The Home Service Expert Podcast
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?
00:49:00 · Tommy Mello, Zach Deering
[00:49:00] S3: Why does ruthlessly simp... Why does ruthless simplicity matter more as a company grows? [00:49:06] S0: Yeah. It's great it's great question. At the end of the day, consistency is really king. And the more complex things are, the harder it is to be consistent. Most organizations above 10,000,000 in size, right, most contractors, they actually know what a good sales experience probably looks like. Right? And they've probably gone through training, and they probably have some SOP. The question is, are you are you able to consistently deliver it? And what's the death of consistency? Complexity. There's this wonderful book called Insanely Simple that was written by the guy that evidently coined the name for, like, the iMac, right, close into Steve Jobs' circle. And the thing that Steve Jobs spent a bunch of time on was simplicity. Because here's the reality. Complexity is easier than simplicity. Simplicity takes work. Candidly, like, as a leader, one of the things that I talk a lot about, we talk a lot about internally, is how do we try to keep our product as simple as possible while making it really powerful? [00:50:07] S3: It's true. I'm thinking about my one on one forums and they can be a little bit complex. I really wanna just jump in as we finish up here to the product. So it's called Mantel. Why is it called Mantel?
00:50:07 · Tommy Mello, Zach Deering
[00:50:07] S3: It's true. I'm thinking about my one on one forums and they can be a little bit complex. I really wanna just jump in as we finish up here to the product. So it's called Mantel. Why is it called Mantel? [00:50:24] S0: The Mantel in a Home. It's where you put the things that you're proud of. It connotes warmth. Right? It's the centerpiece. And really in our goal, our aspiration, and it's a weighty aspiration, we're working really hard every day to get there, is how do we make the experience of shopping for garage door or an HVAC system be really delightful? Be like a warm experience for the homeowner. [00:50:44] S3: By the way, it's m a n t e l, just like the mantel in your house. What do you think the impact overall of using Mantel would be for most companies if they were to get on it? [00:50:54] S0: Higher average tickets, higher close rate for companies that we've worked with, Reliable Comfort and Seymour Indiana, they saw 48% blended increase across close rate and average ticket, and that is after taking out the increase of equipment prices year on year. So there's really, really durable impact they can have on a business, and that's the financial. Right? The non Not [00:51:16] S3: to mention... Well well, it eats the finance fees too. Totally. The dealer fees.
00:51:16 · Tommy Mello, Zach Deering, Zach Deering
[00:51:16] S3: to mention... Well well, it eats the finance fees too. Totally. The dealer fees. [00:51:20] S0: Totally. And the non financial is you have a more consistent, better homeowner experience and you make it easier for your sellers to really focus on the things that they're really phenomenal at, which is building relationships, advanced system design, rather than doing a bunch of more menial work that it stuff that they're passionate about. [00:51:38] S3: I got six closeout questions, so I'll play speed round. Okay. [00:51:43] S0: Let's do it. [00:51:45] S3: Give me your favorite books that really shaped... It could be the bible, it could be the e myth, it could be a fiction book, but just three books that really really affect the way you conduct yourself and and your path was like based on these. [00:52:00] S0: There are many that come to mind. I think ones that are at the the top of the the list for me. The Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz, basically a book about entrepreneurship, and that fundamentally the journey that we're on is hard, and that's okay, and the struggle is real, that's part of it, so that's thing one. Book two never splits a difference. I think it fundamentally changes the way that I think about the the way I think about negotiating. I also really like that Chris Voss starts with a zinger about the Harvard negotiation program, which, while I was [00:52:36] S1: in law school, went through it, so I appreciated him him sort