Why You Don't Need More Website Traffic to Grow Your Trades Business

Summary

Podcast Summary: "Why You Don't Need More Website Traffic to Grow Your Trades Business"

Podcast Information:

• Title: To The Point - Home Services Podcast
• Host/Author: RYNO Strategic Solutions
• Episode: Why You Don't Need More Website Traffic to Grow Your Trades Business
• Release Date: December 17, 2024

In this insightful episode of To The Point - Home Services Podcast, hosts Chris and Chad delve into a critical aspect of growing a trades business: maximizing conversions rather than merely increasing website traffic. The discussion is enriched with practical strategies, real-world examples, and actionable advice tailored for HVAC, Plumbing, Electrical, Roofing, and other home service companies.

---

1. Understanding the Conversion Challenge

The episode kicks off with Chad highlighting the importance of mapping the customer journey to identify where potential clients drop out. He poses a crucial question:

Chad [00:00]: "What percentage of your customers are you okay not doing business with?"

This introspection leads to the realization that many businesses may be losing half of their potential customers due to ineffective conversion strategies. The focus shifts from attracting more leads to converting the existing ones more effectively.

2. The Six Ps of Marketing

Chris introduces the concept of the Six Ps of Marketing, a framework designed to help contractors evaluate and enhance their marketing efforts without increasing the budget. The Six Ps discussed are:

1. Product: Clearly defining what services you offer.
2. Place: Ensuring customers know where your services are available.
3. Price: Strategically presenting your pricing to encourage action.
4. Promotion: Crafting compelling calls to action that resonate with customers.
5. People: Training your team to handle inquiries effectively.
6. Personality: Infusing your business with a relatable and engaging personality.

Product Clarity: Chris emphasizes the need for businesses to clearly communicate their service offerings. Using Chad’s roofing business as an example, he questions how specific service descriptions can enhance customer understanding.

Chris [15:24]: "What are all the enhancements that I can have? They can't buy what they don't know you have."

Place and Service Areas: Ensuring that your service areas are explicitly stated on your website prevents potential customers from overlooking your offerings due to geographical misunderstandings.

Chad [30:12]: "Make it easy for people to know exactly what you do and exactly where you do it."

3. Enhancing Promotional Strategies

Speed to Lead: One of the standout strategies discussed is the importance of responding to leads swiftly. Chad shares a tactic where automated text messages are sent to potential customers who disconnect during calls, offering a direct link to book appointments online.

Chad [19:35]: "We have an automated text campaign that sends out a text message to that person and says... here's a link to our online booking."

Same-Day Service Guarantees: Offering guarantees, such as next-day installation or providing credits for delays, can significantly enhance customer trust and increase conversion rates.

Chad [37:12]: "We guarantee a next day install... if I can't put it in the next day, I'll give them 500 bucks as a credit."

4. Optimizing Communication Channels

Text Messaging Over Calls: The conversation highlights the effectiveness of text messaging in converting leads compared to traditional phone calls. Texts are less intrusive and provide a convenient way for customers to negotiate and ask questions.

Chad [21:12]: "If you're texting people, like people are responding, they're getting into conversations."

Effective Call Handling: Chris underscores the necessity of answering calls promptly to prevent losing potential business. He shares statistics indicating that a significant percentage of calls are often missed, which can be detrimental to growth.

Chris [52:26]: "Speed to that contact form is incredibly important on making sure you're following up on those."

5. Training and Empowering Your Team

Personalized Customer Service: Chad and Chris discuss the balance between using scripts and allowing genuine interactions. Emphasizing the need for empathy and personalization in customer interactions can lead to higher conversion rates.

Chris [56:50]: "You need to be a little more personable in how you answer these calls."

Employee Education: Educating your team about the value of each lead and the cost associated with acquiring them can motivate better performance and a more proactive approach in handling inquiries.

Chad [53:39]: "We even allow... they're like, we're not going to pay $200 for a lead. And we couldn't get there when they wanted us to."

6. Infusing Personality into Your Brand

Humor and Relatability: The hosts advocate for giving your business a unique personality to differentiate it from competitors. Chad and Chris share examples of how humor in commercials can make a business more approachable and memorable.

Chris [39:52]: "Don't be afraid to give your business a personality."

Social Media as a Testing Ground: Social media platforms serve as excellent venues to experiment with different brand personalities and gauge customer reactions without significant risk.

Chad [40:00]: "Empower your team to go do that because you're right."

7. Mapping the Customer Journey

Chad returns to the concept of the customer journey, emphasizing the need to identify and address each touchpoint that a customer interacts with. Understanding where customers lose interest allows businesses to implement targeted strategies to retain them.

Chad [59:00]: "What are all those touch points where someone could fall out and you paid for a customer, yet you did no business with them?"

8. Practical Takeaways and Actionable Strategies

The episode culminates with a series of actionable strategies that businesses can implement immediately:

• Map Out Customer Touchpoints: Identify where customers drop off and implement solutions to retain them.
• Enhance Service Clarity: Clearly articulate all services offered and the areas served.
• Leverage Text Messaging: Utilize automated and personalized text messages to engage leads effectively.
• Implement Service Guarantees: Offer incentives like next-day installations or discounts to reassure customers.
• Optimize Call Handling: Ensure swift and empathetic responses to all inquiries.
• Infuse Brand Personality: Use humor and relatable content to make your business stand out.
• Educate Your Team: Provide your team with the knowledge and tools to understand the value of each lead and handle them accordingly.

Chris [59:43]: "You don't need to work on all the nuanced stuff. You just need to work on the basic stuff first."

Conclusion

In this episode of To The Point - Home Services Podcast, Chris and Chad convincingly argue that increasing website traffic isn't the sole path to business growth. By focusing on improving conversion rates through strategic marketing, optimized communication, and personalized customer service, home service companies can achieve significant growth without additional marketing expenditure. The practical insights shared provide listeners with a roadmap to enhance their existing operations and capitalize on the leads they already generate.

Chad [59:53]: "You don't got to do everything, but you got to do something. No zero days."

---

Key Takeaways:

• Prioritize converting existing leads over generating new traffic.
• Implement the Six Ps of Marketing to streamline your strategies.
• Utilize text messaging for higher engagement and conversions.
• Ensure prompt and empathetic handling of all customer inquiries.
• Give your business a unique personality to differentiate from competitors.
• Continuously map and refine the customer journey to minimize drop-offs.

By adopting these strategies, home service businesses can optimize their operations, enhance customer satisfaction, and drive sustainable growth without necessarily increasing their marketing budgets.

Transcript

[Chad]

Map out that journey of, like, what touch points hit the customer and where a customer could fall out. So did they call in and fell out because we didn't book the appointment? Did they get to the website? And we got all these form fills, but we only. There were 10th of them, but we only talked to two people. Like, what percentage of your customers are you okay not doing business with? So if your conversion rate is 50%, essentially what you're saying is that half of the customers that I pay for that come and we send somebody out, we're okay not doing business with half of it. Well, when you frame it like that, it's like, oh, shit.

[Chris]

This is to the Point a Rhino experience voted one of the top home services, marketing and operations podcasts. Cutting through the bullshit and getting to the point. What's up? To the point, listeners, it's your boy Chris. We are so close to Christmas, and I am excited. I can just feel the excitement. I can see the excitement on Chad's face. Some of you might not know, but Chad also goes by Chad the Chief of Christmas cheer, or Peppermint Peterman as some of us call him. But Christmas is also his favorite time of year. What you guys can't see unless you're watching the video is he's got a twinkle in his eye, much like old St. Nick. Chad, you feeling very Christmassy, buddy?

[Chad]

You know, I actually made the comment, typically it's, you know, running around, doing this, doing that, but I made a comment to my wife the other day is that my daughter's 6 and my son is 3, and this is like prime time. Because they both get it. They're both super excited. Every day they wake up. I've already used, hey, you better be good. You know, Santa's watching all of this stuff and, like, it literally has brought back kind of the joy of Christmas just seeing them and how just over the moon. They are excited about this. So, yeah, I'm really. I'm actually. I don't get pumped up quite often, but I am. I am pumped up about Christmas and. And them seeing them have a great time.

[Chris]

Yeah, man, that is. It is fun. I love that too, because, like, it's just pure, genuine joy.

[Chad]

Absolutely.

[Chris]

I mean, it's so cool. I love it too. We had, so we had a. We had an instance that happened in the. In the Yano house yesterday, or I guess it be a. A few days ago. And that is. This wasn't a thing when I was young. I don't think it was a thing when you were younger. Either. But, you know, you've heard of the elf on the shelf, right?

[Chad]

Yep. We do not do it, okay? They do it. They do it at school. Which makes getting the kids up in the morning a little bit easier because they're excited to go see where the elf is at school.

[Chris]

So we have that in the auto house for, you know, the youngest, for Fallon. And Fallon is it. Film is about it. Okay. And. And I have to. Excuse me. After Santa has to remember to make this move or somebody's meal, they'll move it on its own. Of course, you know, magic, you know, for all the kids listening. But the elf, Riley has, as she's called in the Yano house, was sitting by the fire, you know, the other morning, her and her little trusted reindeer. And during the. During the work day, seems that old Rex, the youngest dog, got a hold of Riley. You know, you can't. And you can't touch. You know, you can't touch elf without loses its magic. Well, kids were home when that happened. So long way we could, you know, Riley could be dislodged from the jaws of Rex, our English bulldog was, you know, Jamie, our house manager, had to, you know, grab Riley and pull her out of his mouth. Well, there goes the magic. And Fallon lost it. She said, oh, my God, like, what now? What are we gonna do to get the elves? So I come home from work, boom. She. Well, she calls me, she calls Anna, she texts me. I get home, boom, she's on me. She's like, here's what we got to do. You got to put paper towel down. You put Riley down the paper towel. You spring cinnamon all around it. Then you sing Christmas carols to her. And then if you put her under the tree and write a note, you know, then I think you can get the magic back. We're like, okay, so. So that's what. That's what I did. I. We put. Put her on a piece of paper towel, surrounded her and cinnamon. Same Christmas carol tour, which I know you love. So I'm sure you were upset you missed out on that. And then. And then wrote a note and then Fallon put her iPad down when it was bedtime and just put a fireplace running on her iPad by the alpha century. So I guess we're gonna, you know, we'll find out because I think the elf is going to make a return. So the magic's back. Okay, so I'm getting to. It was a catastrophe that we had to over overcome. It almost was a Christmas nightmare. So a little crazy, man. If you have Kids and you have the elf on the shelf. You know exactly what I'm talking about. It's the same reason Chad doesn't have one in his house. It is not. Not an enjoyable time of year to have to remember to get up. And thank God I get up early anyway. But, man, you never know. Like, sometimes they get it. They wake up and they're, like, eager to go and find the elf. So this episode has nothing to do with that, but because it's, you know, the spirit of Christmas, it made sense to talk about those things. What the episode is actually going to be about is something that Chad and I believe a lot in, and we've talked about it in various ways throughout this. This year. But it's around the thought of you have to, you know, spend more money on marketing to grow your business or get more website traffic to grow your business. That's not. That's not always true. You actually don't have to do that to grow your business. And a lot of times what we find, regardless of size of business, Chad's found it in his business is there's a conversion problem. And thankfully, there's lots of different conversion problems that can be found and fixed. So. So, yeah, maybe you don't need to spend anything anymore. You just need to focus on, well, where are these conversion breaking points that I can get fixed? And we're going to share some of those things with you, but not until I ask you, Chad, would you be okay if I just shared a few Christmas jokes with you to kick this off?

[Chad]

So this is where the point of it, the episode potentially going off the rails that you were talking about before we started this is that point correct.

[Chris]

You know, sometimes when it's a Christmas season, I just feel compelled to share funny jokes.

[Chad]

I can only imagine where these are going. Well, let her rep.

[Chris]

It's gonna be good. So where the stock came from was, you know, this past weekend, I was over at Tommy's house, and Tommy loves to tell about a million jokes. And some of these, you know, I didn't. I didn't hear any of these jokes in particular, but it's what gave me the idea, you know, to do one of these episodes and make sure that, you know, I have some Christmas jokes on there. So I thought, let me just, you know, pick out a couple. We'll throw them out there, and we'll see if I. We'll see if they land. I'll see if I can make Chad laugh, which is my goal, by the.

[Chad]

Way, listeners, if you got these from Tommy, I can only imagine where this may be going.

[Chris]

Well, hold on. There's only three jokes on here that I'm going to share with all the listeners and with you, Chad, and my hope is to make you laugh or to even better, embarrass you, but not all of these are from Tommy, but I bet you you can pick the one that might be.

[Chad]

I probably can.

[Chris]

So of the three jokes, we're going to go ahead and kick it off with. With this first one, and it's. What's the difference between snowmen and snow women?

[Chad]

I don't know.

[Chris]

Snowballs.

[Chad]

Oh, I like that one.

[Chris]

That's good. Easy one, right? Y. Pretty good.

[Chad]

Easing in.

[Chris]

Yep. Easy. Okay, here's the next one. This is pretty funny, too. Made me laugh out loud. Lol. As the kids say. What do you call a sex toy on a Christmas tree? What do you call a sex. Oh, is that Santa.

[Chad]

Fre.

[Chris]

My. My ringtone I text off. What do you call a sex toy on a Christmas tree?

[Chad]

I'm not sure.

[Chris]

A decoration. Okay, I got a little giggle out of you.

[Chad]

Oh, boy.

[Chris]

Okay, here's the last one. Okay, I'll see if I can get this one out. What do you call a penis wearing a Santa hat?

[Chad]

I don't know.

[Chris]

Jolly old Saint Dick.

[Chad]

Lord.

[Chris]

Okay, listeners, I apologize. Don't cancel me, okay? These are just jokes. I. You know, and they're not even mine. I didn't write them, but I had to read them out. Some of you laughed with us, all right? Some of you are disgusted and might never tune in again. Chad and I. And I blame you. Sorry, buddy. Thanks for. Thanks for taking that for me. Make sure you have some decorations on the Christmas tree. Okay, let's jump into it again. The whole reason we're having this podcast is, again, you know, it's for the end of the year. And I don't know about you, but there's that week between Christmas and New Year's where, like, as soon as it's the 26th, like, as soon as it's the day after Christmas, my brain immediately shifts right back into business mode, and I start thinking about all the things, you know, I'm gonna. I'm gonna do for next year or that I need to do. And, like, what I'm. You know, it's time to start executing on xyz. Like, I immediately shift into business mode, like, the next day. Sometimes at the end of Christmas, one of these things that you can, you know, that you can do in that period or beforehand is be thinking about Some of the things that we're going to talk about today because again, yes, the topic is around, well, how can you get more out of what you're already doing? So without having to spend any more marketing? But you can do both, clearly. Like if you have a. Your plan in place for, for 2025, which hopefully you do and your budging's in place and you've already been down that path, but if not, it's not too late, maybe think about some of these things that you can fix that will just help with what you've already got in place. So, so let me go ahead and start with this from a marketing perspective. You know, there's a lot of us marketing agencies and maybe for those who are listening, I don't say this often, I should say it again. I'm the founder of Rhino Strategic Solutions, which is a digital marketing company for home services. It's been around since 2008. So I've been at this for a long time. And Chad is the CEO of Peterman Brothers H Vac and Plumbing Company out in Indiana. So and then collectively we're contractors. I mean, I'm a contractor, I'm a red bird. Roofing is our roofing business that Chad and I and another partner started out in Indiana this year. You know, so we, you have a couple different businesses that we're in. But collectively, like these are some of the conversations that we have when we talk business and we're not telling jokes or Chad's trying to, you know, sing because he loves singing. But it is, you know, all, all marketing companies are, you know, here to help you. You have marketing spend and we're all trying to bring in more business for you in various different ways depending on whatever your marketing company is. But the point of all this is, you know, once you get to a certain size and Chad like you, you can for sure attest to this. Sometimes you are hyper focused on just conversions. Now what do I mean by conversions? It is if you pay money for a lead, right? Someone goes to Google and searches for drain cleaning and we got to get them to actually convert from the ad to the website. Pretty straightforward. We want to get one, we got to get their attention to even want to click on your ad. But then it is once it gets into the website, the lead gets into the website, the customer gets in there. Are they taking action? Are they not taking action? Right? If they're not, well, then you got a conversion problem. If they don't even make it into your website, you got a conversion problem. But let's say that they do, right? They find an appealing ad, which we'll talk about some. You know, I'm going to give you some actual, like, tactical things that you can walk away with and then Chat can share from his perspective. But once they get in there and then they actually call you, well, there's another conversion opportunity. And I think one that a lot of you will find is there's probably something to be fixed. Regardless of how great you think that your business is, there's probably something to be fixed there. So. But there's some things that you can do along the way without spending another dollar to help help with conversions. So I'm gonna jump in on the first, on the, on the first topic with this. And Chad just kind of like, jump in, whatever. And, and because if I'm reading something off my list, just, just jump in. But the. I've done and I've done probably. I don't know how many different breakouts or keynotes. I might even have done a podcast on this now I think about it. But there's this thing that a topic I've done that's called the six Ps, the six Ps of marketing. And the whole point of doing it was these are things for that the contractors could look at that are easy to remember and go back into their businesses and say, yep, I'm missing one of these six P's, and if I just change that one, it would increase, you know, the business without changing, you know, without spending another dollar. That was, that was the point of six Ps, and, and some of this is going to sound like pretty simple, but I think you'd be surprised if you looked at your, at your website and you might find that some of these things are missing. But let me go give you the first P. You know, the first P is, you know, place, you know, our. Excuse me, product is product. What do you, what do you do? Like, think about this, Chad. Like, even with some of these roofing businesses that we look at that are exteriors, I am ABC exteriors. What does that mean exactly? What does exteriors tell you? Is, is it clear of what your business does? It could be Peterman Brothers Home Services. What are the home services like? Why do we make things difficult for people, you know, trying to find your. The someone to take care of these services? Why do you make it difficult for them to know exactly what you do? Why can't we just put on there, you do H Vac, plumbing, electrical, make it easy. Now Chad does a great job of this but there's a lot of you that if you go to their website is it really clear what you do? So that first p being product make it super easy for people to find out what you do.

[Tommy]

In home services, speed to lead is everything. Chirp stands out by transforming your communication strategy with Chirp, accelerate your lead response time with instant sms, text messaging, email and ringless voicemail automation. Chirp's cutting edge technology ensures you're the first and the most persistent, helping you close more deals than ever. But that's not all. Say goodbye to missed opportunities with Chirp's incredible follow up system. Keep your leads engaged and moving smoothly through your sales funnel without lifting a finger. And with your deep integrations with top CRMs like Service Titan, Housecall Pro and Jobber, you can launch laser targeted campaigns to connect with the exact right leads at the exact right time. Automation creates efficiency. Efficiency unlocks scalability. With Chirp, you can automate speed, delete, estimate follow ups, rehash abandoned call follow ups, cancel job follow ups, review requests outbounding to your list, annual reminders, membership expiration follow ups and so much more. So stop chasing leads, capture them, connect faster and close more deals with Chirp. Contact Chirp today and elevate your communication game.

[Chad]

Well, if I think, yeah, I think it's a great point. I think the other piece too is more so do your own customers know what you offer? If you offer multi trades, you know, I know for the first probably shoot, we were in like year six of having plumbing and I still had customers going, I didn't realize you did that. It's like it's written on the side of the truck, it's in every ad, all of these things, but people just don't pay attention to it. So I think there's a huge opportunity and something we're really focused on is people talk about it a lot because I think it's kind of a buzzword is like cross selling but like what's stopping you from sending out a text to your customers and saying, hey, just a reminder, we do plumbing. If you book here in the next week, we'll give you a hundred bucks off or something like that. I think there's so many opportunities there when it, when it comes to conversion where we're so tied to, well, I got a, my marketing company's got to drive me more leads, drive me more leads, drive me more leads. It's like you probably have a lot of leads sitting there that you just need to nurture a little bit more or Educate or just inform them that you actually provide that service. You know, I think in plumbing, you know, like water conditioning or water softeners or whatever it is. Like people sometimes don't even equate that to a plumber. Like they equate a plumber to like fixing my pipe or my faucet, not so much. What are all the enhancements that I can have? Electrical, like generators or whatever it may be. Like people, you know, they've seen the ads, they've thought about a generator, but do they know that you can do it and they already trust you, so why not reach out and let them know, hey, we do this service and we've just seen a huge kind of uptick and just really focusing on just how do we not like, not like hammer your customer base, but just like let them know. And it's always the times, especially around the holidays when something breaks or they think about something or the kids are home and they're taking off time, it's the perfect opportunity to get some of that little piddly to do stuff off your list that, you know, you've been putting off for a while.

[Chris]

Yeah, it's a good point. And then I think I wasn't really thinking about that until you brought it up. And then it made me think of the follow up. You know, like you follow up on stuff that had maybe been proposed or is still pending. Like someone reached out but you haven't, weren't able to book anything with them. And that is the rehash world, you know, or just the followup world. And I know that, you know, one of our sponsors, you know, Chirp, can certainly be helpful with that, but Chad's got more tactics around, you know, like I think we did this podcast. It was me, you and Gainer, I think it was. We were talking about this particular. But maybe just share like some of those tactics on just, hey, some of the business you've already got there, you just need to go and chase it down.

[Chad]

Yeah, I mean, I think when it comes. And you'll probably get into this on the call conversions, but we have a, we have an automated text campaign that goes out to if you call in and then like hang up or get disconnected, it sends out a text message to that person and says, hey, saw that you called, wanted to make sure that we got you booked. Here's a link to our online booking. If you want to go ahead and book an appointment that saves a ton of appointments that we would have otherwise lost. I think you'd be surprised, especially in These smaller companies that, you know, they're, you know, everyone's wearing a bunch of different hats. You're running around doing all this stuff and what gets lost is, well, you ran 20 service calls today. You converted 10 of them, but maybe three or four of them just need a phone call to say, hey, we were out there. Do you still want to move? Oh, yeah, I meant to call you guys. I. Shoot, yeah, let's go ahead and do it. It's just there's a lot of low hanging fruit there, you know, I know our inside sales department just on service lines does probably, probably gets 20 to 30 thousand dollars worth of work a day by just literally simply talking to people going, hey, it's us again. One thing I would tell you is I just said call, just text people. That's how, that's, we've tried calling, we get about a 10% pickup rate. Whereas if you're texting people, like people are responding, they're getting into conversations. Hey, what can you do? I thought it, you know, can you do it for a hundred bucks less? Yeah, absolutely. It's a $3,000 job. We'll do it. Let's go.

[Chris]

Yeah, because they can. It's easier for people to try to haggle via text without talking to somebody. It's just easier.

[Chad]

Yeah, absolutely. So all of our communication, we don't even, our inside sales department doesn't even. They very rare. I mean, there's times when they'll jump on the phone with a customer, but it's usually after a text conversation of like, hey, let's just hop on the phone real quick. I can explain that or we can get some more details or whatever it may be.

[Chris]

Yeah, it makes perfect sense, actually. And I even prefer that too. So I just had, up at the, up at the cabin, we had a well issue, which by the way, I've never had a well issue in my life and now I'm wishing I didn't have a well issue. But it costs a lot to drill well. And so I had, I had the first person come up to our house, the first company go up to the house and do a, you know, a whole analysis. I, I changed out a, you know, a pump and, and it still wasn't pumping water. So the first one, a pump guy came and fixed it. He recommended a company to me, a well drilling company. I called the well drilling company. They went to the, they went to the house, did their analysis, and then sent me an email with it with two invoices in it. So not proposals. Two invoices and one was for $30,000 and one was for $50,000. 30 and 50. No conversation, like zero. None. Not even a call, not a text, nothing. So I'm like, okay, I hope that doesn't mean that they did one of these things without talking to me. So I reached out to them and I called them and I called them and they called me back and said it was a younger, like, it sounded like. Sound like a younger guy. Called me back and just said, yeah, it looks like we're gonna have to redrill the well. It's. There's, you know, the well, if you either got to go deeper or you gotta move it and you can't go any deeper, you have to move the well. And if, you know, we do that, it's gonna be another 50, you know, it's $50,000 because equipment to get down your road and like, what's next? 25 grand just to get the equipment there. Like, this is crazy. So I'm like, maybe I'll get a second opinion. So. Second opinion. This dude, I don't talk to him on the phone at all except for when I booked the call, all via text message. Ton of stuff. Sent me pictures, sent me like, and then sent me a detailed proposal and said, call me if you want to go through it. And I looked at the proposal and I just asked my questions via text and I said, good to go. Boom. I mean, it was. Thank God. Not that still cost me ten grand to get it all repaired and fixed. Never talks to him until afterwards. I bought it and it. And it worked fine and I just saved myself a ton of money. But that's like, you know, it was just one of these things where I would have. I probably would have kept putting it off had I not. Had they not made it easy for me to get it, to get it done right. But you can't send me a thirty thousand dollar, you know, invoice and say, well, that's what our proposals look like. And then, you know, not give me any solutions. And like, so that's just one random instance where it's like, I would much rather do business off of a text message or without having to talk to somebody than having to talk somebody. And it's kind of.

[Chad]

Yeah. I mean, people are buying cars via text message. I got a few people in here in the office. It was like a couple years ago. He's like, yeah, I just bought a car. I never talked to the guy, never met him. Whatever it was, I knew what I wanted. I sent. He sent me a text and said, hey, just tell me what you want. Here it is. All right, perfect. Here's what the payment's going to look like. What can you make it better? All right. Walked in, signed the paperwork, drove off in a car. Never went to the car lot to even see it.

[Chris]

Yeah, I don't know when H Vac is going to get like that because we've talked about it for a while, kicked it around on this whole E commerce and buying equipment thing and somebody showing up and installing it. I still don't know how far away you are. Away from that.

[Chad]

I sold two this week. Like that side unseen.

[Chris]

That's awesome. Are you starting to see like a slow progression there with online buying like that or.

[Chad]

Yeah, I still think there's a there I. We look at it like this. So I'm going to. We're going to do traditional now. Ours isn't as traditional because we do a lot of virtual estimates where technicians in the home. It's a 20 year old system. The need a new one. We send the customer a zoom link while the technician's there, salesperson is right on that call and sells the system right through Zoom. So we do them like that. So that's with a technician on there. But we also run ads at. And we look at it as, can we just go grab another segment of customers who are literally just kind of shopping right there. There's the customer that I got something wrong. I need someone out here. It's broke. I know it's broke. Someone else gave me a quote, whatever it is. But then there's another segment of customers and I always, we. I always associate it with buying a car. How many times have you went online and built the car that you want without ever buying it? And so like that's the experience that we're looking to create where it's like, we don't want it to replace anything. We just want it to be like, hey, is there a group of customers out here that we could provide something to, to make it easy? And so what we do is we basically, you put in a few pieces of information, we send you a quote, and we also with that quote say, hey, if you'd like to talk to a advisor, you can hop on a zoom call and we'll go through the quote with you and you know, talk you through it. So that's exactly what happened. Now we're still working out the kinks and we don't have it perfect. We just launched it like a week and a half ago. But the goal is to, if we can grab those customers, they're not going to convert at nearly as high. There's just tire kicking. But once they get the quote and they see what the monthly payment is, they may get a little bit more interested because the reason that they wanted the quote was they weren't sure what it cost or how could they afford it or whatever it was. And so we just sell them right through there. So we'll have the customer take some pictures, do some stuff like that. Once it's sold, then we'll send a field supervisor out there to get a material list, make sure everything looks good, all of that stuff. But yeah, we've sold a couple like that this week where we never, never went out to the house.

[Chris]

Yeah, that's pretty cool. And then do you have the, do you also have the option with it? Like if they're doing, if they're building their own system, the financing, like the pre approval financing button there too to get preapproved or do you still have to.

[Chad]

Yeah, so we're playing around with that. So we've done pre approvals. Like we send out a text message, it's like 4:00 right now we're playing around with that because what we're seeing is a lot of declines and we have other options but it's hard to. When they see a decline, oh shoot, I'm not going to have the appointment anymore. And so now we've started some follow up campaigns of like hey, I noticed you got pre approved but it didn't, didn't go through. Just want to let you know we have a ton of other options that we can, we can get you situated with. So yeah, that one we're playing around with some different things on it for sure.

[Chris]

Yeah, good point. I didn't think about that because I've been such an advocate for like sweet build a system and also get your pre approval done. But you make a good point with all the declines because I have heard of a lot of declines happening. Well then that might actually work adverse on you because you're like, oh shit, if you don't follow up on the decline for an alternate solution that they could have been approved for for sure.

[Chad]

Well and I think that just goes into what we're talking about right here is conversion. Right. Okay. I paid for this lead. It came in, I got them to go to pre approval. But if they even got decline, I mean we've sold quite a few declines over the last month or so just by, hey, let us come out there. Well, let's get it. And then we can go through some other options for you because we've got some other lenders or whatever it may be that can, you know, do something maybe go a little bit deeper on your credit score, you know, just other options for sure.

[Chris]

Got it. So great points. So you know, around the, the whole 6P theory that I've kind of laid out to you guys, starting with, with product, this is a great example of just different ways you can go about, you know, one, making them aware of the products that you have. In Chad's point, if you have new services and maybe they use it for something different. To not be afraid to reach out and tell them you have these other services, they can't buy what they don't know you have. And sometimes they don't know what they need. They don't know what they need until they know that it exists to add, you know, whether it be, you know, an add on service.

[Chad]

Well, and a lot of these people, I mean you gotta think about a net new customer. Like how many times do you have a H Vac person out to your home? Well, okay, it may be the first time. And so they're, they were, when they were searching, they were looking for H vac, My furnace does not work. I need you now. They didn't probably care to click on the plumbing tab or the electrical tab or all of these other things. And so you've got to make them aware because yes, they've used you before but like they used you for a very specific reason if they're a new customer, not all the other things that they're like, oh shoot, well I really like those guys and my water heater just quit or whatever it may be.

[Chris]

Yeah, good point. I think that I'm going to jump, jump ahead on one. I'm going to do this a little bit out of sequence because we're kind of talking around the promo. Like the promo part of P. And promotion doesn't always mean a pricing promotion. It can be, you know, like it could be speed to service, which is still super important. Like what if you are a same day service or a next day service or whatever it is. But promo can also be around like building your own system. It could also be around like your financing. It could also be around using an online scheduler, you know, to book a book now button. So promo doesn't always have to be something that's, you know, financially driven, but it's a call to action, you know. And a common mistake that I see too is, you know, on, on a website, whatever your call to action is, you know, at least have, if you're going to have three colors, one needs to be an accent color and the accent color needs to be something that really stands out. That's usually your call to action, you know, so we're like Peterman Brothers. Colors are the red and blue. So you have, you know, you might have to have a third color that really stands, you know, that stands out. Or if it's, you know, rhino, it's, you know, we're orange and blue, you know, but have a third color in there that helps, you know, certain call to actions stand out or at least a variation of a shade of that color. But you, you know, you can have different call to actions because again, think about it like this. When you, if you're driving somebody to your site, I don't care where it's from, if it's from marketing, it's from your trucks, if it's from branding that they hear on radio, tv, whatever, and they end up coming back to your site because we know that's what happens. You, you need to make sure that they know exactly what you do, number one, and exactly where you do it, number two. So the second P being place. So first is product, second is place. Let's not assume that everybody knows where you do business. So again, an example would be, you know, I'll use Chad and I's roofing company, Red Bird Roofing. We're located in Carmel, Indiana, but we will serve, we will serve the Indianapolis metro area if we need to. And now also in West Lafayette and Lafayette if we need to. When we just went to Lafayette and West Lafayette called a month or so ago, it was, I had to add that to the website. So that way we knew that we served Indianapolis and Lafayette. Otherwise we can't just assume that they know we're in Lafayette. It's far enough away. Wouldn't make any sense. So. But, but people will even think if you're in the northern, you know, if you're in the northern suburbs and you service the, the southern suburbs, if you don't put that in there, why are you going to let people like, you know, assume that you don't just if no matter where you're at in your service area, even if it's like a little map that shows a shaded area over the area that you service, make it easy for people to know exactly what you do and exactly where you do it. Why make him guess like it makes no sense? And don't make him dig for it, you know, don't make them have to go looking around for your service area. Like, make it easy, you know, without them having to scroll to see exactly what you are, you know, where you. What you do and where you do it. I mean, Chad, you guys are all over the state of Indiana at this point. And every time you add a new location, well, you have to add that location to site for the folks that are searching in that location.

[Chad]

Yep, absolutely. Yeah, we'll launch Lexington, Kentucky here in January. Well, we've already got GMB set up, trying to drive reviews at it. All of these things that you can do prior to ever kind of doing business. I think I got that from our good friend Mr. Goodrich. And kind of how they went about putting ghetto up in these other locations is they were acting like they were there way before they were ever there. So that when they did start doing it, you already had kind of that brand equity that was already rolling, right?

[Chris]

Yeah. I mean, that was the first thing I did with Redbird was I changed out that the Google business profile. And that world wanted to make sure we got into it and changed everything over and we were ready to roll. So another one is. And this one can sometimes be controversial. And we were on a podcast, a podcast that we previously recorded with our friend Travis Ringi. And I know this was one thing that he loved to do was the other p, you know, is price. And some people put price on their site. Not everybody puts price on their site. It might be a starting, you know, a starting from price or as low as price. I'm not telling you to do this, by the way. I'm just giving you an example of something that some people do, you know, to create a call to action by using price. But there's another. That's something else that you can do or, you know, another version of that could be, you know, the. If you, if you have the option to build out your own system online, whether you're using like your own built better, good, better best option, or like a contractor commerce or something like that, I think price is another option you could put on there. So that way people are going to call in and ask for ballparks. Can you give me a ballpark on this? And the answer is always, we got to go out to the house. We got to be how we like. But there. But if you are going to offer a price, clearly you need to have a system around. That's exactly what Travis would say is we didn't put it on there without having an exact system. And process in place on how to handle that type of call. But the other one is, you know, on promotions I do want to go back to the financial and the Financial well, the two best call to actions for me to bring in a new. A new customer still those main pillars are a. Some sort of a. A savings or like a like or a financial promotion or speed to lead. Those two are two great hooks still to this day to get someone to actually click and take action. And doesn't mean they necessarily need to call. But if you're sending a contact form make sure you got on I don't care on every page of that website. The easiest way to do this is make sure you have a sticky header meaning no matter which page you go to, you got the same header that has the same call to actions where it makes it easy for them to book no matter what page that they're on. And then if it's on a mobile version just make sure that the number is easy. They're going to call. This is easy. Click the call button. But I still love those two promos, man. Like if you can actually get their same day service or same day service is a big one that's like anytime I have a contract that offers that it's such a huge deal because I can get there faster. I didn't spend more money on it. You know, I didn't spend more money. I just made sure that I put, you know, I know that they want somebody if it's. Especially if it's, you know, here in Phoenix and the, you know, air conditioner goes out like speed is an absolute necessity. Same in Indiana. It's cold and the heat goes out. You know, you can get by with some space heaters but people are going to want to get that furnace fixed. Like they're going to want to get that stuff done. And if you can get there, you know, same day, next day or at least get there and put a space heater in to get to put doing it installation of the furnace or whatever. Like Speed delete absolutely matters.

[Chad]

Yeah. One that works for us is and it goes along with speed delete is we guarantee a next day install. And a lot of people are like I got this from Dave Geiger. So I know it's good because I asked him, I was like how do you do that? Because like in the middle of the summer or the middle of the winter, like you don't know if you're going to have. He goes it we just give him 500 bucks. If I can't Put it in the next day. I'll give them 500 bucks as a credit because it's going to be the next day. And so those of you out there that maybe don't have the install labor built up at the end of the day, utilizing that to get in the home and sell it, when you're sitting there and they want to buy and you're like, well, let me check my capacity. Oh, we're full for tomorrow. But, hey, as a courtesy, I'm going to give you 500 bucks off this system, and we'll put it in the next day. But you got to the lead. We win. We're in a unique position because we have so much install labor. We win jobs where we're. I mean, we won one. I heard the other day we were 2,500 bucks higher than the next guy, but I could put it in the next day, and he was a week out. Well, all day long. But, yeah, those are some other things that you can. You just got to think creatively, like, what do people want? You know, you may not be able to technically fulfill it, but if you can give them some money off or whatever, everyone's happy and they're good to go.

[Chris]

Yeah. You know, and I think another thing that's still underutilized, I think that you guys have done a good job on it. Peterman Brothers is. And this is like the. I skipped over one of the P's. One of the P's is people. But that's. We'll get to that last. The people means the people in your business, which we'll talk about in regards to the call answering and that type of stuff. I'm gonna skip past it to personality, because personality, you know, is something that's. You know, people are still maybe kind of afraid. I think people are getting better at it. But you can give the business a personality. I mean, it's a heating and air conditioning or plumbing or electrical or roofing business. Like, it's not super sexy. It's okay to be, you know, to give your business a personality. And I like that, you know, that you and your brother do, like, funny commercials, like the free furnace ads, you know, and, like, it's okay to. To be funny and add humor to your ads. Like you guys did the one where you won the award, you know, so don't be afraid to give your business a personality. I mean, listen, the best, like, testing ground is social media. Like, I know you might be like, think everybody's gonna look at your social media, but they're. I Promise you they're not. So it's like a great proving ground to throw it out there and see how it works. But it's okay to be funny with your business.

[Chad]

Yeah. And I think, too, you know, and this is. There may be some of you out there like, oh, I'm not funny. I'm pretty serious. Well, hey, welcome to the crowd.

[Chris]

Please chat.

[Chad]

Yeah, but we have people on our team that love to be creative. And I'm like, hey, think up all the creative ideas that you want. Just let me know. I've turned down a few. But, yeah, just. There's people on your team that love to do that stuff. So, like, empower them to go do that. Because you're right. Having a personality around the business and people seeing it as more than just, I'm a contractor. Like, no, I want to do business with these guys. They seem like nice people. And, you know, I think that goes, too, to kind of your own personal brand. I know this is something I've leaned into. You know, we will sell systems based on people. Listen to my podcast, and they're like, well, this seems like a place I'd want to do business with. And I think that being able to put out that message of who we are via your own personal channels. And some people are like, I don't want to be known for the business. I kind of want to be behind the scenes. And that's perfectly fine. I just know that it's worked for us is kind of being out there. Here's who we are. Here's what we're about. You know, we're going through the same things. We're just here to provide great service. And all of that stuff, I think, goes a long way, for sure.

[Chris]

Yeah, I think so, too. And that's actually a really good point, is, you know, it is. I do have to make sure I stop and think about people's creativity and. But there are plenty of people who can do this, come up with these ideas for you. And, you know, I mean, I. You know, Chad and I are good friends, and he, like, I. It's funny for me to try and make Chad laugh. It's funny for me to try and make Chad uncomfortable because he's a little bit.

[Tommy]

You know, he's a little bit more.

[Chris]

In case you guys haven't noticed, he's a little more, like, laid back, a little more serious. Serious than I am. But it has been cool to watch what you and your brother have done with the commercials, you know, and it's, you know, I mean, really Inspired me to do the same thing with our Redbird commercials. Like, let's just start leaning more into, into that style, giving the business a personality because it's more fun that way. You know, we're contractors. It's not, it's not like we're this really awesome business that people want to have to call. You know what I mean? Um, okay, so let me shift gears just a little bit into the answering side of this, right? Because no matter what you're doing, whether you're giving the business a personality or you're doing whatever, marketing, whatever's coming inbound has to be answered by a human being, right? So let's just assume that the website's doing its job because you have the, you know, it's easy to see what the product is that you offer the place where you offer it. You got your promotions or your call to actions on there. They're all working. Boom, call comes in or a contact form comes in. Speed to that contact form is incredibly important on making sure you're following up on those. On those forms coming in. Like, I cannot stress enough how the longer it sits, the lower the percentage of you actually converting that thing goes. Because if they submitted one to you, there's a good chance it probably submitted one to someone else as well. If they, you know, booked it through the. You just have a solid process in place for contact forms that come in that you catch it quick and somebody's reaching out to them. Like, that's an easy, that's an easy low hanging fruit win. But let's go to the, the calls because this is something where we spend, you know, quite a bit of time on both Chad and I's businesses. We both spend a lot of time here, I and Chad. I don't know if you remember hearing this in our breakout session at Pantheon where one of our, one of our vice president of sales, who Bailey, did a presentation on this when we were rolling out round tracks 2.0 where she was talking about just answering the phone. Okay, this sounds very simple, but the average. We averaged out all the missed calls, averaged out all the missed phone calls and it was 17% of calls were missed. Now, I know there's a variable there, like some of that stuff was probably garbage, right? There's probably some junk in there, but some of it's not. So there's probably some median in there that's actually like a percentage of legit calls that you're missing. And a good rule of thumb for like best in class would be 5% or less. Like that would be considered best in class, preferably as low as you can get it. But let's be realistic. Some sometimes in summer months or if it's like really, really busy, you might miss a few calls. But 17% is ridiculous because all I do is look at. Well, one you got to figure out is there, is there a common denominator? Is it a timing? Is it during hours, after hours? Is it actually you and your call, your team, or is it the after hours answering service? That's a whole other issue. But making sure that one, you're just answering the phone calls, you know, in general. Like, try not to let it go to voicemail if you're small and you're still the one answering the phone. Right. If nothing else, my God, get at, you know, an AI answering tool or something for you that's answering, having someone answer it's better than it's going to a voicemail. But there's also when a human being does answer the phone, I think that and Chad, like, I'll be interested to get your opinion as I leaned more into this. But you know, since we launched Traction, you know, our CSR coaching and training business to help our customers, it's been interesting to hear the updates. I'm like genuinely interested to hear. Well, what are the, like, what are we doing that like any hour had such a, huge, you know, win from us and then we care and then we brought on in Ghetto and like we're having a lot of success with it. And I'll be interested to hear your take on this. You know, most, most of the CSR coaching services have a script for you to use. Right. Like they've got their idea of what should be said that works. I don't know that. I don't know that. I'm a, I'm a believer in following a script. And, and I don't think that the attraction program is the same way. But, but here's what I do think. You definitely gotta have, you definitely gotta have like the bullet points in place of the path you need to go down. And maybe you, maybe you, you know, you have the, the same thing that you say that, you know, that is your intro or what you're calling. Sure. Or whatever. But I think there needs to be a little bit more like personable. You need to be a little more personable in how you answer these calls. Did you hear Tommy talk about like his mom? You know, Gina would answer the phone and she was like, oh, honey, like, I'm so sorry to hear that. Like, let Me, it was very, like, genuine. I think that goes a long way. And just being genuine, it kind of. So you're not really going completely off script, but you're not following this thing to a tee. Because I do think that having some of that empathy and, like, genuine matters a lot, at least from what I've noticed. So that's one thing. And then the other piece of this is, you know, we started implementing the color code that, you know, that the color code personality test. So what we had done to try and take this to another, you know, take it another step, was perfect example. Chad's a red. Chad wants to get from A to B. There's not a lot of fluff involved in there. He wants to get from. From A to B, whereas I am a yellow, which is very social. I want to have, you know, a great time. It's fun, you know, I can drag the conversation. I'm actually my wife's worst nightmare because she's a lot more like Jed. She wants to get the A to B and she doesn't want to hear all the fluff. But if you're talking to somebody who's a yellow, you need to know how to talk to somebody who's a yellow. If you're talking to somebody who's a red, you know how to talk to somebody who's a red, you know, and there's two other colors as well. So I think there's something to be said about doing some personality training in your csr coaching on how you talk to someone when you recognize they are in a, you know, a red, yellow, white, blue. Because again, these are all things I'm thinking about is once that calls come in, we've got the lead. It's ours to lose. Now what can we do? Well, answering the phone's one thing, but then the other is, you know what? So. And you guys have started. Pay closer attention to this. Chad, what are you guys doing over at Pier Bose?

[Tommy]

Sorry for the interruption to the point listeners. Have you heard of Rilla? Are you using Rilla yet? If not, are you Farilla? See what I did there? Rilla is the leading speech analytics software for the trades. It is on a mission to bring physical ride alongs to an end. You can coach your reps with virtual ride alongs now that are 100 times better, faster, and much more efficient than the physical ones. All you got to do is use the Killa Rilla. That's R I L L A.

[Chad]

Yeah. So I, I think that to hit on your first point of just answering the phone. I think that my soapbox here for the last four or five months has been, as I kind of talk with smaller companies and different things like that, it's like we're so. A lot of these companies were built on someone who was in the field, right? They were a technician. They, you know, did the work, whatever it was. Well, I think what's happened as these companies grow, what we see and when they hit walls, I think it's because we're so focused on revenue generating, selling things, doing the work, all of this, that we forget about. The most important part of the business is picking up the phone. And we're so hesitant to do it. And I'm like, guys, to grow your business, you just need to pick up the phone and answer the calls that are coming in. You've got plenty of business, right? And so for us, and what we do is, yeah, we've got somewhat of a script, but we also like the people to be somewhat genuine and somewhat do their thing. One of the things that we've done that I think plays a huge role is educating your. The people that are picking up the phone or are contacting the customers is educating them on, one, how much a lead costs and two, where what lead source it's coming from and what that lead may result in. So we did an exercise with our team where. Well, actually we have it now where when the lead pops up, it tells them where the leads, where the lead came from, and it estimates about how much we spent to get that phone call. And like, our team loved it. They were like, oh, my God, this is such great information. Like, I'm. I want to book. I'm booking this call. Like, no doubts about it. Whereas when they didn't know, they just thought the phone was ringing because they see trucks rolling around and different stuff like that. And it's like, no, no, no. We're spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to make that phone ring when they figured out what it was. And then we can also put in there, like, hey, this is an install lead that could be $12,000 of revenue into the company. And they got like, excited about it, like, oh, shoot. Like, hey, we need to jump all over this one. And so I think there's a piece where it's like, oftentimes like, well, just answer the phone, you'll be fine. But then I think there's so many more nuanced things. What you talked about is kind of the training on how to talk to different people and make sure that you get to the point you Know, there's the people that want to laugh and joke and, you know, tell you a story and so on and so forth. And there's people that are, like, busy, like, hey, yeah, book the call. Yep. Get someone out here. That sounds good. So I think there's a lot of things you can do. I think the first. First step is just having someone dedicated to answering the phone. Whoever is answering your phone, that is the lifeline to your company. So to say that. Well, yeah, Nancy does it, but then does payroll and does some bookkeeping and does. No, no, no, no, no, no. There needs to be a person that is literally just sitting there by the phone, ready to pick it up whenever that thing rings. And the more you can do that and the more calls you can book, you'll start to see the business grow. And then you can start working on all the nuanced things. Right. Like, all the personality and how are we going to answer this better? Like, that's when you can start chipping away at your booking rate. But if you're just allowing calls to just fly by and you never see them, well, you're going to. You don't need to work on all the nuanced stuff. You just need to work on the blocking and tackling of picking up the phone and booking a call.

[Chris]

Yeah, good point. I didn't realize you had. I didn't realize you had something that popped up that showed the average cost of that lead. That's. That's all. That just adds a whole other layer of, like, accountability because you're like, this is a 200 paid ad lead booking.

[Chad]

Please book it. Well, yeah, and it. We even allow. So, like, when certain leads come in, you know, they have a. They have a capacity board that they're looking at to say, hey, can I get there today? Is it tomorrow? Whenever certain lead types, they're allowed to override and overbook because it's like, no, you do anything and everything possible to book that lead because I just spent 200 on it. So do whatever you have to do. I mean, promise them whatever. Like, we're going to do it because we've already paid for the lead. We're not going to pay $200 for a lead. And we couldn't get there when they wanted us to, and then all of a sudden they're calling somebody else. It's like, no, no, no, no. We. You book that lead. But, yeah, it's really simple to do. I mean, just take your average, you know, LSA lead. What's it cost? And then just Educate your CSR on. Hey, when you see that come in from an LSA number, like, it's. That's a high dollar call. We gotta book it.

[Chris]

Got it. I see what you're doing. Okay, so you're basically, you have lead source, average cost per lead. And they, when they see that come up and know it's a LSA leader, a pay that leader or whatever lead, then they're like, they could say, oh, shit, this is a X, you know, cost. Okay, gotcha.

[Chad]

Yeah, we just put the dollar amount in there more for like a shock value. Like, because they didn't know how much leads cost. They didn't even know we were paying for them, like directly, which. Why would they. They don't. That's not. Of course. So.

[Chris]

Yeah, yeah, good point. I could, like, that's. That makes a whole lot of sense. It's just all psychological, you know, a psychological deal. Cool. Okay, so we are. We're a little over 50 minutes into this thing already. 50. I don't think we were having that much fun. Maybe it's because I told. I took too long talking in the beginning. Probably.

[Chad]

Yeah, maybe the jokes took up some time. But I think we've provided a lot of value.

[Chris]

I think so, too. Well, I meant, listen, by the way, to all the listeners, like, this is legit. Sometimes what Chad and I sit for fun and talk about is this. So as pathetic as that may sound, this is the kind of stuff that's fun to us. Okay, listen, I'm not going to drag this thing on anymore. I think we gave some good information. Let me just backtrack for just a second. You know, I'll. I'll go back to the six P's real fast. And it was product place, price, promotion, people, meaning pay attention to your people, your CSRs, their. All that type of stuff. And then a personality. Don't be afraid to give your business a personality. But in that promo phase, you know, Chad also talked about was. And don't, you know, don't just assume that because someone used you three years ago for one service that they know you have another service like ACT for. Be proactive in reaching out to them, letting them know you have these other services. And by the way, if it doesn't work the first time, don't give up. You probably. If there's something that I actually got to learn through our roofing business was sometimes it takes like, you know, three or four, no times of getting them to actually get them to, to take action. So, you know, it doesn't mean they, they saw the, they even saw the previous three. They just saw the fourth one that we sent out. And then he also talked about, you know, maybe using text message, you know, as a, as a lead, as a lead option versus so much, you know, as calling. But, like, trying text messaging is another strong one. I don't think it's impersonal. I don't know if people think it's still impersonal. I, I don't, I, I prefer that. At 45 years old, I preferred if you text me. And Chad barely does that with me. But you do, and I appreciate that. And then, you know, the last thing is, again, just answer the damn phone. Like, the phone. And if you have some money to spend and you don't have a person dedicated to answering the phone, maybe spend that money on the person answering the phone, because I guarantee you that personal loan is going to be worth its weight in gold just because they picked up the phone and gave you a shot. And then to Chad's point, you can start to work through the other things, you know, later. Just, let's just handle the basics here. And that's answer the phone. And, you know, if you have a script, great. You don't need to, you know, it can be flexible. You know, have a good personality. Just book the call, but answer the phone first and foremost. I think you think we, you think we nailed everything there, Chad, as far as, I mean, I think there's at least enough good tactics in there that they could take some things away and implement.

[Chad]

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of good stuff in there. I think one other important thing that you can do is map out your customer journey, kind of what goes along with the six Ps, but, you know, map out that journey of like, what touch points hit the customer and where a customer could fall out. So did they call in and fell out because we didn't book the appointment? Did they get to the website? And we got all these form fills, but we only. There were 10 of them. But we only talked to two people. Like, well, how do we shore that up? And so that's what we're constantly working on is here's the customer journey all the way from they saw a piece of our advertising to they put in a new system or whatever the service that they wanted. But like, what are all those touch points and how do we continue to tweak and modify and get better at all of those things so that we can take a customer from start to finish? Because so many of your customers are falling out. You know, one of the things that we're, we say all the time around here is what percentage of your customers are you okay not doing business with? So if your conversion rate is 50%, essentially what you're saying is that half of the customers that I pay for that come into and we send somebody out, we're okay not doing business with half of them. Well, when you frame it like that, it's like, oh, shit, like, what do I. Oh, hold on a second. I paid for 20, but I only did business with 10 of them. Well, why didn't you do business with those 10? Was it lack of follow up? Was it, you know, pricing? Was it. What were these things that these 10 people did not do business with you because of one reason or another? And you need to find those out because, yeah, you're not going to probably get all 20, but like, if you could get 14 instead of 10, your business starts to grow. If you can, okay, we got 14, can we get 16, whatever it is. And I'm not saying try to do business with everybody. There are some customers that you don't want for sure. We'd all agree with that. But where are all those touch points where someone could fall out and you paid for a customer, yet you did no business with them?

[Chris]

Great, great point, man. Yeah, let's not overthink this whole thing. The whole, you know, the whole purpose of this podcast episode was around, you know, not having to spend more money to, you know, grow the business. It's just, you know, finding these little areas that you can clean up and fix. And I mean, just chip away at it. Like, if you can get that 50, down to 40, down to 30, down to like, you know, that just chip away at it. Didn't take you more marketing spend to make it up. Like, by the way, you fix these things, then you add marketing spend, then watch what the business does. Now you. Now you've shored up these issue issues and now you can start spending because now it's starting to make more sense for your return on ad spend or return on investment. So. Okay, well, I think that's a great way to end it, man. Like you, you just brought us home, Chad. I'm very proud of you.

[Chad]

Do I get to do the no zero days thing or are you gonna.

[Chris]

You just do that, actually, know what? Here's what we're going to do. Chad is going to close us out. I'm not going to say another word.

[Chad]

All right, well, we are about a week away from Christmas, so I hope Everyone has a very Merry Christmas. Happy Holidays. Thank you for listening. I really like talking about this. I know Chris does. Hopefully there's some helpful hints and tips in here that you can take and deploy in your business in 2025. Again, as we always say, you don't got to do everything, but you got to do something. No zero days.