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HVAC Masters of the Hustle
Episode #310- Chris RP1- Filling Up The Board
00:30:43
HVAC Masters of the Hustle would like to welcome Chris Badran into the Hot Seat on episode 310. On this episode Jdun dives deep with Chris on RP1 & how imortant is it to have full board. If you are having issues getting apts on the board you dont...
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- [00:01]
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- [01:03]
Jacob Moneymaker
This is H Vac Masters of the Hustle with your host, Jacob Moneymaker.
- [01:30]
Chris Baldron
Yeah, I'm a hustler Cuz I'm a hustler yeah, I'm a hustler.
- [01:37]
Jacob Moneymaker
What is up? You are listening to H Vac Masters of the Hustle podcast and here's your host, J Money Maker. And welcome to episode 310. And first off and foremost, I just want to say what is up to all the Spartans out there. I believe that we all have a Spartan in us and it is my job, my duty and my obligation to bring that beast out. Let's go. Also, this podcast is brought to you by Mel Shark. If you guys are the shark of your market, right, you guys want to take advantage and control of what you're doing. We do it at royalty and the outcome that we've gotten has been absolutely amazing. Target general areas and make sure that we also get the, the facts right, the information, the data, if it's working or not. And that's what I really like is those targeting points and the data and the information from Mel Shark. But also nuva Thermostat. Nuva Thermostat is made by the contractor for the contractor. And this is the thermostat that's going to brand your company. It's going to bring brand awareness. It's also going to retain your client as well so those competitors out there don't steal them in that pond of yours in that big old market. And I'm super excited to talk about this podcast, talking about the market, taking control of the market, filling the board as well. Because at Royalty we also use Mr. Chris Baldron with RP1. And I'm super excited to have you here, brother, because what you've been doing with Us the last year, you know, not being able to have a real big database, but we're still getting our foot in the door to create opportunity. So a special welcome to the hot seat, brother. I'm super excited to have you a part of it.
- [03:38]
Chris Baldron
Thanks for having me on, Jason. I mean, this is a pretty cool feeling. I don't know if I ever shared this with you, but the first like, self help podcast I ever started listening to back in the day, and my roommate also used to be a comfort advisor at the same company I worked at, was like, I remember my girlfriend lived like four blocks away in the same city. And he was like, yeah, like, if you just want to listen and like learn some extra stuff after work, this is a great podcast. And sure shit, it was your podcast. And I remember just throwing in my AirPods and just walking up the street and every time I'd walk over to my girlfriend's house, I was listening to this podcast. And now like five, six years later, we're buddies and I'm on today, so it's such a surreal feeling. But thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.
- [04:24]
Jacob Moneymaker
Yeah, man. No, that's super cool. And just also watch your growth in your journey within being in the trades, you know, because you haven't been in the H vac space for that long, but the, the big splash that you've been making of helping contractors across the nation has been a really, really massive outcome. And that's kind of what I also wanted to talk about was, you know, what you've been able to do here at Royalty as well is get opportunity and our foot in the door. So kind of talk real quick about what RP1 does.
- [04:58]
Chris Baldron
Sure. I mean, I mean, the elevator pitch is we really do business texting, so SMS marketing and email marketing. We're really, really, really specialized in the trades. So our primary three trades are going to be H vac, plumbing and electrical. We really don't branch out too much outside of that. Obviously we get the calls from, you know, mortgages companies, insurance companies, and the simple answer is we just don't really know how to help those companies as well as we can help a contractor. So the concept here is being in the home service space is expensive. Right. And it's just getting more and more expensive as these PE groups kind of join in and, and bid up these leads. If you have 2,000 or 3,000 or 5,000 people in your database, the number one concept of RP1 is increasing the lifetime value of every single customer in your database. Imagine if you can go through and stick with that customer long enough to sell them your, your premium package, which a lot of times is a full system with a duct replacement or a re pipe or a water heater. And that's really what we do is we maximize what you guys are already doing with all your other lead channels and keeping you with the customer and keeping you top of mind through that journey. The best way that we do that is we, we really market for service type calls. Like we build value, we make it educational and there's a trade off with the customer. And, and what that typically looks like is hey, you know, you take our next spot on the call board in exchange for a small discount. Right. And we don't undercut the market. But what we want to do is we want to make sure that we're giving a competitive offer to your customers. So, so they're not kind of drifting and looking in other places for deals. I would say that there is some sort of seasonality with it. I mean this stuff works best right before the season, right when people are looking for service. And if you have even a thousand people in your database, we want to make sure that we're with that whole 1,000 people for that season while they're getting service. And a lot of times it turns into other stuff. So that's kind of the main.
- [07:07]
Jacob Moneymaker
As a business owner, you know what we want is a full board, right? And we're telling the dispatch three calls, three calls, three calls, three, four calls. Right? But no more than that. But that, that's what the, that's what our ultimate goal is, right? Is fill the board. Fill the board. Fill the board. And you all are another part of the company as a team that helps.
- [07:30]
Chris Baldron
Fill the board 100%. Yeah, we, like I said, we go through and we re engage those customers in the database and we do it by criteria that we know is going to drive a high average ticket. So like one of the cool things, and back in the day when we started this in like 21, 22, this was all manual, right. We would go through the whole database, export it onto an Excel sheet and sort through one by one. And we're deleting manually the people who we don't want to see. But now with technology we're able to automate all of that. Right? We can pick a criteria of customers that we want to see. A lot of times in the H Vac space it's going to be non club members with older systems that maybe people we haven't seen in six months. Plus or 12 months plus. And we can get you and sell something and get you back in front of those customers really, really fast. Because text message is probably the most cost effective and the fastest way to fill your board. I mean, it's got a.
- [08:28]
Jacob Moneymaker
And everyone looks at their phone 100%. Everyone has a phone.
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Chris Baldron
That's right.
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Jacob Moneymaker
Everyone's on their phone.
- [08:35]
Chris Baldron
Absolutely. I mean, I mean, yeah, it's. It's getting pretty bad. What the screen time is, These screen time reports on Sundays.
- [08:43]
Jacob Moneymaker
But what is your screen time of day?
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Chris Baldron
Oh, dude, it's bad. Like at least five, six hours. You know.
- [08:51]
Jacob Moneymaker
Five or six hours.
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Chris Baldron
Five or six hours. I mean, a lot of that is.
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Jacob Moneymaker
How do you look it up on your phone?
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Chris Baldron
It gives you a report on Sundays.
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Jacob Moneymaker
You can enable it.
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Chris Baldron
Yeah. It'll tell you your average screen time. But I mean, that's just where society is going. We do so much stuff from our phones now. Yeah. It really has turned into the best way to communicate with your customer. And not to mention how cost effective it is too. I mean, we also own a call center where we sit there and we bang the phones all day, and each person's making 200 outbound calls a day. I mean, that takes a good rep. Eight hours. Right. But now. And skills. And skills. Not only that, I mean, they got to be good with the rejection. I mean, it's basically like their head on the wall.
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Jacob Moneymaker
Oh, it's the same over and over.
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Chris Baldron
Yeah. And that also creates a lot of turn. But now with technology, I mean, we can talk to 200 people in the first or 500 people, or however many people you want to talk to in the first couple of minutes of each day. And that's what's driving the call board to get filled up so fast and so efficiently.
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Jacob Moneymaker
Chris, what's new with RP1?
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Chris Baldron
Dude, we've been working on a lot. We've been working on a lot. I would say, like, when you hear the chatter on the Internet, I think that we're really most known for, like, contractors get really, really excited about a full call board. Right. And for the first few years of this, that's exactly what we would be known for. Like, when we would get the call, we would just say, hey, we've tried everything. It's not hitting. We know you can fill the call board. So I want to see a demo. And that was kind of like the version one of it. But as the product evolved, we started looking at all the other stages of when a customer comes into a home service business. Right. So there's the top of funnel, right before they even get to know you. There's the re engaging the client. There's the asking for the Google reviews, There's the rehash of the. If the technician doesn't close it out on the spot. And it slowly evolved into not just filling the call board, but, you know, and when you go into a company, Jason, I'm sure that you're probably saying the same things, but we need to enhance every level of the business 5 to 15%. And that's where these contractors are seeing the biggest difference. So that's what we started doing. A lot of. A lot of contractors that came through our funnel because we run ads just like you guys. The top of funnel. As soon as we get your guys's information, we stay with you until we book the appointment. Right? Appointment reminders, getting you guys in the door when you're showing interest in our product. And that's kind of the same stuff that we do for contractors, too. So wherever you guys are spending money on marketing, whether it's Yelp or Angie's or Facebook or Google, we now have that for the. For the contractors as well. Now, once they come in the funnel, we got to get them booked. We're also using RP1 for that, too. Once the technicians go out, we're getting a good Google review. Right. We're selling the club memberships, too. So a lot of contractors, we realized, had a really, really good process of selling a club membership. Right. But what they didn't have, a lot of them, was keeping them sold. So most guys are selling a yearly plan, and what would happen is it was just this open door on both ends. They would come in for 12 months, they would get sold the agreement, and on 13th month, they were leaving right out the back door. So that's an enhancement we made to RP1 2, automatically reselling these club memberships. Ms. Ciniban at calls is another big one, too, especially during summer when it gets really, really hot and there's just a lot of calls coming in. All those calls are money calls. They're diagnostics, they're estimates. So missing one of those can be a really, really big deal. That's a new enhancement we made to RP1 and then one of my favorites on the rehash. And this kind of took us some time to make. We're actually on our third reiteration of rehash already. But when a technician goes out and leaves an estimate, I mean, what would you say? The best technicians are closing on the spot. Maybe 40%, 45% on something like a no charge estimate.
- [12:55]
Jacob Moneymaker
I'd say your average.
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Chris Baldron
Yeah. Okay, so like, I mean that's still like 50 of those tickets are going unclose on the first touch.
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Jacob Moneymaker
Absolutely.
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Chris Baldron
And what we do now is we re engage those customers automatically through automations. And the coolest new version that we have of Rehash is that we're actually getting the technicians on a mobile Device app for RP1 either on their work phone or their work tablet. And what's going on is AI goes in and it finds the estimate that that technician left and, and it assigns it to that guy. Because our first version with the automations was going back to the office and what we realized was the CSR in the office is probably not the best person to close out this ticket. They didn't spend the time in the home like with that, like that Comfort Advisor did. So the newest version of it connects the Comfort Advisor with the client who's asking the questions either about, you know, the replacement or the price. So there's been a lot of new enhancements that we've made over the last year and we're really excited to now, I feel like, offer a full suite of automations that can increase business on every level. And that's where contractors are seeing the biggest difference.
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Jacob Moneymaker
I love it. What do you feel like makes RP1 different than all the other ones out there?
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Chris Baldron
That's a good question. You know, it comes down to I guess, like where this thing all started from. And I think for me, I realized that this problem of not being full, you know, being really, really busy in summer and really, really being busy in winter, but having this lull and kind of spring and fall depending on where you are in the US And I mentioned I had a roommate, a buddy who had been a Comfort Advisor for a really long time. And we'd always talk about it, right? He'd always say like, oh yeah, you know, I'm making X amount of money a year, but 90% of it comes in summer and the rest of the little of it comes in winter. And I was like, wait a minute, you're already making so much money in half the year. What if we could just make that much money 12 months out of the year, what would your income be then? And that's kind of how this whole thing started. And that was like my mission. When I started the call center I was like, I want contractors to be able to make this kind of money 12 months out of the year. So when it comes to Us, I think the foundation of like coming from the space and being a part of the space and just kind of building it for those reasons really sets us apart. Because a lot of the new features that we've made, especially over the last year, we're not a tech company that went out and just raised money and decided that hey, contractors are our golden ticket. We're going to target these guys because that's, that's our ideal customer. We made all these solutions for us to solve our own problems and then realize that it's going to help everyone else. So that's the first and foremost. I think a lot of, a lot of automation companies, they really focus on the same things, but it's how the things get done that really makes the biggest difference. Like the rehash for example. I think a lot of companies are still focusing on the fact that there's a follow up process. But who that follow up process is going to made such a big difference for us internally. Just getting the comfort, the right people connected with the customers at the right time.
- [16:16]
Jacob Moneymaker
No, I agree with that 100%. You know, one thing also that's important too is at royalty when we started, right, you have a portal and you got outbounding text messages that are going out. So you gotta also have the office staff to make sure that when these text messages are going out that when people are responding, we gotta respond quick. And I think that was something that you taught me at first was we gotta respond within. I think you said 60 seconds.
- [16:54]
Chris Baldron
Yeah. Speed to lead is really important and the concept is really from the top of funnel. I mean there's a whole bunch of big organizations, Harvard, Yelp, Zillow, I mean they all did studies on this stuff and they spent a lot of money doing it. And they realize that after a minute your chances of booking that appointment drastically decrease. Right. So the percentage, I, I think it's 90% of. If you respond in, in 60 seconds, it's like 90% of people are still engaged. Right. Or like it's, it's something in the 90s.
- [17:27]
Jacob Moneymaker
Yeah.
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Chris Baldron
And then the next metric that they measure I think is at five minutes and I think already 30% of those people are already moving on or they're already shopping to it with a new contractor. Then it's really just because of the instant gratification society that we live in. Right. Things like Yelp or. I'm sorry, not Yelp, Netflix or Amazon. Right. You can go and you can watch a whole season in one day if you want. Sometimes you order Something on Amazon, it could be here in the same day. Right. So people are now trained to want what they want and get what they want right now. So it's so, so important to, when the customer is shopping, play into that. Right. Be that person. I do know that 78% of people typically work with the first person that responds and that's why speed delete is so important.
- [18:12]
Jacob Moneymaker
Now talk about your portal because your portal is very user friendly. Yeah, I am not the best technology savage person out there, you know, and a lot of office personnel I would say aren't the best at technology. And we always want things to be user friendly anyways.
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Chris Baldron
Right, yeah.
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Jacob Moneymaker
So talk about your portal and how you all set it up to be user friendly.
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Chris Baldron
Yeah, yeah, that's a, that's a, that was a big one for us. So when we first started the call center before we built like the SaaS product, obviously we were, we were customers, right. We were customers of another product and we were spending a lot, a lot of money on, on this kind of stuff and we realized that it was difficult to use. Right. And that was the biggest reason why we decided to go out and build something for us internally that we ended up licensing out later on. But, and I, and I hate to say this but it's the truth. These softwares are typically being run by, when you think about it, the lowest paid person in your organization. And if you have to go in and spend a bunch of time and money to get them sufficient on the product. Yes, I mean it's still going to help a little bit but it cuts into that margin and it cuts into what automations can really do. So when we went out and redesigned our product, we made it so simple that anyone in the organization can use it. And I know we even have like this is a crazy story. We work with some companies nationwide that are so big even their call centers are in other countries. And we actually had VAs one time we got a referral from a VA that worked at another company. There was two friends and they both worked in home services and they both did the same thing but for different companies. And one VA told the other VA about our product and they told their manager and it went all the way up to the top. And they reached out to us because they said, oh, it's so much easier to use than what we use now. And now they're a client of ours. So ease of use is a really, really big thing because it's so, so important. The other thing is implementation. And one thing that we're I would say we really pride ourselves on is getting something implemented in a business. So there's a lot of softwares out there and like you hear about this stuff a lot like on our, on our end, on like a tech side, it's something like HubSpot. Sometimes I hear about this, something like Service Titan. Right. It's such a good product and it can do so many things, but a lot of people don't take the time to implement it fully or build it out fully and they don't get the full benefit, which is a common thing in the tech sector. So what we do when a client signs up with RP1 is we actually come in and just like we did for you Jason, we come in and we build out all the automations that are possible for you on the first day. And then the second thing that we do is we schedule time with your entire staff so we train them. So implementation is really, really easy for the business owners because when you're sitting in a demo with us, we don't expect to be a professional after a 45 minute demo. Right. And it's only going to do you good if your staff is using it. So we come in and we train your whole staff. Additionally I mentioned that we get the technicians on the app. We actually schedule another meeting with your technicians, usually early in the morning before they dispatch. So we're not cutting into your call board and we train them on it and we get them done on it too. So the implementation is a really big reason why we've been so successful over the last year and a half because the product is fairly new. That's when we launched it.
- [21:45]
Jacob Moneymaker
Is there a certain size company that you all are looking for or like that they would benefit from or is it kind of just.
- [21:54]
Chris Baldron
We really have all ranges of clients on it. I mean the biggest thing is our software is deeply integrated with like Service Titan and Housecall Pro. You can still use the product with other CRMs, but those contractors we have direct API access to and it really helps us automate a lot more than these other FSMs. So I would say that's really the, the criteria that we're looking for someone on housecall Pro or Service tie in, but the concept is still the same for any contractor on any fsm. The outreach and talking to so many people is what gets the call board full. That's a good question though.
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Jacob Moneymaker
Now one thing I wanted to talk about is, you know, not all good text message responses are good.
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Chris Baldron
No, no, no.
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Jacob Moneymaker
So I wanted to I wanted to kind of just ask and make it a little entertaining. Real quick, what are some crazy text messages that you've heard? Yeah, companies are seen.
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Chris Baldron
Dude, I've seen everything. I've seen, I've seen everything. When you're sending out that many messages, like some people, like, you know, there's, there's some people are funny, right? So I've seen all sorts of crazy stuff. And yeah, you're right, not every text message is good. But the most, the most part they are good. But I've seen crazy stuff. Can we cuss on this podcast?
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Jacob Moneymaker
Absolutely.
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Chris Baldron
I've heard, I've seen Go yourself. Oh yeah, Jump off a bridge, right?
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Jacob Moneymaker
Like I'm gonna kill you, kill you.
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Chris Baldron
And that kind of stuff happens, Right? But what we're doing too is like you're actually learning and seeing like who is still part of your database. I would say the most common way that like, that kind of stuff happens is when contractors have this big database and they're really confident and they go, yeah, we've been in business for five, 10 years. You know, we have all these people on the database, but part of this is actually cleansing that. Right? So when you reach out to 5,000, 10,000 people, but you haven't done a good job of staying in touch with them over the years, you're going to find out really quickly not everyone is still your customer. Right. And that's where it typically comes from. You know the funny thing, the other crazy thing that you actually learn about your business too, on the rehash side is I've also seen crazy stuff like that when we automatically follow up with customers. And I've seen crazy stuff too, like, I can't believe you send that technician out here. He smelled like beer and cigarettes. He was drunk. So I've seen it on both ends, on both on the outreach and people you're actually still doing business with. And you actually learn a lot about your company when you start automating stuff like this too. Because, I mean, techs have gotten fired over responses. That stuff has come back through RP1.
- [24:46]
Jacob Moneymaker
Now when we talk about RP1s for all size companies, right? There might be some companies right now that are starting to gear up for summer that might need a little bit of help to get more volume on the schedule for themselves. How would they be able to reach out to you, Chris?
- [25:07]
Chris Baldron
Yeah, so I mean, we have our website. It's, it's getting redone now, so it'll be look a little different in a week or two here, but it's www.rp1ai. You can come in. We have a bunch of professionals that really understand and love the product. They'll then get you a demo. And the cool thing about this too is I didn't mention this earlier but all of our account managers, because we're open 12 hours a day, we're open 8am Eastern to 8pm Eastern Monday through Friday. But you will be assigned a dedicated account manager that is responsible for training your staff and building out all these automations for you if you decide it's a good fit. A really cool thing about us is all of those account managers have actually been promoted from within, from our call center. So at one point in time, over the years they were the actual person doing the outbounding and doing the work and getting a contractor's call board full. So when they come in they're really, really knowledgeable and they've also been here through every part of every season. So when we're setting these kinds of things up, a lot of times they'll have recommendations and like they're really smart about like checking the market and seeing what's a competitive offer. And they do all that with you too. And it's not always the same, it's not the same 12 months out of the year. But there is a message or there is a, a template that we know works basically in every single market every time of the year.
- [26:33]
Jacob Moneymaker
I love it. So you're capitalizing, you have already done the research for them?
- [26:37]
Chris Baldron
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. And that's a big selling point for us too. It's, it's if you don't have a huge database, the A B testing or the throwing the spaghetti at the wall can cost you a lot of customers too. And like our opt out rate across the platform is a true testament to that. So like when you work with the mobile carriers like Verizon, AT&T T Mobile, like they, they're real strict, right. And you really start having problems when you exceed a 3% opt out rate. So we're in close contact with representatives from all those companies and they monitor us as a whole. Not just one company but as an entire group. So that's what our score is. And we have a, I mean I don't think we've ever, I mean there was one time where we just barely touched the 3% opt out rate and we kind of got those flags and we said we got to go in and re optimize the campaigns and, and so yeah, the testing is done for you guys. You can rest assured that if you come in and you give it a shot, you will have the most qualified pre, pre approved templates from every single region in the US and Canada too.
- [27:44]
Jacob Moneymaker
And I'm telling you all, I deal with Chris and his team and Chris is always the front face for me, the guy that I talk to and interact with and he's always been upfront, honest and very active. And when I say active, responsive, yeah, that's what you look for in a team to back you up. And like I said, using them at royalty. The last year we actually have our one year anniversary June 1st. June 1st man. One year business. But you know, they've been helping us across the board. Like I said, get opportunity, get our foot in the door. Like I said, we are a new established company and our goal and our mission is to, to create opportunity and to get as much doors as we can and to not go in tunnel vision but to look at the full envelope, to create the best opportunity to get the best solution right and the best experience and you guys help with that. So I just want to say thank you for the more opportunities of getting us in the door, helping us grow. And I recommend anyone that's out there that's having issues filling up their board, give Chris a reach. Chris, I got business owners on this podcast. I got, you know, Comfort advisors, installers, CSRs, dispatchers, you know, managers, service technicians. What would you like for them to get out of this episode of H Vac Masters of the Hustle.
- [29:17]
Chris Baldron
Just know that like automations is becoming a really big thing, especially with like the introduction of AI has blown up over the last couple of years. You guys just got to understand that there's so many things that automations can do in a home service business that, and, and we're not trying to replace your staff, right? We're not saying, you know, let's automate everything and fire everyone. Our biggest takeaway from this is we want to enhance what you're doing. We want to reduce the turnover by eliminating these tedious tasks. So don't be scared of technology, don't be scared of automations. They are designed to help you and, and that's really what we do on, on a demo, is we just fully transparently showcase and show probably a contractor that's in your trade, maybe sometimes in your area and we just show you what we've done for them. So I mean, if you're hesitant or you don't like technology, or you think your customers don't like technology, come and take a look at it, right? And. And don't knock it until you try it, because it's been a really, really powerful tool for a lot of contractors nationwide to help with that growth.
- [30:23]
Jacob Moneymaker
Absolutely love it, y' all. Until next time, y' all, Again, this podcast is brought to you by mail. Shark and Nouveau Thermostat. Late. Have a great summer, y' all. Crush it.
- [30:35]
Chris Baldron
Because I'm a hustler.