer basically back in the house. Because the whole goal here is for me to be able to do an estimate video. And I don't want to have the customer over my shoulder, following me around the property. So I'm going to give them the literature, set the expectations, and then I'm going to pull out my phone once they've gone inside and start making an estimate video. Now, the estimate video is very important if you want to ever get out of daily operations inside your business. The estimate video is going to be recapping everything you just talked about with the customer. You can use the estimate video later that evening if you're way behind and you need to do your estimate notes. I don't suggest that, really. The main reason we're doing the video, though, is that you, as the estimator, don't have to come back to the property. The whole goal is that between the estimate notes that you give the crew.

And the video, you, as the estimator.

Never return to the property. We consider a system failure if the estimator has to come back when the project is actually underway. So when I'm making the estimate video, the first thing is I want to be a wide angle and as far back as possible. I'm going to do in landscape mode so we get as much of the surroundings as possible. I'm actually going to start from the very front of the property so they can actually see the address. They see what the property looks like.

Because that's what they're going to see.

When they drive out up to the address using their gps. I don't want to start in the very back corner of the property.

Okay, we're going to fix this bush. And they're like, where are we?

Like, am I even at the right house? So I've now wrapped up with the customer. I'm now taking my estimate video. I'm in wide angle. I am landscape, and I'm going to step back from the property.

I'm not going to be going in. Okay, so we're going to take care of these weeds right here.

I'm going to step back. I'm going to be able to show my crew where we're at in the.

Property, and I will use my finger.

To point at specific items that are needed being addressed.

That way they can actually know where they're at in the property, and they.

Actually have some sort of frame of reference. That estimate video can be used by your office to create the estimate, and it can also be used by your crew leader or your crew project manager to be able to get the product done without you being back on site. Also, any details that you want your crew to know, but you don't want to put in the estimate. Notes can also be recorded in the video.

Something as simple as just like the.

Customer'S hard of hearing could be said.

To the crew inside the video.

So they know those details when they come on site. Dude, these are the basics. But like, as I was writing this, I was like, I wish I would have known these things back in the day.

The biggest advantage of being in person on the customer's property is the fact.

That I can see the property and.

I can actually sell them other services that we offer that they didn't actually ask for. These are called upsells, selling more services to the customer. And so whether I'm doing the estimate video or I'm walking the property with the customer, I'm constantly thinking about, oh, I could sell them this, I could sell them that.

So even though they got me here.

For a bush trimming, I'm actually focusing on do they actually need gutters cleaned out?

And so the whole goal of doing.

An upsell is to improve the lifetime value of the customer.

Not only do I actually make more.

Money from them on an annual basis by selling them other services like cleaning out the gutters, but also by solving more problems for the customer, I'm going to reduce the likelihood that they turn or that they leave because I'm constantly solving their problem. And better yet, I'm solving the problems they didn't even know they had because they might not have ever thought about the gutters. And now I've actually presented the problem and the solution. One really cool feature inside of copilot is the ability for your crew when they're on the customer's property, even after.

The estimate is accepted, to quickly be.

Able to choose which other services the property needs. And then immediately a text or an email goes to the customer asking them if they would like a free estimate for those services. So if they're mowing and they see stuff growing, falling out of the gutters, they could simply just, with a tap of a button from the mobile app, be able to get an upsell email or text message sent to the customer.

That is how you improve the lifetime.

Value of the customer, solve more problems and keep customers around much longer. Alright, so the question is, do you sell to the customer now and actually try to get them a quote, or do you just send the video and the notes back to the office and they send the quote via email or text? Here's the thing, if you're trying to get out 15, 20 estimates a day, it's probably a lot faster just to Take the video, take the notes and send it to the office. But if you're only getting one or two estimates a day, it might be worth the extra time, 20 or 30 minutes to actually prepare your notes, get.

The quote, and then go right back.

To the customer at their front door and actually sell them the job.

So it's really a matter of I.

Know that my close ratio will probably be higher if I sell the job right now to customer and get a yes or a no. They don't have to go through the actual process like sending the quote because like, I'll just get the yes and I'll put it on the schedule. However, keep in mind that if I do that, they'll know that I made the prices in my truck and that they can haggle with me. So if you just really are not comfortable with like haggling on price or objections around price, etc. You might just want to prepare the notes, be more confident in your estimate so there's not a time rush of getting back to the customer as soon as possible because they have a deadline, they need to leave. Just take your time, make the video, take the notes, get your prices together, and send the quote that evening. But if you're trying to maximize your.

Close ratio and close as many jobs.

As possible, have a Chromebook or have your iPad in your truck, put together the notes, put together the video, put together the pricing, and go right back and sell the job to the customer. I've seen some people actually have a mobile printer inside of their office truck so that they can actually print the estimate off, go back to the customer and give them the price proposal and close the job on the spot. The last thing I'd say about that is keep in mind, if I've already built the relationship with the customer and then I give them the pricing, guess who they're going to want to haggle with, ask questions to, et cetera. Probably me. So sometimes I've seen when people sell in person, they become the bottleneck for the job. Instead of being able to hand it off to the office, the office be able to hand it off to the.

Crew manager or to the team leader.

Once the job is actually in progress. Because I've built so much of a rapport with the customer, they know I've done the pricing, they know I put together everything, they might kind of stuck on me as their only point of contact, which can be a hurdle down the road if you're trying to hand things off and scale the business. One of the easiest ways to be able to increase the sales and increase the number of customers you're getting is simply getting to the customer's property as fast as possible so that you can.

Give them a quote.

Now there's a few ways you can do this. Number one, try to avoid going to the property at all. You can do this using OTP or over the phone estimates. And here at command center, this is what we answer phones all day long 24, 7 in order to be able to do the estimates over the phone with the customer. And we don't even have to go to the property. In other words, the time to the property is essentially zero because we never have to go. And before the customer even gets off the phone, we can give them a price, get their credit card information and get them on the schedule. Now if you're not doing that and you actually have to set up in person estimates, try to set up estimator availability that is as wide as possible. Just by increasing the amount of time that an estimator is able to meet with potential customers will get them to the property faster. For example, if you're only available between 3pm and 5pm, that's fine. But what if they work till 6 o' clock every evening? It might be a week or two before they can get off work and actually meet with you. Now if you only are doing estimates, say 11am till 3pm, Monday and Thursday, that's fine. But what if someone contacts you on a Friday morning?

It means they're going to be waiting.

A few days before you even get to the property. So simply by increasing your estimator availability and the hours in which they're available to be able to go to the customer's property, that will increase your sales. Another thing that we try to think about is ideally we like to do estimates over the phone as fast as possible. The next best option for us is drive by estimates. The reason we like drive by estimates.

Is because then we can do it.

On our own schedule and we don't have to worry about the availability or the schedule of the customer. And so I can get five, six, seven of those pounded out really quickly. As an estimator in like the evening, I don't have to wait for the customer. I can go to the property really fast and make the quote, then the last one. So again, we want OTP is the best, then we go drive by estimates and then at the very worst, we meet in person with the customer and have an actual meeting at their property. I usually like to give an hour window, at least of time for my, my estimator to be able to have a, a slot of time that they can show up at some point within that one hour. I've seen some places do two hours or more, so give you more flexibility and allow you to have a bit of a gap. Some estimates will take you five minutes and then another customer will talk your ear off for two hours. So having some sort of a cushion there to say, hey, I'm not going to show up at 11 o'. Clock. I'm going to show up, show up at your house between 11am and 12 noon. Giving you that at least that one hour gives you a little bit of cushion for so many variables that can kind of throw a monkey wrench in your day. And especially if you're doing field work and estimates, you'll want that cushion to make sure you don't disappoint the customer and you're not running around ragged throughout town trying to figure out how to get to the next estimate on time. Or even having to call customers at all to tell them you're late. Just give them a window of time. Show up in person and you'll be inside of the timeframe you've promised already.

All right. The next thing that's super important is.

How fast are you able to send the estimate. You've met the customer, you left their property many times. The person that gets the client the estimate first in their inbox, whether it be text message or email, is going to win the job. So here's a couple things you can do to make this process faster, because.

The faster you are, the higher your close ratio.

Number one, have an estimate template. Don't have it where every single time you go to an estimate, you got to type up all the notes for that specific job I want to have. We're in Google Docs. Whether I have a notes app on my phone or my CRM, all the regular notes that I'm going to have for any specific type of service. This is going to allow me to be able to copy and paste and with a matter of a couple seconds or minutes, set a lengthy proposal to the customer very quickly. Another thing you want to do if.

You'Re not big, get a virtual assistant.

Or someone that can do these estimates really fast and are on call as many hours of the day if you're larger. This is why you have an office staff. You want these notes being put into a proposal to the customer as fast as possible. And ideally, I'm not making the estimator do that task because they're Usually the most skilled and the most costly in.

Terms of their wages.

Another thing you can do to get the estimate to the customer faster is have a Chromebook setup or a laptop setup or Microsoft Surface setup in your actual work truck, the one you're doing estimates with.

That's gonna allow you to be able.

To type these up, format them, attach your video without even leaving the driveway. Because the whole goal is to get that, estimate them as fast as possible.

Follow up phone calls.

Yes, the phone is considered an antiquated form of technology. You can text people, you can email.

Them, you can create automations to do that for you. But I have yet to see any form of follow up like phone calls where you actually call somebody and talk to them on the phone that will convert as many of your estimates into being accepted.

And so I highly recommend, especially 24.

Hours after you've talked to the customer, you've met with them, you've given them a price, you send them the quote, follow up with the phone. Now when you call them, actually know what you're gonna talk about. Have something that you're going to actually go through and instead of like I'm just calling to follow up, that's weak. And the problem is after they say yeah, I'll get back to you, you have no other ammunition.

So what I recommend you do is.

Print off on your desk, print off the 12 different things that you can call customers for and actually have a reason for calling them. Just calling to follow up is weak. Have an actual reason. For example, I have a spot in the schedule, we're offering a promotion, I wanted to offer you a discount, someone canceled last minute, I wanted to get you slotted in. Like have reasons as to why you would do a follow up phone call. Just calling them doesn't help. After the first call, the first call you can say hey, I'm following up. Do you have any questions? Did you want to go over it? Just making sure you actually got the estimate. But after that I need reasons to call them again and again. And until they give me an answer, until they say yes or no, I'm going to keep calling them on the phone because if they don't, they're just ghosting me. And it's amazing to me how many times I'll go to the home service.

Businesses and I'll look through their estimates.

Inside of copilot and I'll see how many estimates were sent and then how many were accepted. And that's your close ratio, let's call it 40 or 50%. But then I'll look at and see that 30 or 40% of people, the status of the estimate is just sent. It was never accepted, it was never denied, it was just ghosted. You did all the work to get the customer, you sped to their house, you got everything sent to them. You spent all that time, energy and money talking to them and whining and dining and then you never even hear back. You're literally getting ghosted and it's costing you thousands of dollars. How do you solve this problem? You follow up relentlessly on the phone until they give you a yes or no. And I don't even care if you say, Mr. Jones, if you don't want.

Any of my services, that's fine.

I just want an answer. I want to know why you wouldn't go forward with the proposal. Having the phone is your best weapon. And when you pick up the phone, have why you're calling them and also pull up their estimate on your CRM, actually be able to go through the notes with them. Why? As we'll talk about later, this will be used in price negotiation because when I'm calling them, I need to be able to see exactly what the scope of work is and be able to adjust it. And the reason most people don't do follow up phone calls is because they're afraid of that negotiation. So have the scope of work the estimate proposal pulled up and also know the date of service that you could put the job on the schedule. You'll be able to use that on your follow up phone call as a form of scarcity, to be able to tell them like, look, we're booked out four or five weeks, but I do have a spot that came available next Thursday and you're going to know for your budget hour capacity chart inside of copilot when the next available time slot you can put them in. Use that to create scarcity. Use that as a way to potentially even give them a discount on the phone. If you're planning to discount the estimate on that follow up phone call, great. Just know that going into the call so it doesn't seem like you're kind of waffling with price. That'll come back to bite you and we'll talk more about price negotiation in.

Just a few minutes.

At this stage where you've now sent.

The estimate to the customer, it's really.

Important to handle work. Change orders when the customer is requesting.

You to change the scope of work.

Now this could be because they have a budget problem and you're trying to.

Adjust the price Back to fitting within their budget.

It could also be just the fact they saw your estimate notes and they changed their mind or they wanted to add more stuff to the project. When it comes to work change orders.

Here'S a few tips I have.

Number one, make it really easy from your client portal to be able to ask the customer what they want to have changed. Inside of Copilot in the client portal.

They have three buttons.

Accept, decline or request changes. If they click the request changes, it opens up text field where they can now type in exactly what they want.

Changed on the estimate proposal.

In my opinion, someone that submitted a request change for an estimate is the number one priority. They're basically saying like, hey, I want to accept this, but I want a few modifications. That person should have much higher priority than a new lead or even a complaint because this customer is about to accept the job. I'm about to add one new customer, so why go running after a potentially cold new customer or potentially someone that's like making a scene and is super mad online when there's literally a customer to replace the bad customer or a customer that's actually going to accept and is very, very warm. So focus on these warm leads. If they're asking for a work change.

Order, do it as fast as possible.

Now, one way to reduce the amount of work change orders that you have.

To provide to customers is take a.

Big project and chunk it down on your estimates. So instead of providing a $40,000 install for a new project, break it down into five or six different line items and do it in a way where the customer can pick and choose which ones they want to accept. Maybe they only have a budget for 30,000, so they can accept 2 or 3 of the line items that are most important to them and then down.

The road, complete the rest of the proposal.

This will eliminate the need for them asking like, hey, I only want like 1, 2, 6, 8, 10, 13, 48 and 96 done. And now you're trying to break up an estimate proposal and doing the pricing is now much more difficult. Just break up the job in logical processes and steps of a larger project and then allow them to accept or deny each one. Keep in mind, if we're going to do this, you need to treat each line item as if it was only going to be accepted by itself. So if you're going to charge rental fees for an excavator and they're like, oh, well, I won't charge it again because I'll use it on all the other line items, keep in Mind, they might not accept that one line item that you put the excavator rental costs and baked it into the pricing. So keep each line item as if it's going to be its own job. And if the customer accepted only that.

Job, you'd be okay with it.

All right, let's talk about now, the.

Customer actually getting back to you after you send them the estimate and the proposal and trying to negotiate with you on price.

Now it's easy to say never change.

Your prices, never go discounts, never give any sort of money off whatsoever. And then, and I actually don't agree with that, I think I'm willing to negotiate if I'm trying to grow and I need the work because I need the work more than I need that top dollar profit margin. But if I'm booked out like six, eight weeks into the future, I have.

Tons of leads pouring in.

Yeah, don't discount your prices. But here's one way to look at price negotiation and then whether or not you should be actually discounting your services. I am willing to give a discount if someone else is willing to consider concede on timing. For example, it's the middle of spring rush, I'm super busy, I'm booked out.

Five, six weeks and I have leads pouring in.

I can't get to the work, I'm super overwhelmed.

Someone's like, oh, this isn't going to work for my budget.

Hey, I'm willing to give them a 10% discount if they're willing to do the project in the middle of winter. Hey, it's going to be like six or seven months.

But if you're willing to concede on.

Timing, I'm willing to give you a discount. Why? Because I need as much work in my off season as possible.

So if you can take time insensitive jobs and push them into your off season from when you're really busy to.

When you don't have a lot of work coming in, I'd recommend that being a time when I'm okay with discounting. Now if someone also says, hey, it's.

Not inside my budget, things are too.

Expensive or you know, you're too expensive.

Or whatever it might be, the other.

Thing that I can do is change the scope of the work.

So the thing that really ties this.

All in together though is like you.

Gotta know their budget. And so whether you're doing follow up.

Phone calls or customer says, hey, you know, I got to think about it.

This is a little too expensive or whatever, I need to know what their budget is.

It's above my budget. Okay, great.

What is your budget? If they give you a number, then.

I can work with them because I.

Can either delay the project off into my off season or I can change.

The scope of work to fit inside their budget. For example, if they say their budget is $5,000 and my estimate, my current proposal is $7,000, that's fine. I will work with them on what is included for their budget, the 5,000. So that's why again, we were going to have the estimates split up in as many chunks as possible.

And maybe I just cut back on.

How many trees I'm installing or how.

Many, how many yards of mulch or.

I don't include a certain area of the project in order to fit inside their budget. So I'm okay with conceding on price, but I'm only going to concede if they're willing to move it into my.

Off season or if they're going to actually cut out things from the job.

Itself and reduce the scope of the work being done. The only other time to discount is if you have massive amounts of excess capacity. So excess capacity is going to be coming in the form of capacity.

You have a whole bunch of trucks.

You have a whole bunch of employees.

You could do way more work than what you're currently doing.

That's the only other time I would reduce the price and give them a discount to get the job on the schedule.

So if anyone ever tells you that you'll never move on price, realize that if a customer is willing to work with you or if you're in the.

Position where you need to get jobs on the schedule, that's when I'm willing to discount. Assuming I know what their budget is, I can close the deal. Especially if I'm on the phone doing a follow up phone call and get the deal closed immediately.

In my opinion, in order to actually.

Get an estimate that is one, they need to get on the schedule. A lot of times we think, oh, they accept the estimate, I've got the job. Not really, because they could still go get other estimates. They could accept someone else's price proposal and I need to actually lock them in by getting more skin in the game if I get a date on the schedule, more skin in the game.

If I get a credit card on.

File, more skin in the game if I get a deposit on the job, more skin in the game.

The more skin in the game, the less likelihood you're gonna have leakage between when they click accept and when you.

Actually do the job.

And there is Leakage there of them.

Going to other providers and getting another quote. So for example, in order to be.

Able to actually know when you can.

Put them on the schedule, I need to know based upon my budgeted hours, what my capacity is for the week, for the month and for the day. In other words, how much work can I get done. So that way, when they accept the.

Estimate, I know exactly how far I'm booked out to and when I can.

Put them on the schedule because I want to get that date to them as fast as possible.

So for example, inside of Copilot, when you're scheduling a recurring job, we're going.

To be focusing on the fact that.

This is what we call our budget hour capacity chart. And you can see this little green little blips because we're adding one budget hour on every one of these weeks.

For a weekly service.

Now you can see it goes red.

When we go above our capacity.

In other words, we're going to either have to work overtime or hire someone else during that time because we are above the capacity for our current crew. It also tells me that in the next couple of weeks I need to schedule a few more jobs, otherwise the.

Guys aren't going to have enough hours. So knowing your actual capacity in terms.

Of budget hours for your crew, super important. Now if we're scheduling a one time job, for example, you can see here, it turns yellow. We're now within 80% of our budget hour capacity and it's notifying, hey, we're.

Good, we can finish these jobs.

This is our capacity based on how many employees we have. But we're making sure we don't cross it because like here, here in week three, I'm either gonna have to hire.

Someone part time for the weekend, knock.

This stuff out, or we're all going to be working a lot of overtime.

In order to get these jobs completed.

The reason knowing your budget hours and.

Your capacity for your crew is important.

Is simply so I know when a job is accepted. I know exactly where I can fit it on the schedule without overburdening my crew. This allows you to go into the.

Future in terms of booking out your.

Schedule by 4, 6, 8, 12 weeks and accurately knowing that you can actually.

Get the work done.

This allows you, when a customer clicks accept, you immediately can give them a.

Date of service and lock them in. Now we talked about being able to.

Get them on the schedule as fast.

As possible and using budget hours to know that.

Another way to get more skin in the game so no one drops off or goes to another provider after they click accept and we actually win the job is get a credit card on file inside of copilot. We have the ability that before someone even clicks accept on the estimate, you can actually have a credit card required to where they have to put this information in before accepting a proposal.

That way, when you get a notification.

That says the estimate has been accepted, you already know they have a credit card on file.

And if you do services, you can charge them.

By the way, this also leads to a whole lot less overdue invoices because you know a credit card is on.

File before the job is even accepted.

But even better when it comes to sales is I have more skin in.

The game, Less likelihood of them leaking.

And going to someone else even though they've accepted the estimate.

The next thing I can do to.

Improve even further the amount of skin they have in the game and ensure that when they accept the estimate, they actually convert into a customer is having what we call deposit thresholds at copilot. I can edit this for every single customer or have it for my entire company. It is essentially when the estimate goes over a certain threshold of total value, I'm going to have to require the customer to pay certain percentage, Or I can also change it to dollar amount. So in this case, any estimate over $1,200 in value, I'm going to require a 50% down payment or deposit before the job can even get accepted.

Now I have more skin in the game.

I got a credit card on file.

I got a deposit.

So 50% down, and hopefully within 24 hours, I can get them a date.

On the schedule Because I know my budget hour capacity.

Doing these three things will ensure that when you get an estimate accepted, you actually convert them to a customer and they don't find someone else for cheaper.

They don't go to someone down the.

Street that knocked on their door, and.

They don't go with another estimate that.

Suddenly came in a couple hours after yours.

And now they're going and switching providers. An underrated way of getting more customers is using what we call instant quote door hangers. Essentially, I'm able to assess the property and able to give an actual price for the service.

Now we have door hangers that simply.

Just talk about our services and we're more generic. But I like to be able to give instant pricing when it comes to doing door hangers. That way, when the customer gets the.

Door hanger, they are immediately making a buying decision Instead of where I have.

To hit them five or six or seven times. For them to actually even recognize my brand, I'm actually putting a buying decision in front of them. So for example, this one's for mulch. It's going to talk about how much mulch, the quantity, any notes, and I'm actually going to put a dollar amount with this instant quote.

Now, the thing I like about instant.

Quote door hangers is the fact it's all just a math game. It is simply a matter of how many door hangers can I put out per hour and how many leads do I get per hour. That's it.

Thing is, you're not even getting leads.

You're getting paying customers. Because how we set it up is they actually take a photo of this, they send it to us via email and they're accepting their estimate.

So if I'm doing a mult install.

Instant quote door hanger and I put 799 put on the door, they send a picture back to me. This is an accepted proposal. And so all I need to know is first off, how many door hangers can I put out per hour? Now, I'm not going to knock on every single door, but if you did, you'd probably increase your close ratio.

You'd also do less door hangers per hour.

Let's assume I do 100 of these per hour. That would assume I'm in a pretty dense neighborhood. If you have to walk one or two minutes between every single house because you're in a more rural area, you're.

Not going to be able to get.

100 out per hour. So I need to know how many.

Of them can I put out per hour.

And then if I put out 100 or a thousand, what percentage of them are going to actually respond back with the accepted estimate. Once I know that math, I can.

Determine my customer acquisition cost and then be they'll pump money into that system.

Over and over again. Also, I really like door hangers because.

I can actually target individual neighborhoods and.

I can use these door hangers. If I have a customer that I'm actually servicing their property, I'm going to do the five houses, the three across the street and both neighbors, I'm going to hit them up with the door hanger.

Now, as you're doing door hangers, there's.

Really two ways to be like put these out and that is one, I.

Can actually put the real price as I'm walking over the property as assessing.

What needs to be done in terms of scope of work.

This is going to take a lot.

More skill of the person that's putting out door hangers because they actually need to know about pricing. That's one way to do it.

I really like being able to do.

A whole bunch of door hangers before I even leave to distribute them and just do small and large properties that way. All I'm distinguishing when I walk up to this property is this is my left hand, my small ones, and in my right hand these are my large ones. And is this a small or is.

This a large property? Is it going to be as accurate?

No, but it's going to lead to.

Way more of these being distributed per hour.

And the person that's distributing them doesn't have to actually be an estimator. They just have to literally distinguish is this a small property or is this a large property?

And a lot of times if you're.

Doing neighborhoods, a lot of the properties look exactly the same, have the same square footage and are about the same size. So you can kind of round in terms of pricing.

All right, so we talked about doing.

Instant price in person when you're at the client's house, but now let's talk about doing instant pricing on your website.

A lot of people will shy away.

From sharing any sort of pricing on their main website because what they think.

Is that customers are then going to.

Be turned away and without trying their services, they're going to be turned off by the high prices. Here's the thing, the people that do.

That, you don't want them as customers anyways and you prevented yourself from going out and doing an estimate, meeting the customer, only to be met with the.

Fact that they think it's too expensive.

And so if you have a great looking website, they're going to assume much more value and they're going to reason the fact that you are going to be a little higher in price, but that's what they're paying for. They're paying for a premium service and they expect premium prices. And if you don't want to attract those type of customers, don't have a website in the first place, don't have logo decal trucks, don't have uniforms. But if you're trying to have a premium price with premium customers, sharing your prices won't scare away premium customers and so it reduces the tire kickers. And the people that are always price shopping, the people that are going to complain a bunch about your prices, they're not going to take upsells, just share the prices on your website and get them away from you as fast as.

Possible so you don't waste time on them.

The Thing I love about instant pricing, especially if you actually allow them to accept an estimate from your website, is it reduces the amount of steps required in the sales process.

I don't have to go visit them at their property, I don't have to create the estimate and then send them.

The pricing and then wait for them to click accept. It is all done immediately and instantly from the website. If you're afraid of sharing your pricing on your website, keep in mind that with the transparency of information now online, people already kind of know the general.

Pricing that they're supposed to be paying for your services.

They've already googled, like how much should it cost to replace X, Y and.

Z or do maintenance on my property?

They've already googled it. So just give them the pricing to be able to share that you're at.

Top of the market or you're in the middle of the market.

And if you just want to share a article kind of sharing your pricing philosophy, great. But most ideally give them the ability to see your prices and then check out or accept an estimate directly from your website.

It saves your admin time and it.

Saves you from going out and spending time on customers that are never gonna.

Accept from you anyways.

There are three really important numbers you.

Wanna know when it comes to sales in your organization. That is cost per click, cost per lead, customer acquisition cost. I like to think of it as a funnel. At the top of the funnel, all.

Of the clicks that come to our website from all of our marketing come.

In the top of the funnel.

And usually it's pretty easy to be.

Able to determine the cost per click. So on Google, if you're running Facebook.

Ads, all sorts of online platforms, I can determine the cost per click to get someone to my website. There is a cost per click associated with that. And usually it's pretty easy to determine how many clicks you get from a paid ad.

And Facebook and Google will tell you.

Exactly how much you're spending to get.

A click to your website.

But clicks don't pay the bills. They are not customers. I want to know how much do.

I have to spend to get a paying customer?

Well, once I get clicks to my website, I'm then going to have some percentage of those people fill out an.

Estimate request form or call me or send me an email and those people will become leads.

Now what that is called is our conversion rate. And that conversion rate is mostly determined by is your website structured and designed in a way that gets a many people that have clicked to actually submit an estimate request form? And if you want to see good examples of websites in home services, go.

To homeservicewebdesign.com or lawn carewebdesign.com and you.

Can see sites that are optimized for the best conversion rate. I want to make sure that people.

See my brand, that it's easy to.

Call me, it's easy to submit an SM request form. It looks great on mobile devices, it loads really fast. These are the type of things that will increase your conversion rate. Now, I don't even care about my conversion rate because that's just going to.

Get me a lead.

I'm going to get cost. My cost per lead is now, how much do I have to spend on marketing to get enough clicks to get leads?

In other words, people submitting estimate request.

Forms, but those don't pay the bills. So some percentage of those people, I.

Need to actually close them.

So a lead is, hey, I want an estimate. I'm not going to be able to.

Close every single one.

That's my close ratio. And that is the number of accepted estimates divided by the total number of.

Estimates that were sent to customers.

And this is the close ratio, really the thing that you can fix, the.

Thing that you can affect the most in your sales ability.

So everything we've talked about, this video, most of it will have to improve the close ratio.

You showing up on time, you being.

Quick to the estimate. All the things that we've talked about are mostly going into improving this close ratio. Here's the deal. If we go ahead and spend $1.

Per click, so I have to pay.

Google or Facebook or someone $1 to get one click to my website.

Great.

Let's assume that one out of 20 is my conversion rate, which means out of 20 people that click on my site, one person submits an estimate request form. That could then assume that my cost per lead is $20. But then if I have my close.

Ratio, what percentage of those estimates actually became paying customers?

Let's say my close ratio is 50%. 50% on a $20 cost per lead would assume then that my customer acquisition cost is $40. And knowing that number is very, very important because it tells me how much I need to spend to get one paying customer. And if I know how much I have to spend to get one paying customer, and then I know how much that customer is going to spend with me over the course of the year, two years, or their entire lifetime, in.

Other words, their lifetime value or ltv.

I'm able to make educated decisions in my business as to When I should invest into marketing. All right, so we talked about the.

Funnel starting with clicks and moving all the way down into an actual paid customer. But now I want to talk about keeping customers warm. Because once we get them through this funnel and acquire the customer, now we've actually going to think of it like having a bucket here with all your existing customers inside of it. So assuming someone gets through the filter, they go through a conversion ratio, then they get close, they come at the bottom here and they fall into the bucket of your business.

Now the problem is there's going to be some sort of churn. There's going to be some number of customers that fall through the bottom of.

This bucket through these leaky holes.

If you can plug these leaky holes.

And actually get customers to stay by having great customer service and all the things we've talked about in running a great business, less people will fall out the bottom.

However, there is going to be people.

That churn or leave your business. They're unhappy, you don't do a good job, et cetera. The goal of keeping customers warm is to be able to to get them to come right back to the top of this funnel re engage them.

Even if there's customers that did a one time project and they're only in your bucket inside your business for a.

Week or two, they're going to fall at the bottom.

But they're still inside of your contact.

Database, inside of your CRM and inside.

A software like Copilot CRM, you can.

Mass email or mass text message them and immediately try to reactivate them.

And what's crazy is the customer acquisition cost here is exactly zero because I don't have to pay for the click. So if I don't have to pay for the click to come in the back and the top of this funnel, it cost me exactly $0 to acquire the customer, assuming they accept the estimate.

So the question is, how do you keep customers warm? First off, don't let customers go 612 months before they ever hear from you again. Even if they've done a one time.

Project or if they've left your business.

And they've churned out, I want to try to reactivate them.

How am I going to do that? I'm going to try to sell them.

Other services that my company offers based upon the time of year. For example, in the middle of spring, I'm going to be pitching mowing and lawn care, spring cleanups during the fall, leaf cleanups and preparing for the winter, etc.

So these messages that I am sending.

To the customer via text or email. I'm trying to reactivate the customer.

Inside Copilot we have what we call email links, which allows you to set.

It up where you can pitch a.

Service and say click here to get.

An estimate and they click there.

It takes them to a thank you page on your website, any URL and then you can have that email or text message going to you saying, hey, this customer is looking for this specific service. Get them a quote. This allows you to reactivate the customer.

Over and over and over again.

And this is going to massively improve the lifetime value of a customer, especially your one time projects because they usually only stay in the bucket of your.

Business for a couple weeks or while you're doing the project.

You've got to reactivate them and get.

Them back to the top.

This is what allows a more established.

Brand and more established business to be.

Super profitable because they just simply get all their new jobs from reactivation of contacts inside their database. They don't have to keep paying the Google and Facebook gods for more and more clicks. They don't have to keep doing door hangers and all these other things because.

They just keep reactivating clients they've served in the past. So inside of Copilot, have a mass.

Email strategy and have a mass tech strategy. We are constantly keeping those leads warm.

So they constantly are hearing from you.

And I've had it before where I've sent someone an email every single month for a year or two and all of a sudden they click on a button and they ask for a $20,000 project.

Boom. I paid nothing for it besides simply staying in touch with them and keeping those leads warm.

They've already put their hand up, said I need service. They've already paid an invoice and they've already done business with you. They already know like and trust you.

You reactivate them back to being a paying customer. For the sake of an example, I'm actually going to show you a video.

From a couple weeks ago from one of my general managers that sent out a text blast inside of Copilot CRM and got over 50 estimates within a.

Matter of one day.

All right.

Hello everybody, this is Corey at Augusta Bellingham. I wanted to let you know in in on something that happened today that I think might be valuable to everybody. Hey, let's do a mass one click text to all of our clients. They kind of just build some lead flow that way. And I sent it out to everybody and within the first 24 hours we got over 50 estimate requests. With the help of command center, I was able to basically, I could have sent out 31 estimates today. And, you know, with a couple of different things that had come in for me, I had a field crew lead that came in. I sent out a total of 29 for today. But I just want to let you go. Guys know that, like, I'm, like, just now done with that. I'm super pumped, and this marketing message has been so successful that it's basically, like, doubling down. I will. I will tell you one thing is that everybody I didn't get to today, I sent a person. I. I sent a personal text. I just mass texted, hey, it's Cory again.

I just want to let you let.

You know, like, I wasn't able to get your estimate done today, but I'm going to be at your property first thing Monday morning. And what I said is, like, I'm gonna have something productive submitted and ready for you by the end of Monday afternoon. Have a great weekend. And within, like, three minutes, I got 10 responses. Out of, like, 18 texts, I got 10 responses. That was like, oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for letting me know. Have a great weekend, Cory. It's like, okay, so there might be something in that. So anyway, I wanted to share that with you guys. Hope you all have a great weekend. I'm cooked. I'm so tired.

Peace.