Top Automation Hacks to Save Time & Money

When you call that person and they don't answer on Monday morning because everyone's at work, what happens? A lot of times you don't need more leads, you need a better lead management process to manage your leads and get the most juice out of the squeeze.

Welcome to Jobbers Masters of Home Service, a podcast for home service pros by Home Service Pros. We are in sunny Las Vegas. Today's topic is 17Amazing Hacks for automating your business, saving you time and money. I'm your host, Adam Sylvester. Today's guest is Phil Risher. He's the owner and founder of Flash Consulting. Phil, welcome to the show.

Yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah. So Flash Consulting, we partner with local service businesses, help them increase their sales, keep their schedules full. I actually used to be the director of business development at a multimillion dollar service business and helped them scale their business and now partner with companies, help them do that. Cool.

Well, glad you're here.

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Well, let's get into it. So, Phil, one of the main things that we are talking about is automation, saving time, saving money and building your. And one of the key ways of doing that is with a CRM. But let's be real, you can't automate anything on pen and paper, right? You have to have some sort of, maybe our listeners on pen and paper, maybe Excel, but they really need to be on a CRM, is that right? Like foundationally?

Absolutely. Because in a CRM or platform you can put people in different buckets or stages and then you can run automations off of where they're at. Whether they're a lead, they're an estimate, their job is completed. There's a bunch of different ways you can automate off of wherever they're at in those stages.

How do you actually automate something? Like tell our listeners who just really have no idea, like, oh yeah, automate, that's a buzzword. But how do you actually do the thing?

Yeah, so typically when we look at a company, when we're working with them, we try to look at, well, what exactly is their process happening and where are the leak points? Like a very common one is that someone's out on the truck or they're out talking with clients and no one is booking jobs or their CSR is busy on the phone and no one's booking jobs. That is an opportunity where maybe there's an automation that could come into play that you don't necessarily need a human aspect of. It but you can automate that sequence of happening. So that's typically where we look at is like, what's a manual process that we can automate? And that's where we would probably start.

Yeah, leads, nurturing leads, follow up. Right? Is that what you're talking about?

Yeah, absolutely. So, like, the number one hack that I would say for any company that's out there, that when I was the director of business development at the air duct cleaning company, this is literally the first thing that we implemented was online scheduling. So if you're not doing online scheduling, I guarantee you're missing out on jobs being booked. The main reason is that if you are out on the truck and you're answering the phones, well, you know, you're not answering all the phones. Second, if you have CSRs in the office, are they booking every single job? And then third, after hours, a lot of people don't want to call people. They just want to schedule. And so what we found is by setting up online scheduling, it allows you to book jobs when you're not able to answer the phones or talk to people. And that's what people want anyways.

Yeah. Yeah. I always think it's weird when I submit anything and I don't automatically get a text or an email. I think it's kind of weird now with just email. But if I submit my information to somebody, I think deep down I'm wondering, am I gonna get screwed? Am I gonna get scammed? Is this a scam? Who is this company? Deep down, I think that. And as soon as I get the text, hey, thanks for submitting your information. We're gonna be right with you. It puts me to ease so much. I think our listeners shouldn't overlook that.

Oh, absolutely. The automatic text or automatic email or both back when you submit a form is huge. And to your point, it validates that, yes, they receive this, but then it also acknowledges it from the business. So people can say, hey, okay, I guess I need to stop my search now because this company is. Is on it. They're on it. I feel like they have a good plan to touch base with me.

Yeah, a hundred percent. Okay, so we're automating leads. So you're talking, like, maybe the next day they get a follow up. Have you approved your quote yet?

Right, yeah. So let's look at this sales process for a lot of businesses. So typically, the way that it would work is someone goes to your website, they call your business, or they fill out a form. When I was at the air duct cleaning company, this was Our process, they would get it into their email inbox, the customer service representative, they print out the piece of paper that came out in over the weekend. They'd set it on their desk right here. They'd call the customer, they wouldn't answer. They'd mark a LM for left message and then they have a pile stack of all these leads. And I'm like, okay, well who's calling these people back? What's the process for this? What's so another automation is when a lead comes in, send it into your CRM. So that way it alleviates someone having to manually enter it in every single time into your CRM. But then to your point is when you call that person and they don't answer on Monday morning because everyone's at work, what happens? A lot of times you don't need more leads, you need a better lead management process to manage your leads and get the most juice out of the squeeze.

Yeah. I'm curious if you have a, an example of maybe a client of yours or someone who's done that kind of thing. I'm thinking about from a CRM standpoint and a lead standpoint. Leads are precious. Right. Leads cost a lot of money to get usually, and they're precious. And not everyone is ready to play ball. The first time. I mean, I submitted a request a couple weeks ago, I was very serious. But I didn't end up booking the sales appointment with the company like almost a month later.

That's right.

And I was just busy. It didn't mean I wasn't serious. But if they had and they nurtured me, thankfully. But if they hadn't, I, I might have fallen off, I don't know. It's so important.

That's right. If you go back to the analogy of like the juice and all the juice in every single squeeze. A lot of times people get leads and they think of it a lemon and they just squeeze it one time and a little juice comes out and they say, okay, I need to get another lemon to get more juice. When really if you just keep squeezing that thing and try to get as much juice out of it as you can, then you move on to the next one. So some automations that you can set up for your business are what is your value proposition as your business? A little bit about your business. Maybe some case studies or testimonials or reviews that you can share with customers. These are things that you can put in an email or text message sequence every couple days. It's like, hey, haven't heard from you. Here's a little bit about our company. Hey, haven't heard from you. Did you know that we also offer this. Hey, haven't heard from you. Here's an awesome case study in your neighborhood of this X, Y and Z. And those are some things that you can build out that are automated that then to your point of like two weeks later, three weeks later, you're nurturing that lead and following up with them.

Yeah, that's great. Do you have a. Do you have an example of a client of yours maybe that has implemented some of these things?

Yeah, tons. I can give you an example of a lawn care company, for example. Basically what happens is someone fills out a form for an estimate request right then and there they say, hey, we got your request. Then it says right after that, hey, tell us about your project. Do you have any pictures you can share with us or any additional information? Then the next day it says, if it hasn't heard from you, hey, haven't heard from you. Are you still interested in getting this project done? Yes. No. All that, all that kind of stuff. And then it goes into the next sequence and it kind of has a decision tree. This is maybe a little bit more advanced, but having some type of a walkthrough to do that. One big thing with automations that a lot of companies should look at is how to stop the automation from happening.

Yo, it's huge.

Yeah, because if you're nurturing the lead and, and then they call you and say, hey, yeah, actually I want to get the job done. Then next day they say like, hey, haven't heard from you, want to get some work done. They're like, this is very unorganized.

Yeah.

So you need to have some trigger to stop that automation in there.

Phil, this is great. I want to take a minute though, and pause and talk about why we love jobbers so much. Phil, why do you and your clients love jobber so much?

For us, it's definitely about the reporting. When we talk about automation, we look at automating, you know, your sales, your estimates into close jobs. And with the reporting, it allows you to see, well, how many estimates have I done this month and how many closed jobs have I done this month? And it allows us to really benchmark how things are working based on the reports.

Yeah, for me, I think it's the automatic invoicing, complete game changer for my business. And you know, it just charges all of our lawn co lawn accounts every week. Wednesday night, 7:00 o', clock, bam, bam, bam. Saves me so much time it automates that. So you need to try Jobber too. New users can get exclusive discount@jobber.com podcastdeal go get it and start automating your business today. I know personally I've used Zapier a long time, Zapier for all the, for the triggers and whatnot. I think over the last year or so AI has become really big, even Zapier and a lot of these platforms are using AI to make it even easier for the beginner to get started on some automations. But if you were, if you were to recommend someone to get started, you would definitely recommend that they, they implement some sort of zap or. Yeah, I get, I mean Xavier is the leading one. Are there other, definitely other ones that people could use?

I would say Zapier is probably the best one out there because it just so simplified for you. Most platforms or CRMs, Jobber included, they'll have different triggers that allow you to say if this happens in your platform, then do X, Y and Z. So one like what we're mentioning is okay, a lead comes in, then what happens to it, then enter it into your CRM, then turn it into a quote. When they approve the estimate, then do this. So when they approve the estimate, then stop this automation for example.

Yeah.

So it allows you to kind of tie in some automations that are happening with your CRM as well.

One thing you've helped me set up is AI response to 5 star reviews. We get, we get so many, of course, you know, we get five star reviews and I don't know why I hate responding to those things. It takes so much time and effort. Thought I just hate it. And so it just bam. As soon as someone leaves a review, AI goes in and leaves a really unique response. Another thing I've that I've used is for my landscaping company. A lot of times people are in two boats either just want a very basic mowing quote, which is very simple. We just, we beam that over to them over online. But if they want to meet with someone to go over like a big project proposal, that kind of stuff, then I have a zap that instantly sends them an email from Gmail. It's not like mailchimp or anything that says hey, if you want a mowing quote then it's coming. But if you want to book a consultation with us, then click this link and they can just book a meeting in like Calendly or Google Calendar. And so I mean that's automation at its finest.

That's right. And to be honest, we get A lot of pushback on this for online scheduling because people say, well, all my prices are variable and I don't want to give a price on my online scheduling. And to your point, it's like, well, just set up an, an option for them to schedule a free consultation or estimate. And, and whether you use Calendly and Zapier, you can connect your Gmail account and just have it automatically send an email out to someone and you can use Zapier for free and just set that stuff up.

Yeah, I mean, it's hard, but figure it out. I mean, like, yeah, you know, I would.

It is hard.

Service companies have a wide range of prices, but the way the future is online booking. It really is. People want to buy on Amazon. They want to buy, they want to buy Spotify subscriptions all just right now.

That's right.

And they want to book your services online too. And sure, you might have to do, you might have to get creative on the pricing thing, but don't just not do it because the pricing part is hard. Everyone has that same problem. And some people are really taking the bull by the horns and like figuring it out maybe have a range of prices. But like, that is something that, that I'm very passionate about. I think it really needs to happen.

That's right. And I'll give you another secret automation that we've implemented with, along with online scheduling is just because you have your residential cod cash on demand type of client for online booking. There's a whole nother side of online booking that a lot of people miss, which is the referral partner bookings. And nine times out of 10, if you were to go reach out to a referral partner, let's say you do lawn care and you're reaching out to an exterior siding company, you say, hey, if you send me a lead, I'll give you X, Y and Z. And the way that you send me a lead is you go to this page on my website.com referral and you can schedule a time for me to literally call these people back your referrals or you can submit your referral here. That process is foreign to most people, but it crushes it for the companies that we implement it with because it allows for those referral partners to then send in leads and schedule right in there.

Okay, hold on. We got to unpack this a little bit. So tell me more about that. So you're, some of your clients are having these subpages with forms are specific to each of their partners, correct? Yes. And they. And that's how you track it because they use the form.

Correct.

And then I am curious how are your. How your clients compensating their trade partner? Just cash.

Yeah. So what they'll do, they'll do several different things. They usually don't do it based off of the lead coming in, but they say if we book this job, we'll give you X percent or we'll give you this fixed amount for this job. And they are. Now that you have this form, you can run it into an Excel and then have a list of these people or in your CRM you can do different things. But yeah, it's a great way to automate that process. We have companies that literally 50% of their business is just referral business that comes in from all these different partners.

What?

Yeah. Millions of dollars.

That's fantastic.

Yeah. I'll give you an example. Like a moving company, they partner with a bunch of realtors. Realtors can then just go there, submit a lead and then it goes directly to the consultants.

Sales, that's a really good idea. I'm going to start that tomorrow.

Yeah, you should. Especially with realtors. It's a great way.

Yeah. I'll be darn. If Masters of home service has been a game changer for you and your business and we want to hear from you. Go leave us a review and tell us what you think. Help us build this community and level up together any kind of automation ideas. For once the person says yes and they're in. And now we have to go fulfill anything happening in between those two steps.

Yeah. So this is probably where most people miss the mark from a sales process is they do the estimate and then it's just sitting out there and they're out running jobs. They're out, you know, fighting fires and, and they don't have a process to nurture those estimates. They're just sitting there and whatever they get back, they do. Hopefully if someone's slow, maybe the office manager or CSR will call them and follow up or something like that. And what we found was if you take the when an estimate was is created then you create an estimate follow up process that follows up on it. That process will convert 20, 30% more estimates for you just by having some type of a sequence like that. And that process would talk about, well, similar stuff. Tell us a little about your company. Here's all our great stuff. Tell us about the service that you offer. All our great stuff. Here's our frequently asked questions about the service that you're thinking about. Here's a Cross sell all this stuff. And then one pro tip on this is if you put an expiration date on your estimates, like, hey, these are good for 30 days. Just throw it out there. Then as you're nurturing that estimate, you're like, hey, you got 10 days left on this estimate. You so interested.

I like that.

Yeah.

And you're slowly, the countdown, you're slowly.

Counting down for them. And then after 30 days, you're like, hey, this is the last time I'm going to be reaching out to you. Just want to make sure it's not the right fit or we've got to re quote you or something like that.

I'm making it 12 hours, 10 hours, eight.

Yeah.

Fast.

You know, people want that countdown to get into that estimate process.

Countdowns are very powerful.

Yeah. And so this is what takes us back to kind of having that, that stop on those. Those stop gaps. Because again, if you're nurturing this estimate and they call in and say, I want to get this done, and then you still are hitting them up about this. Some people even throw discounts when, as it gets closer to nurture, like, hey, here's 10%. Maybe this will help get it over the finish line. Because we only got 30 days. We have a promo going for the rest of the month, something like that. But in a lot of CRMs like Jobber, for example, if someone approves the estimate, then you can fire off and say, remove this from the sequence.

Gotcha. Okay.

So definitely that works. Good.

I know that we have when someone approves our quotes, and then it's time to go do the job. I feel like there's a gap there. It's like we celebrate. We have a party that they approve the quote. I'm exaggerating, but we have a party. But then we're like, okay, onto the next guide to approve and. But we have this, this client who wants to do business with us. And I feel like there's room for improvement there in terms of, like making them feel special. Even after we get married, you know, we date. We date, we date, and then finally they say yes, and then we go on the next one.

Yes. There's two parts to this, which is that process of approving the estimate and then getting the job done. There's obviously cancellation rates that we all have to face. And so you want to follow up with those people not just the day before, but throughout that process of getting to their actual job that's going to happen. And then if the job does cancel, are we following up on those Cancellations as to why do they want to reschedule, that kind of stuff. One of the awesome things that we've seen in that process, from quote, approval to actually job completion, is the opportunity to upsell services.

Right.

So it's like, hey, when my tech is out there doing X, Y and Z, do you want them to look at this while they're there as well? Since they're going to be out there, it's only, you know, X, Y and Z additional. And a lot of times people will say, yeah, actually, I didn't know you offer that service. Let's add that on there. While they're out there, I'm curious.

You may not know the answer to this and that's fine. Do you have any idea what's best in terms, like, is it text really good for upselling future services as an email is a phone call? Obviously. Phone calls are usually always the best, but they're not automated. What's the balance there? Any. Any insight on that?

Yeah. So with texting, people don't really want to get bombarded with text messages every single day, counting down to their stuff. Email, you know, they're like, okay, this is fine. You know, following up with this text, what we found is like, if you do it every couple days, maybe like three, like three days out, one day out, then like, you know, that day or something like that. That works good. Emails is a really great opportunity for those upsells because it's not in text. You got to got a small window of what you can hit them with in email. You can hit them with it and then have a separate call to action. That doesn't seem very salesy where with text, if you're like, you know, hey, do you want to upgrade this when you. When we're out here, it's like, oh, dude, chill, you're doing too much.

Yeah.

In the email, it's like a little bit more opportunity to upsell and add value and stuff.

Yeah, yeah.

The call, though it's not automated, is the home run of home runs when it comes to upsells. Because they're like, hey, just confirming your appointment for tomorrow. We're all set for here. By the way. Do you want us to take a look at this while we're out there? It takes an additional like 30 minutes. But a lot of our clients are really looking for this service as well. It's much more easier to convey that sales process and you can even incentivize your CSR to sell a product.

So that could be automated with voicemail. Bombs. If someone wanted to, it couldn't be personalized because a prerecorded message. But you could use something like Send Jim or there's a lot of platforms out there that allow you to. Once the trigger is quote approval, they could get a voicemail bomb, for example, like a ringless voicemail. The next day or two days later say, hey, we're so glad you approved your quote. Looking forward to seeing you. We do X, Y and Z. Be sure to ask your technician about those services too.

Yeah, that's good. The, the hard part about voicemail drops is that then people are calling you back a bunch. Oh, yeah, they're like, wait, I missed a call from you. Did you. Did you mean to talk with me?

And they didn't listen to it.

Yeah, they didn't listen to it. And then, and then your customer service was like, oh, well, I'm not sure.

What did Adam do?

What did Adam do again? So, yes, you can do that though. It's just, we've seen that you can get blown up by calls and you're.

What? No, I think the very first automation I ever put in place on purpose, like very intentionally, was reviews follow up. I think it's the easiest. Jobber does this now with reviews follow up. Nice job. Has a great integration with Jobber. There's others out there. I think that one is potentially the most important, to be honest.

I would completely agree because that allows for customers that are extremely happy to leave you review, which is great. But it helps so much on the front end side when it comes to search engine optimization, getting leads in the door, People want to read reviews and it's a big part of your ranking. So it allows for you to automate that review process. Because everyone says, oh, I tell my text, you know, we need to get reviews and. And they never ask for it and they just stop there. If you could automate the process and also maybe incentivize your technicians, that works too. Another one that goes along with that is referral opportunities. So you could send out an automation that says, thanks so much for choosing us for your service. If you have any other neighbors that are Interested, here's a $50 gift card that you can just forward to them and you can look like a hero for them. That's a nice referral opportunity. The other one is, hey, we have a drawing for $100Amazon gift card every single month for referrals. If you know anyone send it, send this to them and you can be entered to win.

I like that idea. I struggle with the pure transactional referral base. Like, if you give us a lead, we'll give you 50 bucks. I personally have always struggled with that, but I like the Amazon sweepstakes. We're like, hey, we're just going to pick a winner. It takes a little bit more. The transactional part of it out for me makes a little more of like a. Just fun, I guess. But yeah. So are you seeing success with that? You're seeing success with referrals?

Yeah, definitely. We've seen some companies where. And again, even if you get, you know, two or three, five, 10 referrals out of it, it's just an automated thing that happens.

Yeah.

So it's like, it's so cheap and then you just pick someone that got referred in every single month and say, hey, thanks so much for referring us. We really appreciate your business.

Here's the Get a huge check, but.

All over Facebook, drive out to their house.

Exactly. Reviews is really critical, I think for two reasons. One is, I mean, the company with the most reviews wins. I think you touched on this. I do think that it benefits you to incentivize your infield staff, your technicians to give them a certain amount. If they're, if they get a review, if their name is in it, give them even more. Make it. Because I talked to a lot of people who are like, I just can't get reviews. They might be high volume too. They see the thousand people a year, maybe or more, and they're just not getting reviews. And in my view, you can get 20% conversion rates.

You should.

Out of five clients that you serve, one of them should always leave a review and that's kind of high. 10 is pretty good. But with, with automations in place, with three or four reminders over the course of next three weeks or so, with good technicians, you can get one out of five. That's a lot of reviews.

Yeah. Another automation off, that is if you have multiple technicians and you want them to recognize how great they are at getting reviews, there are automations out there that we've built before and that you can utilize and in some of these platforms, like nice job and stuff, where it will filter down your reviews based off. If they mentioned Adam, if they mentioned Phil, and then you can see all the reviews that Adam's mentioned that month. So then you can have an automated report that goes to them and says, hey, Adam, you got 20 reviews. And these are all your, you know, raving fans. Great job.

I like that. Yeah, that's a great idea.

Yeah, that's a great like scorecard for reviews that you can send to them.

There's so many things I want to do my business, but I just don't have a way to do it. Yeah, you know, I want that report, but I don't really know how to get that report. So that, that's a good example of one that I'll, I'll ask you more about later. Well, is that something that you build for your clients? Like, is that a pretty sophisticated thing?

Well, so like tools, like nice job, they do that.

Nice job does that. Okay.

They'll have components of that or remnants. And then you kind of have to build stuff off that podium is another one that they have that kind of thing. Bird Eye. All these different platforms that are out there, they have different ways that you can report on this. There's also platforms out there that will, will build the reports for you. So, yeah, we build them for clients to help them with that stuff. There's just. So that's why when we first started the conversation, it was like, we talk to the companies and kind of see like, where are these big missing points and say like, hey, because when we partner with a company, there's so many automations and it's like overkill automations and then there's stuff going everywhere. So it's kind of like, let's work on these things systematically as we're talking through. What are we trying to do in the business? What are you trying to accomplish? How are we trying to uncover these things? And that's what I recommend to people is like, start simple. Like, okay, let me look at my leads on my website. How can I get them to go into my platform? How can I set up a nurture for my, my leads? How can I set up a nurture for my estimates? Then how can I set up a review process? Kind of like walking them through that funnel and building that, that, that makes it more palatable than if the ship is seeking.

You fill the biggest leaks first and then you fill in the smallest leak.

Exactly.

So, okay, I do want to ask you. There's some listeners out there that are like, I know all this stuff, I'm doing all this stuff. Pretty advanced business owners, what would you say to them? What do they, what do they need to know the advance, you know, the 2.0 stuff.

Yeah, I would say for those people, a lot of times business owners, they, they like this stuff, but they get bogged down in it. And so for those types of business owners, I would say it's good to set it up, but it's changing so much. And so right now there's a big one with ChatGPT open AI. It's on Zapier. And so the next level to this is actually building out that communication sequence with chatbots. So an example of this, a lead comes in, we said the automation of like tell us a little bit more your project or can you share some pictures with us? Then it goes over to the manual side of a csr. Someone having to respond to that automation. Well, with chargeability now you can build that conversation back and forth in a decision tree to then communicate with stuff. Same thing with your estimate nurture. A lot of times people are prolonging you because they have questions. They might respond with a question. Well then guess what, it's on a manual process to respond to that question. Well, now you can ChatGPT to then communicate back. You build out a list of frequently asked questions, it communicates back and it works into the decision tree. So that's kind of like 2.0 of all.

Like that. Yeah, I like that. Phil, this is great. I'm going to try to boil down all the things we talked about into three takeaways. Number one is online booking. Jobber makes this easy. But online booking, you want to be able to book jobs in your sleep and when you're on the job site.

Yeah, a lot of our clients use the Jobber online booking tool. Makes it super simple to do free consultations, even to itemize your services and have people schedule services right online.

Yeah, 100%. Number two is reviews follow up. You want to be able to ask your clients for review after you're done. Automated for three to four weeks afterwards. Jobber again makes this easy with their marketing tools.

Yeah, you can send a simple text message right when a job is completed, send them a text, get the review. Pretty streamlined.

Yeah, 100%. Number three, so that you're not so spammy. At least perception is you want to add some good content in that follow up. So someone submits a request and then maybe say, hey, this is how you clean your windows. Go and do it yourself. Or maybe it's a little harder. There's some, some value added stuff so that they feel like you, you are just, just banging on their door all the time. Phil, that was great. Thanks for being here. How do people find out more about you?

Yeah, they can go to Flash consulting dot com. It's Ph L A S H consulting dot com, click discuss your business. We do free marketing audits where we sit down for 30 minutes, go through all your stuff makes sense to work together, great. If not, you have a game plan to help you grow your business. Sounds great. Well, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me.

And thank you for listening. I hope you heard something that will make your business more profitable, more efficient, and more automated. 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.