How to Beat Your Competition and Dominate the Market

We try to distinguish between the customer that wants really quick service, wants to get on the calendar right away, versus the VIP luxury client who we still want to book very quickly. But we want to give them a face to face experience to make sure that they see our brand and know that we are the most reputable in the area.

Welcome to Jobbers Masters of Home Service, a podcast for home service pros by Home service Pros. We are in sunny Las Vegas today. We're talking about dominating your market and beating your competition. I'm Adam Sylvester. We have two great guests today. Phil Risher, owner of Flash Consulting and Christine Hodge, CEO of Clearview Washing and a jobber brand ambassador. Welcome to the show, guys.

Thank you.

Christine, tell us about you and what you do.

Absolutely. I am the CEO at Clearview Washington. I joined the company about six years ago to join my husband and I manage a lot of our operations, fix things that are broken and kind of work on all processes.

Awesome. And it's family business?

It is a family owned and operated business.

Awesome.

Yep.

Phil.

Yeah. Phil Richer, Flash Consulting. We work with local service businesses. We help them increase their sales, keep their schedules full. I used to be director of business development at a multimillion dollar service company and help them scale their business and that's what we do, help other companies.

Cool.

I'm glad you guys are both here. Let's get into it. So a lot of our listeners need to make sure their business stands out in a sea of service providers. We need to be different. And so let's just start with the basics. How would you coach, if you will, a listener on how to go about like determining what their unique selling proposition is like, what makes them special? How would you go about that?

Yeah, I would say for us, typically where we would start is on Google search engine results page. The main reason is because Google's the number one referral partner and, and so Google's the one that's going to be referring you business. And so a big part of it is building the relationship with Google that it's going to refer your company. So some ways that you can do this, you can get Google reviews, which is a very important part of the equation. You can also stand out. So when people go to your website, you want to have branded pictures and not stock images. It makes you seem like a legit company that actually cares about how they're working with their customers. I would say to starters, those are probably like the first two things that you can definitely do to help you stand out.

Absolutely. And to jump on top of that, we really train our team to identify. We like say you have an elevator sales pitch for your team to tell a customer, why do we stand out? What makes us better? Why are we more expensive? Everyone says, well we're fully insured. Everyone's fully insured. You know, so what else does differentiate us? Those are the things that we've written down as a team. One of them is you're always going to get clear communication from us. We're going to make sure that almost, and we're working on this being 100% almost every phone call is answered. And we're our goal actually this year is for every phone call to be answered. You're going to get every appointment reminder, you're going to get quote reminders, you're going to get very clear quotes. You're going to be educated. These are things that home service companies sometimes overlook because they think that the consumer is just looking for insurance and licenses. That's not the case. Another thing, and it kind of goes towards marketing what you were speaking about is we fully revamped our website where we used to have pictures of homes or before and afters as like the main image on our website. And we learned from somebody just about a year ago that it should be replaced with a smiling face. So we did a photo shoot of our employees smiling at the camera we with the beautiful home behind them because faces are engaging. So to get really specific, something that sets us apart is our Google reviews because we've integrated with company cam, have images of our employees smiling along with each Google review that comes in. And of course that's broadcasted among several platforms and we believe that's what sets us apart.

Yeah, I wanted, I wanted to pinpoint something that you said about everyone's license and ensure that whole thing where have a lawn care company that we work with actually and they similar thing, they've been in the business, you know, 20 years, barely any Google reviews all this stuff. And what we did was we said okay, there's a bunch of these big franchises out there that are competition that saturate the market. And he's a local company that does lawn care services in very specific area. So what we did on his website, it says for neighbors by neighbors. And then it tells a story of how his kids grew up on these fields and went to these schools and, and we listen, we record calls for customers. One of the calls that we listed literally like two weeks ago, the customer says hey, so I saw that you guys service this area and you're Actually, my neighbor over here. And you guys definitely stand out as the number one company in this area. And we're like, yeah, that's great. That's exactly what you want. So a good takeaway is, like, if you are a neighbor and you're doing this for your neighbors, make people know that, like, you're not some, you know, business executive on a beach somewhere, you're golfing, something like that. Like, no, you're in the neighborhood 100%.

Yep.

Yeah. I think it comes down to how well you solve the client's problem. The client has a problem, and to the degree that you solve that is how much you stand out. So if you just, you know, basic or over the top, what are some other things that we can do to stand out before we move on? Of just, like, above the competition, you know, because everyone's like, price, price, price. But obviously, you. We both know that it's not about price. Yeah.

A big one that we've seen is the actual customer experience. So what I would typically recommend to a business owner is, okay from start to finish. How does a customer reach out to your business to turn into a lead, and what does that process look like? Is it easy? On your website, does your customer service representative answer the phone and with a smile and say, hi, I'm so happy that you called us. We're the local company for you. Then from there is, what does the actual process look like? Like, are you engaging with this customer? Are you standing out with your customer experience? Because we all know we go to a website, fill out a form, and no one reaches back out to us. And it's like, oh, I guess this is just another one of those guys who's out on the truck, who's too busy for me. But if you actually build a great customer experience, we have one company that we work with, their electrical contractor. Anytime a lead comes in, they send them koozies that says, like, you know, we look forward to chilling with you. And it's like a koozie with their logo on it, because it's just like, that's an automated thing, but it stands out. So that's a really good way that I've seen.

I love that. And to go along with customer experience, we always say we. You want to touch the customer multiple times through your marketing. Right. So that's like creating brand awareness and trying to get them. But once they actually contact you, you don't want to touch them too often. You want to make it as smooth of an experience for them. So we're trying to get our team, it's a huge initiative for us to. When the customer contacts you, I want the person answering the phone to be able to take care of everything the customer needs to make it very smooth and seamless. The time from when the customer contacts you to the time where you do the job. We're trying to make that window smaller. So I don't want it to be customer calls us and then they get an estimate from a sales rep, and then they call our admin with a question for the estimate, and then we have to say, okay, our sales rep will call you back. I want whoever to take that call to be able to answer the question because we want to close them and get them on the calendar and do the job. So to go along with customer experience, we want it to be seamless, but seamless communication. You have to really narrow that window of from the time that they first contact you to the time that you actually do the job.

And I would, I would echo the phone side of things, because as a marketing company, we help companies get more leads and then get. We hear the phone calls and we're like, oh, my gosh, this needs some work here. So coming up with a list of, like, frequently asked questions to have for your CSRs, especially if you're transitioning to someone else answering the phone and you're not the business owner answering the phone, having a list of frequently asked questions, or who. Who should this person talk to? Obviously, you don't want to send them to this person, but they're like, I don't know, I'll have someone call you back. It's just, yeah, like, like, why don't you plan that out and say, okay, I'm gonna have this person call you by. Let's say they have some time on their schedule at 2:00'. Clock. Does that work for you? You kind of going the extra mile? Because at the end of the day, Adam, you hit the nail on the head. They just want to know that their problem is going to get solved, and they need to know that you're going to actually follow through on what you tell them that they're going to do.

Yeah. So we have. In home service, we have a luxury, and we shouldn't take advantage of this too much. We have a luxury that usually the first person to book is the company to go with whether they're good or not. So our clients don't spend all this time determining which is the best company, what's the second best company, what's the third. They don't have Time for that. Nor do they have the resources of that. Usually they judge how good a company is by how quickly they can get on the schedule. And so I think booking over the phone for especially high volume pressure washing, gutter cleaning, lawn mowing, these high volume services is key. Hey, I have a problem. I want my grass cut tomorrow. Great, we'll be there tomorrow. It's 80 bucks. Get them booked, have a nice day. And they hang up. They're like, well, that was awesome. I solved my problem in one phone call. What they don't want is, okay, well, we'll have somebody call you back next week and send you a quote. They're gonna call the next guy. And so I think if you wanna beat your competition and dominate your market, you need to do what in most markets the competition's not doing. They're not doing that, they're not booking over the phone. That first call, it's not easy, takes training, it takes a lot of practice and all that kind of stuff. But it is a better customer experience and that's what people want.

Can I add to that? So, yes, we feel the exact same way. The only thing is, do you guys know about the love languages? Like in a relationship, there's a love language. We always say we want our team to feel out the client's love language, essentially. So if I have a client that calls us in a an 8 to 10,000 square foot home or bigger, they are not necessarily the ones that we do want to do things by phone. We want to send our best sales rep over in our nice uniform and in his branded vehicle to shake the person's hand and give them a folder. So we try to distinguish between the customer that wants really quick service, wants to get on the calendar right away, versus the VIP luxury client who we still want to book very quickly, but we want to give them a face to face experience to make sure that they see our brand and know that we are the most reputable in the area. Does that make sense?

You may not book the work, but you'll book an appointment.

Yes, exactly, exactly.

I completely agree with you. And one way, there's ways to automate this process, but one really great way to do this is you create an employee card that has their picture and then a quick bio of them. And then the day before when you're doing your confirmation calls and you know the routes that people are going to be on, your CSR would send them an email like, hey, this is your technician that's coming out to you. Here's a picture of them, you know, they have three kids, they like, you know, this sports team, whatever. They look forward to meeting you. That goes way above and beyond what most companies are doing and it helps you really stand out in the market.

Yeah, I would say another one switching gears a little bit is having like a nice vehicle is a great way to stand out. You know, I think in the beginning, humble beginnings, it's okay to have an old truck or old van, but as soon as you can, I think it's, I think it makes a difference. I think if you want to stand out, beat the competition. If you have a nice, I'll say new vehicle within the last three years, you're going to have a newer vehicle than 95% of your competitors in most cases. Now, some of our listeners are in really hot markets and they have to do that just to keep up. But most people, if they have even a wrapped vehicle, then they're beating almost everyone.

That's right. The big companies, you know, the pe back, private equity backed companies, they're all using this company called Kick Charge Creative. And that company builds vehicle wraps that are amazing and really help you stand out in the marketplace. And I completely agree with you. The old white trucks and it looks creepy when people show up. They don't know, you know, is this the right company? They're asking all these questions, having branded logo, all that stuff, it ties in and they're rolling billboards. So like, come on.

Yeah, yeah. You don't have to have nice vehicles, in my opinion, if you're doing commercial work for the most part. But if you're going after, if you're trying to dominate the residential market in your city, you need to have nice vehicles with nice wraps as soon as you can afford it and you have nice uniforms. What are you asking about uniforms?

Yep. We think uniforms are very, very important. Everyone that we bring on board is an employee that we are comfortable sending into the home. We're an exterior cleaning company, but we do interior chandeliers and windows. We hire everyone on our team we trust going into somebody's home. Everyone is very professional, presentable, great communication. That's another thing that we feel sets us apart. That's not something that all exterior cleaning companies can handle or can say that they have. Another thing are yard signs and just things that kind of complete our branding. So our trucks look a certain way, but our employees and their uniforms match the truck. Our yard signs match the truck, our emails match our vehicle. Like we have completely branded ourselves to promote ourselves.

Yeah.

I would say when it Comes to uniforms, I've seen really two things. First, a lot of times, even my company, a consulting company, we have a logo. We all wear this same thing. We hop on calls and stuff. It helps stand up, standardize the processes. But what we've seen with uniforms is a lot of times companies will have a logo or shirt that they get their employees, but then they'll wear a different type of hat. And everyone have a different hat.

Yes.

And it's like, okay, but you're wearing this, but you have a different hat. So if you're going to go out on job, you all got to wear the same hat. All got to wear the same thing. And another really cool one that one of our clients did, they actually got branded booties. So the booties on them, they have.

Their logo on the little shoe cover.

Yeah, yeah. And so then when they show up and they put on branded booties, it's like, wow, this company is legit.

I love that.

Yeah. So those are some really cool ones that we've seen from a uniform perspective.

We use buckets. Our gutter company uses buckets. I've thought about getting branded buckets. Yeah, we're like 10,000 at a time. So we're not quite there yet. But I would love to. That's a great idea.

And even also, like, branded tape. If you're sending stuff or leaving stuff, get some cool branded tape. That's just like a cool branded touch. That's like, wow, this company really thinks about this.

Yeah.

This is a great conversation. I'm going to hit pause real quick so we can talk about Jobber. I'm curious. Kristen, we'll go with you. First, tell me about a feature that you first underestimated with Jobber, but now you just could not live without it.

Is the marketing tools, the new marketing tools specific to emailing the client list? And we have our a marketing plan, and we use Constant contact, and we kind of have that all set up and we have our email blasts all mapped up through the year. And so I didn't think that we would be able to utilize the tool. And then we saw how easy it was to target specific clients from our job or data, and we were like, wow, that's something that constant contact cannot do automatically. That would be a lot of manual work. And implemented it, and it's been a huge success.

Yeah. For me, it's got to be reports a lot of times. Reports. It's hard to pull reports. What am I looking at? And this kind of stuff. Dabber has recently released some really Great reports, whether it's like looking at new customer data, estimates, quotes, all that kind of stuff. And it helps make a lot of decisions from a marketing perspective that much easier. So I would say definitely reports. If you're not using them, you're missing out.

I think for me, it's Client Hub. I used to think Client Hub was a little overrated, but now I realize that clients can do a whole lot of stuff. They can update their payment information in Client Hub. They can see upcoming visits, they can see the photo of our technician in Client Hub. And so I'm a believer now of Client Hub. If you want to try Jobber, get an exclusive discount for new users. Go to jobber.com podcastdeal and go see what Jobber has to offer. You won't be disappointed. We're talking about beating the competition, dominating your market. I think there's a whole nother touch here, which is community involvement, donating, perhaps potentially sponsoring events. Do you guys have any experience doing that kind of stuff?

We do, actually. And we. So for example, we would sponsor a hole at a charity golf outing. We've sponsored, you know, a table, a casino table at a casino night that was to raise money for a local children's hospital. We get involved with things like that. So there's a very fine line because when you hit a certain point in business based on your gross numbers, you feel like, I'm gonna do this so that people see me. Like, it feels good to see your logo at a golf outing. But I will say that the return on investment is not always there. So only do it when you're at a place where you can do that because that's more branding. That's not really advertising, if that makes sense. So that's bringing awareness to your company. People are going to recognize your logo. Oh, that's the guy that was, you know, at the golf outing. We saw his. But so it's not necessarily going to bring you immediate business, but it's going to be a brand awareness, which of course looks good. Another thing is when you are doing charity, you know, things like that and sponsorships, you should advertise it. You should advertise it on your job postings when you're hiring so that your potential, you know, employees can see what the company is doing and what they support and also advertise it to your customers. So in all of your emails, you should really still, even when you close the deal and you get a follow up, like, these are a few things Clearview has done over the last few years. And mention what you're doing, put it on your website because it does look good. But only do it when you're in a position to spend that money on brand awareness and not so much lead generation.

Yeah, I completely agree. The branding side of things and the transaction side of things. Hopefully you have a marketing budget of some sort. Usually it's 3 to 3 to 10% of your revenue. And then from there you can say, okay, I'm going to devote this much to my branding side, this much, my transaction side, that type of stuff. I completely agree with that. What we've seen from actually like doing events and that, that kind of stuff. There is some search engine optimization, SEO advantage when you get these backlinks. So what that means is like let's say you sponsor this fundraiser, they link, they put your website link on their website because you sponsored it. Well, then that is a trigger to Google that says, oh, wow, this company must be legit if this company is linking to theirs. And it's a local backlink is what it's called. So it helps from that standpoint. One big thing I would say if you, if you're a local service business and you, you want to crush it, there are local groups. One that we're involved in and we highly recommend is called BNI Business Networking International. The reason that these are so important is because in these networking groups, it's only one of each vertical. Only one lawn care, only one electrical contract, only one plumbing. And the beauty of that is that you can saturate that network, that they all pass referrals to each other. And so we have companies that they'll put their finance person in this group, someone else in this group. So they're basically saturating the entire group with all these networking marketing people.

That's a smart idea.

I like that. And it's a really good way because a lot of the big companies, they don't have the bandwidth to put people in these pots. So it's a lot of the smaller companies, but there's a lot of business paths in these things.

One, Christine, I told you about the golf. We actually sponsor one in our city and we do the hole in one sponsors. Like we pay for the insurance for the hole in one, which I find to be a little more unique than just another hole. We did the, we did a hole the first time and I was like, well, that was completely useless. You know, I want to have. But you're right, there is almost no return. Like we don't get a bunch of clients from it. It's just brand awareness. And if you can be present and be there for a couple hours, that's even better. But don't expect to get a huge roi, just community building.

There's an awesome way to leverage this though, from a sales and marketing perspective. So you could ask that place that you're doing the fundraiser at for an email list of attendees and then you could reach out to them and just say like, hey, we sponsored this thing. Thank you so much for joining this event. A little bit more about us, X, Y and Z and add them into your email list of some sort. That works really good. And then also if you do a raffle or drawing at the hole, you can get these people to come in and maybe you say, hey, you didn't win the top prize. However, we also have this free cleaning over here that you could get or something like that, a secondary price.

Phil, that's all we have here on the show. I love that.

That's.

That's a good one. That's a really good idea. Christine, I want you to talk about, because here's thing, we're talking about customers, but let's be real. Our business is not just customers. Half of its customers, half of it is our internal customers, our staff. I know you do a pretty big party once a year, right, with your team and like some big bash. Tell me about that.

Yes. So we do three big events, but they're all very different. And by big, I just mean it's like we get all of our employees together in one place, which never happens in the home service industry. So in the beginning of the year, we do a team kickoff and that takes place for us. We're seasonal, so it takes place every March and we have all of our returning employees, everybody, office, sales field, everybody is there. And then prospect employees, like people that we've interviewed, we love, we want them to join the season, we bring them along as well. And we do an entire kickoff that consists of training, like, with our like training manual processes we're implementing for the year, refreshers, how to take payment, things like that. But along with that, I do a team building event. So I will ask a question like, you know, what is something that no one in the company would know about you or no one in the world would know about you? My job, and I've said this before, is I want to create careers. I'm not creating a job. And my job as a CEO is to build up everyone's confidence in the home service industry and especially in the field where there is no License or degree requirement. You could potentially create a path for this person in their life that they would have never thought possible. And so how do we do that? From day one, I want to build up their confidence. They have to get up, stand, stand up in front of all of us and talk about themselves. I want them to feel empowered. So in the middle of the year we do Clear View day and that's to celebrate us and our work anniversary. This year we hit 20 years which is very exciting. And we do a big party. We'll do it at, you know, our home or we'll rent a space or whatever. But we do it based on budget. Back in the day it was a barbecue at my husband's parents house. So that's very important. And I again I incorporate a team, like a team building type event, a co question. And at the end of the year we do a Christmas party, a holiday party. And to kind of branch off of that with what we were talking about is along with marketing to our internal team to keep them, you know, involved. And then also we'll getting involved in charities and stuff like that. We have started to initiate not char it is for charity, but we're initiating the event. So instead of donating to a golf outing, for example, we learned, for example, tunnel to towers in New York City. To climb the Freedom Tower, you can donate X amount of dollars and then you can climb the tower. We got a bunch of property managers involved and said, do you guys want to create a team with us? And that's a very happy thing. So you can also take initiative. They're going to pay for themselves. So it's not a huge financial burden on your small business. But that's a way to get in front of the people that you strategically want to get in front of, like property managers. For us, do something fun, educational and for charity and publicize it.

I completely agree. And the internal side of things with employees, when we talk about saturated market, it can be very hard to find good quality technicians as well. And one of the things that we found with companies that we work with, and even when I was director of business development, we would hold a day like, like a picnic. And a lot of the people like to play soccer and stuff. So we would invite the entire family, brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, everyone out to this event. And what we found was that all these people would say, this is such a great company. I can't believe your company does this stuff. And we started to get referrals for jobs for people to come and work here because like, this is such a great company. I want to come work here. And so talking about building community around your company through an event and not because saturation can be so hard to find great people, this is a good way to actually get company employees. Yeah.

Yeah, I love that part. Thanks for sharing that for sure.

Yeah.

So let's talk about competition. I think we all agree that just badmouthing our competition is not. It's never useful, it's never productive or fruitful. How do you handle. Do you guys keep a pulse on your competitors or do you take the approach? I don't care what they're doing. I'm just focused on me. I think there's validity to both. What do you guys think? What do you do, Christine?

We keep a pulse. It's not like we're digging or doing any research, but we know who our competitors are based on the size of the company, the number of trucks, and the bids we've lost. You know, commercially, residentially, we. So that's from the commercial side. Residentially, we don't feel like we compete with anybody because we do know our value. Like, we. We've talked about this in the past, creating your client avatar. Like, we are friends with a lot of power washers in our area, and I know that some of their clients that they service are not our. Our target client. So we will happily refer somebody to another local power washer. So we don't see a lot of competition because we know the clients that we want to capture, the luxury clients, we know that we are one of the higher priced. That doesn't bother us really. Commercially though, we do know who our competition is and we know where we're losing bids. And we kind of, you know, kind of see, like, maybe that wasn't the right client for us because they just went with the lowest bid. We're not always going to be the lowest bid. We have to make sure that we're maintaining our net and our value. So that's an interesting question, but that's kind of how we see things.

I would say there's two things on this from a marketing perspective that we've seen. The first one is when a company goes out of business, one of your competitors. We've had really good success on creating a blog post or something on someone's website where someone goes out of business and all of their customers are looking for this company. So we created a blog post that said, such and such company out of business. What should I do? And then that blog post all about, hey, work with us.

Wow, that's so smart.

That one works really great and we've seen really great results on that. The second one is in creating these content on your website. That's pricing guides. And the reason this is so important is because let's say there's a big company in your market that overcharges everyone. We all know those people well, you could create a pricing guide on what exactly do I need to look for when I'm getting this service done and what do I need? What are red flags? You don't call them out specifically and say like this company is terrible. But you say, hey, a lot of the big companies, they charge this filler fee, this filler fee, this filter fee. Here's more transparent pricing over here and what you should be looking for. And it allows you to kind of segment that out. And we talked about nurturing the lead and being that. Go to company that's educating and being that company. Then in your sales process, you, you layer in that type of content in there about pricing guides and this vers that type of content and it helps so much to help you stand out.

I do like to know what our competitors are doing for sure. I think keeps me sharp, I think because anytime I see a competitor doing something that we don't do that we should do, I'm like, okay, keep me on my toes a little bit. And so I think if I were to talk to our listeners, I would say like, do not obsess over your competitors. You know, focus, stay in your lane most of the time, but every now and then you will get a kick in the pants by your competitors and then like, oh man, I'm going to fall asleep with the wheel here if I don't stay ahead of the curve.

Yeah, one of the low hanging fruit actually about this is if you go onto Google and you just type in your service with your target service area, then on the Google search and results page you're going to see a bunch of your competitors and what they're doing. A good way to benchmark your company is like, okay, I did this search. This company has 200 Google reviews, this company has 100 and I have 20. So I need to get over 100 reviews that I show up here. Great way to look at that. The next thing is go to the person that ranks number one and see what's on that page. Like what are they talking about over here? And a pro tip, if you scroll all the way to the bottom, you can typically see the digital marketing company that they're working with because they put it in the footer. So then you can see, like, who are they working with, what they're doing. There's one other tip on this. It's a website called Built With. Built with dot com. You take your competitor's website, you put it into Built with, and it's going to show you all the plugins, everything that this website's built with, and you can literally see everything that they're using.

Interesting. Have you ever changed your service offerings? Like, how does your service change and evolve over time in a competitive market? Have you axed services? Have you added new services? I know you guys do a lot more commercial now, Christine. A little chandelier cleaning as well. So that's a good example of that. Maybe you can elaborate more on that. But I'm just curious how you guys evolve your company to stay relevant.

We offer services based on the client demand. So Clearview, 20 years ago, started as a window washing company. That's all they did. And people who are getting their windows cleaned were asking for, you know, do you do power washing? Once you get enough of those questions, you're like, I really need to go into power washing. Well, now you're doing power washing and window washing. Hey, do you guys clean gutters? My gutters are clogged. And you know, we always say, we say yes before we say no. So of course we clean gutters. You know, let's do it. Do you clean roofs? Of course we clean roofs. So we go based on demand. We have a lot of high end luxury residential clients who are asking if we shrink wrap patio furniture. That's become a big thing in New Jersey. And we did not. And then three years ago we were like, of course we do. And we bought the shrink wrap stuff and we learned how to do it. And now we shrink wrap patio furniture because enough people asked for it. So there was enough of a demand and you have to price accordingly. You can't just add on a service where you're going to break even or lose money. So you have to make sure that you learn it, you're efficient and it makes, you know, it makes sense for your, you know, your gross and your net profits. And we asked one service in the past to get specific. It was gutter whitening because we didn't want our crews using the. Whatever chemical is needed. Yeah. And we didn't do it for any reason other than the safety of our technicians. That's not a recommendation for anyone who does it. It's just we didn't want to do deal with it. We add services. We've been asked like a handful of times, do we do air duct cleaning? And we don't feel like that complements. So you have to make sure it also complements your, the services that you offer. And we didn't feel like it complemented our power washing services. We, we just keep saying no to that. But if there's something that really complements your services, I would say to give it a shot and see if it works out.

Yeah, yeah, I completely agree with that. There's a saying you can't grow if you say no. But yeah, you also, you also don't want to get too crazy, you know, going way off the wall and doing all these random tasks and stuff. One thing that I would tell businesses to look at is your current process or the current service that you're offering, are they scalable? Because a lot of times business owners, they get so caught up in pricing every single job down to this and that. Is there a way that you can standardize your pricing in some instances to help streamline the processes? What we found a lot of the big companies is that they're making it so tight so that, you know, a high school student can sell this service or a college student and getting that process so dialed in that this is our specific Clearview washing program. You know, it's so tight that it's not hard to sell over and over again. And that's what we've seen to help scale the process for sure.

Yeah. I would say final thought on this. I think Christine's key point is you've been around for 20 years. You did not start doing all these different services the first year.

No.

And so I think our listeners would be better off making sure that they, they want to dominate, they have to dominate one thing really, really well. And once they've completely maximized for, in terms of a tier, once they max out a tier, then they can, they can branch off.

Yeah. There's a book called Good to Great and there's a hedgehog mindset in there which he says, you gotta focus on this one thing and be so great at this one thing up until around a million dollars. Cuz if you're like so good at this, no one else can touch you and everyone's else gonna be chasing all this stuff all around you and you're just standing things true to yourself.

Yeah. Okay. So another thought I want to address is this idea that we're, we're, we're number one. You go to any, any touristy city, world's best you know, souvenir shop, World's best. World's best. And you see it in more. But in a local service context, is it. Do you think it. It's. It's effective and compelling to claim that you're the number one power washer in your area? You think that's a good idea for.

From my perspective, 1,000%, yes. You are number one. You believe in your product, and you're number one. And the way that you do this is you take all those glowing, raving reviews that you have and you put them on that same page where you say that you're number one and you're number one to all these people. They would all vouch for you and say that you're number one. So, yeah, you are number one. And also, if you believe in your product, you should be number one. You should say that confidently. I think if you. If you shy away from that, you might not have enough conviction in that your service actually solves people's problems. And so you should get to the point where you're like, yeah, this is. I'm the number one person for this problem.

To piggyback off of that, we would say we are New Jersey's premier exterior cleaning company, because we feel we are New Jersey's exterior cleaning company. So exactly like you have to promote what you're telling your employees. You have to. We tell our employees we are the best, and we strive to be the best, and you have to be the best, and you have to come to work and you have to be the best. And so it's almost like manifesting where you visualize your company going. Even though we don't use the term number one, another thing is you can apply for things at no cost that might say you are number one. So we applied for Monmouth County's Best in business award, and we got onto the list of the top 50 that says best pressure washing in Monmouth County. And then we get the. You know, and so there's no money in that, but we can advertise that we want it, and then we will pay the hundred dollars for the plaque so we can hang it on our office and we have it for every year. I applied for best 50 women in business in New Jersey, and I made it and I won it. So. And there was no fee associated with that. So you have to apply to be the best and use all of that in your branding.

Yeah. I mean, if a contest says you're number one, you're number one.

Yeah.

I think, Phil, you can probably talk on this. I Think people are more likely from an SEO standpoint to search best power washer in Charlottesville rather than number one. Is that correct? I'm guessing, yeah.

From a marketing perspective, in your title tag and your meta description, which is more technical SEO, you can put whatever you want in there. So you could say experts choice, premiere, number one, best 10, best top 10, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, of course you can put that in there.

Yeah. I, I love local contests because they give you so much credibility if you can win them. Should we say that our competitors are bad? Should we say that they're no good and they're dead beats and that they, you should never use them and scoff when people do say they use them? What do you guys think about that?

Yeah, well, one of the things that I've seen there's a book called they Ask youk Answer, Marcus Sheridan. And in that book he actually talks about creating content about the best service companies in your area. And what he says in there is say the name of the company and then tell who would this be a good fit for? What, what are they about? And then obviously list your company in there. The other thing, as I mentioned before, was creating that content about things to look for. You can basically call them out without calling them out and just say like, hey, here's some of the things that we've seen with these companies. And it just. You don't really want to bash people because it's not about them. We're talking to you. We want to work with you, so it's about you.

Yeah.

We take the opposite approach and everyone thinks that we are nuts for doing it. But annually we host a competitors get together at a local restaurant near us in Red bank that has a private room in the back. And we made a Facebook event and we do it annually and we invite every power washer, window washer, gutter cleaner, exterior cleaner that we know in our space. Someone traveled down from Connecticut for this past one. It was in February. We feel like we are stronger together and you are a community. And my company, I do feel like we're the best, but I might get a client that I can't service. We're maxed out. Something happens, whatever the case may be, and I would refer them to you. Maybe we just don't want to drive the distance during our busy season in May. So I think it's important for your competitors to be your allies. We did a huge last minute commercial roof cleaning and we did not get our bleach delivery and we called a competitor and we said, do you have any bleach at your shop? And he said, come on over. All of our employees took all of our trucks, eight trucks over to his shop and filled up. And then we had our bleach delivered to him instead.

Wow.

That is the power of working together. One of them specializes in raw cedar shake clean cleaning. We're not trained to do that, but we want the window cleaning and we want everything else. But we will tell the customer, you know, we have a really great friend, he's right down the street from us, and he can do your cedar shakes. And that customer will leave us a review saying, I still used Clearview for the window washing, even though he was able to do the cedar shakes and the windows. I did the cedar shakes with this guy because Clearview referred a local company. So I think there's power in working together with your competition.

That's a great story. Well, that was great. I'm going to try to boil down our entire conversation down to three actual steps. Number one is maximize your Google listing. Make sure you have tons of reviews. Make sure you have photos and, and all your services laid out. Make sure Google will even tell you if you've got everything checked off and done. Make sure your Google listing is robust and ready for business.

Yeah. Go to Google, search your service and your service area and see what your competitors, how many reviews your competitors have, and then set a goal for your entire company and say, hey, when we get to this, we're going to get this. And when you get over those reviews, then you're going to be ranking higher than them, hopefully, and you'll be beating them.

Number two is you are. Your company is judged on how quickly and how efficiently you can book business. And so another way of saying that is how quickly can you solve the client's problem. And so if you can do it quickly, it will judge you well. If you're slow, that is no good. And number three is have a cohesive brand. If you want to dominate your competition and dominate your market, your branding needs to make sense. No more hats that don't match, have uniforms, random vehicles, beautiful website that all looks good together. This is a great conversation. How do people find out more about you, Christine?

Find me at the process CEO everywhere and you can follow our exterior cleaning company at Clearview Washing.

If you go to flash consulting.com, ph l a s h consulting.com, click, discuss your business. We do free marketing audits. We go through all your digital stuff. We sit with you for 30 minutes, come up with a game plan you can take and help grow your business.

Cool.

Sounds good.

Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate you guys. You guys are really making a difference for your clients, your team, they're better for it. So thanks for being here. Thank you for having us, and thank you for listening. I hope you heard something that will make your business more profitable, more efficient, and that will help you crush the competition. I'm your host, Adam Sylvester. You can find me@adamsilvester.com. your team and your clients deserve your very best, so go give it to them.