How to Grow Your Business Using Your CRM with Ryan Wyatt

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher. And on today's episode, we're going to be discussing how to grow your business using your CRM with Ryan Wyatt. Thanks so much for joining us today, Ryan.

Thank you so much for having me, Phil. I'm excited.

Yeah, likewise. So Ryan is the co founder of Titan Wizards and he's a CRM expert dedicated to helping home service businesses optimize their operations through technology. He has hands on experience in the trades and, and a deep expertise in service titan. And Ryan bridges the gap between field work and digital solutions, guiding companies to streamline processes and boost growth. And I'm really excited to talk with him because CRMs, technology and the trades are all things that I'm passionate about as well. So Ryan, could you tell us a little bit like how did you get into the trades? Figure, you know, how did you even start this process?

Yeah, absolutely. So I, it started because I was already kind of in the technology field. I was working for a company called Procore at the time. Had a nice cushy job. I was working up in the Sacramento area, remote. And one day I get a call from my brother in law. So Tom Howard was, you know, my brother in law. So they, he goes, you know, I just got this job at Service Titan. I don't have anybody to run Lee's Air in Fresno, California and you know, are you interested? And I didn't really want to move to Fresno and I didn't know too much about H Vac either. But I did know that this was a large company and it was a big opportunity. And I was like, okay, we're gonna do it. So I moved my family down there and it was, it was an eye opener, man. Like I couldn't believe how, how complex it was. And you know, then it was during COVID as well. So then there was all the supply issues that we were having. You know, there was just a lot of issues with that. But I gotta tell you, it's probably one of the most beneficial experiences of my life kind of learning how a large company like that actually operates.

Yeah. So what role did you come in at Lee's Air?

I came in as the president. Oh, wow.

Like right off the rip. And you had no.

Right off the rip, you had no.

Experience with H Vac anything?

No, I did not. But you know, also the thing is, is that I'm really sharp learner. You know, I can, I can come in, I can understand it. And the biggest part was there was a good team in place Already that I was able to, like, really draw from and rely on as well. And then we also made a lot of other improvements during. During that time as well. And so that was like, my very first, like, glimpse into home service companies, because prior to that, I was working with, like, general contractors and stuff like that.

Yeah. What size was the company? Like, how many team members? That kind of stuff.

Ooh. At the time, we were at 17 million. When I came on, actually, we were at. We were at 15 million. And then the. The year during COVID we grew to 17 million while I was there.

Wow. And just like traditional service H vac residential, we.

It was almost all residential. I think that the commercial was only about 20%.

Okay. So. Yeah.

And we did plumbing as well.

Yeah. And so they implemented Service Titan then. Or they had it running and then.

You were like, yeah, they already had service tit up and running and they had figured it out really well. And that made my job so much easier is like, we didn't have to onboard onto Service Titan.

Yeah.

Funny story is, like, after that, I went to work for Tom's other company that he had, a pest control company. And they were almost pen and paper. I mean, my office manager literally had a typewriter. And taking them from. Taking them from that level up into, like, the future with Service Titan, you know, it was. It was a monumental shift for them. And I was the only one that was, you know, capable of even doing it. So that was another huge challenge, but also a great opportunity as well. Wow.

So you came in Liz Air President, 2020, and then you were there for like, a year or two.

Yeah, I was there for about a year.

Okay. And then he's like, hey, maybe you could help out at this pest control company. Yeah.

Because they shared the same building. So, you know, Lee's was downstairs and Dustin Pest control. The. Was upstairs as well. So it was like, a very nice transition to just walk up there.

Wow. So the pet. Yeah, exactly. You didn't have to change the commute much. So the pest control company, you went in there. Were you the president there as well, or.

Yeah, I was the general manager, you know.

Yeah, same thing. And so they were pen and paper and then you helped them get on the Service Titan.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. So that was quite the change.

Yeah.

Because we were sending guys out with a paper list before that was printed out. Yeah, everything was paper. Everything was paper, you know.

Yeah.

So, you know, getting the tablets, obviously an investment, training everybody. And that's one of the things that I had to work on a Lot was making sure that the guys in the field really understood how. What, like, what the expectation was and how to. How to do this, you know, because, like, there's a big change from looking at what you're going to do for the day on a piece of paper versus, you know, all the stuff you got to do within a tablet. It's a huge change.

Yeah. So my dad was actually a pest control technician for about 30 years. Now he's a GM pest control. And so. I get it. I get it. And they still run on pen and.

Paper, so, yeah, it's super common.

Still happens. So how many team members was at the pest control company?

Okay, we had. I think we had nine or ten techs.

Okay. So that's like a normal size that. That people could relate to that are maybe doing like a million dollars to a couple million dollars maybe.

Yeah, I think we're at a couple million.

Yeah. Pen and paper. And then you brought them on a service site. And so how long were you at the pest control company?

I was there for another year.

Another year. Okay. What was the progress like? I know, you know, onboarding a new CRM can take six months to six years sometimes. So what was that like?

Okay, so it was. It was a little bit challenging because it's a. It was a new vertical at the time for Service Titan. Fortunately, I did have a good contact over at Service Titan that helped me out, even though I was already familiar with Service Titan. So I think his. I think his name was. Was Josh, I believe, and Josh. And I mean, we had a lot of conversations, but it also helped that I had already, you know, just at Lee's, you know, running Service Titan. So it's not like I'm a newbie to this anyway, but it would have been. It would have been extremely difficult if I didn't know already, you know, what I didn't know.

So, okay, so you're there for another year and then what, Service Titan comes knocking and says, come work over here or.

Yeah, so that's, you know, once you start talking with Service Titan, more and more. Like, I started having connections over there. Obviously, Tom was a huge connection as well, and I was looking for more of a change. You know, I did like working in the trades, but also I did like working in the software side as well. And so naturally, Service Titan was the first on my list. And I went into Service Titan as an enterprise project manager helping other people get onboarded to Service Titan, which was nice because that's what I was doing at my previous company. Before even Tom reached out, you know, because that's what I. That's what I really like to do anyway. Wow.

Very cool. So when you went to work at Service Titan, you were there for a couple years and you were basically helping people implement Service Titan. You had the trades experience and then you had the technical background. And so what was your experience like working at Service Titan?

Okay, so the Service Titan was great. I really enjoyed my time there. I enjoyed the people a lot as well. The platform, I'm a big, you know, I'm a. I'm an unashamed fanboy of Service Titan. I still do know that it has its. Its pros and its cons. Right. Just like any kind of piece of software. But culturally, I thought it was great. And the roles, I actually did two different roles at Service Titan. One, as I mentioned, the Enterprise Project Manager. Right. Which is really going to be the scheduler, making sure that you're going live on time. Right. And that's great. But there's two competing forces with that. Right. On one end, Service Titan has limited resources to get somebody live within a certain time, you know, because they're paying me to do it. And at the other end, competing side is, well, can the company that's being onboarded, can they do it fast enough?

Yeah.

And be comfortable enough and be ready on time. Right. And so that was. That was always the challenge. And so for me, for me personally, I wouldn't say that my metrics were the best because I always kind of favored what the client, what the pace of the client was, even though I would try to nudge them and get them to go a little faster, you know, but you can't. You can't really do that. And I understood that because, you know, I've been in shops, I've run shops. I understand that, you know, you've got so many different poles on your time and attention. You have limited resources.

Yeah. So this one technician can't even log into his Facebook, let alone learn how to use a tablet. And this guy, you know, is a wizard over here. So it's, It's. You have to zoom out and see that, you know, the company as a whole. It's like, I understand that this is the actual timeframe, but it's not realistic in some aspects.

Yeah, yeah. And in. Is. It was tough. Like, in some spots it was tough, you know, and there are missed deadlines. I mean, but the. What I would say is I was very fortunate is I was able to actually transition away from project management into project engineering and the project engineering was really kind of like the down and dirty, nitty gritty back end configs that, you know, a customer may not know. It was much more technical in nature. Right?

Yes.

So that kind of. I felt like that was a better fit for my personality because I'm actually helping solve individual problems instead of like, hey, we got to go faster. Hey, we're going to go here, you know, ready or not.

Got it. Okay, so let's get into some of these CRM questions because I want to pick your brain and I want to start with this one because I think this plays out. And this is probably one of the reasons why it takes a while to get onto CRMs, but there's also probably lingering issues. So what are some of the common. And service Titan is one of them. But there's a bunch of CRMs, obviously. But what are some of the common mistakes that home service business owners make when they're implementing or using a CRM? What have you seen? Are those common mistakes?

Garbage in, garbage out. That's the number one thing that I see. And that's moving to a new CRM is a golden opportunity to go back and look at your data and decide, is this, is this any good? Does it need to be reformatted? Do we need to maybe have a cutoff point? Because we don't need to bring in all this garbage. You know, there's, there's the, the data integrity, I would say, is going to be the, the first step. Right?

Yeah.

Is it even reliable? Because reports are one of the most important features in any CRM, regardless, you know, if it's service titan or not. But what are you reporting on? Is it garbage already? You know, how are you going to make a business decision based on that?

Yeah, for sure. And when you start looking at historical data and you're like, well, this data is not really accurate, so let's just start from here. I completely understand. And also, like, if the data that you're bringing in, if you don't have, you know, custom tags or different qualifiers on there, that's going to make sure that it lines up with what your current, what your new process looks like, then you don't really know what you're actually looking at from your historical data as well.

Right, Right.

Yeah. So speaking about reports, what are some of the reports specifically when we talk about growth or pushing growth for a business, what are some of the reports that you see that people are running and how are they analyzing them and pushing numbers?

Well, I think you got to look at it from different levels. Right. So on one end is just getting the leads in. Right. What was the marketing report looking like? Right. How many leads did we get? Where did they come from? What did we pay for those leads? Right. That's step one.

Is that like the campaign summary report?

Kind of, yeah. Probably a campaign summary report. Probably the basic one. Right. Then what about the efficiency of the office? Right. Because a lot of these can be lost right then and there. What's your job booking rate for these leads? And it needs to be continuously monitored and everything being attributed correctly as well.

So. And that would be something where, like, all the calls are coming in and then you can see your actual booking rate and then you can track your booking rate. What about, like, leads that come in from, you know, your website or. Or Yelp or Angie's List? Is there a way to get, like, a true booking rate?

The. Okay, so I'm not. I wouldn't say I'm a specialist when it comes to all of the bookings that come in through all the different channels on there. Right. But the standard would be to reach out to these customers, like, immediately. Those are the hottest leads. Right. So I've actually run into situations where a CSR didn't even know what those things were, you know, and so this was a major fail point for. For the company. I mean, how many of those maybe could have turned into jobs right there? It was just. It was just like nobody had thought to explain it to her what this was and what to do with them. So that's one of the things that I always cover with anybody, really, like, take care of those bookings immediately. Reach out to them.

Yeah. So track your leads. Track the source. Right. Any CRM, you can put a lead source in there or a tag or something that's going to track all the leads and you can pull a simple report to see, okay, I got all these people and it generated this much money. Efficiency of the office, which is your job booking rate. You got all these leads. How many of them did you actually book? What are some of the other reports from, like, actual, like, driving growth that you would say?

I would say the conversion rates of the technicians as well. Well, because it's all, you know, we already know this. It's a funnel. Right. How many leads do we get? How many of those jobs do we book then? How many of those jobs did we sell some kind of service to a customer? Right. And there's so many opportunities down that funnel for things to just kind of fall apart. But the more you capture all the way. It's like a colander. Right. The more holes you can plug in, you know, the more water you're going to store in there. Right. And so that's, that's what I always encourage my customers to look at, is each one of those. Right. Because if we can include. If we can bump up the call booking rate from 25%, which I've seen, to 75% just by training.

Yeah.

Right. Then that's a. That think about how much growth that that would actually contribute to the bottom line. You know, everything else can. Everything else stays the same.

Yeah. They call booking. Right. We had Brigham Dickens, Dickinson from Power selling pros on the show, and he talked a lot, at length. That's what, like their specialty of booking, increasing your booking rates. So figure out your leads. You want to have a process for tracking leads, then you want to have a process for tracking your job booking rate. And then ultimately you want a conversion rate for your technicians. Why do people not do these three things? Because, I mean, I agree, but what do you see, like, on your end? Is it just too hard to get your technicians to do it and your CSRs don't want to do it? Is it poor management or is it. They don't know how to do it in their CRM or what do you think?

That's a great question. There's. There's so many different directions that you're being pulled in. If you're an operator or an owner. Right. And it's this fire you got to put out or that fire you got to put out or, you know, this vendor issue or, you know, you know, whatever. Whatever it is. And I think that that's. That it's easy to get distracted from keeping those key KPIs from being monitored and moving in the right direction. And it's obvious. It's obvious to us. But I don't think it's as obvious to other people that are trying to manage their business by the numbers. Right. Making sure that those funnels, you know, that you're not losing business, you know, as the, as that job is coming down the pipeline.

Yeah.

You know, maybe, maybe your focus is, okay, I got to get another truck, or this technician did. Did the wrong thing, and we got to do a recall on that. Right. That's. That's where it's hard, especially when you're smaller, when you can't delegate that kind of stuff. And as an owner, you got to be the one to do all that. It definitely distracts you from all those other important numbers. That are actually going to indicate whether you're going to grow or not.

Yeah, I agree. And I think, well, with Service titan too, there's so many moving parts to like, oh, this is an actual lead because it's over a minute. But then I didn't qualify like this, or like, oh, is this marketing campaign set up? And then do I pick this one or that one? I think there's a lot of nuance there that maybe it's everyone's not on the same page and so things can get lost if you don't have a good standardized process. For sure.

That's a great point. And also maybe there's confusion about what all these different terms mean as well. You know, I mean, even, even some users that have been on Service Titan for, for a while and service Titan in particular, because that's why I know the best is, you know, what, what do these definitions mean? How do we get these numbers? You know, so I think that that's also, that also plays a factor into it as well.

Yep. Another thing that I wanted to pick your brain about, since you have a lot of experience with home service businesses, you've been obviously working at some pretty decent sized companies from a memberships perspective. How have you seen the best way to structure memberships? And I mean, you could talk about H Vac, you talk about plumbing, pest control, but what do you see are the best ways to sell them and then structure them? And it could be in service item or just in general.

I like the, I like prepping the customer during the call booking. Are you aware of our membership or our preferred membership package? No, I've never heard of that. Okay. Yeah, you know, and maybe, maybe just like a little tantalizing tidbit over the phone, but letting them know that the technician will be giving you a little bit more information right when he, when he shows up. I like prepping them ahead of time and then it always has to be offered on anybody that doesn't have a membership. Why not offer them a membership and explain the benefits of that. Here's an example. We had, we had a standout at Lee's, Aaron. And I said, aaron, how are you selling so many memberships? Because he was selling like at least 50%. I don't, I don't even know. Oh yeah, every. He had everybody getting on a membership. I said, aaron, how you selling all these memberships? He goes, all right. He gave me his 60 second spiel and it was several years ago, so I can't repeat it verbatim, otherwise I would love to share it. And I was like, yeah, man, I want to buy a membership. And I'm like, I don't even need one, but I want one.

He was a csr?

No, he was a technician.

He's a tech. Okay.

He was a tech, and he was getting spiffed. $20 per. Per membership that he sold. Right? So if he's running four jobs a day, he's running, he's getting an extra 40 bucks.