← Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
Owned and Operated - A Plumbing, Electrical, and HVAC Business Growth Podcast
#171 - Why Your Sales Pipeline Is Failing—Hatch's Chief Revenue Officer 'Tim Geisenheimer' Explains the Mistakes Costing You Millions
00:40:03
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- [00:00]
Tim Geisenheimer
We have a really exciting product launch coming up that's going to be, I think, pretty big game changer for the industry. They could set 100 demos, but if it's only one qualified opportunity, that's no good, right? Having really buttoned up process, having the right people in place and the right teams and the team structure in place, those will never go out of style.
- [00:26]
John
Earlier this year we started an outbounding campaign and we really didn't know where to begin. So we were using dialing on the phones, we were sending text messages, we were trying emails, tried a couple different softwares and ultimately we ended up with Hatch. Hatch has been an awesome partner for us. We started with them about five or six months ago and we've just continued to ramp. Every month we add three or four more automations. And my personal favorite thing about working with Hatch is Hatch comes out of the box ready to go. With Hatch you get automated multi touch outreach across text, voicemail, drop, email and a ton more. So every single lead that you have gets worked, every invoice that you leave gets retouched and rehashed and it's freaking awesome. Check out usehatchapp.com OAO. Welcome back to Owned and Operated. Today on the show with me I have Tim Geisenheimer from Hatch. Welcome to the show.
- [01:18]
Tim Geisenheimer
Thanks for having me. Appreciate it John. Looking forward to it.
- [01:21]
John
Yeah, this will be fun. If anyone's been listening, aside from the fact that Hatch has been an awesome sponsor, they're like one of my current favorite like tech stack tools because they just help us make a ton of money. So we're excited to have Tim on here and I get to pick Tim's brain on a couple things. So I'm excited to do this. This will be fun.
- [01:40]
Tim Geisenheimer
Well, I appreciate the support. We've really enjoyed working with you and obviously you're using our product as well, which is phenomenal. So yeah, happy to share more, learn more from you on this, on this conversation and hopefully we have a good one.
- [01:53]
John
So I'd love it if you just gave us a little bit of background into yourself. What were you doing pre Hatch? What do you do at Hatch? Like Tim, what do you actually do here?
- [02:02]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah, happy to. So, so I've spent my whole career, you know, running sales teams at software companies. So you know, I've been doing that for, for a while now. I, I did a short stint as an entrepreneur actually myself. So right before I joined Hatch I'd actually started a company and was working on building tools for, for sales teams actually at that company. We ended up selling the the business and I was looking for my next adventure and I got introduced to the founders of Hatch and was really excited about what they were working on, what they were building, so decided to jump in full time there. So I do have some experience starting a business, being an entrepreneur and then I have, you know, here day to day responsible for building our sales team and working with great customers like you.
- [02:47]
John
I don't know how to build a software sales team. Sure, it's confession. I'm glad I got that off my chest pretty early on. Could you like walk me through what that even looks like? Because I really feel like there's probably a lot of similar. It's, you know, We've got a B2B sales component. How does this work?
- [03:02]
Tim Geisenheimer
No, I think as we were talking about a minute ago and I think we're going to dive into it, I feel like there's a ton of similarities between software and home services. Actually it's an under discussed topic, but I'm happy to discuss it. So effectively what we do on the sales side is we try and identify companies that we think are a good fit for our product that have a problem that we can help solve. It's sort of as simple as that. And I would imagine, I'd love to hear your perspective, but there's similarities in home services too, right? People have a problem that you can solve and you can solve really well. There's maybe some competition, some other people that could help solve that. You're trying to make sure you're getting in front of them before maybe some other folks do and you're hopefully doing a great job solving their problems. So if they ever have that problem again, you're able to come back, they're going to come back to you and think of you first. And so same idea for us as far as building the sales team we really work with. Try and look for people who are able to understand and have empathy for our customers to have conversations about those problems that they're having and then be good communicators and be able to explain how we can help solve them.
- [04:09]
John
Well, this is coming to mind in a few areas for me for how it ties into our industry. I was just talking with Kelly Roberts and she's an awesome entrepreneur down in Dallas Fort Worth and she's the CEO of Moss Heating and Cooling. They've actually been able to scale like kind of crazy fast. It's like $15 million in a couple years and all organic, which is nuts. A big new Construction component. But we were talking about like, hey, how do you, how do you think about building out the sales function for, for what you're doing? And I really do feel like it's very similar to what you guys are doing where it's like, okay, we build this outreach campaign, we build bring on SDRs or BDRs or something to go contact our ideal client. And we're trying to do the same thing like tying it to us. We have a restoration business which is almost all B2B. So the way that works is we're going to go sometimes knock on doors with other plumbing companies, we're going to talk to insurance companies and we have to identify them. And it's just such a different process than me going and like buying a lead off Google.
- [05:19]
Tim Geisenheimer
No, exactly right. And I would say the similarities there just to maybe draw more tactical details for software. So one of the things that we do is that we rely heavily on data to try and understand, you know, who are the right folks to buy our product. Why do we think they're the right people? What data sources can we gather to try and pinpoint. Hey, Wilson. Companies is at this level of revenue and they have this many CSRs and they have, they're maybe spending this much on marketing across these different channels. We're able to gather some of that data to help us much more finely target and pinpoint the people that we think are the best fit for Hatch. And then that message from our SDR, from our sales team is going to be much more likely to receive positively than if we're going after the wrong people. So I'd imagine in that business that you're starting to build same idea. If you're able to find people that you think are really good fit for that restoration business, then if you, you put someone to go, go reach out to them, it's going to be better fit than, you know, if it's just a random list of people that you kind of got from, from somewhere. So. So that'd be maybe a recommendation to you. What's. What are some of the data points you can find that would indicate someone's, you know, really going to need your service and then try to identify that data and then go find it.
- [06:38]
John
Yeah, like, how does that work for you guys? Like who, who's a, who's a good example of like, who you would look for?
- [06:44]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah. So I kind of gave you some examples and I'll go down to a few more. So we look at things like what's the size of the business and that can be a revenue estimate or total employees. I think Service Titan, for example, looks at, you know, how many trucks do you have? How many vans? Right? And so famously they're, they're kind of, they have at their conference pantheon, they'll hand out those pins where they'll say how many you got? 80 trucks or whatever it is. So that's one of the ways they look at it. But same, same idea for us. You know, are you doing $30 million in revenue that's going to be a better fit for us than someone doing three or four. And then we look at things like do you have a contact center team? Are you, are you doing some of the things like. Or inside sales team? Are you doing kind of that rehash component? If you do those are kind of checkboxes for us. And then you know, finally there's the component of are you a multi location business? You know, do you have kind of a larger operation where you're starting to expand, you know, regionally or even, you know, in rare cases nationally? That would be a really, you know, telltale sign for us. And so there's more than just that. But those are some of the good signs for us that hey, this business is probably going to be a better fit, you know, for Hatch versus a business that might be a bit smaller.
- [07:59]
John
Yeah. When you're going to hire, I'm trying to like take in so I can go build a B2B sales team.
- [08:05]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah, yeah, please.
- [08:06]
John
Like if I'm going to Go build a B2B sales team tomorrow in my restaurant, Brasia business or grease traps would be another thing that we do that, that might apply here. Like who am I looking for? And like how do you even set the measurements? Like how many calls day or appointments a day or like how do you set that?
- [08:21]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah, so I think there's, there's two roles that are typically in software sales and, and you mentioned, you know, str bdr and it'd be curious to hear how you're thinking about it for, for what you're planning to do. But the two primary roles that can get more specialized. But let's just for sake of simplicity, it's that sales development rep which is kind of the most junior person and they're responsible for the cold call in the cold email and that sort of thing. Typically the way they're paid is they'll have some level of a, you know, a base salary, but then they'll have a big component which is based on a few different metrics. Different companies do it different ways, but one of the key ones would be just how many demos have you set? So have you. You're going for the grease trap business. How many like grease trap demos have you set? You know, this month that we do monthly. You know, you could do different timelines, but that's typically how you do it. And then you kind of pay per demo. Some companies will do it where they'll look a little bit lower down. And you know, you might call the pipeline so. Or the funnel. So it's not just about the demo set because maybe you could set a lot of bad demos. So let's actually pay on what we call a qualified opportunity. So someone you've actually had a phone call, you did the demo set, you talk to the person like, yeah, we need the grease trap. Actually. Like, you know, we, you know, we don't have that and that's something we need. And then that would be qualified. And so then instead you could actually pay on the qualified opportunities produced. That's how we do it here. So we have. I've seen companies do demo set and we do it actually on the opportunity side. So we really want that team to. They could set 100 demos, but if it's only one qualified opportunity, that's no good. Right. They're not gonna be doing their job. We want them focused on, on finding kind of great people for us to work with that have the problem that we help solve and that we can uniquely solve. And so I'd recommend that for, for you that, that junior role, maybe the kind of outbound role would be focused on that. If you want to keep things simple, you can have that role also. Go into the field and do the meetings and, and actually sell.
- [10:24]
John
Do the sale. Yeah, yeah.
- [10:26]
Tim Geisenheimer
What we do is we do have it separated. So we have that role that's kind of setting the meetings and helping to get those qualified opportunities. And then we have the more senior sales team. They're doing kind of the demos, they're talking about the problems they're understanding through discovery. You know, what, what exists today, what are you doing about sales, follow up or whatever it might be. And then, you know, they're compensated on just a commission on the revenue they produce. So it's a. Often a direct percentage. You know, you get a kind of a piece of, you know, every sale that you bring in. And so I think that's pretty common for, for home services too. Right. Oftentimes you'll see the rehash team, they're getting paid, you know, even sometimes on strict commission. Basis, but fairly common there. So those are the two roles in software. I think there's a lot of kind of overlap into your world too, but.
- [11:15]
John
Yeah, yeah, like ours is. So we have, we're kind of different in that we have this outside sales team, but for homeowners and the way that looks is like door to door canvassers and an events team. And ours is set up really pretty similar to this, which is kind of funny. So I think lead setters is what we call them because it's, you know, we're going to go. Or canvassers, but we're going to go knock on the door. We're going to try to set an appointment and then they get paid. Yeah. Per, per appointment. Now there are some companies. Sorry. And the appointment is run by a salesperson we're finding. And I'm sure you guys are. Are too. But it is complicated to set a good lead from like scratch. Like really, really complicated. Like, we have, we're maybe 10 months into this and we're just starting to like, set good leads. I mean, we're setting hundreds of leads a month. But like, are they good leads? Like, did we set them up right? Did we set good. Like what ha. What communication happened between setting that lead and like sitting for. We call it the demo too. Sitting for the demo. And like, did we talk about what we were going to do? It's been really interesting. And then Cancel Rate, I talked about that on Twitter the other day. I did a post and it was like, hey, we're eight months into this if we're finally getting ROI on our, on our events team. And Cancel Rate has been like the nut to crack.
- [12:45]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah. And by the way, these, these things can happen kind of in, in our business too. And, and I would say, you know, I actually, I should have given you a call, John. I was in Cleveland last week, so I'm sorry I missed you. I know one job. It was, it was in and out. It was in and out. But I met with a home improvement company there and so was it premiere? It was.
- [13:08]
John
You know, they're. Well, like barely. I, I follow them along on LinkedIn. They're amazing.
- [13:13]
Tim Geisenheimer
They're amazing. So I met with Vince at Premier Shout out to Vince and he walked me through some of his metrics. They have an extremely sophisticated. Yeah. Sort of way of tracking their metric metrics throughout the entire kind of funnel. Right. And so, you know, I saw them last week, so it's top of mind for me. But what I would say is they're constantly looking for how can we get gains within this pipeline, within this funnel, across all the different spots where there might be leakage or drop off. And so the canceled appointments is one that they see too. Everyone does. It's not unique to them. And so I think this is part of the process and a good, you know, maybe to, maybe to pat my own back, a good sales leader, you know, this is what they're thinking about. They're thinking about how do you tweak this, every aspect of the process to make it as streamlined as possible to make, to train the team to do a better job, to understand what objections are coming up commonly to iron those out, to make those kind of less, you know, less friction there. That's what a great sales leader will do and how you can get kind of that team to start to be more productive.
- [14:20]
John
When you're thinking about like that's that example. Sounds great. Want to talk to them even more now? To me it blends the line between sales and marketing. And like I think this whole outside sales thing does. So like you're seeing this like the cancel rate, all that stuff that is a sales function in Premiere in this case, which if the listener doesn't know Premiere is like a like kind of insanely fast growing home remodel business. I don't even, I think they started like a year or two ago and they're clipping like $3 million weeks right now.
- [14:55]
Tim Geisenheimer
They, I think this is, they put it on LinkedIn. So I don't think I'm sharing anything that's not public.
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John
Right?
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Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah, yeah, about two years ago. And they just had a. Yeah, this is on LinkedIn. So I'll share what was on LinkedIn. $10 million. Over $10 million a month.
- [15:08]
John
Insane. Just insane level of growth. It's, it's just totally unbelievable. And they're based here in Akron, Ohio.
- [15:14]
Tim Geisenheimer
That's right.
- [15:15]
John
Yeah. That's crazy. So, so you see that like capturing leakage, handling the canceled like that falls inside sales in your mind and inside their mind.
- [15:24]
Tim Geisenheimer
It's a collaboration. So certainly like on the marketing side, like if you're. Again, let's talk about the, you know, something like the Premier or home services use case. You have all these different lead channels, right. And so you know, you're trying to optimize between Google, LSA and Angie and Modernize and all these different ones and then you're looking at on a channel basis, you know, what's the quality across different metrics, where is drop off? So that's a marketing, you know, focus Right. Like you're trying to understand, you know, the cost per lead and like negotiating there and you know, so there's a lot going on there that marketing owns. But then once it gets into, let's say the contact center and that can be, you know, there's difference between the service side and the sales side, but let's just say it's the sales side, then you want to have that leader of the contact center or on the sales side. Understand? Okay. When we get leads coming in or different from different channels, how are we optimizing kind of our approach and our process to maximize things like the set rate, demo, health. Yeah. Minimize, cancel. What are the things we can do? What software can we use to make sure we're optimizing that? So that's where I think sales really comes into play. And it's a collaboration between sales and marketing.
- [16:42]
John
Always I feel like that gave me that gimme a lot of good ideas.
- [16:45]
Tim Geisenheimer
Well, I'm kicking. You're in Akron. I'm now, I'm really kicking myself now.
- [16:48]
John
Yeah, dude, I hope you feel so bad. I, I, I like live in Akron. I live like five minutes from their office and our old office is probably two minutes from where they used to be. We moved to stone.
- [17:00]
Tim Geisenheimer
We were in their office and everything. Oh man.
- [17:02]
John
Yeah, I reached out to them on LinkedIn. I really got to connect. Maybe I'll start with like, hey, come on the show. There's nothing white dudes love more than getting on a podcast. It's like the easiest in, in the world.
- [17:14]
Tim Geisenheimer
Vince is our cmo. I mean he, he's super sharp. I'm sure he'd be after this. I'll connect you guys over email, so.
- [17:21]
John
Yeah, yeah, no, that'd be, that'd be amazing. I'd love it. I'd love it. Well, yeah, that's awesome. I, it, it's been a huge area of learning for us and I think the whole, maybe, maybe not the whole industry, but you know, we, we got to kind of a decent size really just spending a ton of money on Google, LSA and like not, not loving the lead and it was almost like there was so many leads that it just didn't matter that you lost some here that you just didn't think about it. But we've really put a ton of work into like what's that speed delete process look like? What's our, how do we reduce our cancel rate? How do we increase that, that sit rate? And, and that's been across all of it. I mean we, we Started really getting the most lessons learned out of our field marketing team because that's where it was the most egregious. But then when we looked at what was happening in that team, we're like, oh, my God, this is happening in the entire rest of the business. Like, how are we continuing to rehash these leads and like, what's our process there? And the answer was there was none. And I think, like, plumbing, H vac, electric as a whole, you. You're just not used to it. Right. Like, you're used to, like, hey, I don't have hot water. We call it, like, it's like the cold lease versus hot lead problem where, like, you can get to 20 million exclusively on hot leads. But eventually you do have to figure out how to manage leads.
- [18:52]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah. And, you know, and I would say as a, as a small plug to what we do, you know, that's an area where we really help. And I think a reason why, you know, as you get to be a larger business, why there's an attraction to using a service like ours, is because all of a sudden you see that maybe organic growth piece plateau.
- [19:09]
John
But, but you're.
- [19:09]
Tim Geisenheimer
You're starting to tap out to some extent across the major markets you're in. So it's either you, you tell me if I'm wrong on this, because you're the expert, but it's either you expand markets and like, grow that way, or you start to say, hey, how are we going to do better job making kind of the. The market we're in, you know, more efficient for us and, like, not lose the leads, you know?
- [19:31]
John
Yeah.
- [19:31]
Tim Geisenheimer
Not just. Not just rely on those hot leads, but also say, hey, this. Someone was looking for something here and we didn't do anything with that. And so maybe we can do a better job following up.
- [19:41]
John
Yeah, 100%. And I think it's just totally different. Like, even the work that we've done, like, inside our call center on, like, how we think about rehash, because it starts off with like, okay, well, how are you communicating? And I'm, you know, the hatch was our solution to that. But then, like, well, okay, are you calling too? And like, how are you managing a pipeline of these leads? And it's, yeah, huge learning for us because it's just so different than what we were doing. And like, oh, your toilet's broken. We'll be there, you know, in two hours. It's just a totally different experience.
- [20:16]
Tim Geisenheimer
What. As far as LSA goes, I'm curious to hear the distribution for you. Was it predominantly the phone leads or were you also doing message leads? Where did you see the biggest bang for your buck as you scaled that up?
- [20:31]
John
I have two answers to that. Like, almost all phone leads, like, we did some message, but people really just didn't use it. And also we didn't have a great, like, response tool. So maybe other people are doing that better. I just really think, like, we were really immature there. But what has been totally out of freaking left field for us. That's why I keep talking about on LinkedIn. I probably should stop. But, like, all these lead aggregators are now an actually good lead source for us because we went through all this energy of building this rehash component, like outbound calling and outbound messaging and the speeds lead process. Like, Angie had a higher ROI than LSA in January for us, and we're like, what the hell just happened? Like, what? What just happened? Totally crazy. So, like, all that to say, like, yes, it was phone leads, but now that we've gone through this discipline, we're like, oh, my gosh, like, every lead we have is now a lot more valuable. Like, we just got a couple hundred leads from this home show we did. Premiere was in too, and, like, we have this sort of machine to put it into now, so we're pumped.
- [21:47]
Tyson
We're about eight months into using Evoca, and Evoca's been an awesome partner for us in our call center. So what Evoca does for us is they do two different things. One, they have their Coach product, and Coach has been helping us do what it says, coach our csrs every single day, it listens to every call, and uses AI technology to basically pick apart that call and tell us where we can improve. And for the last eight months, we've been consistently improving our scores, which has been awesome. The other product they have is just conventional booking, and it's an AI tool that books over the phone. A customer calls in and it either handles overflow, as in our phones are full, or it does nights and weekends for us, and a customer will call in and actually deal with an AI agent all the way through booking. And the savings inside call center has.
- [22:31]
John
Allowed us to ramp up our marketing.
- [22:33]
Tyson
To continue to grow even more. Thank you, Evoca, and thank you, Tyson, for your partnership.
- [22:37]
Tim Geisenheimer
One of the reasons why we work closely and I think they like us with. With folks like Angie and others is that, you know, we have an opportunity as a software solution to help you do a better job kind of going after, you know, the. The folks that come in and kind of raise their hand via that platform and others. And, you know, oftentimes I think folks in, you know, that own and operate home services businesses will say, oh, you know, Angie doesn't really work for us. And yeah, I think part of that is just the way they, they're kind of parceling it out to different people. Right. And that's annoying. But at the same time, if you're able to get to it quickly, you know, that's a high intent, high intent lead. And then if you go back to it, be like, oh, I was looking for something. The first person I spoke to wasn't able to do what I was looking for maybe at a price I wanted. So I'm more did. You caught me two days later. But I'm now still in the market for it and I'm willing to talk to you, so thanks for reaching back out. So it makes a ton of sense. And. But that is fascinating that it was higher ROI than.
- [23:33]
John
Oh, crazy. Yeah, totally, totally. Just because LSA sort of sets the gold standard for us anyways. I'm sure other, you know, people feel different, but it sets the gold standard for us of like, okay, this is our best roi and it has been for kind of a long time. So. Yeah, the fact. And Angie does have this reputation of just being like, shitty.
- [23:55]
Tim Geisenheimer
Listen, I think that, you know, again, we're good partners with them. So, you know, I think that reputation is often as a result, you know, it results from the way they've built their business.
- [24:08]
John
Yeah.
- [24:09]
Tim Geisenheimer
How their product operates is. It's competitive. And so you have to, as. As the, the.
- [24:15]
John
Yeah.
- [24:16]
Tim Geisenheimer
Customer of Angie, you have to kind of play by the rules a little bit.
- [24:21]
John
Yeah.
- [24:21]
Tim Geisenheimer
And it's not easy always to do that, but if you do, I think it can really work. And we've certainly seen a lot of larger energy customers that are using us. You'll be really successful with it. So.
- [24:31]
John
Yeah.
- [24:32]
Tim Geisenheimer
But I can understand the frustration just understanding how they, how that product operates.
- [24:36]
John
Yeah. And I think, I think it's mainly just like immature process. The smaller you are, you don't have the speed to lead you. You don't have this ability to do all the rehash you need to do. But, man, they had, they, they have been pumping out leads. Like, it has really been just super successful for us. So we're, we're excited about it.
- [24:54]
Tim Geisenheimer
That's great to hear.
- [24:55]
John
What are you seeing right now? Like, how's the industry feeling? Like, what are you seeing across everybody? What. How are people winning?
- [25:02]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah, I think the overall from what I've seen, and, and I know there's. There's a weather aspect to it. You know, winter has, I think, been good for the industry overall. I don't know if that's what you're seeing. I mean, there's been some weird weather.
- [25:17]
John
And us having a winter is nice. Like last February, it was 70 degrees for like a good portion of February. So we're just excited. It's in the 20s.
- [25:28]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah. Yeah. So it's cold, there's snow. You know, there's stuff going on. So I think that just as a backdrop is good. And I think, you know, what we're seeing is that there's. There's a desire for companies to continue to invest in process and invest, you know, and we're often talking to the larger businesses, but there's tremendous excitement around technology and how it can help the business. And we have a product launch. Kristen, our head of marketing, might kill me for saying this, you know, in an unsanctioned.
- [25:59]
John
Yeah, we won't tell her you here.
- [26:02]
Tim Geisenheimer
But we, we have a really exciting product launch coming up that's going to be, I think, a pretty big game changer for the industry.
- [26:08]
John
Yeah, tell me more about it.
- [26:10]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah, so she's not here, but I think this in general, the continuation of, you know, being able to leverage technology to improve operations is something that we see a ton.
- [26:24]
John
Yeah.
- [26:24]
Tim Geisenheimer
And there's just excitement, I think, in the industry about the trend continuing to go up. Like, I haven't heard much, you know, concern. I think people are pretty just bullish in general about, you know, the business and how things are going.
- [26:37]
John
I think what's been interesting and I wonder if it's market or I guess I don't know what it is. So maybe you tell me what it is because you're a little bit like deeper into some of these businesses than I am. But what I've been fascinated by is some of these businesses that are like, technology driven. I think strong leadership teams in the right markets, doing the right, you know, all resi service, that type of thing. And they have just stalled out or shrunk a little bit. Like, have you. Have you gotten any exposure to businesses like that? And like, where do you think they could be improving?
- [27:12]
Tim Geisenheimer
We have, I would say, and I don't know, you know, why this is the case, but we don't have too many examples of that in our customer base. But I have heard, well, maybe that's.
- [27:26]
John
Indicative of like, they're just not investing in the right technology. Like that could be Part of the answer.
- [27:31]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah, it could be, I would say that would be an answer that I would love.
- [27:35]
John
Self serving answer. Nice.
- [27:37]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah, yeah, I think, I think it's, there's also, I mean we see this and you know, I come from the software space. Sometimes in software there's startups that, you know, they'll maybe raise too much capital and they'll expand too quickly in terms of their operations and then as a result they'll fly, you know, too close to the sun and they'll get, they'll kind of get, get burned. Right. And so I do wonder if sometimes that, that can happen in other industries as well where you know, you, you expand a bit too quickly, you don't have a proven process or ability to win in that market or the right people kind of in places to succeed there. And as a result, you know that, that might lead you to then kind of pull back. So it's probably something like that would be my guess. You tell me because it's again, your space. But my understanding is that it's really hard to win in some of these competitive markets. The tier one, two and even three markets like there are great operators, either independent operators such as yourselves or, or private equity backed platform. So to, to win you gotta, you gotta have your, your game face on. Is that, is that fair to say?
- [28:46]
John
Yeah, I mean you gotta show up to fight 100. Yeah. And I think, yeah, I suspect, I suspect you're right. I mean maybe it is like a. Over investment or you know, something that, that Brandon and I, my, my president, we talk about a lot is what we call the stall. So it, it, there seems to be this moment and maybe it's over expansion. You know, it's, it's us looking into other people's businesses and just trying to figure out what happened, why the stall. And, and what's been interesting is over the past couple months I just see it more and more and more. So I'm like, okay, you've got a, you've got a ton of these customers, like you're dealing with them. Are you seeing it too? But I, I mean I can think of 10 examples off the top of my head of these companies that got to 10 to 30 million dollars and then they just stopped.
- [29:36]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah, it's interesting. And, and again, I don't, you know, I would, I promise I would tell you if, and I wouldn't name the names but we haven't seen, we haven't at least heard examples of th, those types of companies in terms of larger ones and those Those revenue ranges you mentioned.
- [29:52]
John
Yeah.
- [29:52]
Tim Geisenheimer
In our customer base. That doesn't mean there aren't some there. I mean, it's possible there are. I just haven't heard of them.
- [29:58]
John
But I, I really do think that's, that might be a part of the answer then. Because like, hey, if they're just not choosing to invest in, in other stuff, like maybe that's it, you know, maybe they're on antiquated CRMs or maybe they aren't loving the lead because I know leads are like, yeah, that's everybody's problem right now.
- [30:15]
Tim Geisenheimer
Sure. Yeah. And, and I would say, you know, putting what we do aside, I think just overall having really buttoned up, process, being detail oriented, having the right people in place and the right teams and the team structure in place, I don't care if you're a software business or in home services, those will never go out of style. And so if you do have a situation where, you know, you burned a lot of money to like scale up on marketing, on buying leads or whatever it is, but you didn't then put in a lot of processes that you need to put in, it's possible that could then lead to kind of that stall in growth and, or, you know, bad things happening. Right. But if you are putting in, you know, solid processes and you're customer focused and you have a great brand and you're doing kind of all the things that I believe Wilson companies are doing, then I think you should be able to kind of weather any, any storms as far as the lead equation goes. Yeah. I think we've heard, you know, weather aside, you know, some similar kind of stories on that front. And you know, we are probably gonna be putting out some data just in aggregate around what we see. Cause we have, you know, 1200 customers and we send millions and millions of messages every month. Tens of millions of messages every month. And so we get, you know, we're connected to all these different lead lead aggregators as well. So I think we probably have a story we can tell there. So let me report back on that because it'd be interesting to see if we have any macro data we're. We're able to share.
- [31:43]
John
Yeah, yeah, I'm really interested. What do you think? And this is sort of like in between us, right? Like tied in between, like what you guys do in your sales team and like what you think a home service company should do. But walk me through the pipeline. Management, obviously Hatch is a component, but there's other components to the call the everything else. What do you Think Best in class looks like.
- [32:08]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah, I mean, I think you mentioned Service Titan. So I think having, you know, a great CRM, like service titan really is important to kind of managing that. Right. And so, you know, in our case, we use a product called HubSpot, which is, you know, some, some home services companies use it as well, but it's, it's very common in, in software. And so we have kind of all of our customer data in there. We, you know, track everything from the first time someone, you know, registers for this podcast, you know, on the website, all the way through to when they become a customer. And sometimes that customer journey can take, you know, three or four or five months. And it can take, you know, multiple different conversations from different people. And so we do our best to kind of really pin down kind of where people are coming from, what are the steps, you know, in between, we have what we call opportunity stages that we track and we're pretty meticulous on understanding and inspecting, you know, where those conversations are, what the next steps are. And again, we're more B2B like we were talking about earlier, so that, that matters more for us.
- [33:19]
John
I think, I think it sounds like Premiere runs a pretty similar process, correct?
- [33:23]
Tim Geisenheimer
They absolutely do.
- [33:24]
John
Yeah. I think to me, it's all the same thing. Like, we're all. It's all the same thing. This is like, here's the lead. How do we convert that lead?
- [33:31]
Tim Geisenheimer
What's funny? And, and I won't share the exact numbers, but their average ticket size is quite similar to ours, so. Yeah, yeah, you know, if you just, if you just forget that it's software and it's like, you know, bathroom REM in the case of Premiere and software, for us, like, you know, it's same amount of money. It's, you know, a big considered purchase. And, you know, we're obviously working with companies, but companies have to be thoughtful about how they spend money, just like consumers. So very, very similar. And they're, they inspect all aspects of the pipeline, like you said as well.
- [34:02]
John
Yeah, I feel like it's. Honestly, I'm kind of excited about it because I feel like we started to scratch the surface and the more that we, like, learn about how to do this, the more we're just like, oh, we know nothing. But that's so exciting because, like, we can just continue to get better and this is a discipline that our industry just doesn't really care about. Like our. And Premier. Absolutely. But like, you know, plumbing H VAC and electric is still so driven by this. The hot Lead.
- [34:31]
Tim Geisenheimer
Even for the question back to you on that. What about for the installation side? I mean, I guess that would still be driven by, hey, I have a problem that happens to be related to, you know, my H Vac system. And then you go deal with that hot lead. And then the answer is, hey, you actually need to replace your condenser and it's going to be 10 grand to, like, you know, do it. And so I think, think about, like.
- [34:57]
John
Think about the, the culture of the industry. Maybe I've got a lead over here, and this lead is a no air conditioning call. And if I go to this lead, I am very likely to sell something like 80% closing rate. And if I flip it over to a comfort advisor, I'm gonna flip. Like, it's going to work. It doesn't take a lot of work. So H vac and plumbing and electric, people need it. Like, they need heat, they need water, they need power. So when you get those leads, you basically sort of get drunk off them. So when you. So then the whole industry, like, it's, you know, Angie's List and all that stuff, not really working. It obviously does work, but that's. It's kind of. It's kind of the industry joke because that is so much harder to close. You have to build a rehash process. You have to build all these new heads inside your call center, contact center. And you're like, despite all of the work, you're closing right over here with this hot lead is like 60 to 80%. And you're closing right over here is like 35 if you're great. So I. Whereas, like, there's no such thing as a hot bath remodel. Like.
- [36:06]
Tim Geisenheimer
That's right. That's right.
- [36:07]
John
Like, all they know how to do is go close cold leaves or. Or solar or roofing.
- [36:14]
Tim Geisenheimer
I mean, we go in and people don't. They're like, oh, wait, do I really need this product? What do you need? Right? Like what? Very much education. And like, you know. Yeah, why do you. You have a problem? Like, did you even know you had the problem? Like, we could help solve that. I was like, I guess I do. I should be doing rehash, you know.
- [36:30]
John
So you've got this whole industry sort of drunk on easy. Like, okay, I'm gonna go like, hey, they need a hot water tank. Because their hot water tank literally blew up in their basement this morning. It's not like there's like a. Let's have a three to six month buying decision and budget for it.
- [36:45]
Tim Geisenheimer
It's an emergency.
- [36:47]
John
Yeah. So it's. It's easy. I'm gonna go close that. But then. Okay, I got a lead off Angie's List. They're discerning, you know, they're. They're trying to figure it out who's the right provider, what's the right price, what are the things I want? And it's not emergent or same thing with, like, a home show. Whereas again, bath remodels, big remodels, like, long sales cycle. You're used to a 20 to 30% closing rate. You're built around that. But plumbing and H vac just isn't.
- [37:14]
Tim Geisenheimer
I imagine there's some aspect of, let's say the. The installation piece where you could do, you know, more of this. The B2B sales process. Right.
- [37:24]
John
Yeah.
- [37:24]
Tim Geisenheimer
Because, you know, there's. I'll maybe use myself as an example. We had a. I live in. In. In Brooklyn in New York City. So, yeah, we had an in window AC unit, which is antiquated, loud, terrible. And we went through a evaluation of putting a mini split in. Not cheap, by the way, as you will.
- [37:44]
John
Yeah.
- [37:45]
Tim Geisenheimer
And. And so it was a considered purchase. And we, like, did our research and we're, you know, figuring it all out. Right. So. But it's a different model than, hey, we, you know, our existing system broke, and it's 100 degrees outside, and we need to fix it ASAP. So come in here. It was. It was a longer process.
- [38:03]
John
Totally. Yeah. So the whole industry, like. Yeah, a little bit more on the install side, but, you know, get comfort advisors in H vac. They don't even want to run the Angie's List leads. All they want are the tech flips. It's a really big, like, cultural problem in these companies because they're like, this is a waste of time. I only close one in three over here. Whereas, like, for a bathroom model company, that's probably, like, great, but over here, I close 50% or 60%.
- [38:29]
Tim Geisenheimer
And so that's why we see. And I'm sure you're. You're aware and see it too, but we see a lot of teams with a rehash team. Like, they have a specific sales team. It's like, this is what they do. They're compensated on this. They're not getting the good. They're not getting the good stuff. The hot leads. They're. Yeah, they're focused on. On rehash. And we've seen a ton of companies that work with us building successful businesses, doing that. So. But. But it's different It's a different muscle that they're working for. Sure, man.
- [38:54]
John
This was. This was awesome. I feel like we covered. We covered a lot. We got to. We got to touch industry. We got to touch background. We plugged Hatch a couple times, which is great. Hatch really is a great partner, and we are really excited about them. We got to guilt trip you for at least three or four minutes about how you literally came to Akron and didn't say hi, I'm coming back.
- [39:12]
Tim Geisenheimer
We're hanging. I'm coming back.
- [39:14]
John
Yeah, it's fine. No, it's totally fine. I'm gonna remember this. This was awesome. If people want to get a hold of you, how can they find you?
- [39:22]
Tim Geisenheimer
Yeah, so I'm on LinkedIn. You can search by name, which is obviously, as we discussed at the beginning, a longer last name. Tim Geisenheimer.
- [39:29]
John
Yeah.
- [39:30]
Tim Geisenheimer
Which will be hopefully in the podcast name. So you just copy paste that over or you can shoot me an email. It is Tim Geisenheimer. Tim.geisenheimer@usehatch AI.
- [39:42]
John
This was awesome. Tim. Thanks for coming on today, and I look forward to seeing you when you eventually come back to Akron.
- [39:49]
Tim Geisenheimer
Thanks, John. It's now going to be scheduled. Don't you worry.