The Home Service Expert Podcast
00:42:39 · Tommy Mello, Zach Deering
[00:42:39] S3: Yeah. Yeah. It's definitely something that I think most people need [00:42:42] S0: to start taking more seriously. How can top performers balance transparent pricing without commoditizing themselves? Great question. And I'm sure there's a lot of people out there based upon this discussion that are wondering this. I think what it really comes down to is, are you educating? Are you building value? Like, what are you doing to stand out from all the Dan's and the Vans and to make sure the homeowner understands what you are going to do? I think a consistent challenge is a lot of these home service purchases are really different than anything else we purchase. If you buy a car, does it matter the dealership you buy it from? No. It's the same car. It's built in the same factory. However, if I buy a garage door or if I buy a water heater, really the only thing that matters is who installs it, right? Like the equipment is such a small piece of the final experience. And so I think educating homeowners on that is really, really important. And that's, I think the way that you can do it is if you are clearly articulating the value, then you can be transparent about pricing because again, price is only the most important thing if you don't understand anything else. [00:43:54] S3: Yeah. The the whole thing is is how do you prepare the presentation that educates through the process before the price is given? Instead of just a big pop up of the price, there needs to be some education to to provide value.
00:43:54 · Tommy Mello, Zach Deering
[00:43:54] S3: Yeah. The the whole thing is is how do you prepare the presentation that educates through the process before the price is given? Instead of just a big pop up of the price, there needs to be some education to to provide value. [00:44:09] S0: And where I'm pushing our company, our partners, and really the industry is how do we get rid of the word presentation? We don't wanna be presented to, right? Like imagine if someone came in and just lectured at you for twenty minutes on any purchase, like would that be how you wanna play? [00:44:25] S3: I wanna be involved, like I'd wanna be like listen, show me the different colors unless I have an HOA. There are a lot of choices. I mean, we broke the price book because there's so many different combinations. So there is something that needs to be out there, but get me involved. Absolutely. [00:44:41] S0: And is a great shopping experience. Right? Imagine a personal buyer. Right? You go into some high end department store or high end gun store and, yeah, there's a thousand different guns in there. But what are the five or 10 guns that make sense given what you've shared. Right? [00:44:54] S3: I just did a gun experience for my Breeze father. And I said... We walked in and they said, handgun or rifle? And they pointed to the rifles or the handguns and he asked a few questions, but he didn't really get involved. [00:45:10] S0: Yeah.
00:45:10 · Zach Deering, Tommy Mello, Zach Deering
[00:45:10] S0: Yeah. [00:45:10] S3: And Ryan Ree's stepdad figured out what he wanted. Yeah. And that was it. Yeah. And it was really really great. Yeah. Except I had to buy it because he's not in the state of Arizona and it took like half an hour for the background check. It's just a pain in the [00:45:24] S0: ass. Yeah. It's the worst part [00:45:25] S3: of the experience. [00:45:26] S1: All different thing. But yeah, I think what it really comes down [00:45:28] S0: to is like how do you really create a shopping experience versus a presentation? [00:45:33] S3: I really really like that. And I know for a fact, what Aaron and myself has experienced is people, like I had a technician call me, he's like, dude, there's no way this person wasn't gonna buy a three star. But then they looked at the pricing of the five star and it was so close because of the psychology we do with the pricing and the payment structure that they opted to do the five star. Yeah. And if that's happening all day every day, that starts to add up to be a lot of money. [00:45:59] S0: Totally. And I think the really incredible thing about it is it's good for a one, but it's really good for that technician and for that seller, right, who now get to bring home an extra few $100 [00:46:09] S3: Oh, yeah.
00:46:09 · Tommy Mello, Zach Deering
[00:46:09] S3: Oh, yeah. [00:46:09] S0: From that job. And talk about now, like, you already have a culture I know that really prides itself on being a phenomenal place to work. If you're able to increase sort of average sales per job run by, let's say, 20%, that also means that you're able to pay your team effectively 20% more. Right? And that becomes really, really powerful to make sure that a one stays the premier place to to work. To work. [00:46:34] S3: Yeah. Well, I interviewed a technician yesterday. He's out of Milwaukee and he made Pinnacle. And they had lost a baby, which is... Which was devastating for them. Absolutely. And then his dog, his best friend died. And he's part of our dream manager program. He got through it, but he said, you know what? We use Invitro and it's not cheap. Yeah. December 26 [00:47:00] S0: Yeah. [00:47:00] S3: We're having a baby. Oh my gosh. Things are turning around. He goes, Tommy, my average check is 4 to $6,000 a week. Oh my gosh. And he goes, I love this business. Yeah. But to get through that is something pretty special. And I love that because this allows us literally... Why does financing make sense and I've I've learned this from Darius Livers? You get to help all customers, more job security, higher conversion rate, higher paychecks. It's just... There's like this whole spiral of things that happen when you get higher conversion rates and higher tickets and you can help every client. And they they genuinely say yes more often.
00:47:00 · Tommy Mello, Zach Deering
[00:47:00] S3: We're having a baby. Oh my gosh. Things are turning around. He goes, Tommy, my average check is 4 to $6,000 a week. Oh my gosh. And he goes, I love this business. Yeah. But to get through that is something pretty special. And I love that because this allows us literally... Why does financing make sense and I've I've learned this from Darius Livers? You get to help all customers, more job security, higher conversion rate, higher paychecks. It's just... There's like this whole spiral of things that happen when you get higher conversion rates and higher tickets and you can help every client. And they they genuinely say yes more often. [00:47:37] S0: And it just really comes down to giving choice, right? Like I think often as an industry, we conflate thinking that someone doesn't want something with actually just not offering the choice, right? Like, are you offering it and are you doing it in a compelling way? To be clear, if you just ask someone straight out, oh, are you gonna finance this? There's a lot of judgment that comes with that, or a lot of people can receive that in a judgmental way. Instead, if just the initial price you show is a very accessible $144 With a [00:48:04] S3: the finance options. [00:48:06] S0: Exactly.
00:48:06 · Zach Deering, Tommy Mello
[00:48:06] S0: Exactly. [00:48:06] S3: There's five reasons why people don't buy with financing. Number one is pride. Do I look like I need financing? And some of them go into we've always heard cash is king. Sure. And we don't like to be sold to. When you walk in the Nordstrom's, the girl walks up and says, could I help you find something? Yeah. No. We've had a previous experience with financing. Yep. But all of us, I I... My grandma gave me her $96 m. I went to a payday loan to get back to Michigan to $2,200 out. It was at 25%. Yep. And it was a horrible experience. So there's all these reasons why we've learned don't do that. But when you find out it's an investment that's gonna improve your home's value, it's different than buying a Harley and losing half of the value when it drives off. This is actually going... The garage door is 268 percent return on investment. When we talk about investments and ROI, changes everything. That's something I wanna make sure Mantel continues to build this return on investment because Grazer's happened to be number one. [00:48:58] S0: Absolutely. [00:49:00] S3: Why does ruthlessly simp... Why does ruthless simplicity matter more as a company grows?