The 4 Relationships Standing Between You and a $10 Million Home Service Business

Welcome back to the show. I'm your host, Phil Risher, and on today's episode, we're diving into how relationships, referrals, and intentional generosity can become one of the most powerful growth engines in your business. Joining us today is Sarah Hardwick-Grintz. Thanks so much for joining us today, Sarah.

Thank you, Phil, so much for having me. I'm so excited for this conversation today. It's already been such a blessing to talk to you offline, but excited to, um, be in front of your audience today and talk all things relationships.

Yeah, awesome. I love it. I'm excited for it as well. So could you give us a quick snapshot of like who you are, what you do, what company you're with?

Yeah. Sarah Hardwick Grinz, recently married, so added that, that next name, president of Giftology. For those that may be familiar with Giftology's story, we started foundationally as a gift-giving company, really doing things differently though, to help businesses appreciate their relationships, stay top of mind, and increase loyalty. So we don't do swag. I know a lot of times when people hear giftology, they think corporate gifting in the, in the typical way. We are not in that realm. We really do believe that when you invest in relationships intentionally from your prospects, your clients, your team, your business can run on relationships and use that as a growth lever. So that's always been our foundation. We've now expanded into different trainings and education around referrals as well. But we're really living in this relationship system space of how we can help business owners grow their relationships through generosity with referrals and intentional relationship building.

Okay, awesome. Well, I worked at a $3 million home service business and we did a service for people at their homes. What would it look like to build some type of like a giftology thing for that business? You know, like a normal residential $3 million home service business. Like, what does that even look like?

Yeah, that's a great question, Phil. And we really, when we sit down with our clients to think about how giftology and specifically gifting also fits into their business, we really kind of bucket this based on the 4 key relationships that you come across. We have an acronym for this, PACT, right? Like think of a loyalty pact. These are the people that allow you to do business the way that you do. So prospects, P, allies, clients, and team. Sitting down thinking in those buckets, we really start to see where giftology fits in. So from a prospecting perspective, that's really going to be when you are thinking about those larger commercial jobs or maybe some of those larger jobs where you really want to make an impact in the sales process. We don't necessarily love cold gifting per se, um, but it can be used to really solidify some of those vendor relationships that you may be investing in.

So let's say like it's a remodeling company and they do like $50,000, $100,000 jobs. Someone fills out a form on their website and they put their address in or something, and then maybe in the sales process you send them like a buyer's guide or a color palette thing or something.

Exactly. Like for example, I have that on my calendar, right? When anyone books a call with me, we have a little cute note in there that says something. We're going to send you a book. Most of the time we do end up sending them a gift after the conversation. But I love, Phil, that you brought up some of those creative elements of showing up not just digitally, but really in a tangible way with some of those elements of your business. Where we really shine though, as a company is taking the gift out of the specificity of what you're doing in your industry and really making it about them and the recipient and their home and their family. So all of the gifts that we send are an investment directly into the relationship. They're engraved with the family's last name. Most of the time it's something that lives in the heart of the home. Think cutlery or a beautiful cast iron skillet or something of the sort. So That's why, I mean, these things aren't necessarily on the lower side of the budget spectrum. Yes. And why we, we don't see a ton, a ton of people using it necessarily in the prospecting bucket in the sales cycle. Got it. But it can absolutely be used like that in a process way for once you are loving on the clients that are feeding, like feeding you business already.

Got it. Okay. With allies, that is gonna be like referral partnerships or something?

Yep. Perfect. Referral partnerships. Truthfully, we know that these relationships are the lifeline of our business, but a lot of business owners don't have some sort of systematized way to make sure that they're taken care of, um, or even equipped to give them referrals. We, we really do think that the two main pieces of the referral puzzle is the person needs to be equipped to refer you and they need to be energized to do so. Uh, we most of the time just think of energized and we go, okay, if we give them a gift card, a $50 bonus, a cash, right, all those rewards, that will make them want to refer me. But if you— if they don't know how to refer you, if they don't know enough about what you do and who you serve and how to tell their neighbor, their friend, their client about it, that kind of referral game of telephone really breaks down. So Having the intentional conversations about equipping them with the information they need to give you a referral, right? That has nothing to do with gifting, but it's what's going to make the gifting much more meaningful because now they're energized and equipped to go out and give you referral business.

Okay. Makes sense. So I was at the $3 million business, about a million-ish dollars of our revenue was from referral partners. So we partnered with HVAC contractors. So what we did was I would reach out to them, I would say, let's do a breakfast meeting, I'll bring donuts. And then I would get flyers that were educational flyers made with their logo on it and our logo on it. And I would go there and I would equip, I guess, equip them with this. And then I would tell them, when you send us a referral, you'll get points. And then when you get a certain amount of points, we'll give you a gift card.

Right. And I mean, Phil, there's nothing wrong with that, truthfully, from the perspective of That's a, like, referral system that can be set up.

Yeah.

But when, uh, we kind of use this analogy in our training program of when you're developing those referral partners, especially in the beginning, think of it like dating into marriage, right? Like, you want this to be a long-term loyal partner for you. You wouldn't have them sign the prenup on the first date of like, here's how the referral partner is gonna work and you're gonna get half and all these things. We want to build that loyalty with the referral partner and want to get them to a place where they are referring you because they want to create these win-win scenarios for you. They know, like, and trust you. They think you're going to provide a great service to their clients as well, not because they're getting a $50 gift card or they're getting some sort of reward.

So what do you— what, like, do you send them a gift to build that? Or like, what do y'all coach or do for that? Because I'm really curious because this is a big issue. Like I talk a lot about B2B partnerships.

Yeah.

And a lot of times when I talk to business owners, it's like, well, what do I say to them? What do I do? And it could have been maybe that thing that I just gave you, but maybe there's a way to like take this and make it way better because that was like a manual process that was happening. I'm curious to hear like, how do you tease that out when you're working with people?

Yeah, the conversation that you just teed up, Phil, of like I'm sitting down to have this collaborative conversation with them about how we can work together. Is a core piece of our process as well. I think where we really start to differ is after that conversation. We call that a clarity conversation of once you've had that clarity conversation of how you can work with this person as a referral partner, um, then they're on your runway. They haven't taken off into flight of a referral partner first. Um, but what do you need to do in the interim to get them to do so? And it really stems from how do I demonstrate value into them and their business? So that reciprocity is built. So we have, you know, 20+ ways of demonstrating value. Yes, gifting can be a part of it, but it can also be that through that conversation you learned a lot about them, their family, some gaps in their business. Maybe they need a new website, right, Phil? And there's, there's a gap that you could fill there and demonstrate value of how you want to see them win even outside of the partnership. That you guys are physically creating. So really just making sure those demonstrations of value are happening, those conversations are happening. And then our system for once someone does refer you business, we have a little bit more of a systematized approach there of number one, always send a handwritten thank you note after the referral. A lot of people are, you know, quick to send a text and email, but really taking the time to sit down and write a note to say thank you for this introduction. Makes you stand out tenfold against the competition who they may be thinking about referring as well. And then we do add gifting into that system as well. So after the referral closes, after you win this job, now you have some net profit to reinvest back into that referral partner. And we do recommend sending a gift 3 months later, not tied to the transaction at all. This is not saying, hey, Thank you for sending me, you know, John Smith. This is thank you for being my partner. I see you. I appreciate you. I love doing business with you. And that's where we show up in that really meaningful gifting capacity.

Cool. And this could be like maybe like a cutting board with their last name on it or a knife with their name on or something that's going to be in their house that they're going to see and they're going to appreciate.

Exactly. So, yeah, knife, cutting board, skillets, all the things. That's exactly our wheelhouse. And the philosophy there is ultimately, yes, it's a vehicle of appreciation and that's what we're doing it for first and foremost. But now they're using that every single day. And now even though it doesn't have your logo on it, they're using that every single day and thinking about you, Phil. So we have so many stories about even, you know, maybe you are doing business with the man in the relationship, but the wife is at home and she's using that every single day and she's like become a salesperson for you of, hey, like, have you talked to Phil recently? Have you sent Phil business? So those gifts really do work in building loyalty and keeping you top of mind.

Yeah, I love it. Okay. And then C, I think this is the natural one that people think of, which is clients. Or so you had mentioned something before the show that we were recording that like, it's not just like, hey, thank you, you know, so that way they get some value or appreciation, but it's also about getting that next piece of it, which is referrals.

Yeah. Yeah.

So can you talk to me about that? Because I think a lot of people miss that as like, oh, I'm just sending them a gift to say thank you. And like, they don't think about the next stages of it.

Yeah. And truthfully, I would say that probably one of the biggest misconceptions we run into is that clients are your best source of referrals. I really would say it is those allies, the community advocates, the realtors, all of those things that because they are getting a consistent flow of your ideal customer, the HVAC company, right? Like they then are able to consistently flow referrals your way. Clients do, some clients do have this like natural advocacy bone where they're telling all their friends and they're telling their neighbors and all the things. And that's, those are the clients we need to prioritize and then yes, invest in with gifts. Um, but most of the time too, the process to which we are able to help people love and appreciate their clients is coming from a place of like customer service, not necessarily always with that referral end goal in mind. Um, just because it's a little less guaranteed. We've worked with a couple of solar companies in the past, for example, where they've actually built gifting into their, uh, like delivery process of the service. So, you know, when the guys are all on the roof banging on the roof, we've systematized a way that a gift is showing up during that process to kind of even out like the, the pain that the customer is feeling and now the appreciation that the customer is feeling. So that's just one of the ways that we really can build gifting strategically into the client process. And you can build that into your service fee too, right? So like from a budget perspective, it really just elevates the service that you're providing.

Yeah. And I just want to call something out, like people that are listening to this, I talk to so many business owners and every single time we ask them like, how do you get most of your customers? And they say through referrals. And then we say, what's your game plan for referrals? And they say, uh, so it's like, if your number one place to get customers is referrals, then you need to focus on like How am I getting referrals and like nurturing that? Like you're willing to spend $10,000 on the Google God sending you leads, like you have nothing for referrals and that's your number one source. Like, come on.

Totally. And, and, uh, I've, I've mentioned equip and energize, but the first step of our referral process is identify. Like a lot of people say also, Phil, yeah, that's, that's the number one way I get new business referrals. Do you know who your referral partners are and how many referrals they are sending you a year? Like, The tracking element of that and the ability to identify the relationships that are producing revenue for your company, that is step one, so that then we can invest in them and equip them and energize them to continue sending you business. And, you know, if, if anyone is just starting and they don't know exactly who is sending them referrals, that's an opportunity to really dive into your greater network, your greater community, and think about Well, who can, right? Like you identified HVAC companies are a really good referral partner for us. Let's go build relationships with other HVAC companies. Like make that, um, a system in your business to build those strategic relationships as well.

Yeah. So one of the first things that I did was I said, okay, 1.5 million HVAC contractors. So then I said, well, how do we know who's sending us referrals year over year and who's going up and down? And if they're going way down, like We need to be on top of that to figure it out. So I went into our QuickBooks, I pulled all of our HVAC contractors that sent us over 100 deals, and then I looked at year over year and I had a spreadsheet every month to track it. And then it was a glaring hole. One of our top people was way back. So I told the owner, I said, you need to go talk to these people and figure out what's going on. But what was going on was that they didn't have any more of the flyers to give out. So it's like, no, come on dude, let's get them more flyers. So to your point, it's like, You just, it's just about building a process and then tracking your stuff and then making sure that you have a system in place to actually, you know, get referrals coming in.

Yeah. And, um, Phil, something we've implemented in our organization and train a lot of companies to do the same is to have at least once a month, if not 2 times a month, um, what we call a tap meeting, which is all you do for those 30 minutes to an hour is talk about partners. We talk about everything else in our business, um, but the people who are feeding us leads. So actually having some intentional time because maybe there's, you know, guys on the field doing work for you that may have picked up something about a referral partner, but it hasn't been communicated back to the team of like their, their son just graduated college. We can show up in a really meaningful way if we're having those conversations and keeping those relationships top of mind. And I'm sure that problem, that gap would've been identified a lot sooner if they were frequently talking about their partners.

Oh yeah. Oh my gosh, of course. That, that was like the first thing I'm like, this is where we get most of our business. Like, let's like have a game plan and track this stuff and talk to these people, like have a quarterly lunch with them, whatever. Yeah. So yes, I agree. One other thing I wanna call out here, which I think is very unique to this, is that when we talk about lifetime value, a lot of times people put it onto their client's lifetime value. And they don't attribute it to their referral partners' lifetime value, and they don't spend time building more referral partners because they just see it as it's naturally going to come. And it's a big problem that we see when things— when you're talking about lead gen, because like I said, they're willing to spend money on the Google gods and get leads coming in. But if you're not focused on building those referral partners and then they could send you 10 warm leads that are going to close at 60%, right? It's a huge opportunity for a lot of people. And like we have a saying at Flash, you can't get lifetime value without a lifetime relationship.

Oh, I love that.

Yeah. And so it's like you gotta build a relationship to get the lifetime value, whether it's your referral partners or your clients. Uh, it's a huge part of growing a business.

Absolutely. Yeah. And I mean, we talk to our clients all the time as like traditional marketing and the Google gods and all the things like has its place, right? That's going to feed a part of your business, but exactly right. If you are already getting warm leads that are closing at a higher percentage from this certain group of people, we should have at least the same, if not more, budget strategy systems around how we invest in those relationships. Just like when we look at our Facebook ads and, you know, tweak things here and there, like that's, that's the same level of intentionality we need to have on this side of the house.

Yeah. So good. And the last one was teams.

Yeah.

And this is our team. I would imagine. I mean, I just always say the context that I worked at a home service business, it was like, this guy's doing a great job, let's send him $50, you know, give him a gift card to take his wife out, which is nice. But like, what, like, how do you take this and like make it an actual thing instead of just this gut feeling? Like, good job, man, $50 on your check, you know, like, cool, dude.

Right. I would say too, from that, a lot of people are not always, you know, energized by money. I know I'm not one of those people. There's different ways to appreciate me, value me as an employee. As a friend, right? Anything that sometimes just a check won't do it. Now it does sometimes. And sure, there's definitely an amount of money that can help. But that example, Phil, I always relate to something that John always used to speak about in our organization, which is we are all entitled every single month on the company to take a date night with our significant other. And that just shows from a company level that they value me and my family. And that is the foundation of it. That goes along with gifting too, of like, I am investing in you in a meaningful way and showing up and appreciating you in a different way than maybe other companies would. And that's what's going to increase their loyalty and energy to serve you and your business in the best way possible. I walk downstairs every single morning and see a huge knife set that Giftology, our business, gave me. And I will say, you know, after a rough day of work or a long night of work, whatever it is, seeing that like you are seen and valued and it just makes those long, hard days a little bit easier.

Yeah, it goes beyond just like a transactional relationship and it builds into like this company actually cares about me as a human being, right? Yeah.

And from a team perspective, a lot of times in the home service space, you know, the owner is kind of the owner of a lot of the relationships, and they're the ones that are out there in the community setting those relationship standards, wheeling and dealing some of those sales and building relationships. But if we want your team to be out there on your behalf, building relationships, that starts from the top down about how you treat them and how you build a relationship with them and what example you set with them. So we have tons and tons of businesses that say relationships are important, but when we work with them, we really encourage them. The first step is then gift your team, then invest in your team. If you want to say relationships are important to your business, That's where we need to start because that's going to just have a trickle-down effect throughout your whole sales process, prospecting, your customer service. If they're the people in those individuals' homes, we want them to also understand how important relationships are.

Definitely. So how do you all like work with companies? Is it you get an account manager and they like coach you through these things and then they help you set up like the automation piece or like I'm just curious, like, how that works.

Yeah, two primary ways. One is a little bit more in-depth to that education and training piece. Well, yes, still incorporating gifting, but we come in and help home services companies install what we call a relationship operating system. So we're going to work with you as the owner as well as your team to make sure everyone's on the same page about like who are the key relationships in our network How are we equipping them to refer us? How are we energizing them to want to refer us more? And then on the customer service side as well, setting up those systems to make sure if there's something that we can do on a gifting front, that we have that built into the organization. The other way is also just the training and education piece of getting more referrals. So there definitely is a reality to, some of the gifting maybe not being a fit, we really do think it's a key piece of our relationship operating system. Um, but if you kind of take off a piece of identifying the relationships, equipping them and energizing them, we have a ton of training and education tools, uh, that fit into that component as well.

Awesome. So it sounds like if your number one place is referrals or you're slow and you know you should be building referrals, then you all will be able to coach them on getting more referrals for their business, whether they use the gift thing or not. It's at least you have the systems that you can help coach them on.

Correct. And, and the gift thing really comes into play when we're looking to scale, right? Like you as the owner are not able to take care of all of the relationships anymore in the way that you want to, or you do want to scale your business through systems and processes. So now you're adding gifting as a layer to how you're showing up for customers. Um, and that's really where we're on that side of strategically creating this gift plan, creating the connection plan with you of how you're showing up, um, utilizing gifting. And that gifting piece, a lot of people think they can do it themselves. Yeah, it takes a lot of time. Um, and that is the way that we're able to serve in this industry the best, is we know that all of you guys already are short on time, and there's probably a lot better things that you could be doing, or even an assistant or an admin could be doing, than sitting in a conference room wrapping gifts and writing handwritten notes and all those things. Um, and so even if we can outsource just that piece for you, we work with a lot of clients in that way too. Our thing is not Christmas gifts, um, although we do it for some clients. We really do try to stay away from ABC gifting— anniversaries, birthdays, Christmas. But when you are thinking about maybe doing some sort of bulk appreciation campaign or something like that, we're also your team to be your outsourced relationship department and take that gifting completely off your plate.

Yeah, I think the, the gifts at those times that you mentioned, it's like almost— it doesn't, it doesn't take the— it takes the wow factor away because it's like you're not interrupting their normal routine. But oh wow, they thought of me. It's like, oh, they thought of me.

That's nice. It's expected. And unfortunately too, it just gets lost in the noise of every other company that may be sending them a gift, or transparently every other family member or their own gifts that are arriving from Amazon, right? You don't want to meet them in this busy place of they're opening boxes that they just ordered for their kids' Christmas gifts and then they're coming across yours as well. Um, we want it to show up on a random Tuesday where it truly creates this surprise and delight moment, um, and builds this like really psychological and neurochemical bond between what they're experiencing and your business that generates loyalty, um, and that lifetime value.

Yeah, for sure. I do want to ask you this because I know, I know people are probably thinking this is like, how much is too much? Like, bro, leave me alone. Like, I don't need another cutting board, knife set, like all this stuff.

Like, yeah, that's a good question. And we, we kind of, you have a spectrum, but really like we try to have our clients not gift more than 3 times a year. That's really the, the high end. 2 is our sweet spot. We have definitely gifted people 12 times a year and sent a gift every month, and it's kind of like this fun play of developing the relationship. And we do some really creative things.

Like one knife each.

Exactly, Phil. And that, that is one of our most popular campaigns because we are really grateful that our clients do end up working with us for the long term most of the time, um, because if they're in and investing in their relationships, it also is something that we don't want you to then end, because now some of those relationships may feel like, oh, you know, they used to send me gifts and now they don't, or they used to care about me and now they don't. Um, so it really is a, a long-term relationship and, and philosophy that we get our clients on board to, but We do build out a lot of the times, we call it a continuity campaign for those key relationships that you may be cultivating over, you know, 3 to 5 years. We do build out knife sets for them a ton of the time. So it's like, you know, you're getting the carving knife right before Thanksgiving and then you're getting this and all the things. And then once they have enough, we're sending them that block that now sits on their counter and now you own square footage in their kitchen. So we definitely build those, those things out. But aside from cutlery too, we have so many other gifts in our arsenal that show up every single time and are used every single day.

Yeah, I love it. Well, this has been a great conversation. I think if you're listening to this and you don't have a system for referrals and you want to send gifts to people or, you know, those PACT people that we mentioned, I don't see a reason why it wouldn't make sense to at least have a conversation. Even my business too. So, uh, Sarah, where should people go to learn about you and, and, uh, find out about more about Giftology?

Yeah, I would love anyone listening to just connect with me on LinkedIn. Uh, try to make our, our process as relational as possible too. So would love to just have a conversation with you, learn a little bit more about your business, um, and then see which path to working with us could be a fit and how we can serve you from a gifting front or a referral trading front.

Okay, cool. Well, thanks so much for joining us today and look forward to continue the conversation.

Yeah, thank you, Phil. It's been an awesome conversation.

Yeah, you got it. Bye.