Understand Your Company's Performance Metrics with These Tips (Brigham Dickinson)

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Home Service Expert Podcast

Episode: Understand Your Company's Performance Metrics with These Tips (Brigham Dickinson)

Host: Tommy Mello
Guest: Brigham Dickinson, Founder & President, Power Selling Pros
Date: March 9, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode dives deep into transforming performance metrics into actionable growth strategies for home service businesses. Tommy Mello and Brigham Dickinson explore how consistent coaching, precise data, and a culture of accountability can elevate both call centers and field technicians. Brigham shares the frameworks his company uses to boost booking rates, foster team engagement, and build a winning culture—while Tommy provides real-world examples of scaling these systems across a $200M+ operation.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Central Thesis: You Are a Training Organization

• Emphasized repeatedly: To grow, view yourself not just as a home services business, but fundamentally as a training organization ([14:44], [16:29], [26:26], [62:26]).
• Practical tip: Hold weekly training meetings for both CSRs (Customer Service Representatives) and technicians, reinforce core values, cross-train, and spend the majority of time practicing real scenarios.

2. Accountability and Coaching Systems

• 1-on-1 coaching: “You hold your team individually accountable at least twice a month, coaching them, letting them listen to their own phone calls and provide feedback…” ([00:00])
• Benchmark: Without consistent coaching and feedback, even the best data/AI tools won’t drive real behavior change.
• Loop completion: Data must flow into accountability practices; otherwise, insights are wasted ([04:00]).

3. Culture: The Heart of Performance

• Shout-outs and breakthroughs: Regular acknowledgment of wins and lessons learned helps build the right culture.
• Balance: “The expectation is extremely high, but because there’s no love in the room… there’s a culture problem.” ([48:10])
• Cross-training: Having CSRs and techs understand each other’s roles builds empathy and teamwork ([08:58]).

4. Driving Conversion and Reducing Cancellations

• Key performance metric: Booking Rate minus Cancellation Rate is the actionable number for CSRs ([22:27]).
• Creating “WOW” experiences: Focus calls on making customers feel understood, reassured, and cared for within the first 30–50 seconds ([26:05]).
• Disney/Chick-fil-A analogy: People will wait (and even pay more) if the customer experience is exceptional ([23:45]).

5. The Power of Data—But Only if You Use It

• Data-driven: “I’m a software company that does garage doors. The data is that important to know what’s going on.” ([31:59])
• Closing the loop: Data should guide where to apply attention for operational versus performance metrics (e.g., on-time arrivals, time at distribution centers) ([29:02]).
• Performance Guarantee: Power Selling Pros offers an 85% booking rate guarantee if systems and processes are properly aligned ([38:05]).

6. Recruiting, Compensation, and Belonging

• Attitude over skills: Recruit for positivity and natural curiosity; processes can be taught ([46:46]).
• Role play in interviews: Brigham suggests roleplaying common scenarios to gauge fit ([47:07]).
• Performance pay: Offer base pay with clear, unlimited upside for results—e.g., $10 for every service agreement sold over the phone ([50:48]).

7. Leadership Bandwidth & Talent Multiplication

• Mello’s epiphany: The bottleneck at scale is leadership bandwidth; hire people smarter than yourself ([34:39]).
• Delegation: Aim to build leadership layers that continue culture and accountability beyond the founder ([55:50]).

8. Books & Personal Growth

• Scriptures for mindset: Brigham recommends daily scripture reading to ground decision-making ([56:22]).
• Other notable books: “Die With Zero” by Bill Perkins – about experiencing life and giving while alive, instead of hoarding wealth ([58:32]).

---

Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Consistency and Accountability
  “Without Power Selling Pros, without somebody holding your team accountable, you either gotta do it yourself or have somebody like Power Selling Pros do it.”
  – Brigham Dickinson ([04:00])

• On Culture vs. Training
  “Common knowledge for everybody listening, but it’s not common practice… If you do that on a regular basis… you’re building culture.”
  – Brigham Dickinson ([07:40])

• On Using Data to Drive ROI
  “Take your revenue from last year, and say if I increase my booking rate 1%, that’s X million dollars more.”
  – Tommy Mello ([41:51])

• On Attitude in Hiring
  “You can train for process, but if the attitude’s not there, it’s very difficult for you to get the outcome that you want.”
  – Brigham Dickinson ([46:46])

• On Performance Pay
  “If you can show them they can make a career being in the call center, they’re going to stay there longer. Much longer.”
  – Brigham Dickinson ([52:51])

• On Comparing Yourself to Others
  “Comparison is the thief of all joy… Our goal is to learn from one another without comparing ourselves.”
  – Brigham Dickinson ([59:25])

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Intro to Brigham & Power Selling Pros: [01:15]
• Testimonial: $3M to $30M Company: [01:40]
• Why Data Alone Isn’t Enough: [04:00]
• Weekly Meetings Structure & Cross-Training: [07:12]-[09:58]
• Rewarding Desired Behaviors: [09:58]
• Tommy’s Relentless Feedback Loop: [11:27]-[14:37]
• Becoming a True Training Organization: [14:44], [16:29], [26:26]
• Booking Rates, Cancellations, and Metrics: [22:27]-[24:53]
• Operational vs. Performance Metrics: [29:02]-[30:51]
• Value of Meetings & Culture: [30:45]-[31:01]
• The Importance of Data & CRMs: [31:59]-[34:00]
• Leadership Bandwidth (Delegation): [34:39]
• 85% Booking Guarantee: [38:05]
• Performance Pay for Call Centers: [50:48]
• Culture as the Ultimate Growth Lever: [53:42]-[54:48]
• Scaling Personal Relationships as a Leader: [54:48]-[55:50]
• Book Recommendations & Mindset: [56:22]-[58:32]
• Closing Thoughts on Training as a Core Identity: [62:25]-[62:58]

---

Takeaways & Action Items

• Adopt a coaching mindset: Treat every team member as a developing professional; establish feedback and coaching cadences twice a month or more.
• Leverage data: Ensure your CRM is correctly configured and monitor not just booking but cancellations, capacity, and operational metrics.
• Focus on experience: The first minute of a call or visit has outsized importance for trust and conversion.
• Make performance pay prominent: Compensate for behaviors you want, both in the call center and field.
• Balance love and expectations: High standards paired with genuine care create resilient cultures that scale.
• Continuously learn: A healthy culture leverages ongoing training and cross-training, and leaders give up control to multiply talent.

---

How to Reach Brigham Dickinson / Power Selling Pros

• Website: powersellingpros.com
• Free Demo Available: Click “Free Demo” on the website for a free analysis or to discuss launching a coaching/accountability program.

---

“You are a training organization. You need to have data. Don’t cancel the data… Leverage the data to hold your team accountable.”
– Brigham Dickinson ([62:26])

---

This episode is a masterclass in bridging accountability, data, and culture—showing exactly how top home service businesses systematize “WOW” experiences at every step of the customer journey and within their own teams.

Transcript

[Brigham Dickinson]

You hold your team individually accountable at least twice a month, coaching them, letting them listen to their own phone calls and provide feedback and coaching and practice over and over and over again. This is the most important thing you need to do in 2026 for your business.

[Tommy Melo]

Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week Tommy chats with world class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields like marketing, sales, hiring and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now your home service millionaire, Tommy Melo. Before we get started, I wanted to share two important things with you. First, I want you to implement what you learned today.

[Brigham Dickinson]

To do that, you'll have to take

[Tommy Melo]

a lot of notes. But I also want you to fully concentrate on the interview. So I asked the team to take notes for you. Just text notes N O t e s to 888-526-1299 that's 888526 and you'll receive a link to download the notes from today's episode. Also, if you haven't got your copy of my newest book, Elevate, please go check it out. I'll share with you how I attracted and developed a winning team that helped me build a $200 million company in 22 states. Just go to elevateandwin.com podcast to get your copy. Now let's go back into the interview. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. Today I got an amazing guest. He's a great buddy and if you guys don't know, Brigham Dickinson has been in the game for a long time. He's got a big heart. He's here to coach us on a lot of things. I use him. There are times in my life that I thought I had figured out call center technician training and every time that that we parted ways and didn't work with Power Selling Pros, it was obvious in the call booking, it was obvious in the technician performance. So he's based out of South Jordan, Utah. He's the president founder of Power Selling Pros. Brigham is the founder of Power Certification Program, call handling and field training that holds teams accountable for booking calls and creating WOW experiences over the phone and in the home. Brigham started Power selling pros in 2009 when he saw that call handlers were struggling to consistently convert calls to bookings. This led him to create Power Certification Program to help home service companies improve their CSR and tech programs and successfully convert more leads into sales. What I wanted to start out the first time ever in the podcast is there's a testimonial that Brigham shared with me of a company that went from 3 million to 30 million. And one of the biggest things he talked about was the technician training in the field, getting consistent with meetings and feedback. So let's go ahead and listen to this testimonial real quick. One thing that we found that's helped to create consistency is Brigham, Dickinson, his team over at Power Selling Pros, that they've just been phenomenal business partners for us and helping with the evolution of our business from 3 1/2 million dollars annually to quickly approaching $30 million in revenue this year. One of those things that's really become the most important is our technicians coaching process. And we work with Brigham and his team over there at Power Selling Pros to build this program out. One of the quickest things that can discourage a team or create, you know, backwards momentum within your team is a lack of consistency. And with Brigham and his team of Power Selling Pros, it's our way of ensuring that doesn't happen. I would encourage you guys, if you haven't explored any options with him, to help support leadership team and great consistency, reach out to the team at Power Selling Pros and couldn't thank Brigham and his team enough for all the help that they've had with us through our growth periods and looking forward to the next growth period. All right, guys, back to the podcast. This episode's thesis is how Brigham turned regular CSRs and technicians into certified professionals and transform call centers to improve their accountability culture and wow. Experiences at scale. Bring them. Welcome back.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Thank you.

[Tommy Melo]

It's good to be back. I love this stuff. Everyone asked me, they're like, so you use Lace, you know, now we use Phil Spark in the field. But why do you still use Ringo? Why do you guys still use Power Selling Pros else?

[Brigham Dickinson]

Because the data is really good, right? The insights are fantastic, but that doesn't change a human behavior, right? They still need to be. Your team still needs to be held accountable. They still need to be coached. They need to have the opportunity to listen to their performance, right? Listen to it on a regular basis and then self evaluate, right? Use a good judgment. Be genuinely curious about what they're doing in the field or how they're sounding over the phone. If you're not utilizing the data, it's really kind of pointless. You need to use the data to hold your team accountable. So it's just a matter of finishing that loop. And without powerslim Pros, without somebody holding your team accountable, you either got to do it yourself, you got to have somebody like Power Selling pros do it. So last year we experienced 20% growth just because people have the data now they have the insight. They've got their team under a magnifying glass, and they don't have the time or the wherewithal to hold their team accountable on a regular basis. Which is why we're here.

[Tommy Melo]

Yeah, you know, it's. I think I mentioned this to you before, but the technicians get a lot of my time. I mean, they're the ones shaking the client's hands, they're the ones getting the reviews, they're the ones driving out there. But I get really upset when a technician gets a zero. But yet the calls get missed all the time. And I've been saying this for the last decade, Brigham, the money that if I invested in your company, the vast majority of it's going to be done in the call center, the con. I should say contact center, because now lead forms the lead aggregators that on that land on your website, that go to Yelp and Angie and Thumbtack and everywhere else. And, you know, the speed, the lead, you could set up all the tools in the world. But interestingly enough, you know the guys at Ciro and Rilla and you know, the guys at Lace and Evoca and Broccoli and same day, we use them all. And the fact is, what do they know about their clientele? They're not going to re up.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Well, they. They know their AI and they all say that their AI works better than the other. And because we work with all of them, we kind of get a feel for which one's working, which one's not. And they're all about the same. Yeah, right. It's like choosing between Milwaukee and DeWalt. Yeah, they're both good. Yeah, they're both great. The question is, is how are you using it to build your house? Right. And you're unique in that you are extremely good at training your technicians on a regular basis. You set the standard every week. That's just not what happens outside of a one. I mean, yes, you used it for the call center because your time and your effort is focused in on your technicians. So, yeah, it makes a whole lot of sense for us to be working with your CSRs to help kind of provide that feedback to them. And, I mean, you've got 62. What?

[Tommy Melo]

62 now? More than that, 62, 65. It's. Yeah, a lot.

[Brigham Dickinson]

So you spending most of your time on text. And how many texts do you have?

[Tommy Melo]

It's over 500.

[Brigham Dickinson]

So that's why you're spending all your time on technicians. And that's why we're here to help with, with the CSRs. Everybody else outside of you, believe it or not, they don't have these weekly meetings with their technicians.

[Tommy Melo]

They don't.

[Brigham Dickinson]

They want to. Sometimes they have them, but usually it turns into like a product education.

[Tommy Melo]

Yeah, I've seen those. And they're, they're not useful.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Not at all. Not at all. You need to be setting a standard. I mean, just give me an example. In December alone, I went to three companies, I've been doing ride alongs with technicians for the last four years,

[Tommy Melo]

went

[Brigham Dickinson]

through technician training, in fact here in Phoenix, went through a three week program and learned a lot about it. It was awesome. But just in December alone, I asked them, okay, you guys, how are you setting the standard for what you want to hear over the phone as well as what you want to hear inside the customer's home? And they go, well, that's why we hired you. Okay, cool. But how have you been doing it thus far? He says, well, we haven't been doing these meetings. We haven't set the standard at all. So we're not only just out of necessity, we're helping them facilitate these weekly meetings. We just jump on a webinar and we go through and you start the meeting out with mission statement, company purpose, core values, and then you do breakthroughs. What happened last week that changed your perspective on your job, the way that you approach it, the way that you approach the customer. And usually everybody's got something to say there. And then shout outs, an opportunity every week where proactively, you're shouting out other people who went above and beyond inside the organization. If you do that on a regular basis, what are you building? You're building culture and this sort of thing. Common knowledge for you, perhaps. Common knowledge for everybody else listening, but it's not common practice. So the goal is to, metaphorically speaking, hold their hand, say, okay, let's do this meeting, let's set this standard. And it's gonna make the coaching a whole lot easier. I mean, sometimes when we coach, we're only coaching twice a month, one on one, and it's not enough. Right. That standard needs to be set as a group. And so what do you do for the bulk of that meeting? Well, you practice. You go over real phone scenarios, real in home scenarios, and practice it. And what I would do is I would cross train. I'd have the CSRs and the technicians in that room and let them practice each other's role and what they should be saying, each other's role and just so they have a better understanding of what goes on inside the office. Right. What goes on inside the call center as well as what goes on out there in the field. If you do this on a regular basis. Regular basis. And at the end. Right. Bulk of your meeting is spent practicing.

[Tommy Melo]

Yep.

[Brigham Dickinson]

You teach, you demonstrate, you practice over and over and over again and again. You do this. Well, the thing is, is not everybody else does this well. They need to be doing it with or without somebody from the outside. They need to be doing it at the end of that meeting. You want to reward for the behavior you want. So you have a lot of cash in your pocket and you say, hey, look, you got a five star review, here's ten bucks. Right. Hey, you turned a plumbing call into a heating call. That was awesome. Right. And in your case, there's other things you've got going on in addition to garage doors, you know, say, for example, clean water or what.

[Tommy Melo]

Right.

[Brigham Dickinson]

So, so if, if I'm a CSR and I take that call, that was a garage door call and I also turn it into a water quality call, I should be compensated for that. And you reward them right in front of everybody. You turn that call into a water call, water quality water, water consumption, so on and so forth. You should reward them for that.

[Tommy Melo]

Right.

[Brigham Dickinson]

From everybody. And then lastly, if you take, say for example, in heating and cooling, your plumbing, if you take a service call and you turn it into a replacement call, and it's super easy. Hey, Mr. Jones, how long have you lived in the home? Oh, about 20 years. Cool. When's the last time you replaced your system? Oh, I've never replaced my system. Oh, well, they, if, even if they're installed correctly, they last about 12 years. So you've gotten some great life out of the system. You've got an extra eight years out of that system. That's amazing. Have you ever considered just upgrading it? Getting it back under warranty? Is that at some point one of those parts and then another and then another is going to go bad and there's no point in calling as much as we like each other.

[Tommy Melo]

Right.

[Brigham Dickinson]

I know you like me. I know you don't like, like me. And so let's, let's do this right the first time.

[Tommy Melo]

Right.

[Brigham Dickinson]

And so we. And then if I can turn that service call into a replacement call, man, I should be compensated for that. And so those things at the end of those meetings, I mean, I just gave you a model right there.

[Tommy Melo]

Yeah.

[Brigham Dickinson]

If you Follow that outlined every week without fail, whether it's busy or not, whether calls are coming in or not, you're going to be very successful with your team in the call center as well as your team out in the field.

[Tommy Melo]

We do a daily morning Mojo call six days a week. They started doing it on the seventh day. We do an hour and a half meeting upstairs on Thursdays in every market. It what do I give myself on the feedback? The D minus. What do I give myself? We're a training organization. We train, train, train, role play, ride alongs, record every conversation. Still a D minus. The evolution of this business is the firm feedback in a fragile world mentality. It's and here's the biggest thing I'm building these forms. They're one on one forms weekly and we're going to take this is straight out of the power selling pros playbook. Five calls. We've taken them apart and it doesn't matter. They're random, they're good or bad. It's not you were successful, unsuccessful. They're random. And we're gonna say look, the one thing we want to get good at this week, not five. All we're looking for is increasing conversion rate. So let's make sure your profile's set up in service type. Let's make sure you offer coffee on the way. Let's make sure you didn't start your first estimate in three minutes because you didn't even get to know the client. Little things that go into conversion rate. Now if you got that, you got this as green we're going to go into. Did you even ask the customer if they thought about a better investment for their home? The anyway dollars you're going to spend the money anyway. You got a non insulated door. You're letting cool air go out in the summer, warm air go out in the winter. Just all you got to do is mention it. So that's all I'm looking for. Then when you do that, are you selling max lives? So I got if then this and if they don't do it there's kind of this whole recipe. I want you to go listen. We're building a library of successful calls of how to get the conversion of how to sell max lives of how to sell a door. And they're like three to five minutes each. I'm going to have you listen to these on your way way there. And all I'm looking for next week is in your recordings on Fieldspark. I'm going to be listening to these five calls. All I'M looking for is this, this phrase. Have you ever even considered a new door? That's it? That's all you got to say? And then we'll take it from there. But I need to be doing it weekly. I mean one, one, one on one per week per tech, on top of a Mojo call every day, on top of a Thursday, training, on top of ride alongs, on top of coming back to Phoenix and training. That's a lot. It's a lot to handle. But what's going to happen? What do I care the most about that? These guys make 200 grand a year. Yeah, look, I don't care if you get big tickets. I want you to make more money for your family. Look, we're going to do good no matter what. As a company. That's like. I figured that out. But what about you? What about the generational curses? What about you paying off your car? What about you getting out of credit card debt? What about you getting your teeth fixed? And that's why, like would you want me to call you up? Call you up? I'm not calling you out. I'm calling you up because I, I know you have more inside of you. So look, if we work on this together, all I want is your commitment, that you're committed to becoming better. And if you're committed, I'm committed to helping. And look, if we don't get to this spot by this date, what end up might up happening, Brigham, is you might be better off installing, you might be better off as a maintenance tech. If you show me you got a willpower. I have a position on the bus for you. But if you can't be successful in this position, you're not doing you, your family or us any favors. So that's the conversation that we need to be having.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Wow, that's huge. That's huge. And I keyed in on something in the beginning there. You said we are a training organization.

[Tommy Melo]

Yeah.

[Brigham Dickinson]

I'm not sure I've ever seen or heard anybody in the home service industry say that. And that is huge because at the end of the day, that's what you need to be. You need to be.

[Tommy Melo]

It's 62 guys here last month, 62 brand new techs, 62 guys graduated. I mean you have to be. It's train, train. When you're done training, you're training again. And I always say this, and you'll like this analogy. I played football. I was a left tackle. We did two a days, five days a week to play one game. We practiced 10 times more than we played. We knew every single play. I mean, literally. And if you weren't performing, they were going through your hole. Left tackle in the guard, they go through my hole. I was called out of the game. I knew this. Like, I, I respected my coaches and they were there to win because they asked. You want to go undefeated this season, then we're gonna have to play some Ironman football or we're gonna win. If we did win, we went undefeated. The fact is, that practice, I never seen it in the home service. It's like you're gonna ride with my best guy for two weeks and you're on your own forever. There's gonna be no feedback loop. And the guys, you know, Victor Rancour has this story about how he quit Champion Group and went to this other company, was paid more, but no camaraderie, no brotherhood, no meetings, no open book management. And he goes, this sucks. Yeah, because that's why Champion Group is so good. Because Leland was sharing. We got to learn from each other. There was not this. There was camaraderie versus I'm the best. So they shared. That's what we have here. We're going to share. This is great. Just because you win, bring them and you're writing big tickets and getting high conversion rate and 5 star reviews and selling memberships doesn't mean I can't. We could both win. You don't make more or less money. If I do. Well, we all win together. It all goes into a pot called the advertising budget. And we're going to be doing more TV and endorsements and affiliate stuff.

[Brigham Dickinson]

So until everyone is doing this, the thing that we're talking about right now, with or without parasoling pros, in my opinion, nothing else matters. This is the most important thing you need to do in 2026 for your business. You've got to create a training organization. You need to see your organization as a training company because that's really what it is in order for you to grow. That's absolutely what it is. And I really loved what you said earlier. Just focusing in on one thing. If there was one thing I could help technicians with, it's to slow down customers. They're trained by Amazon, they're trained by McDonald's to just get it done quick. And their mindset initially is comparison chopping. Well, your goal is to build trust over the phone and help them realize that it's not about just getting by, it's actually about doing better. So if we can just focus in on one thing at a Time. And if it's me, you go. You go into the home. Do not go into the crawl space. Do not go to the thermostat. Just slow down. Talk about what's going on. How is the customer living? What are they experiencing? If you can get. If you can just get inside that front door and just talk for a minute. As uncomfortable as it may be in the. In the beginning, because usually technicians just like to go and fix stuff. Just slow down. Use good judgment. Be genuinely curious about what's going on inside the customer's home and sincerely care about the situation. If you can do that, you can reassure them, you know what, what you're dealing with. We can absolutely help you with this. And then just educate on the. On what their options are and then ask if you were to do those things. In fact, if you worked on the first thing. Okay, slow down. I want to see you slow down. At least spend five minutes inside that front door talking about how they live. Just do that. Then once they have that down, okay? Now be genuinely curious about what's going on inside the customer's home. I want you asking just a few questions, demonstrating how curious you are about them and their living circumstances. Right? Because technicians, they get in their mindset, hey, I gotta maintain their quality of life. No, your job is to go in and enhance it. Anybody could maintain a quality. Anybody can go in and fix it and get it working again. But your job's to go in and see what's happening. Do you see an inhaler on the table? Let's talk about that. Right? You see a portable humidifier sitting there that you have to fill with water every day. Let's talk about it. Right? So step by step, one thing at a time is brilliant.

[Tommy Melo]

And it should be something that you look forward to. You know Jack Tester, right?

[Brigham Dickinson]

Yep, of course.

[Tommy Melo]

First thing is the first page is what's going on in your life. Like, I want you to report to me. I want you to tell me, what'd you do well this week? How would you rate your performance? What are you working on? What's new in your life? What. What's happening at home? What core values did you exemplify this week? Let's go over the mission vision. Are you living that? Are you living that in and out of work? And so it should be. So you're teaching them leadership skills. You teach them how to communicate better. And if you do this right, they're going to get better in and out of work. They're going to be. They're going to be better human beings. And that's something to hang your hat on. Like, when you work here, you're going to become a much better human being.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Totally agree.

[Tommy Melo]

So, you know, the call center is where you started out, and the call center is where all the money's made. I mean, so many people right now, it's a broken record. They're complaining about marketing. The opposite of COVID is like, I can't hire fast enough. And there's always these ebbs and flows. I need more people to run calls. I need more leads. And right now, we're definitely everyone. The leads are getting expensive. Google's getting harder. ChatGPT's out there, the LLMs. There's a lot of money to spend. And I'm watching people fall and fail left and right. I mean, we're hearing the summers aren't hot enough. Last two summers stunk. We're hearing now, like, Lennox and Goldman or Goodman, you know, they're coming out with these reports. And this is why, like, we're not selling a lot of units. People are a lot more price conscious. They're not doing as well. I mean, I think the economy's turning around. It's getting better, but history repeats itself.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Yeah, this happened in 2008. So when I first started. When I first started, I was doing digital marketing as a subcontractor for a company called Oozle. And we did pay per click and SEO, Right? And Troy calls me in and he says, hey, this is 15 years ago now, right? He says, hey, your leads are no good. I said, what do you mean my leads are no good? Well, they just want a ballpark price. They just want to know if your charts come out. They just want to talk to a technician. I said, but, Troy, they're talking about heating and cooling their leads. And besides, what kind of. What other calls are you getting? Well, I'm not. It's 2008. These are the only calls I'm getting. Okay, so then you shouldn't fire me, right? You shouldn't put this on hold. You should actually train your team on how to book these types of calls. Right. Same thing's happening today. Okay, cool. We have less calls, or at least they're more expensive. Train your team. Hold them accountable, because every one of those calls counts. Can we agree that every one of those calls count great? They're more expensive than they've ever been. Great. History repeats itself. We've been here before. So what do you do? First things first. You tell them. You teach them to slow down. That Conversation. Hey, I want a ballpark price. Great. Tell me more about your situation. What's going on? Well, I've got this air conditioner that's blowing hot air. My gosh, that's terrible. How long's he been doing that? Oh, last couple days. Well, look, we can totally help you with that. When would you like us out? Oh, this afternoon would be good.

[Tommy Melo]

Right.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Initially they wanted a ballpark price, but by the time I was done, took me 30 seconds, they realized they went from a mindset of I need to compare you to another guy or a bunch of other companies to, you know what, I trust this person.

[Tommy Melo]

Right.

[Brigham Dickinson]

And we become their last call. That's the objective.

[Tommy Melo]

Yeah.

[Brigham Dickinson]

If you're in the call center, your objective is to become the last call of that customer. Creates such an amazing experience over the phone that that's your, that's your outcome.

[Tommy Melo]

You know, this is pretty interesting to me because now I got all this data and I call Boris all the time. He stays in my house, comes in about once a month and we go over and I kept asking for more data. I'm like, I need to understand same day cancellations. I need to understand why people are canceling and customer resolved themselves. Bs. Yeah, I got someone out quicker. Everything that. The reason why I'm at 91% right now instead of 93 or 94 is a hundred percent because of capacity. So here's something very interesting that I just started doing and I think you'll dig this. I wanted to know, cancellations per CSR, I got some people at 17% cancellation, some people at least 3%. So now at the CSR level, I take their booking rate minus their cancellation rate, and that's the number we look at. Interesting because, you know, I, I have my conversion cycle, so I said booking rate, conversion rate, average ticket and cost per lead. Now I got to take in the cancellation rate into that. So why are we getting so many cancellations? And if I'm going to get cancellations, I don't want to get the people that are stuck in a garage that say, I'm going to pay whatever it takes to fix this.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Right. I would say that with those individuals, if we can create an amazing experience over the phone, we can keep them on the hook. Right. It's not just about booking the call. People look at booking rates all the time. And I love that you're looking at cancellations rate, cancellation rates. And I'm going to make a mental note of that because if the experience is awesome, they'll wait. Now how Do I know that? Well, because I've been to Disney before, and in Disney, what do you do? You pay more. And you. What, you wait. You wait in lines like never before. So if they can do it. And guess who else can do it? Chick Fil A. You mean you have the same problem Chick Fil A has. Their biggest problem is keeping people in the line. So what do they do? They double down and triple down on the amount of people that are ushering you through the line. Of course, they take your money way back, a mile back in the line

[Tommy Melo]

so that you're, You're.

[Brigham Dickinson]

You're hooked, you're in. But it is, for you, it is absolutely all about creating the experience for the customer to keep them on if they're canceling and if their cancellation rate is high. I'd want to listen to that CSR and figure out whether they're just focused on booking it or whether they're focused on creating an amazing experience for the customer.

[Tommy Melo]

Pretty smart, because I didn't even think about that. Because me, if my air conditioner is not working, and unless I really believe and I've seen a one or whatever company, I'm going to call, I want this fixed now. My family's. It's 100 degrees outside. I'm going to get somebody that could be out here the next hour. My car is stuck. I need to get to work. So my theory, and I want to run this by you. Yeah. There's two ways I came up to fix it other than trying to make sure the call's extra special. They trust us and they're willing to wait. The first one is I could pay the customer something to wait. I give them 100 gift card. I could say, listen, I know this is a convenience because we can't get out till tomorrow because capacity is capacity. So I'm working on expanding capacity the other one. And is that enough? But the other one's even better. I call it. You know, when you order an Uber and let's say you're at a. A football game, they call it surge. You're going to pay more because there's so much demand.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Right.

[Tommy Melo]

And you're going to pay it either way. So what if I built a search program that went out to 33% of my top technicians, and they have five minutes to claim that job, and they'll get an extra a hundred dollars just to ring the doorbell.

[Brigham Dickinson]

I like that idea better.

[Tommy Melo]

Yeah, me too.

[Brigham Dickinson]

In addition to having an understanding that our. Our end goal is threefold over the phone number One, the customer needs to feel understood. If they don't feel understood, trust me, they're going elsewhere. Right? Remember, they called you not because they called you for, because they don't want to do it or they don't know how. That's why they called you. All right? So your goal is to show them that they are understood, show them that you care, and reassure them that they've called the right place. So they need to feel reassured, cared about, and understood. If you do that in the first 30 seconds, first 30 to 50 seconds, you're going to change everything for that customer. You have to do those things first. If those things aren't being done, we're working way too hard when we're not creating an amazing experience for that customer that when they hang up, they don't call anybody else and they're willing to wait happily. Right? The type of customers we are going for are the ones that will advocate for us. Right? Pay our price, happy to wait until all their friends about us. So for that to happen, we have to have an amazing experience over the phone as well as an amazing experience in the home.

[Tommy Melo]

You know, I was talking to my buddy Matt, owns a really big company doing 250 million of EBITDA, and what was interesting is the infrastructure they built. Like, we always want to be efficient, right? We want to make sure we're pushing every dollar, every dime, every penny. But what I realized is so much. You do need this infrastructure. And it just kind of dawned on me as we're talking that I need more infrastructure. I need to be listening to, listening to a lot of calls. I should be happy at 91%, but yet I'm not. There's something probably wrong with me.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Yeah, you gave us a D minus. I'm not happy about that.

[Tommy Melo]

No, no, no, not, not you. I'm giving myself on the technician side, not, not the call center. The call center is absolutely phenomenal.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Yeah, we're, we're all one team. A one, one team.

[Tommy Melo]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's, Look, I, I'm very satisfied. I, I. What's crazy to me is you're just hearing so many people complaining out there. This is hard, you know? You know what's crazy? I was telling a couple guys yesterday is the roofers. I don't know how much you've worked with roofers, but I have these roofers that come do shop tours and I talk to them at hsf and I'm like, so what are your core mission, vision, core values? I don't do that shit. What Is your booking rate book. What's a booking rate? Well, when a person calls in and they need a roof, how many are you booking? Well, sometimes we just go out there for free. Estimates, I don't really know. So you get every single one of them? Well, I don't know. It's super high. Well, what do you convert when you're face to face? What's the decimal point? We've got that, but I don't really have that on me. How much are you doing? We're doing 3, 3 or 4 million of EBITDA. And I'm like, if you were in the garage industry, you would be doing a hundred thousand dollars of revenue. The fact is that once they start systematizing that industry, you're gonna watch guys doing 20, 30, 40 million of EBITDA

[Brigham Dickinson]

like that, no question.

[Tommy Melo]

And I love finding these industries that are still the wild, wild west, that they haven't used data. They haven't really. They don't know. They've got this great big boat and there's holes on the boat, but they don't know where the biggest holes are. They don't know. Imagine going in on Monday, bring them, and you're like, I don't know what I'm gonna do today. There's gonna be a lot of problems. I'm a firefighter, but I don't know where I'm going to focus because I really don't know where I should be focusing. And that's where a great CRM, having great systems in place to see KPIs, not just performance KPIs. Here's another big one I've learned. How many jobs are we showing up to on time? That because the only job you show up on time guaranteed is the first one. How many are we close? Like, these are not performance metrics. Operational metrics. And we've got a coach that comes from Cortech that said, I want you to start focusing on these operational. You guys are so good at performance metrics, but capacity will be opened up if you get the guys out of Amar reloading quicker. Because if your average load times an hour and 33 minutes. What if we get down to 23 minutes? Wow. That'll give an extra hour and 10 minutes back to them a day. So that way you're not losing all these jobs. What is the only time my technicians are making money? When they're in the garage talking to them.

[Brigham Dickinson]

That's right. That's right. When they're in the.

[Tommy Melo]

So we got to get rid of all the Other time at the time I'm not willing to settle on. Here's another interesting thing. My managers, my complete leadership team came to me a year ago and said, we've done the math. We've got evidence to show you, Tommy. If we cut the meetings on one meeting a month, here's how much more money we'll make. I said, there's not an effing chance. I said, it'll be great for three months, and then we'll have everybody leave. They'll quit.

[Brigham Dickinson]

They won't.

[Tommy Melo]

There's no camaraderie. There's. They're all eating next door right now.

[Brigham Dickinson]

You gotta protect your culture at all costs.

[Tommy Melo]

And this is what PE does. They go in and they're like, les me. And they have the best year ever. And then all of a sudden, a mass exodus. Everyone quits.

[Brigham Dickinson]

You know, it's something you said earlier about how contractors are kind of complaining how things are right now. Well, it's because 2021 was so amazing.

[Tommy Melo]

Yeah.

[Brigham Dickinson]

I mean, we probably had a couple of years that we may never have again in the industry. But in order for us to understand what's amazing, we also have to experience bitter every once in a while. Right? We gotta bootstrap it and go to work. So it's all right that we had some good years. We need to recognize them for what they are. And today we gotta take some steps as a training organization, because what you're talking about, Tommy, the things you're talking about, I mean, for most people listening, they're not even close to where you're at right now. What you're describing is amazing. It's incredible, right? Operationally, performance wise, it is. It's. It's awesome. It. It really is. But contractors need to start somewhere. So where do they start?

[Tommy Melo]

Well, the first thing is I got fortunate in 2014 to have Adam, and Adam was everything I'm not. He was good at dialing in the CRM to make it do. Do its job. I don't care if you're on jobber or house call pro or service titan or whatever it might be. Workies, they're all good, but they got to be programmed in a way to get the data. I mean, I'm a software company now. I'm not a garage door company. We're a software company that does garage doors. I mean, the data is that important to know what's going on.

[Brigham Dickinson]

So you gotta have the data, and

[Tommy Melo]

you gotta be able to read a balance sheet income statement. You know, I will tell you, Al Levy Taught me, you better know. You better know those financial statements better than your cfo. I wouldn't say I know the better than my cfo, but I, I know the numbers. We're closed out from January. I've gotta look by January 30th. What we're gonna close out by the 1st. I have over at. By the 5th. It's locked in. Most people say close by the 15th. That's where I think people are missing is they don't have the data. Why is my, why is my cogs so high in this market? Why is my indirect labor so high? Like, well, you got to be able to look at these and spot these out. And I know a lot of people listening are like, yeah, it's easy for you to say, no, I'm 20 years into this thing.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Yeah.

[Tommy Melo]

And by the way, you'll hear me say, I got a D minus. You'll hear me say, there's work to be done. You'll hear me say, there's a treasure in every corner of this business. So much money being left on the table. Do you think I say, I've made it? No, I say we gotta work harder, we gotta get better. There's so much opportunity in this business. I don't think we've arrived. So I think at least get data you could trust. That's where I think you start. And then, and that's where, like, how are you gonna guarantee 85% booking rate when you have no idea what the booking rate is? You don't even have anything to know your booking rate.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Right?

[Tommy Melo]

Like, how could you say. Because power selling pros, you guys have this amazing, bold guarantee to get to 85%, which is nutty.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Yeah.

[Tommy Melo]

But if you don't have the data, how do you get there?

[Brigham Dickinson]

We don't. We need the data. Yeah, we need the data. You don't cancel the data. Right. You need the insight. And you leverage the insight to improve the performance of your team over the phone and in the customer's home. You absolutely need that. But you're also probably the first home service company that wants to achieve a billion, right? So that's why you're where you're at. That's why you're talking crazy numbers and so on and so forth. And for the rest of us, right, we need to just take those baby steps into a training organization.

[Tommy Melo]

Well, here, here's, here's something. I just did a Facebook live when I walked into the office. When I walked into this office, I said, you know what the secret sauce is? And I had this epiphany late at night, I'm sitting in bed and I go, I'm a coach. You know, I've never seen a coach do is say, hey, I'm gonna go make this play myself. I'm gonna go be the quarterback on this play. You know, I never seen, you know what I see the coach do is they say, I need the best offensive coordinator there is. I need special teams, I need the defensive coordinator, I need the best recruiter. And here's the epiphany I had. I'm talking to R on a podcast last week, and he goes, you know what the problem with most companies are? The leadership's bandwidth. I go, well, that can't be true. What about Elon Musk? You think he's running Tesla? You think he's really in there doing everything at SpaceX? You think he's doing everything at X and his AI company and this and this? Or you think he's got a way to bring on the world's best? I have a guy that works for me at the family office. He's the only guy to ever win this award three times in a row at ge. He is a savant. I go, if I had five of him, do you know what I'd be able to do? Just one of him changed my life dramatically. So now I'm going, how do I get talent? How do I get people that could run circles around me?

[Brigham Dickinson]

You're so right.

[Tommy Melo]

I like who, not how. And I just. I just had a great interview weekly. I do this with my top recruiter named Sophie. She's a machine. And I said, how do we get more talent? How? How can you help me get more? What can I do better? What do I need to do above and beyond? How do I. How can I be. I give myself a six. How do I become a 10? And that takes a lot of humility because I don't think I'm better than anybody. I think I want to be the worst one here, actually. I want to say that person's better because my ego is now my amigo. And that's one thing I've learned is a lot of people won't hire people that are the next level. They don't want to feel stupid in a meeting. They want it their way or the highway. They don't want to make the changes. So I'm like, man, we're going to have to change. We're going to dramatically have to change if we're going to go to where I'd like to See us go, and it's better for everybody.

[Brigham Dickinson]

And your objective is to put the right pieces in place to achieve the goal that you want to achieve. And it doesn't matter who does it, right?

[Tommy Melo]

Well, there's a lot more money to go around. You could pay crazy salaries, give equity, give all these crazy bonuses. If you got a really high booking rate and a really high conversion rate and a really great average ticket, you're getting five star reviews like you could get. I just had both endorse when you think about the radio. And these guys do endorsements. And I talked to my buddy Cameron, that just sold for 100 million pest control. He goes, you know what blew it up for us. And they started inviting all these endorsers to football games and baseball games. And he talked about me all day on the radio. Wow. I was on my best behavior. They came to dinner, I'm making them laugh, we're having a blast. I'm like, you guys are going to the game with us. And I'm like, I went to my neighbor's house by my dad's, my old neighbor. And she goes, john Holmberg talked about you for an hour straight on the radio today. I was like, it's working. And I only met these guys once, but I'm not doing it maniacally. Like, I really like these guys. They're funny guys, so great to hang out with. They're like connected. And they're like, I learned a lot from them. But I'm like, Tommy 3.0 is like doing that kind of stuff. Making sure I'm recruiting the right people and being the culture guy.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Working smart, not just hard.

[Tommy Melo]

Yeah, that's the key. So tell me about this 85% guarantee.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Well, it's simple. Usually when we go into a shop, they're not using their CRM properly.

[Tommy Melo]

Right.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Say, for example, they have Service Titan. And there's in fact the one company who provided the testimonial. When we first looked at their CRM, it said they were booking 30% of their phone calls. We knew that wasn't true. So we went in, we modified it, we made sure that it was set up correctly. Sure enough, it was like 65% double what they thought it was. And that was the kind of the impetus that, that, that for. For hiring us. Oh, we're at 30%. We gotta fix this. And so when we switched it to 65 and showed them it's. It's actually 65, they're like, oh, that's a whole lot better than we thought it was. Well, you still have to work with us. So. So we actually started working with them and now they're, now they're in the 90s. Most of our companies are in the 90s. That's why we say 85. It gives us a little bit of a cushion to work with. But if you are, if you're doing the right things, holding your team accountable at least twice a month, we coach them one on one twice a month using their own phone calls. And if they're listening, caring, reassuring at the beginning of that phone call, in fact, 90% of the outcome is determined by the first 30 to 50 seconds of that call. I would say the same thing is true in the field. That first couple of minutes inside the customer's home, if they feel better, see, the goal is to help them feel better, whether it's over the phone, whether it's in the home, help them feel better. If they feel better, you don't, chances are you don't have to do anything with the system or anything with the garage door or anything at all. You just, you know what, this guy's amazing. There is, believe it or not, there's one time where we went into a customer's home, we condemned the furnace. Now if you condemn the furnace, the customer's probably going to be upset, probably going to be frustrated, probably going to be like, hey, can't you do something here? Well, no, it was complete opposite. They gave us $100 tip. Yeah. For condemning the firmness. It was, it was an incredible experience. In fact, technician was like, dude, this is amazing. In fact, he want to split it with me. I was like, no, you don't need to split it with me. This is my job. This is what I do. But it does all start over the phone. And when it comes to 85%, it's easy if you have the right system in place. And what's the right system? Make sure you have your data. Make sure you're leveraging it to hold your team accountable. One on one, twice, twice, at least twice a month. And if you don't have time to do that, then get somebody like power selling Bros to do it for you. If you do that consistently and well, you'll see, you'll see 85% easy.

[Tommy Melo]

I always look at like return on investment in marketing. It's called return on ad spend. And if I was to invest, which I do invest in power selling pros, I would imagine on a low end, the investment you're making to reduce turnover, if you really looked at it like completely all in it's probably a 20 to 1. But I guarantee anybody not getting a 10 to 1 is just not buying into the program or not listening. So I always look at, I look at power selling pros not as a cost but an investment into my people because they make more money. My clients, my marketing dollars go further. My guys get actually way more work. That's one cool thing about working a, when you go to another company, they'll offer you. All my guys get offered equity in the small business, but they got no jobs to run. They're sweeping the floors all day. I'm like guys, I'm going to keep you slammed. And so when you think about that, you know, do a lot of people do hear that this is costing money? You hear that from certain companies like this is I'm paying too much money for this or this is not an expense I want to pay.

[Brigham Dickinson]

No, because when, when you do the math, I mean it's, it's, it's easy. In fact, you've done this math before. I've got videos of you doing this math right where you with, with for every one percentage it's, it's an extra $3 million. Right. Call conversion. How does that math work?

[Tommy Melo]

Well, basically take your revenue, right? So If I do 315 million, 1% of this 3.15 million. So there you go, that's 1% getting better. So if I get to 92% that just brought 3.12 or 3.15 million now we're going to do 400 million this year. So now 1% is 4 million. So if you're doing 10 million, it's a hundred thousand. It's just simple. Take your revenue from last year and say if I increase, If I did 10 million and I do 20% more on the booking rate, as long as I keep control of my cancellations, I want to do $2 million more. If you're a growing company, but you got to remember that your marketing dollars are going way further too. So there's all these byproducts and then the turnover. I heard this stat recently that it costs somewhere around 62% of the person's annual salary to replace them. Yeah. Because by time you bring them on, train them, get them accustomed to it and then you're paying. You know, if you fire somebody, they're still going to get, they're, they're, they filed unemployment and you pay that. So when you look at the burden costs. So I, I think about a lot of these things and I'm like, I want to work with these. Like, you guys see the potential in people, and you've probably brought somebody that was at 45 to 90 by just taking the time and listening to them.

[Brigham Dickinson]

If they. The main reason why people lose CSRs is because they don't feel like they belong. If you can help them feel like they belong with training, if you have someone that is talking to them on a regular basis in the first couple minutes, hey, how are you? How's your family? How are things? Great. As we get into it, we listen to a couple of phone calls, and if something's off, hey, what's going on? It sounds like something's off. Well, when I took that call, something happened that day. Oh, well, what happened? This is what happened. Whoa. I can only imagine. I can imagine that you wouldn't be having a great day. How do we take steps to make sure that regardless of what happens outside of work, that you are on your game every time you go into work? Oh, you're so right. All right, so let's refocus here. Let's take some steps now so that next time that occurs, you're proactively prepared so that you can handle that call and attend your job like a champ. Every time. Regardless of what's going on outside of the office, when they get that kind of attention, they feel like they belong. And when they feel like they belong, they're going to stay a whole lot longer. They're going to perform a whole lot better.

[Tommy Melo]

If an owner were to listen to the calls, you know, let's say I had time to listen to a few three a week, what should I be looking for?

[Brigham Dickinson]

It would ruin your day. Get somebody else to do it.

[Tommy Melo]

No, I know, but, like, I've listened to some of the calls, and I get very frustrated because I never want to get angry at a customer. I never want to be like, no. Like, if the service fee's too much, hey, what part of town are you in? Oh, what are your cross streets? Well, I got a technician in that part of town today. I'll tell you what, if I could get rid of this service call and you could. And he's got the stuff on the truck, and you're happy with everything he's got to say. Are you willing to get the work done? Absolutely.

[Brigham Dickinson]

So that's awesome. But you can't script that. You could try, but you need to get them to the point where they are proactive. You see, this is why we like to teach principles and not just scripts. You teach them the correct principles, and you allow Them to govern themselves. Right. Use good judgment, be very curious. Sincerely care if you can teach the principles. And I know that there's a lot of people listening going, how do I get my team to do that? You teach them correct principles, not just scripts. Okay? Scripts are a launching pad. It's a starting point. Use this to get started. But once you get them started, then you start talking about active listening and empathizing and reassuring and asking the right questions and creating value, being grateful. If you can do those things, you're going to be able to think quickly on your feet, just like you described, just like you demonstrated over and over and over again. So it really comes down to training for CSRs to do what you just demonstrated. It's going to take time, it's going to take practice. It's going to take them learning the principles behind the script.

[Tommy Melo]

So let me ask you this. This goes for technicians and CSRs. I just told you, the number one thing going forward is going to be the way in which we recruit. It's very hard to take somebody that's never smiled, that's depressed, that might be going through a divorce, that's angry, that's a video game or whatever their issue might be. Video gamers just, they kind of, to me, they're a little bit robotic. They could sit there all day. I'm not saying they're bad people. I've played video games. I play golden tea a lot, you know.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Sure.

[Tommy Melo]

So I will say if you could be a magnet for people that are just automatically happy, like my mom was and wants to have a conversation and goes, oh, honey, are you kidding me? I am so sorry to hear that. Like, what do you look for when you're recruiting people and what does that interview look like?

[Brigham Dickinson]

So the attitude's got to be there, right? They've got to have a good attitude. You can, you can train for a process here, follow this process, but if the attitude's not there, it's very difficult for you to get the outcome that you want. So first thing right out of the gate has to be attitude. Right.

[Tommy Melo]

And how do you interview for attitude?

[Brigham Dickinson]

Just the way they sound in the beginning. And sometimes they can fake it. Right. That's why you have a 90 day clause. But, but that's what you look for first and foremost. And what I like to do is role play right out of the gate. So I give them a very quick scenario. Hey, a customer calls in and they just want to know what you charged to come out. Are you ready? Yes, I'm ready. And let's just see how they do off the cuff.

[Tommy Melo]

Yeah.

[Brigham Dickinson]

If they have a natural ability to actively listen over the phone, they have a natural ability to kind of slow it down and talk about the situation, sincerely care, be genuinely curious about what's going on. Right. What is happening. And if, if you, if you can see that without having to teach it at all, you're onto something.

[Tommy Melo]

Now, have you had a scenario where you went into a call center and you just noticed that a lot of the people just gave up on themselves? And I know this is hard to say, how could it be that many people, but when you were like, you talked to the owner or the leader or the call center ops person, and you said, look, we're going to have to probably rebuild this team.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Okay? So I do go into a lot of shops and I find one of two things that need to be better. Either the expectation is extremely high, but because there's no love in the room, I don't know how else to put it. Right. Genuine desire to take care of the people inside the room. If they don't feel that love, there's a culture problem. And that's the reason why they're giving up. And they're giving up because they feel like everybody else has given up. And when you think about this, there's just this sense of apathy, right? If you don't care, why should I care? Right? It's, that's, that's, it's that mentality. And that usually happens when the expectation is extremely high and the company's good, Right? The company's usually able to get to, who knows, 5, 10 million, but if they want to get into the 30 million, 50 million range, they're going to have to increase their love. And so I sit down with them and say, hey, look, it looks like you've really done a good job of setting the expectation for what you want to hear with the phones as well as what you want to see in the field. What I'm feeling, though, from this group is they're not feeling. They're not feeling that they're getting a lot of attention that they're cared about. Let's talk about improving that. Okay. Most of the time, though, in this industry, they have a ton of love and zero expectation. So the love's there, right? Nobody's getting fired. It's funny how I go to an event and every contractor, without fail, they act really tough. They say, hey, if you don't do what I say, you're off my bus, right? You go back to Their shop, they are puppies, okay? And admittedly, so am I. Yeah, guilty. Okay? I keep people on longer than I should. 100% guilty. And I need to work on it. But it's easier for me to go into a shop and go, okay, this is what's going on. You got a lot of love going on. You're putting up with a lot of crap, right? It's because you've probably hung out with these people on the weekends. You know what's going on with their families. You've got to protect the whole as opposed to any one individual, right? So I. I'm even. I'm either having one of two conversations where either the expectations too high and there's not enough love or the love is way too high and there's not enough expectation. My goal is to create a balance between both. If you can have balance, you can have a beautiful, healthy culture. You can get rid of the toxicity and, and have a company that's ready to grow.

[Tommy Melo]

How important is performance pay vital? Do you go into call centers that are just straight hourly, no performance, no perks? No.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Yeah, all the time. And what they need to do is they need to set a base, right? And then give them the opportunity to make as much money as they want to make. So if they sell a service agreement over the phone, and it's simple, Mr. Jones notes. I notice you don't have a service agreement with us. You can call it a club. You can call whatever you want to call it. I'm wondering why not? Oh, well, I just haven't thought about it or I didn't think to do it when you guys were out here last or. Well, the cool thing about it is it prevents things like this, the thing that you're dealing with right now, from happening. If you want it, I can get you going on it right now. Well, how much is it? It's $29 a month. Best part about it is, is that we take 20% off of all the services provide and you get priority service. If you want, we can get you going on it right now. Now, if I do that on every phone call and I get 10 bucks for that man, I'm going to make as much money as I want to make. Okay, so let's say I sell two a day, that's 20 bucks a day. Five times $100 a week, 800 times 52 weeks, that's 50$200 a year. You just gave yourself a 50, $200 raise. You should absolutely compensate for service agreement sales, for cross selling. If you turn a service call into a replacement call. Technicians do this all the time, right? That's our best lead as a technician. Set lead. Awesome. Why don't we also have our CSRs do the same thing? Hey, Mr. Jones, I'm looking at your notes. I noticed that you've had a system we've been working on for the last 12 years, right. Have you ever considered replacing it, getting it upgraded, getting it back under warranty, as opposed to just fixing it? If I book a replacement call as opposed to a service call, should I not be compensated for that? And if you can create that process where you have the salary and you have a way for them to make as much money as they want to make, guess what? They're going to stay there in that seat longer. They don't want to move up. Usually a CSR wants to move up. They want to move into accounting. They want to this bad. Exactly. They want. They want to feel some sort of progress. But if you can show them they can make a career being in the call center, they're going to stay there longer. Much longer.

[Tommy Melo]

As you've seen companies grow from like the 5, 10 million to actually really getting significant growth, what systems matter to the most?

[Brigham Dickinson]

Well, you got to have data, right? We've talked about this. You. You've got to have the insight now. The insight doesn't equal change in performance. You've got to leverage that data to hold your team accountable over the phone and inside the customer's home. If you don't have the time of the wherewithal to do it yourself, then get help. It's just like what you said. Find the right people who do it, specialize in it, and get it done. Make sure it's being done with or without Parasol Pros. Just make sure you do it. Make sure you have a training organization, bar none. That is the most important thing.

[Tommy Melo]

How many clients do you guys have currently?

[Brigham Dickinson]

Over 400.

[Tommy Melo]

400 clients? That's crazy. What's one leadership habit that you see top performing service companies do consistently?

[Brigham Dickinson]

Their culture's beautiful, right? You've got a great culture, Tommy. When the culture is good, good things can happen, right? I was just in Ohio at Simpsons Salute with Chad and Steve, and these guys are probably one of the best duos I've ever seen. They just work really well together.

[Tommy Melo]

Just.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Just had a. An acquisition event, right? They were bought by Sila. Really cool experience. It's because they've built an amazing culture. A culture where there's training. People are being held accountable on a Regular basis. And it's just. It's just great to be a part of groups like that. The heart's another good one. Lawrence is an absolute stud in Kansas. There's others. Mountain View in Portland. It's because the culture is awesome. It's almost as if when you go there, you want to pack up your bags and move there and start working with that company. When I feel that way, I know that the culture is pristine.

[Tommy Melo]

It's hard to get. As the company grows, I think about the company when it was 20 technicians. I knew their wives, I knew their kids, I knew their birth dates. And now it's like sometimes I feel really awkward. Yesterday I went to the waste management open, and this gal comes up to me. She goes, hi, I've been here for six months. My name's jj. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I've heard so many good things about you. I'm so sorry we haven't met. I'm like, let's get lunch on the books. But it's so hard for me because I'm jumping. I mean, the calendar. The one thing I can't get is more time unless I delegate more. And it's so hard because those relationships are so important. But it's harder to create relationships with your time. So you've got to teach other leaders how to create those relationships. I mean, there's companies that run 75,000 people. The CEO doesn't know all of them. The founder doesn't know all of them. So you got to continue to create leadership that they could create those bonds all the way down. And I think it would be foolish for me to realistically think I could get to know everybody.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Well, that's just it. If they feel like they belong, right? And you do this one way or the other, if it's you, great. If it's not, you have someone there spending one on one time with them on a regular basis, asking about how they're doing, what's going on, what are their goals, and how are we going to get there. Right. Give them ways, mechanisms, and practice with them on a regular basis. Hold them accountable so that they can. They can actually make a difference on. On your team. Right? So help them feel like they belong. If you do that, you're going to be very successful.

[Tommy Melo]

Is there any good books that you've read recently that you want to tell the team about or the audience?

[Brigham Dickinson]

Well, listen, if you haven't read the scriptures lately, it's time. And listen, I can. I can rattle off any number of books and chances are there are books that you've heard.

[Tommy Melo]

Yeah, they're always the same.

[Brigham Dickinson]

But the one thing that I feel most people are either afraid to talk about or they don't talk about. They don't think about is sitting down, at least taking 10 minutes before you open up a business book before you pull up the news. Right. Take 10 minutes, read your scriptures.

[Tommy Melo]

I think the Bible. The Bible app is great. Pops up on your phone. The crazy thing. So this is two years. No, last year I'm at Barrett Jackson. Oh my gosh. I just buy this beautiful Mustang and the Bible verse pops up. And I'm telling you, I was sitting there, I just got done and I got a screenshot of it, but you would laugh so hard. It said like, don't fall into the like, material things in life. And like this stuff.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Yeah.

[Tommy Melo]

And it was like a verse and I'm like, it was funny, but it was just spot on. And I showed my buddy and he. We were just laughing.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Well, when you bring up the Bible app, the really cool thing about the Bible app is that there are several different versions you can choose from. Right. There's the niv. In other words, there's a third grade level version where you can pull it up and you can actually understand what you're reading. Because when you read the King James version, it's. It's brutal. It's a tough read. Right? It's. It's a 12th grade.

[Tommy Melo]

I like a student Bible more.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Yeah, Exactly. It's a 12th grade reading level. So if you can choose. And there's levels from three to four, third to fourth grade, sixth to seventh and even in. And even on up. And. And the cool thing about this is you can finally begin to understand what you're reading. And guess what? It's a free app. Okay, Just. Just buy it. Yeah, just buy it. So if you haven't picked up the Bible. Pick it up, Pick it up.

[Tommy Melo]

You know, one book that I, I told Yano to read recently is Die with zero. And the reason I like that book is because when you take a trip when you're 20, it's different than when you're 75. Like you, you can just do more things. And when a lot of people, they don't ever give, like they want to accumulate all this wealth and then when they die, it goes to the charities and everything else. What if you could see your dollars go to work and what if you could instead of like you. You've reached the pinnacle of where the wealth, the compound interest will be Enough, you just start spending and it can go down a little bit. That's fine. And you can find worthy causes. Like, I think that book really spoke to me is like, live your best life today. Continue to go on these great vacations, build these great relationships, spend the money where that you see a need in the world the most.

[Brigham Dickinson]

I would say that comparison is the

[Tommy Melo]

thief of all, thief of all joy.

[Brigham Dickinson]

It really, really is. Right? So our goal is to learn from one another without comparing ourselves to one another. Right. The bottom line is, as you work on yourself and your team, you're going to have success. Right now, your success may not be equal to Tommy's success or this guy's success or that guy's success, Elon Musk success. But the bottom line is, if you apply yourself, work hard, study hard, you're going to be successful. Right? You're going to be successful. And when you are, the next step is all right, so how can I serve? How can I give? How can I die with zero?

[Tommy Melo]

Jim Carrey said it the best. I wish everybody was super wealthy and super famous and then they'd realize that's not the answer.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Yes.

[Tommy Melo]

And it's just this world of Instagram and TikTok I think we live in. What can we do for the audience? They reach out to you. What's the best way to reach out? Is there something you could do, like a free analysis or something for them?

[Brigham Dickinson]

So the most important thing for you to do is recognize that you are a training organization. We should, in my opinion, we just end the way we started. You are a training organization. You need to have data. Don't cancel the data. Yeah, okay. Leverage the data to hold your team accountable. Make sure that you're setting a standard every week for what you want to hear over the phone inside the customer's home. Do this without fail, whether it's busy, whether it's not busy. You have that weekly meeting. Step two, you hold your team individually accountable at least twice a month, coaching them, letting them listen to their own phone calls and provide feedback and coaching and practice over and over and over again. And if you do not have the time or the wherewithal to do that, definitely call Power Selling Pros. You just go to power sellingpros.com right? P O W E R S E L L I N G p r o s.com click on the free demo. Let's talk. Let's talk about building a coaching program where we're leveraging your data and it's just. If it's just CSRs great. We'll work with your CSRs. If it's technicians and comfort advisors, great. We can do that, right? We can absolutely do that. Just make sure you have the data so that we can leverage it and it really doesn't matter where it comes from. Okay? They're all pretty good at this point. The most important thing is, is that you leverage it. If you don't have time or the wherewithal to leverage that data, let us do it, okay? We'll provide that feedback. We'll coach them one on one, whether it's CSRs, whether it's technicians, whether it's compromisers. And if you need help with that weekly meeting, that group meeting, we'll absolutely help you facilitate it using the same outline we went over earlier.

[Tommy Melo]

So why wouldn't somebody reach out? It's not the right time.

[Brigham Dickinson]

Inertia, Inertia, Scary. Like it's one more thing you've got to do. But here's the thing. This is actually one less thing you have to do. You know, you have to do this with or without us, right? You've got to have a training organization with or without us. Let us take that off your plate. Let us be one less thing you have to do.

[Tommy Melo]

I love it. Close us out, brother. One final thought for the day, I

[Brigham Dickinson]

would say more than anything, most important thing is to remember, not to compare yourself to anybody else. Open up your scriptures. Chances are you haven't done it lately. Do it, okay? In due time. Chances are morticians are going to have an identity crisis, right? So consider that. Consider what's coming. Consider what might change the next who knows how many years. But the scriptures will definitely help you with that. Other than that, you guys build a training organization. If you know in your heart of hearts you can't do it on your own, let us help you.

[Tommy Melo]

All right. Brigham Digginson, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you guys for listening. Hey there. Thanks for tuning into the podcast today. Before I let you go, I want to let everybody know that Elevate is out and ready to buy. I can share with you how I attracted a winning team of over 700 employees in over 20 states. The insights in this book are powerful and can be applied to any business or organization. It's a real game changer for anyone looking to build and develop a high performing team like over here at a one garage door or service. So if you want to learn the secrets that help me transfer my team from stealing the toilet paper to a group of 700 plus employees rowing in the same direction, head over to elevateandwin.com podcast and grab a copy of the book. Thanks again for listening and we'll catch up with you next time on the podcast.