The Home Service Expert Podcast
00:40:57 · Tommy Mello, Kyle Erdmann
[00:40:57] S0: They all meet up or is that on a Zoom? [00:40:59] S2: On a Zoom. So each location has their own power half hour. So Chicago has theirs at nine, both do at nine. And then every Monday, there's a two hour sales meeting, is purely role play on an area that our CROs have found the salesmen struggling A CRO. Yeah, so we use our CROs too. And then we'll use our promotions. [00:41:17] S0: You got a two hour power hour? No, we have our [00:41:19] S2: two hour sales meeting and then our power half hour every... [00:41:23] S0: Power half hour. [00:41:23] S2: Sorry. We started working with Dustin Rhodes on selling, and he's he's redone a little bit of the lingo in our company. But Dustin's been great. Couldn't recommend him enough. And then we'll take it one step further as, you know, let's just say we get a demo no sale, customer is not ready to move forward at the time of the appointment. When our rehash team calls out, our rehash team talks about a different promotion and they have one step further in the financing they can go. So they offer a unique promotion for what we would call our Megan Beatty special, the grassroots marketing campaign. [00:41:52] S0: Yeah. [00:41:53] S2: So they're offering one further financing plan that the sales team could not
00:41:53 · Kyle Erdmann, Becca Erdmann, Tommy Mello
[00:41:53] S2: So they're offering one further financing plan that the sales team could not [00:41:58] S1: And the the rehash... The call center, when they do their rehash, they get a look into the seros first, and they get to understand what happened and where it went wrong. So then when they do call back, have better ammo kind of an understanding of how to present and speak to that customer to get them back on to... [00:42:14] S0: What are some of the objections? Obviously, money could be one. That's... [00:42:17] S1: Typically always price for [00:42:19] S0: us. Price. [00:42:20] S1: I mean... [00:42:21] S0: What's a good conversion rate in your industry? Where do you guys like to be? [00:42:24] S2: So a good conversion rate for our industry is about 20%. But our average ticket runs around what $70.65, 70,000... [00:42:32] S1: It's about 70 right now. Because we started selling only motorized screens, which are 10,015 thousand dollars versus we go up to $250,000 project. So it depends. Right now, yes, on average between both the companies is about $75,000 and we finance about 60% of the business. [00:42:49] S0: 60%. And you want to be at 20% or you want to be higher? [00:42:54] S1: On close rate? [00:42:54] S0: Yeah. Close rate. [00:42:56] S2: Not to net close rate. Yeah. I'd like to be a little high. I'd like to be closer to 25% and I think that if we did that, we would be really crushing it. And do you give options?
00:42:56 · Kyle Erdmann, Tommy Mello, Becca Erdmann
[00:42:56] S2: Not to net close rate. Yeah. I'd like to be a little high. I'd like to be closer to 25% and I think that if we did that, we would be really crushing it. And do you give options? [00:43:04] S0: Lots of options or what are the Well, when I always do that, like to give options instead of ultimatums because either they could say yes or no. When I do a quote, I go, look, there's a few different things we could do. We could do the most economical. We could do top [00:43:16] S1: Like of the [00:43:17] S0: for me, my garage, I got three in my house. I mean, I spent, and I get it, I'm the owner, founder. I paid $60,000 that was my cost without installation for my garage. They could be on a magazine. I'm a garage door guy, of [00:43:29] S1: course. [00:43:29] S0: So I tell them, tell that story. Say, here's what the founder did on the side of the truck. If you wanna be in a magazine, here's how much... So I'm anchoring it up here. But look, we can get you a really nice garage door for around 5. Yeah. And I don't like to say 5,000. I don't like to say, you know, $5.06. Yeah. And I don't like to use dollars or cents. Yep. I just say, look, you're looking at $53.42. [00:43:51] S1: Mhmm.
00:43:51 · Becca Erdmann, Tommy Mello, Kyle Erdmann
[00:43:51] S1: Mhmm. [00:43:52] S0: The simple little things, Darius Libras taught me a lot about this stuff, is the words that we use matter. Mhmm. Instead of say it, you know, it's more of a builder grade but we could do that for you. And always having a drop sale that you can get it to for the average client because as long as you still are making profit. Mhmm. And that's the key. And not keeping your team so busy that they can't spend the time on the more profitable things. [00:44:13] S2: So one of the parts we say during our sales process would be, you know, we design projects from $10,000 to $300,000, never in between, but there's one thing I'm really good... Or there's two things I'm really good at, is finding the right project for you and making it affordable for you. So we like to anchor at that really high point. And then if the customer, you know, every customer when they talk about projects with us, they start talking about the most grandiose backyard that's ever been imagined on their $500,000 house. So what we use is word track similar to like, oh, yeah, you know, we've designed projects like this. We've... Or, you know, that reminds me of the award winning project we had last year, to start anchoring towards that higher $300,000 point, then we watch them dwindle themselves back down. So, price anchorings. [00:44:53] S1: And yes, we have many many options. So drop downs too.
00:44:53 · Becca Erdmann, Tommy Mello
[00:44:53] S1: And yes, we have many many options. So drop downs too. [00:44:56] S0: I love it. I love this stuff. I I could do this all day. What do you think that you offer Becca the most traditional? There's a lot of people that get stuck, especially around 5,000,000. And obviously, look, I've got this book. I started working with this guy, Al Levy, 2017, The Seven Power Contractor. You guys could take a copy. But he walked in my office and said, Show me your manuals. He's retired long since, but standard operating procedures. Show me your checklist. Show me the success guide. Are you allowed to have a beard? You got to get tattoos on your face? What happens if your truck breaks down? How do you get PTO? Who do you go to? Who do you It's a success guide. Our manual is 70 pages. And it just goes through what success, what winning looks like. And it's getting back to the fundamentals. And I think sometimes we definitely grow and we kind of like build our own thing and then we go always back to the fundamentals. And the KPIs drive the decisions down. But a lot of people that's what you use. I think you did is you were like, where's the systems? Where's the processes? So what did you bring? Yeah. Most of these guys listening and gals, I think they're probably missing this piece.
00:46:02 · Becca Erdmann, Tommy Mello
[00:46:02] S1: Well, like I said, I came in and there were no systems and there were no processes. And I'm a very organized person and I needed to organize the chaos. So I just took it upon myself to create everything. And then, of course, what works at 5,000,000 doesn't necessarily work at 10,000,000. And as you grow and you hire and you get more employees, it's kind of just like a constant state of refinement. I'm always having to revise what I had created because it doesn't work anymore. And now that we have leaders in place, again, everything that I had made, it needs to be tweaked. So I think something I'm really good at is creating and implementing. I'm a great implementer and starting. It does not need to be perfect. It just needs to get going. I can see how it's working for that person. Maybe it worked for me, didn't work for them. Edit it and tweak as they go to make it so it works, and I've done that with many positions where now there's nothing else really to edit or revise until we get so big that I need to hire somebody maybe underneath them to work with. [00:47:01] S0: And how do you do that? Because that's where a lot of people fail too is they expect more from their people. When do you know when to put that person? When do you know