 Hey, good afternoon everybody time steward here I'm with Liz Trotter our guest today is Derek Christian. This is smart business moves I'm on we're doing sales today Yeah I'm glad we're doing sales today marketing really talking about marketing just tied so smoothly into sales I feel like we need it. Yes side It's a good way to start And you know I get all warm and fuzzy about KPIs Liz Doesn't take much Yeah, I do now it's it's material So Where do you think that's happening normally up in the top right? It'll tell you if you're like low on bandwidth But if you are there usually isn't you know, unless you've got other things running on your computer that you can turn off Other apps and whatnot. I don't think that helps. I shut everything off on my end. So we'll see hopefully it'll be okay Yeah why oh On my on my laptop. I don't have I Can't I can't add things like add people or add comments in You've probably never logged in as admin there. Yeah I had a zoom call I had a zoom call on my computer Waiting to start for the last hour. I just noticed that and turned that off. Maybe that'll help Are you late to something or was that no, I had a schedule at four o'clock, but I was stood out I Wonder who would do something like that to Tom. I can't even believe that You're just beyond beyond comprehension Liz and I had a call schedule, but I think it snowed or something and it messed her up Well, I mean, I'm gonna use the snow It's like two-day old snow No, it's knowing oh it's snowing again. Okay It's been snowing for a couple hours now. That was supposed to start till tonight. So oops Yeah, how's the travel anybody get kind of hung up delayed any any of that mess Yeah, a couple people. I don't think anybody got canceled, but quite a few people got bumped or maybe not quite a few the last I heard three people Excuse me had gotten bumped and So they were gonna be coming in late somebody's not getting in until like midnight tonight Which is really hard, you know, it's an hour drive down here the event starts tomorrow morning But what are you gonna do travel right now, right? Yep, is what it is We haven't seen you in a while Derek. What's been going on in your world? Oh Craziness actually just bought another rental house this afternoon. So that was my latest fun. Oh, cool I guys still buying the big house up on the mountain by the tree No, we wanted to but it got it gets scary when you're building up there builders say things like oh, I don't know Somewhere between 800,000 and three million depending on conditions and that's a little bit of a range Yeah Little bit. Yeah, I'm kidding Decided we were a little uncomfortable with a two million dollar margin for error in his quote, so That I mean, I know this is like going, you know off topic, but Normally you have a Plan from a builder. I mean from up from an architect you take it to a builder They look at it and they can give you well This is literally like virgin land on the top of a mountain So it was like well We're gonna have to do some surveys to figure out what the soil is made out of and depending on the answer The peers are somewhere between this and this and we might have to anchor this far back and the water Somewhere between 200 and a thousand feet down for your well. And yeah, it's just there were a lot of Somewhere between these two really big numbers Then you do the environmental studies and hopefully we aren't gonna be dislodging some endangered species or something. I mean The numbers got real big real fast if anything anything came in wrong So we're like, you know what? I think we'll stick to subdivisions Well, it sounded all cool and glamorous to build on the side of a virgin mountain it the numbers got scared It was kind of scary driving up there too to be honest I was like this road is really thin and really bumpy and really windy Imagine it when it's We're also told when it snows you need to plan to spend a week or two Well, I think you made a good good decision there. They're a good decision All right What else is going on in the world? Anything Well, Liz you're you're in Colorado. You want to share? Wait what you're up to and while you're on the ride Yeah, I'm at Laura Smith's event. Are you gonna pop up or can you pop up her? Event time operational excellence. It's a three-day event here in Fort Collins It's completely sold out. So if you're thinking oh, I can make that I live really close. Sorry sold out There is an online version Full that is going to be doing the same thing. I think next month. Is that right there next month? Yeah, I believe it starts in February February Here I think there are rational excellence You have a URL formulas I'll pull something up it was just a AI I've got the name of it not evite but one of those platforms that host events for you I'm with you. I can find her on Facebook. Yeah, I got it. I'm almost there I'm not even trying I Know let us do all the work Yeah All right, so anyway, there are about 40 people coming here from all across the country and Flying in driving in I've met already with at least six different people That have come in. I know Denise Baker. Hey Denise is Already here. I know Nina and Derek Hazelwood are both in the house already Sandy from natural care is here Sprutter daughter, which is fun Let's Ashley Matushka is here Lawrence is here. There's a there's actually a good chunk of people here we ate at snooze today and They gave us free food It was fun. Okay. Why did I give you free food? We didn't know about maybe three quarters of the way through the meal they came out with this beautiful platter that had a big Pineapple pancake a big blueberry pancake and then some French toast called I can't remember like all the while or something like that and that stuff was Amazing. See there's Denise. Hey, Denise Yeah, so she I think she got here on Monday Oh Anyway, people are already coming in Laura is is running around like a chicken with her head cut off making us all laugh hysterically She's okay. We need to do this. We need to do this. She's leaving without her coat With no sleeves on her shirt coming outside and come back get your coat Should have seen her yesterday when I was setting up the snacks and apparently I did not arrange the Kind bars artistically enough, so you don't just dump them in a bowl I'm impressed you have kind of much less they have to be artfully arranged They're very everything is being arranged very artfully over here, you know, that is also not my strain So, yeah, no no when the iron came out for the tablecloth, so I was like and I'm out Exceeded my you've exceeded my level of design, so I'm thinking about past Foundations events and our setup routine for that. I can't imagine ironing the tablecloths. Yes, I can't imagine tablecloths No, she wanted to iron the gift bags, but we got her to admit that was a little too far Yeah, I'm looking at the gift bags and they're in pretty good shape I'm like did they actually decide to iron these? Why don't they look so good? I was expecting them to be really wrinkled All right, well, we should get started with KPIs I think That takes time I dare When it comes to sales KPIs, it's actually kind of funny because like a lot of key performance measures The top line one the one you watch is actually pretty simple And that is basically what percentage of your leads convert to either one time or ongoing service And we track those two things how many go to one time and then how many go to reoccurring and we track it that way for a couple of reasons First of all if it gets to one time we at that point I wouldn't say we consider the sales person's job done because we would have wanted them to try to sell them on reoccurring But what happens on that one time makes a big difference whether or not it can go to reoccurring So I want the sales person to sell something and then I'm hoping that my cleaners do a fantastic job and convert them And so that's the top line number that you watch Because at the end of the day as long as that number stays in the right range You don't need to dig into any detail. That's kind of the truth with a lot of your KPIs You sort of want to have a dashboard number Which is your overall number and as long as that's in an acceptable range I mean if you're curious you can dig in more, but you can't watch every number So I just keep a real close eye on what percentage of my leads convert to One-time cleanings and what percent booked to recurring and if I notice I'm selling too many one times and not enough reoccurring There's a couple things that can be going on One of which is my sales person's being lazy and just selling one times the other thing that can happen Seasonally is you can fill up your schedule with one-time cleans and not have space for the recurring So we'll make a real clear decision certain times of years like holidays and you know end of the school year when there's you know Graduation parties and stuff that we do not want to book up our schedule with one times and I'll tell our person Hey, listen, you can only fill this many slots So that's the one thing we want to watch is making sure that we're not booking too much of one and not enough of the other And you can also have the opposite, you know For a long time We were so short staffed that we wouldn't book one times. We would only take recurring So we wanted to see our recurring number would be way higher than Now I'm pretty sure here where I am right now at Laura's at all star They're not booking one times right now. They're just started to it just started to again because they finally got fully staffed But yeah Yeah, I own reliable cleaning and four columns which pretty lives pretty much lives off of all-star scraps So when somebody calls and there's no availability like call reliable so Yeah, that's your that's your primary a marketing channel your lead Yes, I'll start rejects that Laura doesn't want okay So there was oh, sorry Tom. Did you have something? Just we might be asking the same question that you know when your salesperson gets lazy You sell more one times. Is it harder to sell recurring than it is one time? I Generally it is and some people are just really uncomfortable asking It it just seems easier to them to just like let's just look them once and see what happens I want people to just say oh, so you want every other service okay, so we're gonna do every other Tuesday and set that expectation and We're not really talking KPIs now, but sales process I do think it's a mistake that some people won't let customers book recurring You're like, oh, well, we do it one time and then we call and we follow up with you And I'm like no you have that person on the phone. Just book them. Just just get them on the schedule Yeah, get them to say yes, and then go back Well, you brought back to the question that I was gonna ask is you have Mentioned a couple of different times the right number. What what is that? What is the right number of? Sales well my advice is y'all you want to know your own number and get better because There's lots of reasons that your numbers can be different and we'll get into that a minute But if I'm not seeing About 40% of leads converting at a minimum and I mean all leads, you know Sometimes when I throw that number out people are like I sell 80% and then when I start poking at it They don't I mean someone who called you and gave or contacted you could be a web form Could be a home advisor lead somehow that you got a name address phone number email and some something that implied I'm interested in cleaning so I don't mean if you're gave away a Had a contest at a home and garden show and collected 300 names. I mean somebody that in some way implied I want a cleaning service They're looking for an estimate I I typically want to see a minimum of 40% now it can be higher It can be lower, you know, that's gonna vary based on your availability if you're booking three months out Which some people are you're not gonna close as a minute? so It's a little Dangerous to say you should be closing next percentage. I my point is you always want to get better You don't want to get worse. Yeah, you want you want to see somebody have I'm sorry Do somebody have Facebook like open on their computer because I'm kind of hearing a Reverb of what you're saying Derek about two seconds Yeah, cuz I think I might be slowing you down a little too. I Didn't know it was open. I saw the tab up though Is that good cool Yep Now another number that I really like to look at is what percentage of your leads did you even get to quote? Because you know, how many people were you able to even get a quote to? Because that has a lot to do with your your process Are you following up enough? Are you trying to get in touch with them? And if you're only quoting half of your leads then you can dig in a little bit More and try to figure it out. I Blame the prop process more than the salesperson For the ability to get somebody a quote meaning are you calling multiple times? Are you texting? Are you emailing? That's where things like software automations can help you get a higher conversion rate now once they get on the phone And you give them a price now I'm looking a little bit more of the the Sales ability of the salesperson so that's when I want to see the close rate of the people that you gave a quote To how many did you actually quote? Which you know, we're rambling without numbers here in spreadsheets. That makes it tricky sometimes Well, you can share your screen and pull up a spreadsheet if you want but these are all top line numbers I said your top line numbers. What percentage are you closing as long as that's in an acceptable range and getting better? You don't need to dig into the details But it's when things start to look bad or you want to try to improve it You want to look at the details and Tom I know you had this experience where you had a new salesperson come in and saw sudden increase in sales, right? Yes, it was awesome It makes a difference it makes a big difference if somebody has the the skills set to be persuasive And it can make a difference in the opposite direction, too. Go ahead So you're 40% number and I know, you know, there's a lot of things that factor into that Is that 40% of the quotes? No, I want to see about 40% of the leads convert to something And if and if it's lower than that I want to start poking at why and there's a lot of reasons why now We're getting into some more KPI stuff. One of my first questions is where your leads coming from, you know I want to look at lead source reports. Not all leads are the same If you're buying a bunch of home advisor leads Chances are you're not even quoting a bunch of them. So you got to be careful about that If you're doing some of you know, pay I find paper click off and brings me lower quality leads I don't know why I don't know if it because it gets more impulse people But I find that people that find me on natural search And fill out a web capture form typically have a higher close ratio than people who do paper click I don't know if because that's more bots or competition. I've never quite figured out why it's just something that I've seen happen People who fill out a form on your website, you know If you don't have an instant way for them to get a quote are gonna have a lower conversion rate So those are all things that I want to look at is where did it come from because if you if you're getting leads Especially leads you're paying for and you never even get them a quote. That's a channel You need to stop paying for because you're never even talking to those people. I noticed You know, like you mentioned home advisor, I guess that's kind of merged in with Angie now If I understand how Okay, we're gonna get Derek on a rant So Angie and home You're paying for an ad on Angie's list when people ask for a quote from you Angie also sends the lead over to home advisor, which also sends the lead to handy So which they also so when somebody requests a quote from you like goes to your profile on Angie and requests a quote It also gets sent to home advisor and handy So which really sucks because Angie's less used to be one of my favorite companies back when it was Angie's list And they were actually about quality and things like that But man, they've just become terrible right now. I Yeah, I did this with someone the other day and was showing them the consumer point of view of Angie Where I'll go on to your business profile and request a quote and it says hey Thank you so much for requesting quote from reliable cleaning we also sent your request to home advisor expect for phone calls back and And they charge you for that pay for you pay for that yeah, they charge you On Angie where when people ask you for a quote, oh, we're gonna send it to four other companies to In the four people on home advisor paying for it as well, correct And then they send it to handy, which they also own who undercuts all of our prices And it yeah whole price it At 20 bucks an hour. Yeah So does it work the other way so anybody that calls the other company do you also get their leads? So is that how they even that out? Basically, if you pay for home advisor, you get the you get leads One of the ways home advisors are getting leads is anyone who requests a profile on a quote on Angie automatically gets Shut it over to home advisor now So so Derek from a KPI standpoint if I hear what you're saying, you know Your lead source matters not all leads are are as valuable as others Right and watch and watch it over time. I mean like I said for years Angie's list was my favorite one of my favorite websites But with the changes in ownership, I Mean your conversion rate on that would have gone from I used to see 70 and 80 percent conversion rate on Angie's list And now it's horrible last time I checked out with somebody. I think it was like six percent So you're paying for leads and closing less than one out of ten Wow Do you have Derek do you have numbers on? Um, like what people might expect from different leads like a phone lead You might expect to close the those at this percentage versus a website lead You might expect to close at you know much lower percentage. Sure um Honestly, Tom might have better numbers than I do on some of that stuff because of some of the stuff he's been doing But in general just for internally, I want to see somebody if somebody says they're a referral I want to see in excess of 90 of those closing if I'm not seeing referrals in the 90 closed rate I feel like my salesperson is doing something really wrong And I'm going to want to go listen to those calls to see what the problem is Sometimes it's availability in which case I'm like, yeah, that sucks. I need to hire more people um Could be price. Although honestly, that's normally not the problem I'm looking for you know, what it is but referrals should be extremely high When somebody says they found you on the internet, I ask my people to poke a little bit more and ask more as to what that means Because if they said they found me on something like next door, I'm also expecting a high close rate like 80 type percent because That's basically a referral a friend asked they asked on because they'll often tell you Sometimes in fact, it's interesting if somebody ever calls you and says my neighbor referred me if you poke at it a little bit Oh, what's your neighbor's name? Sometimes they'll say, well, I don't know. I posted on on uh next door and you were thrown out And but you'll log it as referral, but was it a referral? It was a social media mention So it's an interesting channel that we might need to watch But if people are saying that it was a referral or a social uh, not a referral, but like a social media mention I'm I'm seeing about 70 to 80 percent close rates on that Anytime somebody's on the phone. I expect to close at least half of those So if somebody calls in you've got them on the phone. You're talking to them live We want to see about half of those close and then it drops as you start getting things like web form fills because Some of those people you never get in touch with and those are people that are probably filling out three and four forms And looking for three or four quotes Yeah, and they're doing it like two o'clock in the morning and they so we're up the next day and forget the even dead right Or the fight they had that made them look it up in the first place was resolved So what we're really talking about here, I guess is a couple of dimensions. One is the lead source and the other is Motive communication. Are they calling? Is it an email? Is it a lead capture form? Is it online booking? Text and chat. I mean, there's so many different ways now that that that we have to interact with prospects and and Try to you know, give them a quote. Yeah, and phone is still the highest close rate without a doubt You get to answer questions At home, you're right in in home is in home is still the highest. I just don't know many people who do it But were you right when you get the person? Well, one of the people on the on One of the people on today Still does in home. That's why I mentioned it And it's a big investment in expense But if once you get out there, um, you do have a higher close rate and honestly it Part of it's because it's a better sales experience But it's also kind of a filter people aren't going to invite you out and spend their time with you coming to their house If they're not already halfway sold. It's just it's a huge time commitment So in home has a higher close rate if you look at the number of houses you get into But if you go back starting at counting at your leads and how many do you actually get to quote I would be curious to see whether or not the actual enclose rate is the same. Does that make sense? Yeah You know if if I If I have a hundred quotes come in I'll probably quote 70 of them if I'm able to use internet and phone and all of my tools If it has to be in home I never did in home. So I don't know the numbers. It'd be something I'd be curious to check and whoever does in home They might want to check but do you quote one out of three? Do you quote 50 of your leads? Because I quote about 70 of my leads in some way shape or form That's currently the ratio. I'm at if someone tries to get in touch with me about 70 of them end up getting a quote And I'd be curious for the folks that do in home And you said someone who's on here is what percentage are there people that fill out a form or in some way ask Do they actually end up in that house? So It'll be interesting Okay, so Linda closes 98 of in home. Yep That's pretty normal for the close rate for in home But Derek's question is how many Yeah, go ahead. How many leads do you get to end up in one house? Yeah, that's that's kind of what I'm curious about and I'd be interested in tracking And those are the actual quotes given I you know, I remember we used to do a lot of in-home estimates and I mean it was a Smaller number but still meaningful that you'd show up and the customer wasn't there And you kind of made the trip for nothing and those kind of hurt so Well, the other thing which has always been interesting to me This is where tracking lead source not just on conversion rates, but on lifetime customer would be interesting to me Tom guy who owns a software company can track this stuff for me is by lead source. What is your conversion rate? because Rohan Gilk he looks back in the day made an interesting point with me He was you know a lot for those who don't know launch 27 and online booking and he was explaining online booking And we kept stopping them and saying well Rohan, what about this special customer? What about the person that needs towels folded? What about all of these questions and answers that the website doesn't answer and Rohan kind of cut us off? And it's like, you know who books online easy customers They really don't care and they just want to get their service done And they want you to show up on time at a reasonable price And they're just really not special. So, you know what online booking does it filters for easy to please customers and I was like Oh That's really interesting And I wonder to what extent the people that actually want you to come out and see their house and see their special needs Are the opposite and they're the harder to please customers So I'd really be curious kind of by lead source or maybe how you presented the quote or something what that does to long term conversion and ability to hold on to customers because Rohan's belief was if you book online and you're that type of customer You're the easy to please customer and we all have these these are the people that when you've got a cleaner who sucks You're like, oh, you know what give her missus so-and-so because she never complains um And that's what that's what a lot of people do when they have a bad cleaner They get in the easy customers And his view of the world was online booking filters for easy customers because they don't have special questions Things are a lot different now, you know, because Because it's so easy to book online and everybody's so used to buying everything online now That I don't think that holds true as much as it used to I I could see how it creates the op and another problem people who book online expect it now when they want it How they want it and might be grumpy that you can't clean them on christmas eve because they're used to Go to amazon and ordering when and where they want and you don't have that relationship But these are all theories honestly Nobody's ever really tracked the data So it'd be it's something that I'd be interested in doing is sort of by lead source or how you communicate with people What would those long-term conversions rates be are not once again not conversion rates, but retention rates But actually no, we have tracked that this nobody's been tracking it recently um, I haven't heard it being tracked like especially the in home hasn't been tracked recently just Because so few people are doing it, but back in the day the You definitely had a lot or at least we did and the people that I talked to all had a much longer retention with in-home estimates So the people created relationships and they didn't want to let go of you. I mean Don't pull me on this But my memory is that it was like five and a half years was the average amount that you would keep an in-home estimate Uh, and that's you know, if we dig into the data if we don't end up doing more in-homes again and going to old school Yeah, but you know that the reason why they're doing it now is different than why they did it before, you know So it's a it's a completely different time Yeah Yeah, mostly people that want in-home estimates from us currently are picky people Old people that don't understand how You would even understand how to clean their house if you don't come to look at it More more like that, but back in the day It was just standard You're coming to my house because I want to look at your face That's why they had you come out. They wanted to see Right, they wanted to trust you and then all of a sudden we all started getting to strangers cars on a regular basis Yeah, so, you know, that's that's kind of interesting does the turnover rate for Say we're curring service sets booked online. Is that a higher turnover rate than Something it was a phone sale or an in-home estimate sale. Yeah, I'd be really curious just because I have lots of theories around it But I don't know if they're true Hmm Yeah, I saw time they have to Yeah, I'm I'm we might we might dig into that a little bit But don't anybody reach out to tom and ask him when those numbers are going to be available He's Yes, he's just thinking I'm adding that to the long list of features that we might add Hey, but if you can pull it and make a heck of an article and maybe a nice broadcast to talk about and press releases and such So main central interest the eternal question is in home really better You know, we'll make a really cool article in cleaning business today gratuitous plug We Are going to be uh, we've actually got more resources and we've got a lot more cool Content and a pipeline so CBT is going to 2022 is going to be a rocking you know for cleaning business today I got my article live Um, well we used to do a lot more We used to do a lot more content and honestly for a while there A we got busy and b it seemed like everyone was ignoring us for a while I don't know why so, you know, it's hard to hey being honest Um, you know with changes and platforms and technology everyone was hanging out in facebook groups And the idea that we were making a website a publication was like does anyone actually read this anymore? But we really started to take off So we've started doing a lot more and like I just did like a 1600 word article about how do you value your business? And uh, we've got When I saw that article, I basically copied it and pasted it in word to count the number of words. It's like, whoa Because I'm on I'm on cue to write an article next week and I saw how long derricks was so now I have to work a little bit harder Well, see the trick is I'm on a plane every friday now. So I write my articles on place Nice. All right, so if anybody begins somebody's got facebook again Not me No, it's it's it's not I don't know what is going on our technology is being a pain but only to me No, I hear it too. I hear the feedback. Yeah, it's like sometimes when you speak your words come back I don't hear a dairy. I have a like a little bit of a crackle sound But I only get that when Tom speaks so Well, and if you're big enough, I also like another back to our original topic at kpi's Um, I like to track a close rate by person because that's also really insightful to see different sales abilities because For the most part assuming you're sharing your leads evenly between people that'll kind of let you see the difference in skills Um and seeing the difference of different sales people and their ability to close things You need to be a little bit careful, you know If one person answers the phone live and the other person Chases down web leads the web lead person is going to have a lower close rate But if you're sharing the leads evenly, um, I do think you can learn a lot by looking at lead source and how it closes And uh are by person and what percentage each person closes and after those guys Yeah, a lot of animals that I'll start those guys We used to have one person who would outsell everyone else practically two to one Um his close rate was that much better than the other three because we used to The way it used to be structured at blue skies is all the calls for the entire country went into one call center We had four people working there and one of our sales people used to sell nearly twice as much Have twice as good a sales rate as everyone else So most of the people close 30 percent, but he would close 60 percent Now there's a couple things you need to look at that. That's not always good um When you have a sales person who has a close rate that's too high encourage you to go listen to the calls Some of it's skill, but it's also easy to sell if you over promise Um, and so you need that if you notice the close rate being too high You should not immediately give that person raises and promotions You should start listening to their calls because it can mean their pricing too low. They're giving discounts. They're you know And that's the stuff that you want to keep an eye on now skill does matter You you will see some people sell at higher rates But you want to get real curious about why and either listen to the call and try to figure out why they're selling so much More and train the other people to bring them up to the same level or figure out what they're doing That maybe is not good and correct it because once again, it's easy to sell if you over promise Oh, yeah, we'll never miss a corner. We'll always be on time. You'll always get the same cleaner And then you'll love that one. You'll always get the same cleaner. Yeah always. Yeah I like the one where we will always be there exactly at 10 o'clock. Yeah, no, that's happening Although I do know one company that actually is pretty good at actually doing that Well, and it was really interesting for me because when I came out of corporate america, we did over promise sometimes on our products Don will save your life, but that's all the discussion I remember when I was I remember when I was at proctoring ammo one of our claims was using png products would increase your employee retention I still don't understand how we made that claim, but I used to say that but anyway, um, so But those are claims that are kind of hard to disprove Prove that we don't Right that the theory is your employees would feel that you were more valued because you bought them better products And yeah, but that was the claim we used to make and coming over here Um, I hired debbie sardona is my first coach and I remember going to her company And debbie's people used to practically unsell people they'd like just to be clear We're not promising you an arrival time. We're going to do our best to send the same cleaner But no promises, but they're all trained the same so you don't need to worry about it We are not cleaning underneath your bed I mean they had this list of like 20 things that they would tell people that they're not doing And if someone coming out of corporate america promised people the world I was like this is terrifying And now I'm like and you do you still want us to clean? Yes, you do Did I say we suck? Okay, and you still want us. Okay. We're we're good now But what what I discovered is what she was really good at was just setting expectations appropriately of making sure that You know people understood I'm selling people people are fallible. This is the limitations of the really really of people Um, and don't get me wrong. It came with lots of good stuff, too We really care we're going to do a good job if you ever have a problem Let us know but hey, we're dealing with people our whole business is people people occasionally getting traffic accidents They occasionally miss something but we care call us and we'll fix it But they spent a bunch of time Telling people all of this bad stuff is going to happen to you it is it's life But you know what we're going to fix it better than most people And it was really interesting to me so and that's when That's where if you look at someone with a super high close rate Once again, I don't just want to know a salesperson's close rate But what's their retention rate because did they over promise did they cram somebody on tuesday that really shouldn't have been on tuesday? It's real easy for you to go. Well, let's see. It's a six hour clean And I've got three people finishing at three. So I'll put three people there at three and they can finish on time Yeah, that's not gonna happen in the room and I get my bone. I get my sales bonus this week, right? But I just put an impossible job on the schedule It's going to cause customer service to be screamed at in a couple of days And a one-star review and the customer's not going to want to pay, right? Yeah, I so this is what I have heard so far track your track your Just your sales. How how many you close? Right. Um, track how many leads come in first track how many you close like a total percentage and then maybe break it down by Um, a couple of things person and then also by whether it's done by phone by web Yeah, one like I said start by looking at the big numbers like once again Blue sky is Cincinnati. We traditionally close 35 of our leads for home cleaning. Um Last month. It was six percent. So I don't normally spend a lot of time Digging into details. I'm like, oh, look, we closed 35 percent life is good move on But this last month we closed six percent of our leads in Cincinnati and I went Well, that's not good. So I've spent a bunch of time digging in where the leads coming from Why is our close rate so low? Does it vary by the person that they talk to because now I'm trying to figure out Why did that number move and move so so dramatically and come up with answers to the questions? So you got to be careful. You can't track everything So that's why I said when it comes to sales, the big kahuna number is what percentage of your leads converts to some type of cleaning either one time or recurring Because that means you're getting them on the schedule And then you can start getting a lot more curious about when things are off Why or if it gets if you just heard me say you should close roughly 40 and you're closing 20 Maybe now you should start go poking in and trying to figure it out But I want to see it within historic ranges and ideally getting a little bit better at all times Until now what I'm hearing you say Derek is just start tracking the numbers Just start looking at the numbers so that you have a baseline for your own company and just start improving it If you're currently at 15 be shooting for 20 if you're right And I don't want you to everyone sometimes we talk about all these numbers and it really Confuses people because oh my god. I can't track all this stuff The big number is think of it as you get leads which is basically raw materials and At bats and what percentage of them do you actually turn into money? And as long as that's in an acceptable range, you don't necessarily have to go deep every single month now Occasionally you want to go deep and start asking questions All right. I have a 40 close rate. Is that 30 with Derek and 60 with Liz? Maybe I need to fire Derek and hire more lizis Or maybe I need to listen to Liz's calls and see if she promises things she shouldn't promise So there's the overall top level thing which once again, I always say your your big kpi is your dashboard It's the thing you look at when you're driving But when the little check engine light goes off That's when you pull out the little thing that you plug in that it gives you more detail Those numbers are the details. Why is that big number not what I expected it to be? Why is it? Moving so much and sometimes it's a pleasant and you know, sometimes your close rate will go up And as you start digging into you're like, wow, you know, this new sales person is great or All of a sudden we're getting more leads from google and google leads have a higher close rate. So let's stop paying for things. So Yeah All right. Well, what about you did mention at one point and I know matt did talk about this Um tracking whether or not they are One-time cleans or recurring it does that matter? Oh matters a lot. Um It Honestly, we we most of us prefer recurring service. Although I've met people with big companies that just do one time There's a big company that we all know of I think does like 70 one time is their revenue Which is always surprised me but they do it. Um, but yeah, and that's going to vary by lead source too Google local services those ads that appear at the top of google Um are good, but I find it brings a lot of one times Um They're they're good if you need business next week you can turn it on and they've got a high conversion rate Um, but they're normally one times So it's interesting to see things like that. Um, that certain channels are more likely to bring you one time than others Um, and there are one time people that will never be recurrent Um, they they're just not the type they're special events Um, you know my seo company recently wanted to rank me for move cleans And I said no, thank you and they were really confused because they were like look at all this search volume And we can get this. I'm like, I really don't like move cleans They're kind of the definition of one-time events. I don't want to spend my You know x amount of dollars per month ranking for a one-time event You know, let let's rank for some things that are likely to get me some recurring service If you do a really awesome job and leave your card behind Maybe the person it moves in behind them will call you but don't hold your breath on that right So but my seo company was all supercharged on it and excited because oh here's a phrase we can rank for and here's all the search traffic And we think we can get you on the top three in two months. And I was like, yeah, no, thanks I don't I don't want those people. They fill up my schedule Then I can't take the recurrence Right They're great for fill-ins, but you don't want to have them be the bulk of your company. At least you personally don't at least me Once again, I know some people that That do move cleans and charge like eight hundred dollars and have a million dollar companies, but God, it sounds like heck to me Uh linda is saying sorry I got sidetracked if you still want to know I do two to six in-home estimates a week and I'm enough to grow to my 2022 wig No, it's not linda. That is why I want to add She's in the express group strategic success. So that's why Um, I'm giving her a little bit of grief there. One time cleans are done on the phone. We just started taking one time cleans again Just like laura just started it sounds like a lot of people are starting to catch up with their With their staff it seems like they're figuring out staffing It's odd because the press is just now really starting to catch up on the story that there's no employees Um, but I feel like a lot of people are starting to catch up that they've got employees now. So It's like they're behind Well, also now our clients are getting sick with cobit. So everybody has more room in the schedule. True. Sorry. Sorry Um, it's also staffed. It's also staffing We were flogging the heck out of to try to hire it reliable and we have two people in training today You know, it's been a long time since I had two people in at once Yeah, so robin's question is interesting. What percent of your initials would you convert to reoccurring? So it depends on how you refer to it an initial cleaning to me is some in my terminology Somebody who is said they want recurring service and I did a first time clean for If somebody calls me and says they want to move clean That's a one time clean an initial is somebody who said I'm interested in regular service and I did initial clean Those we typically expect to close 90 of them. I'll pull the actual numbers. I think it's like 87 last time I checked but it's roughly around 90 of initials convert to recurring because those are people that said I Want your service and then it's up to us to see whether or not we can deliver Now that's also based on doing some screening and once again not selling people. We shouldn't be selling I feel like that's low Derek. I mean if somebody says that they want recurring service and We go out and do an initial I think our number is high high 90s for that. It's rare that we don't Well, you're probably better than us But we typically lose about one out of ten recurring customers after the first clean for what? Uh A lot of it's misaligned expectations Um, we didn't do something they expected us to do Um, sometimes it's just a cleaner that's not as good One of the problems that I have and I have not overcome yet is my really good cleaner schedule gets filled So my initial are almost always done by my most junior employees And sometimes Sometimes like especially if it's an online booking They'll like book sign up for weekly service because it's the cheapest bill rate and cancel after one job But we do end up with a lot of expectation misalignment I've not got quite into debbie's approach yet Once again, I used to laugh at debbie because as soon as people said and I want to book It felt like their people pulled out of us said great. Here's the 20 things We're not going to do so we've never quite gotten that extreme But we constantly seem to have issues where we get there and the customer seemed surprised that we Take the dirty dishes out of the sink clean the sink and put the dirty dishes back in And we're like, yeah, we don't do dishes, you know, I don't know why that that was a surprise Um, well, they're like, I know you didn't do dishes, but you won't even do the dishes in the sink We're like, no, we don't do dishes means We don't do dishes We call those dishes We still call those dishes But customers sometimes will like get that you're not going to like do a bunch of dishes But you don't you won't even clean the two coffee cups in the sink. We're like No, we won't Um, so that stuff that sometimes gets us into trouble. Okay. Um, that makes sense So things things like and tom your point your tom your point made sense as well We we usually have all of our recurring books on the phone So that's why cards would be would be a different number. I said, I think I've got a little of a business model challenge too Because my my solos I run solos And we always make the comment the good cleaner schedules fill up fast Because their initials start booking they cover for somebody who's sick and that person calls and says can you give me solos? She was better than my regular person So our best people tend to get a really full schedule and don't end up with a bunch of initials So normally when you book service with me, you're getting my most junior person because their schedule is open Yeah So robin, I'm just going to check in with you I use the same terminology For initials that derrick uses an initial is just the first of a recurring set is that What you were asking about Just to double check that now somebody's on one time Now if somebody says they want one time clean, um So yeah, he just The robin just said is there a difference between first clean and an initial so Once again first clean and initial are the same to me, which is You've said in some way shape or form you want recurring service versus what we call one time clean One time clean is a graduation party one time clean is a move one time clean is my mother-in-law's coming one time clean is Christmas These are people that have never given me the impression that they want recurring service They didn't book recurring service. They've never said I'm interested in recurring service, but I want to start with a one time Um that to me is an initial A one time is somebody who just flat out says I'm moving. I need a cleaning I have a Christmas party and I need a cleaning my conversion rate on those people is low, but it is Doable we can convert those people with time and what's interesting is we convert them to what tom's always called on demand They don't typically end up on a regular schedule, but with some prompting and emails and stuff I do find I can get them to book more frequently And You know, you want to tag those one time cleans. Do they have the potential? of Doing more work or not. So basically if it's a move out clean You want to tag that and you're not going to waste your time marketing to them and following up and You know Probably wouldn't even bother to put them on your newsletter list. What's the point? They're moving out of your market But uh, it's a one-time claim that You know, hey, my mother-in-law is coming to mark. Can you come clean my house then? Yeah, if we do a good job, maybe we can get some more work out of them down the road Those people usually you can market to them every three months and you'll hit you'll hit on them They're like, oh, yeah, that would be nice. I did like to have my house clean. That was awesome Yeah, it was a good experience I wouldn't mind I wouldn't mind getting that as a christmas gift to mother's day gift to myself. Yeah And a lot of times it'll take more than just one or two of those and some people never switch off of on demand But but a lot of times you can oh, maybe not a lot, but sometimes you absolutely can get people And that's one of the interesting things and tom, I assume at some point you're going to play with your fun spreadsheets um You're not going to move mountains by taking the one times and converting to recurring You're going to maybe convert two or three percent, which doesn't sound like much But if I move my clothes right from 40 percent to 43 percent and put it on tom's spreadsheet and show what it does over five years Those are big numbers So don't blow it off when I say two or three percent two or three percent over multiple months over multiple years Is big numbers. I also don't want you flogging your salesperson though and saying what do you mean? You only converted, you know one out of 10 people that said they never wanted recurring service to begin with So robin is asking in terms of budgeting for recurring. What do you expect 50 percent to convert? Or is this low? A lot of it once again, okay, because I can't answer all your business model questions Uh of it, you know art do you not take one times when you're busy? Uh It's tough for me to answer that I expect like I said about 40 percent of my people who call into book to to something Referring to what I don't I have the what if spreadsheet that I did a couple of my classes. Yeah On on the what if spreadsheet I had two numbers what percentage of your customers Book a first time clean and one percent book recurring Normally for me it was about 50 percent of people that booked a one time would end up in recurring in some way So they were either initials or one time. So those two terms kind of got combined Okay, that's that's why he's asking about that. That's the spreadsheet that I use in one of my class So I would normally say about 50 percent of One times convert and it can vary like we were just saying all star was closer to 70 80 percent for a while Because if you called in and said I wanted to move clean they said call reliable We don't do that. Right. So reliable's conversion rate on one time. This was really low. It was really crap because we got all the move cleans Yep Oh, we do you you're you're Need a dorm turnover no problem all the stuff that all star was always too busy to take we'd be like sure revenue I'll take it Which by the way is normal when you're smaller you got a hustle for business as you get bigger you tend to do less It's really funny as you've become a bigger company Your scope of work tends to get smaller a lot of people tend to try to want to do add-on services But I found the most successful companies is they get bigger do less not more You you spend your time on the things that are making you the most money and Don't waste your time on the things that aren't I mean reliable's and then we got to make payroll type phase of We're 300,000 in revenue the lovely valley of despair We're in that you know, we got to make payroll next week type mode But once you get to a certain size you're like god moving cleans are pain in the butt. I don't want to do those The one thing we've never done in any of my companies is air b&b's because they're pain in the butt Even I won't do that but We do all the other crazy stuff still Well, we are uh approaching the top of the hour. We've got uh a few more minutes left Derek what you got going on over the next uh several months any uh activities programs fun stuff you're doing You'd like to share with our audience. Um Nothing too exciting right now. We do have cbf live coming up uh With uh debbie's group, but that's going to be I'll throw it into comments a little bit later here I didn't plan ahead and actually get my code. So We can't do it all this way. They're relieving I know I'll hey, let's be honest about 20 people watch this live and a couple hundred people watch it later on So I'll throw it in here in a couple minutes. Um, but it's the big event we do in dallas Um, it's really cool actually a lot of people especially people who've seen debbie sardone speak before sometimes will say You know, I don't need to go that I've seen debbie before but man if you've never been to it It's a heck of a program. Um, it's in april this year april seven eight nine It's amazing On how good the speakers are it's not just debbie on stage this year. It's all about leveling up your employees and your office staff Um, so it's going to be a really cool event. So I'll post some details in here But I'm not doing too much until then honestly. I I'm actually trying to plan a trip to go see gorillas right now Uh, also a part of the world would that take you to africa? Wow Oh Ah funsies Yeah, so I actually don't have anything planned for the next couple weeks I'm normally doing a a big event every month or so, but I'm chilling a little bit Okay, well, you'll still be traveling back and forth in the snow I know writing art writing articles while you do it. Yeah Hey, three hour plane rides are a great time to write 1600 word article. Is this a lot? That's okay, I did have a comment about cleaning business today just a reminder to everybody To look for it If if you're not getting it because I was talking to someone not that long ago It doesn't seem like it was that long ago anyway, and they had never seen it But they thought they were registered and it was going to spam. So maybe Go in and yank that little thing out again Yeah, it does you do get emailed every other week and sometimes google will decide that spam and put it in your spam filter So you do want to check and mark it not as spam and like I said, honestly, we're really investing a lot in content again It's kind of funny for a long time. Our viewership started to dip But man in the last three years it's taken off and people have gotten really interested again It's interesting how what's old is new again and people are going You know what these top five tip type articles which were all the rage people are realizing Aren't really useful that the tips are garbage and so they're wanting more in-depth stuff again. So well, it's true Um, there was a lot of clickbaity stuff that for a while was kicking our butt And honestly tom and I just never would play that game I'm like, I'm not going to write a 500 art word fluff piece that basically doesn't give people anything And we we were losing a little bit because of that but man all of a sudden it's like the world is caught on that You know those little top five this top three that articles Typically aren't that useful So they walked more in-depth 1600 2000 word articles that actually get into details and profiles of successful companies and you know when you look at the articles like How much is my company one's worth is like 1600 words But there's also a profile down there of a guy who started a residential cleaning company and decided he'd rather do commercial And it's actually pretty in depth and talks about how he did it and why he made the decision Um, I really liked it. So yeah If you haven't subscribed to cleaning business today, you just go to cleaningbusinessday.com and it's really easy Just your email address in your name and you'll get our newsletter every other week And it's uh useful information Well, cool. All right, we are Derek As always, thank you. This was uh, this was good and we didn't break out a spreadsheet, but we will I know we should work out a I kind of expected you to have one tom, which is why I didn't make one Or I should be pulling up made central screenshots to go see these close rates So honestly, you know It's 2022 and We don't even need spreadsheets anymore if you've got, you know, the rather right tools You're able to kind of get to the point without The middleman of a spreadsheet, but uh, I still have a few we'll um, we'll put them to work So we got some people popping up here in our chat that aren't supposed to be and I'm having to block them, but um Um Nothing out of the ordinary. So hey Thanks, uh, Derek. We will uh do this again real soon. We'll be back Monday as our guest for monday confirmed lis martha. Yes Yeah, yep. She's confirmed And we're going to be talking about customer retention and engagement And quality also And quality so quality at all kind of kind of ties in there how to measure that Yeah, how to measure it and use those numbers the bad job customers don't keep you. Ah, there's enough Dang it whole new idea. I know. Well, you know, I always tell people I run the mcdonald's of cleaning services, so Yeah, I repeat it for you too. Yeah, so you guys, uh Take care. We'll be back monday five o'clock eastern