Why You Should STOP Mowing, To Make More Money

Most business owners are busy working, but they aren't making money. If you aren't spending at least 30% of your day on sales, you're leaving your biggest revenue leaps on the table. I'm going to prove to you why calling your pending estimates is the highest leverage task in your entire business. It's not just a phone call. It's the fastest way to inject cash into your bank account today. Today we're breaking down the exact percentage of how much time you should spend actually selling. So the title of this is Sell more jobs. That is what we are talking about today. I am going to prove to you guys why sales is the highest leverage task, specifically calling pending estimates. So one of the tasks in our business that our GMs do is calling pending estimates. If you're a lawn care business owner or you're a manager trying to grow a department or grow your business, this is going to be for you. But I want to show you guys these actual numbers of our business. 30 minutes spent equals— so recently our awesome team member Daniel, he's our main location GM, picked up the phone, started calling his pending estimates, which at the current day he had about 80 pending estimates in the queue. He picked up the phone, started doing his calling pending estimates. Now these are estimates that were already sent to the customer that are pending, so the customer has not accepted or declined, they just haven't responded. So he was able, in about an hour standpoint, in 1 hour 60 minutes, he was able to book a $500 landscape job that literally just occurred yesterday. And he this in about 30 minutes. So this equates to $1,000 of revenue he's going to add to his location and his business in 30 minutes. That's one example. The second part is for another additional 30 minutes, he was able to book one recurring mowing and landscaping customer. Now most of the time people will be like, oh, you know what, that's a cheap job, I don't want to do that service. Wait, there's more. With him spending 30 minutes of his time booking this recurring signup, this turns into to a $2,000 annual value customer. Why is that? $50 lawn cut, 32 visits a year, roughly $1,300, $1,400. And then the weed control is about a $75 application, 8 times a year. So that's about another $600. These are rough numbers. He takes 30 minutes of his day, he sells 1 customer to sign up, mowing and weed control, and explains to them why we are the best lawn service company. We're military, we focus on high quality. And he's able to generate $3,000 of revenue in 30 minutes, as long as we continue to deliver high-quality services. This is why literally in 1 hour he was able to produce $3,000 annually for the company and his department, which is going to in turn take that money, put it down to the bottom line. Now that is gross revenue, but that's going to be more profit for him, his location, his team. This is why sales is the highest leverage task that you can spend in a business. You spend 30 minutes, you make $1,000. I'm sorry, that would be 1 hour. So 30 minutes would be $500, but contingent on you continuing to do sales for the next 30 minutes, you should be able to book a $400 or $500 job in a matter of 30 minutes. Now, how do we get those numbers? Every pending estimate call takes about 2 minutes, and I want you guys to think about in, in your own business, how much time are you spending on sales? The question that I have for you, that everybody that's watching right now, in the comments below, I want you to pause the video after I make this statement in this question, and I want you to answer honestly and get a temperature check at what percentage of your day is spent on sales. Put it in the comments right now. All right, let's talk about this. So what is the percentage of your day that is spent on sales? Now, what is sales? I know when I first started, I'm like, man, like, I don't even know what this is. Like, the skill set— everybody tells me you sell, sell, sell. What does that even mean? This means sending personal property upsells on each visit. So you're out there to mow, you're out there doing weed control, you're doing an estimate. Can we upsell the customer into an additional service? Just because we're there for mowing, can we upsell them on mulch? Do they need mulch? Do they need bushes trimmed? Do they need weeds pulled in their beds? Cool, we'll send them a text while we're on the property and say, hey, Mrs. Jones, we were there today to service your lawn for mowing, but we noticed you need some mulch installed. If you'd like a quote, we can get you a free quote, let us know. Second thing, are we doing door hangers on every single visit? 8-round, that's 2 to the right, 2 to the left, 4 across the street? That's a total of 8 surrounding homes from the location of your house that you're servicing. Are we calling pending estimates every single day? The most freshest 30 new estimates that we sent out, not just you but also the office. The office, while you're out mowing and doing weed control and doing those services, the office is taking inbound sales calls and sending people mowing and weed control quotes. When you get back from your day, are you spending an hour of uninterrupted time sitting down and calling your pending estimates, the 30 newest ones. The first 72 hours is crucial. I highly recommend calling them every single day in the first 72 hours. It will increase your close ratio and you will make more money. Doing drive-bys. These are going out to the actual customer's property that we can't give a quote or a price over the phone, that we have to go visually see the scope of work. How long are the bushes? How much grass and weeds are in the beds? How many bags of mulch are we gonna need? This is stuff that we can't quote necessarily right over the phone. Now we schedule drive-by estimates. This is all part of your percentage of your day that includes sales. Talking to neighbors, doing Facebook posts in front of the truck, taking a picture of you in front of the truck, posting it on Facebook groups. Closing leads, calling leads that are in your CRM. Hey, Mrs. Jones, saw that you called us last year. Wanted to let you know I've got a few mowing spots left on our schedule this year. Wanted to see if you wanted an estimate for that. This is all-encompassing sales. So let me ask you again, by now you put that in the comments below. How much of your 8-hour day are you spending on sales? If we know that sales is the highest leverage task that offers the greatest return on your time, what percentage of your day should be spent selling? Well, the goal that we train and teach our GMs is 50%. That is in a 8-hour day, 4 hours is spent doing sales. If what you put in the comments below earlier in this video is not at 50%, you have room for growth. The task that you are doing right now each day is not getting you closer to your goal. It is busy work, dispatching routes, doing equipment maintenance, oil changes, taking equipment to the repair shop, organizing the shelving unit, sharpening mower blades, cleaning your truck. None of that makes more revenue. For the business. It is busy work, still important, still needs to get done, but it should not be taking priority over what actually moves your business and department forward, which is sales. Nothing less than 25% of your day should be spent on sales. If you found yourself answering the question earlier, that, that means in an 8-hour day you're not spending at least 2 hours focusing on sales. You are not prioritizing your day in an effective time management approach. What's going to happen? Your personal goals that you have and your business goals that you have are only being delayed. I see this time and time again. New GM comes in, they focus on all the busywork, and what happens is they're just prolonging the time it's going to take everybody to hit their goals. If we focus and prioritize on the things that actually matter, you will get more stuff done in a day. I'll give you an example. I don't have a cup here, but if you can envision a cup, a glass cup right here, and you had large big rocks and then you had a ton of sand. What happens that most people do that don't understand and prioritize properly, because we only— we all only have 24 hours in a day. Trust me, if anybody's busy, guys, I am very busy as well. You guys are busy, business owners are busy, I am busy too. I run a lot of things, I've got a YouTube channel, I own multiple businesses. I am required to focus my 24-hour day on the large rocks. What most people do is they have their glass cup, okay, glass cup, and they pour sand of all the busy work scheduling, dispatching, organizing, talking to the crews. And they fill it up halfway, half of their day, almost 3/4 of the day with sand. And then the stuff that actually matters, which is the highest leverage tasks, which is sales and hiring that actually move the business forward and training, those big rocks, now you start to fit them in your day and you don't have any room. And so they don't get done and it gets pushed off. And what happens is, again, you're just delaying everything. You're not— in fact, sometimes you might be going backwards. I've seen it go backwards too, where you're losing customers and the numbers aren't improving. They're, they're, they're depleting. So instead, we have to reframe the framework and the brain set, right? Take that glass, just like I— okay, very, very busy person. I have to focus on what is most important. The way that you do that, you have a list of 25 things to do. If you could only do one thing on that list, one thing today, and the other 24 do not get done, what is the one thing that will move your department forward the most? That's the question that you need to ask yourself. That is that big rock that you put in first. Then you go, okay, the 24 list that I I have now, what is the one thing that if I only did this one thing and the other 23 did not get done, it would move my department or business forward the most? That's the next rock that you put in. You do that 3 times and you figure out what the 3 most important effective things that you do that day. You put those big rocks in first. When— once you start chipping away at those big rocks and you get the first one done, you get the second one done, you've got a little bit of margin in your Schedule now to where you get a little bit of downtime. You got 30 minutes here, 30 minutes here. Now you start to focus on the sand stuff. Oh, that's right. I got a dispatch for tomorrow. Boom. Oh, that's right. I gotta send that one email to that one customer. Okay, if it's sales, that might be a big rock for you. That is how, how we do that. Now, here's how to sell the right way. The first 20 seconds psychologically is the most important gateway to the customer. We're gonna write this down. First 20 seconds matter. Whether you're doing inbound, you're going door-to-door, or you're calling a pending estimate, the first 20 seconds the customer is looking for 4 specific things. Number 1 is authority. Do you sound like you know what you're doing? Do you have a clear branded greeting versus a distracted hello? Hey, thanks for calling Military Lawn Cuts. This is Will. How can I help you? This immediately signals to the customer reliability. That's number 1. Do you have the authority to talk to these customers? Not saying, um, or, uh, and having a ton of filler words, right? Number 2 is empathy. Are you actually listening to their problem or just waiting to give a price or find out which CRM they're in? When they call, can we qualify them? Is this somebody that we can actually even help? For our company, we don't do mow-only accounts. When someone calls, hey, I need mowing service, immediately first thing I ask, are you looking for a one-time mow service or more recurring service? If they say one time, I automatically disqualify them. We don't even put them in the database. If they say recurring, great. Now let me tell you about our system. We're a military company. We deliver the highest quality service. Here's how we found to do that. We pair that with our mowing and weed control service. So if you have weeds that need to be treated, I can definitely get you a quote for both. If you only want mowing services, unfortunately we're not gonna be the right company for you. Are we actually able to solve and help the problem? Number 3 is trust. Does this sound like a legitimate business that will show up when they say they will? Are we asking the right questions? This is number 4, is control. If you take the lead by asking the right questions immediately in those first 20 seconds, separating ourselves. Hey, thanks for calling Military Lawn Cuts. This is Will speaking. How can I help? Hey, I need some weed control services. Great. Hey, let me reassure you, you called the right company today. We are the ones that deliver 5-star exceptional service, and that is exactly what we specialize in. All it needs is a little bit of information, and then I can go ahead and get you an estimate here. Okay, are we taking the lead on that so that way the customer can turn their brain off and their cognitive load and feel taken care of? These are the 4 things that the customer is, is looking for. And the 4th one, when it comes to control, are we asking the right questions? Do you have the locks on your gates? Do you have any pets? We're asking these key clarifying questions to position ourselves as the authority that we know what we're saying and doing. These are the 4 psychological things to think of when you are selling. But guys, I cannot tell you enough, I see it so many times again, time and time, managers, owners, GMs, regional managers, myself included. I've made 1,000 mistakes in my time. I'm trying to give this valuable information to you guys so you don't continue to make the same mistakes. Don't focus on the busy work. Don't focus on the sand, the stuff that doesn't actually move the business forward. Sales is the number one highest leverage task in every department. If you're an owner or a manager, it is the fastest way for you to hit your goals, your personal goals. If you cultivate this skill set, and most people don't like it, most people don't like picking up the phone, most people don't— it's uncomfortable, but it's the one thing that will separate you from where you are today and where you want to go is being able to sell at a high level. Thank you guys so much for watching. Hit the like button, subscribe if you want to learn how to get to $500,000 in annual revenue.