 Hey, good afternoon everybody. Tom Stewart here. I'm with Liz Trotter and Matt Ricketts. This is smart business moves Last this is the last week of the month, right? We're like almost to the halfway point for the year Yep, we are days away from the last two more days in the month the 27th week of the year people It is the halfway mark 26 yeah, isn't this the 27th week of the year? crazy I haven't marked as the 26th week of the year I don't know I'll double-check, but how many Well, we can ask Siri in a minute, but I'm pretty sure it's the 27th week because it only makes sense because the 27th week starts that the Third quarter and the third quarter starts on Friday, right Thursday or Friday. Yeah, but next week is the first day of Of the third quarter. This is the last week of this half, which would be 26 weeks Hey, hey, Linda missed you today. It's been a long time since you haven't been in Monday check-in. We wore you out, huh? You finally got home. She was in Vegas with us last week and See how trouble getting out of Vegas. So So talk about that. How do you guys do in Vegas last week? And we had a great time. Yeah, we had a Great time. It was a lot of work Everybody was exhausted at least I think Danique was one of the people that was like I'm really nervous if This was only three days and you said foundations is more intense How am I going to handle it? I was pretty intense I worked on them very very hard and you know how hard I can stick to a schedule Tom I only scheduled two breaks a day So Yeah, it was it was a busy week, but we had a lot of fun, too It was It was a great time when everybody had a lot of good takeaways and I think so one of the things I know that people always struggle with is How to set the big goals how to chump them down into smaller goals how to turn those goals into action steps And how to actually grind out the work toward the real goal So that you actually meet the goal a lot of times feel like I can set the goal or I can stay busy doing stuff But I don't know how to set the goal and then do the things that will actually get me to that goal You know, there's like this weird That's not very project. I'm very project oriented in the way I think you break it into like like we're gonna do three projects this month or like you because you can only get So much done. Otherwise, just otherwise you're just your efforts are diluted So how do you teach people how to do that? So we use two strategies. We combine them So one is the strategy from traction and then the other is a strategy from the four disciplines of execution So I find that people either struggle in one area or the other either in setting the goals and Knowing what they need to do or in implementing those goals. So we teach both together Here's how you set them. Okay, let's set them And then we set them for the year and then we break that down for the quarters And then we break the quarters down for the month and then the activities are What are the activities that you're doing weekly to get you to that monthly goal? So we measure it every week toward your monthly goal toward importantly goal for your animal Yeah, so it's uh it's hard when people first start because You know people aren't used to thinking in terms of like you said projects or what they call in our version wigs wildly important goals They're not used to thinking There you see this thinking that way or I've got to do this and I've got to do this and I've got to do this The goals get the goals get in the way of the stuff that you think that you need to do Yeah Yeah, the whirlwind we call it the whirlwind the stuff that you have to do every day They're like I can't I have to you know Sewing those car broke down and my vacuum cleaner needed new filters And I had two customers cancel and I had an employee call out in the morning. I couldn't do anything else Sorry you have to if you don't then you won't So our big thing that we that we focused on two big points that we focused on over that course of those three days they're really if you can get it they're so impactful the first one is That we really really underestimate How much we can get done in the short term? We really underestimate how much we can get done like in three months or six months or a year and we really Overestimate how much we can get done in the long term. We're like I'm five years I'm gonna be a $10 million company, but in the next week. Gosh, I hope I can get one price increase letter out So that idea of you got to shift that get more done in the short term and the big stuff will take care of itself You know minding your pennies and your dollars that that idea so it worked a lot on that idea and then we spent a lot of time on the idea that You know the you can only grow your company to the size of the problems you can handle So if you can only manage little tiny problems You can't manage a company that's bigger than a little tiny company. That's as big as you can get Bigger problems bigger companies. So when those problems come you need to like embrace them. Yay Here's my opportunity to prove I can grow to a bigger company. So we have a lot of people have big big Shifts in mindset around that that goes with something that goes with something that a lot of people teach though is that You're the lid you are the lid Yeah, I think that's a great I mean that's a great philosophy to understand and then it's also great philosophy understand is that you can actually grow and Expand beyond where you are currently, but until you do you can't reach the next level So big goals don't matter unless you make big shifts So that's kind of what you guys were teaching is that you're helping them expand Expand their thinking and then you know reach Bigger short-term goals as well and then be more tempered with where they can get long term Based on the skills that they have and then they need to improve those skills If you want to get 10 million dollar company, you might have you might have a few more skills You need to level up on in the next five years. So that's kind of all all interplay nicely That was a concept that I wrestled with for a long time. I had a really good business coach that You know, he kept telling me that you know I'm the problem And so if you don't understand and that was when I learned the concept if you don't understand as soon as you Say you don't understand basically you're talking about you don't realize it But you're really talking about yourself, but you know, it's Your situation our situation your situations not unique. It's like everybody else's situation and You know once you understand that you are the problem then you can be the solution and you can make the changes and All of the reasons why you're saying you can't you just don't understand it That's a work that way in my business and I can't this and they and you know, they're probably like no No, no, you're the problem And so how we teach that is we call those the yeah, but it's like, yeah, I know everybody does that Yeah, but in my company we do things differently. Yeah, but I can't because of this yeah And so if you hear yourself arguing with people or yeah, budding yourself or anybody else You have to you have to evaluate that so we spent One day the we started each day with three questions three questions that you're gonna look for the answers to throughout your throughout the day One of the days one of the questions was When when you're hearing presentations and when we're going through all of this material, where do you find yourself arguing? Where do you find yourself saying yeah, but don't work in my company? Yeah, but and then challenge yourself Is that true is it are you really doing things so amazingly well and better that this it doesn't apply to you or Will it not work because you're not doing things in the the most optimal way Doing it that way We're gonna we're gonna talk about that today, I mean really that's a good segue into the topic I mean, we're still in June. So we're still talking about marketing and sales and What we wanted to to talk about is, you know, where does the marketing and sales activity come from and who's responsible for doing that and part of the impediments of execution and Oftentimes, you know, we get ourselves in situations where we're spending our time And we're basically spending the time our support staff or office staff people who are responsible for Doing the important things in our business. I call them our leverage people Doing things where they're staying busy But maybe aren't necessarily creating maximum value and We talk a lot about productivity and efficiency and payroll the revenue Cost of good soul and we pound on that in terms of you know, getting as much value as you can at your cleaning professionals But if you think about it the people working in your office, they're 10x, you know They're getting getting them to create more value as 10x more impact on your business So we're sort of another way there's a big difference between motion and movement and we want to talk about getting your people moving in the most most useful way possible rather than Being engaged in a whole lot of activities that don't result in a lot of moves So so I think yeah, I think a way to think about this is is we need to un we need to get our people out of the world And have them have processes and have them have Automations or or different systems that I don't overuse words that are thrown around a lot But we need to basically get them out of the world. We're always in our own whirlwind But then what happens is when we when we basically Hand off our problems to somebody else. We didn't document what our job was. We didn't you know, we didn't create Systems we just basically threw them into a whirlwind and then expect them to do everything So I think a lot of the sales process For most companies We talk about a lot of sales or marketing problem. You have a follow-up and systems problem You know, that's the real thing. I Know a company that has like Probably, you know every week maybe a hundred leads. They don't even follow up on they don't do anything with them because They just don't have a system. They just they come in and they're just so busy They didn't have a system to say hey, we're too busy to help you right now But we'll put you on a wait list or anything. They just ignore the fact that they have all these leads come in I've seen it. I've seen their inbox. It's real. I thought it was like an exaggeration, but it is a huge Just bit of information. So what they need more customers is the answer increase our marketing budget I've heard this just I've heard this owner. Tell me we need to market more. I need to get more customers and I mean, yeah, I think Still believes that but I have to I have to just inject one thing That is not one business owner Matt. I mean, it's easy to think that that is just like one business It is not Talk to, you know, multiple business owners in the MMA groups and also in the one-on-one coaching I cannot tell you how many times I have to talk somebody out of the idea That they need to put more money in the marketing So what we're teaching currently is that if you are not So the number that we're hanging on that is 40 percent so if you are not getting 40 percent of On your ROI if you're not getting a return on that investment of 40 percent, then you need to be you need to be doing better with the leads that you have and If you do better with the leads that you have then you don't need more leads Just sell to the leads you already have but I was literally talking to a company last Sorry week before last Their ROI was 11% and they wanted to put another thousand dollars into their Yelp budget Like listen, why are you paying for somebody else's? Advertising because if you are only closing on the 11% that means 89% of the jobs that are coming to you You're that you're paying for you're given to somebody else. So you're paying. Sorry. Go ahead, Tom So when you say ROI ROI on their marketing The money that they're already paying here or they're already spending but you might be talking about like a close ratio or something Along those lines is that more more along like what percentage of leads turn into to new business? It could be that or Sometimes it's the time that they're spending too. So either way I Here's my thinking you need to be making money off the leads that are coming to you currently or You're paying for someone else's leads Because you're One thing I think happens to most people is they have no They have no follow-up process either either automated or or what not so they might get a lead and call it one time Oh, yeah, and then they're and then they're they're done So I just wanted to show a couple things that made central and in your software that you already used probably has some of the Stuff turn it on this is an example of automation So when so this is all stuff that's kind of built into the main central But you can build even more robust stuff, but like let's say a lead comes in And you haven't contacted them. There's there's multiple level There's multiple levels of automation and follow-up you can build within made central long-term nurture But every time that a new lead comes in I mean we automatically a lead comes in our website Hey, it's great to meet you. That's the first thing we send them It's like we greet them and like we introduce them to how we work a little bit differently I mean, you know the first time you have somebody come to your website You should introduce yourself and what makes you a little different So we actually even put a quick little video of Angel in there even though Angel is not doing the day-to-day She still trains my managers on quality. They come to our house She doesn't go to the office anymore, but she's still involved with what the expectations and level of service are So it's not it's not, you know that she's day-to-day anymore But she still has a role and you know, then we allow them to go ahead and book their services now, but That's where most people in they get a lead and they might try and call this person one time, right? Or maybe twice Maybe and they probably haven't printed out a piece of paper and then it's just like a big stack of these things like piling up or What not so that's that's one thing You know If you if you can't automate it you need to at least create a process that says like on that sheet of paper Contacted one contact it twice contact three times like your piece of paper needs to have like a workflow that you've devised So so for me we have within the central there's there's four levels of automations There's there's leads that we got a phone call on and then leads that came from our website And then there's leads that we quoted over the phone and leads that we quoted over I'm sorry quotes that we quoted over the internet some of that We gave a price to that they got it off our website and then people that we quoted over the phone So we'll have a slightly different follow-up process for every one of those people But I wanted to show you how many touch points that we really feel like are important It's like 15 touch points before we kind of move them into the long-term nurture cycle So I would suggest really thinking of moving it from like two or one to Ten like whether that's email text like over some period of time So what do you think like how many touch points do you think would be you know before you gave up on a leak? Because you spent the money to get what are you thinking? Yeah, I mean over a three-month period, you know, you should be reaching out at least ten times I mean you've got nothing you've got nothing to lose right because these aren't cold calls Basically, you're responding to somebody who initiated a relationship with you Yeah, so just to think here already they've already got an email from us from the system So then we're gonna try and text them then we're gonna wait a day and try and call them The system will automatically email them in three days So if you don't if you haven't gotten a hold of them Maybe you have it just an email that you send and you mark that off on that sheet of paper that you have sitting on your desk But at the very least if you don't have some automation Have a series of mailboxes where you move these leads through some process Because if you're small and we have ten leads a week a paper system is manageable You know, but even but if you think about that if you're gonna contact them ten times That's a hundred contacts that you have to do even a paper system But ten leads a week can start to be overwhelming because you need to do all these touch points You know, and this is just I think this is the minimum We have one two three four five six seven eight nine and then the first one that automatically came with which is ten So I have ten touch points within the first two weeks before we really kind of put them in the cold lead Nurture follow-up system that we have we still reach out to them even a little bit longer after this But this is the first two weeks ten touch points. Does that seem excessive or is that you know? What are you guys thoughts? Is that too much here's my thoughts how many people say stop Contacting me in that two week period. Not a lot Yeah, I mean the important part I think to remember is they started it They reached out to you asking for your help. So all you're doing is doing what they ask you to do Yeah, and if they don't want you to reach out anymore, they can tell you Yeah, and so even you know, even things that don't even seem like that are like You know, we talk about like the technology we used to clean on like the like after you know after a few days Like why that's important and how that delivers a better service So we even try different messages and see what resonates Surprisingly this one where we talk about like this this hypochlorous this infection process and how it's safe And then we talk about like the technology that makes their service better this email gets a lot of replies I thought it was gonna be a dud But this email that talks about like our iPhone app and about how our teams check in and that they have a customer portal and a Customer survey this resonates with people a lot of people are like oh, I mean a lot of our a lot of our Users are younger now a lot of our our customers are younger now Younger than me like when I started all my customers are older than me I was probably 27 when I started my business and all my customers were older now I have customers that are quite a bit younger than me. So, you know, I've been doing this long enough that it's shifted a bit So anyway, this technology one really resonates with people. I like that one. I would love to see that too man I see why it would resonate. That's great So You know Campaigns, you know is one thing and then even if you don't have some automation built out you should have a way to Go after maybe old customers that are no longer with you anymore. You should be able to search your CRM and You know fine customers that maybe haven't had a job with you in a certain period of time with you know Zero pending jobs and you could search for customers that were just house cleaning And that maybe had recurring freak frequency, but no longer with you and then mark You know create a list and market to them your current CRM should have the ability to find Customers that you are no longer servicing, right? And you should eat you should emailing those customers trying to win them back. That's at the very minimum You've already got this huge list Even the best company it's going to churn over 30 to 40 percent of their customers every single year if they maintain the churn rate of 3% a month Right, which is considered pretty good in the industry 3% if you have a hundred customers and you lose 3 a month That means that you're going to lose 36 customers a year and you've got to replace those 36 customers Well some number of those they're going to want to come back You should be marketing to those customers and create lists and creating offers that are specific to those customers And you know your CRM that you're currently using should be able to give you that data I think that's a fair minimum. You should be doing you should also be looking at every customer that booked and you should your CRM should be able to tell you this is You know customers that have had jobs, but they only booked a first-time job with you didn't book recurring service That's a huge opportunity I'm not even selling one time work right now, but we need to probably start reselling one-time work You know because we're starting to be Not as labor constrained. That's a whole other thing Missouri's unemployment into the couple weeks ago And it's like the flood like floodgates employees are here now. I've got to start selling again, but We got to get them all trained right, but the You should be you should be looking to be mining your CRM for the leads You already have the quotes you already have the customers that you used to have and the customers that have tried you But didn't buy from you permanently right that are not on your you know They tried but I consider a buyer in our business somebody that is a recurring buyer someone that's you know On your recurring list and keeps doing business with you So you can craft messages to those users but civic To you know to the fact that they've done business with you, but but don't any longer. So Hey Matt over here. You'll see that the need Posted a comment sure and I wonder if you I know I'd like to speak to it This is a kind of a hotly debated Topic, you know people talk about whether or not they should be one times and how to how to manage them Well, what do you think about just not responding to them? Got to respond One time's an opportunity to turn into to turn into recurring work I just charged significantly more so my minimum for for recurring work is 55 dollars an hour My minimum for one-time work To even go there is seventy five dollars an hour. So And then that's to make up for some of the risk that a one-time work is is that They don't really know the expectations or that it's you know That's gonna be even you know, you know out of line with what they think and what what you can deliver Another thing that I do is if they if they're asking for something with less than 48 hours notice We we go up to a hundred dollars an hour and that really tries to weed out those Really short-term that I think those are the ones that have the most risk is when they're like I need this tomorrow They weren't really planning very well all of a sudden like they need a cleaning, you know tomorrow And if I have the availability, I'm open to it But we have to make enough money to justify the risk that's associated with those one-time jobs Yeah, then in you know getting their credit card in advance and Situationally even charging them for the cleaning or for for part of the cleaning at the time that they book it just Make sure they're they're firmly committed to it And you do have to realize that You know, this is a very common strategy to just increase that price so that it is so expensive Then it makes it worth your while to clean for those people and to make whatever has to happen happen Yeah, and my numbers are my numbers whatever works for you if you know your profit margins and what you need to make You know, my numbers are based on my employees making $20 an hour on average with with my best people making $25 to $29 on average. I mean You know, I'm kind of probably the exception not the rule of the way that I pay But you know, maybe we all need to be thinking like that, you know, I'm not I'm not sure that that you know Anyway, my point is that you just based it on your own decisions But my my suggestion is one-time work you should be charging 25% more and Maybe as much as a hundred percent more for short term For short term like I need this today if your normal looking rate is $50 an hour You might want to consider $100 now. I mean, you might want to be a double the price just a thought There's a school of thought out there that you don't want to be the one saying no You want to put a price tag on it that would compensate you make it worth your while to do it and let them say no But they're willing to pay the price then then do it and put money in your pocket Just keep one thing in mind if we're gonna go with that strategy. I'm not against it But I do want to remind everybody who's hearing this that if people are paying a hundred dollars an hour Regardless of why they have higher expectations They think they're spending a hundred dollars an hour. They're expecting a perfect job So you got to be really really on point with those expectations if you're charging a ton of money Don't do it. I'm just saying you got to be clear You got to be on point or you'll that's where you're you're gonna get that situation where you're like They wanted the job in 24 hours and then they complained about one hair Yeah, they're complaining about here because you charged them a hundred bucks an hour and there's some techniques you can use though It's it's it's almost like the uber surge pricing And we've done this before it's like we really are booked up But it sounds like if you're in a pinch we can do this But we would have to move another customer to do it and if I move that customer I'm gonna have to compensate them for that So I'm gonna have to try you know if you're willing to pay the premium That I would then have to use to make it right with the customer that I'm moving I can do that so They're thinking it's not really super premium cleaning. It's okay I understand why I'm paying more because basically they're Paying off somebody else so I can have their spy and that's how we address it is like look I'm gonna have to bump a customer and give them and give them a big discount on a future visit if I can get you in So I I need you to understand where this availability is coming from that. It's actually gonna cost me out of my pocket So that's how we address it lives that you're paying a premium because what our schedule is full But we have some customers that are willing to be flexible because we'll give them a discount if we move them So that's that is a good point You do need to address the why of how it's even possible and where the availability is coming from it Why and why it costs more and for us it costs more because we're probably having to move somebody and inconvenience them And we have to you know, give them something, you know for it. So, you know, right now we're not doing it One other thing to think about as far as marketing is Marketing to your existing customers if you have like employee portal or I'm sorry customer portal or some other feature that makes their service better and you can You can upsell them on their job So this is a cool thing about being central is in a lot of the softwares have a customer portal too So this is not just a main central thing. Yeah, but When you when you book a job made central you can send them an invite to a customer portal And then before their next job if they've if they've you know, sign up They can see add-ons that you could add on to their cleaning and it allows them to kind of sell So we invite every customer the customer we have about an eighty-five percent adoption rate our customers that actually have signed up for the for the customer portal and Yeah, so it allows them to do, you know manage their account But what I really like is is allows us to in the reminders say hey go to your customer portal If you'd like to add on anything to your cleaning You can see what the available add-ons are and if we have any specials this week on that So that's a great way to increase revenue with your your existing customers by marketing to them Any services you have so let's say you don't have a customer portal When you sign up send out reminders, just let them know what what the available add-ons are You'll just have to manually add them on to your to your service that you're going to provide them But think of it this way you can increase your your Sales five to ten percent through your current customers How much is that worth how many extra customers would you need to add to increase sales five percent? So for me I'd have to add, you know, 20 or 30 more customers just to do that You know for for when we were at 700 customers part of COVID, right? That'd be like 35 40 customers That's a lot of sales, but you can you can increase that revenue per customer Through up selling to them and you know customer portal is one way we do it But just let you know what you have available is the whole another way So Tom you guys do anything like that with your customer portal letting you know what's available or is that an opportunity maybe still? No, we do that. We use it that way as well and that works well for she can get extra jobs in that way well, I'm super excited because we have been sending a Job form with the reminder where they have to go to the job form and sign up that way. So this is awesome for me Liz come to the jumpstart tomorrow on campaigns because I will teach someone in your office how to do this automatically, okay We're doing a training for made central users tomorrow on campaigns, which is which I'll be teaching So if you're a main central user around this call make sure that you the register for that and come tomorrow It's gonna be put the info in Tom. Oh It's just so for me centrally. It's it's actually It's in the hangout hub in the public group or in the private Groups because we don't want non-made central users on that because it's it's geared towards towards that But but for your office have somebody have me or have somebody from your office Join me and I'll make sure that they they're up to speed on this Yeah, it's a great it's a great tool that we use to increase our sales and Yeah, I think that you'll get a lot of benefit out of that like Like starting next week you could be up and running with that in a week. So Again kind of key takeaway so far is you don't need more leads You already probably have a lot of leads that you're not following up on as well as you could so Have a have a number in mind a number of contacts that you're gonna contact somebody I suggest 10. It's a big number So 10 times you're gonna contact every lead you get 10 times But what about quotes that you already quoted you gave a price and they didn't do anything. Are you guys? Think that's pretty important. I think I think that's a missed opportunity as well It's so a lot of people like you get on the phone and they they got a quote and For whatever reason you didn't get to fail right then You know one thing that one thing that you should do is email them the quote So it's not just on on record on the phone You should email them the quote and the reason I say this is they're gonna go back to their inbox and search for that at some point the future and And you want to be in their inbox. So at the very least You create a written record of that price and you'd say when it expires or whatever you don't because it's not it's not Forever that price was just for what you gave them today at that point But I've had people come back to us and the main central quotes. I'll show you this. This is interesting The main central quotes allow them to click a button and and and book their sale right from the quote You've sent them in the past But I've had customers Come back like a year later from a quote that they got over the phone Go to their inbox click on the button and book their sale and then say to us Hey, the pricing online is different than what was in my quote and Yeah, the the prices have all been adjusted I'm sorry about that Yeah, that was last year So it'll have like a booking button and it'll be like so this is what ours looks like Let me let me preview the the template But so, you know, you know, it's customized their first name This isn't the right one Yeah, all that's all that's customizable so you can you can do that with any software though I believe but that's really it was important to some main central users. So I'm looking for Quote Internal quotes. So you quoted them on the phone and Same kind of look Right yeah, but then they have it has all their pricing information all these little hashtags It's all things that made central or your software would fill out and then they can just hit book now and It'll actually recognize that this person filled it out And it'll go to your website and they can finish booking online over half my bookings happen From, you know our online portal and I don't have data as to how many of them finished that we've already quoted first over the phone And then they and then they fill it's out at book, but it's it's significant. So You know, I really believe whatever you do You need to send them the quote to their inbox and it needs to be there So they can search for it and find you later because they're gonna forget about you If all you did was rely on that you quoted them on the phone and they should remember No way Email them the quote make a memorable that way when their husband or wife gets home later that night And they want to discuss it as a team because a lot of these decisions are made as a team effort and family now They're gonna look at the company that was the most professional if you set them really something professional like this where it's like You know, this is the quote we discussed, you know, what your what your protocols were for cove it What's your guarantee is? Products and we're an earth-friendly company you can learn more and then learn more about the way we train and train These are all questions that come up. They're basically FAQs And we're we're solving those questions on the front end So I highly recommend having FAQs that like real real questions people ask you drive your what's on your quote form? So, you know Kind of the first stop now that you've given them a quote if they don't Book like right away There's a whole series of other things that are gonna be happening after that, right? Yeah, I think you should follow up with them quite a for quite a bit too So if somebody if somebody you got a phone for them, you're gonna have a slightly different process But you need to have follow-up on them too. So we'll follow up with them the next day Five days later, you know, we wait a little bit of time for the next email Then we wait two more days and follow up with them again And then it's all emails from there on one two three four five more emails So, you know, it's a it's an eight There's eight steps here I might I might add one more just to create a round number because the first step is sending the quote by email So that was one and then I like I like ten. I don't know. It's just a nice. It's a nice number I think I need to add another step here So that it's ten steps, but yeah, you gotta you gotta have really strong followers You know If you don't you're you just leaving money on the table. Let's say Let's you know, I don't have the exact numbers, you know Right in front of you what the what the tail is but some portion of your of your leads are gonna come back to you six months later a year later and And again, you need to follow system and then after this process is done Every single you should have a long-term strategy of emailing out Something to your entire list on a regular cadence of trying to re-engage those people and catch them at the right time The more frequently that you can be consistent that I'm not the better I think as much as two times per week is probably okay if you're giving useful information But at minimum two times per month It's great just so that they keep saying your name even if they don't open up the email They see an email came through from better life maids even if they're like I don't have time Delete delete. They still remember better life maids. So when the time comes that it is time to walk They're like, oh, I really got to get somebody to clean my house. Oh Yeah, better life maids that's just pops into their head. I mean Everybody knows that you just want to get your your name out there You're branding out there in front of people as many times as you can so that you're the one spot up Yeah, more leads more leads is great But if you're just getting more leads and they're going into an inbox that's like a one-and-done, you know conversation with them Probably spending more money than you have to to get the same results that if you were just a follow-up and have a better follow-up process You would have better results and to the need to your point here that when you're booked and you know You don't have room for that one-time clean or that vacant clean or whatever. You just don't there's no room You don't have the labor for it So I'm going to really push on you to at least respond at least respond with hey We're we're really busy right now Whatever the reason is and we would love to be able to get back to it What time keep them in your pipeline as part of your Your ecosystem if you don't answer them at all, they're not even a potential customer yours Yeah, and you've actually hurt your brand because yeah next time they're at a party They're gonna be telling their friends, you know, I call Denise business because I really needed cleaning and they never even responded to me That's how they do that's how they remember it to like they're like I mean That's that's not just our industry that is so common in the trades when somebody's busy The way that they express that is is that they don't respond But if they were just to simply text back or email back or even just spend a moment to call and say hey I am so sorry. We are all booked We even go a step further and I actually refer two or three other companies that I'm that I network within the area to try and solve their problem and Customers remember the fact that we were so kind and gracious as to give them the numbers to our competitors that we respect and trust and Believe that we'll do a good job for them Not everyone's gonna go that far, but you know what I have a I have a relationship with Sharon grammar here here locally and I don't know if she'd be watching but dude I Know that she does a good job, and I don't feel bad if I don't get that customer and that customer needed service I would rather give it to her than have them have a bad experience, right? So that's one that's one and there's you know a couple other people locally that I trust it like and they do the same for me from time to time like I don't expect it, but you know, it's just part of the It's part of the way that we do business in that we are trying to be very helpful and solve their problem Off of it. I want to solve their problem I want them to remember us as the company that helps solve their problem, you know Even if we didn't get the money off of it So a little different philosophy now everyone's gonna agree with that, but that's how we do and another piece of that is There you remember Matt used to use that promoter So net promoter score talks a lot about you can have these people that are really all for you And they have all these great things to say and then you have these people that are just neutral They don't have anything bad or anything good to say But then you can also have these people that actively say bad things about your company And those are the worst people to have People that are out there actively saying bad things about your company And if you don't respond to them, they will my worst reviews that I have I think I think I have either on Yelp or on Google my worst reviews have all been Because they couldn't get a hold of us for some reason. We didn't respond. We didn't get back to them I know I'm people are like what Friday at 7 o'clock. Yeah, I know and you're like yeah That's and that's the most stressful thing Because you want to set boundaries when you're small like not Like, you know jump on those grenades at Friday while your kids are at soccer and things like that So I don't have a good answer for that because I'm all about boundaries with work Like, you know, not always but like but with my cleaning company I have better boundaries than I do with But that's because I have established processes and people to take care of things and if I If I jump on it on a problem at five on seven o'clock on a Friday I'm stepping on somebody's toes in my office, but the But man, it is important. I don't have a good answer on that because if you can What do you heard right away? Oh And there's another dimension to this as well. Um We were talking earlier about you you Get caught up in the world when then you really aren't doing the things that are important because you're dealing with the things that you perceive to be urgent A lot of that's really self-inflicted So part of the secret to getting better sales is creating the bandwidth and creating the bandwidth to do it is Using your time in a way and your staff's time your office staff's time In a way that they're creating maximum value And a lot of times we've got processes that are more complicated than they need to be And there may be some marginal value and all the complexity that's created but enough Not enough marginal value to justify all the time and treasure that goes in to support it I've seen some Really Really impressive and complex Pay systems with all kinds of bonus programs that things that require tons of Hours putting numbers in his spreadsheets and building formulas and doing calculations and The marginal value created from that is questionable We look at all the time that it takes to do it But for credit card processing and voicing I mean, there's a lot of things that a lot of companies spend more time on they need to Let's sit on that payroll for a second because I agree like I I can think of examples of companies And so how this plays into marketing and sales is if your people are if you're back off this staff is tied up in Crazy, you know whirlwind things that you're having them do they can't do stuff like this So right like that's kind of why we bring that up is you need to have you need to streamline your office processes um and and clean that stuff up and this is This is so incredibly under looked of how much time your your back office staff Is doing repetitive tasks that perhaps if you have them automated through No, your your software or through just eliminating some things that are just crazy You've decided this thing that you're doing any payroll costs you 10 hours a week For your back office time team to do Um, is there a return on investment at that time, you know, let's talk about ROI on market expense I mean, there's an ROI on your on your people's time and if if you can't justify that time And it increases that much value on a multiple of three or four It can't be okay. This thing costs two hundred fifty dollars and it saves with two hundred fifty dollars No, your back office people need to generate Three x their their revenue to really justify and I actually think it needs to be way higher Tom said 10 earlier like the time that the activities and the time that they're doing You know, you could argue that that for every dollar of time that they do it should generate $10, right? And yeah, if you can't justify that then then you need to really rethink some of those processes So so the point is You know, if you can find some of these activities and you can they're not hard to find And you can automate you can simplify you can eliminate you create a lot more bandwidth to engage in Activities where where you're touching your stakeholders base basically clients perspective clients You know your team members you work towards your cleaning professionals We talk about employee engagement. How much resource do we dedicate to? staying in touch with with our team members every week and We've probably spent more time on some administrative minutia You probably will listen to that as opposed to You know investing that time and part of it's comfortable too. Let's just get real You know for a lot of us it's really comfortable to kind of sink into a spreadsheet or sink into building I've seen some crm campaign and like, you know active campaign infusions off Or I guess keep now whatever that Look like plates of spaghetti. I mean their works of art. They're so complex But at what point, you know, if we have invested 20 of the effort in that and taken the other 80 percent And spent it on making phone calls to people would probably have more money in the bank agree Let me let me give a good kind of example of of this you talked about payroll people come up with like There's a few things but like people talk about like, you know I have this way that someone gets paid in this way. Someone gets paid like I get two dollars an extra hour for this and this and that But their software doesn't track it. So at the end of the week Eliminate that stuff find ways to pay to find paid for performance. We have a on made central.com There's a pay for performance guide. It has nothing to do with the software It just it gives you some formulas and some some spreadsheets that you can use to kind of manage Maybe some different ways to think about payroll. That would be one example of something that's a free giveaway on made central.com Scroll down right below the header download the pay for performance guide that will that will probably eliminate Maybe a hundred hours a year of wasteful Payroll activities that you're doing if you can implement something like that in your business. I I cannot Tell you enough how much just simplifying my payroll process Has made my company, you know smoother operation And takes time off my my manager's back office time Whatever whatever software you use to run your business, you know being you know your production management stuff Your you know your your accounting your applicant tracking Try really hard to use it the way that it was designed I see people all the time saying well, that's really doesn't work in my business So I have to do all this stuff on the on the side to make it work Stop that Use the software the ways designed to Be used You can get things done in a fraction of the time you can click a button And make all this administrative minutiae go away and invest that time in building relationships with clients perspective clients in your workforce Yeah, and then you talked about credit card processing. I see people trying to save A little bit of money by doing you know really um You know like you know only taking checks and cash and then but then thinking for the end of the day You've got to have somebody in your office go through and reconcile that payment against each you know against each Uh invoice is the three percent of the credit card processing really costing you Anything if it's costing your back office time Two or three hours extra a day. Did you really save anything? You know, I see stuff like that where people are trying to save money And really they're increasing the workload of their of their office to manage those things Those are all examples and then that three hours a day could be doing follow up on Or working your schedule to fit an extra job in or you know, the list goes on there's A ton of things that that create more value. Yeah Absolutely that that's all those things if your software can do it and most of the maid service production softwares can do things like Like either pay hourly or pay some sort of commission or job ticket. I don't know if they all do but I think that most of them do and if they do Stop doing all these complex things and get your payroll done with a click of a mouse And you know move on so that so that that activity that took 10 hours a week or five hours a week Whatever it is Arguably if it's two hours a week it's too long if you can get it done in 10 minutes Get it done in 10 minutes get it off their plate and then all that time can be recaptured To like these activities Thomas is describing. That's that's the that's the focus of automation and campaigns and You know doing all this stuff that your software was built to do it It can't most of them can do some level of their stuff Um, and you should take advantage of those features and and reduce your back office workload I can't I can't even imagine some of the things that I used to do Um, I can't even imagine doing them today because I'm like I just I just Love simplicity so much and I love we have complex payroll. We pay commission But I love the simplicity of hitting a button and it's not and I couldn't imagine going back and trying to track All these different things that we used to track Um, you know the mouse track was just too Too busy, you know So we are approaching the top of the hour What are we going to be doing Wednesday? We have an amazing guest Dan Dan hearth of uh, of one click seos can be joining us We're going to really dive into Um, you know some strategies you can take for your business right now to improve your google my business My your your google and that pack look uh, listen whether you outsource that And you need to make sure your company that's doing it for you's doing a great job Or you doing it yourself some strategies and techniques to do that because That is where basically most of search is happening now is is You know six out of ten search results happen from the map pack So you need to get you need to get yourself up the rankings one way or another and you know That's going to be what we're going to really focus on with Dan Yeah, they special they specialize in FDO for Local home service providers, so we're good each five Yeah, I mean I pay to use them there. They they deliver results to me and I'm a pretty good practitioner so They can do a better job than I can and in less time than I can I have to utilize my time in other ways And um, so you just have to yeah, sometimes it's you know, you can learn something and do it yourself And I did all that kind of stuff for years, but even I outsource most of that stuff At this point you're using your time more wisely. You can use your time on on higher order I mean you're buying time basically. Yeah We had Dan do a presentation for us in vegas. He was one of our sponsors and The things that that company does for SEO Everybody was just blown away. It's just It's so they do so much more from the typical SEO company I think everybody's going to love that presentation. How long is it going to be on for? Is it going to be on the whole hour 45 minutes? We have for the whole show so, uh, SEO SEO one click for the person that walked away a little bit Dan Hurth of SEO one click and um Yeah, I would like what I really love is the process like they involve you in the process And you really can see what they're doing because they have a checklist and you're you're You know, maybe not everyone's going to love that, but I'm used to using base camp and I like The project aspect of it and I can see what they're working on next what links they've got for me It's really it's very transparent. It's very different than most SEO processes Yeah, as opposed to the experience where just trust us and Yeah, you have a weight you're not waiting long enough be patient Yeah, uh, yeah, who who is the facebook user that that doesn't have a name face Facebook user Who is that normally it's one of your it's one of your folks because it's they they knew damn buzz once we They're in your they're in your Samantha Sam hey Sam Sam I use I use them as well, uh sam so I don't get anything personally off of Off of you know, you're using them or not using them But I you know, I find them to be valuable And even if you don't hire them Listen to them. They know what they're talking about. They're gonna they're gonna share information in terms of You know how you can get more value off of people who are using their phones primarily or desktop Looking for a cleaning service Dan has the philosophy is he'll tell you exactly what he does because he knows that 90% of people will not bother To do what he's gonna do And you know and the truth is they don't have the time the energy or the resources to do it So he'll tell you exactly what he's gonna do and how he does it and We're too busy doing that crazy payroll process I think if you don't use Dan you're the people that need to be on there On the on wednesday because you really need to see What your seo company is doing and if you're not doing all of this stuff At least you'll know the stuff to ask about because most of the people I know That have an seo company that doesn't operate like Dan got that seo one click They have no clue what their seo company does. They don't know what to ask They don't know what to look for they don't know how to see what they're doing They're they're they're running blind So coming on wednesday and you're going to know what to at least ask your company Awesome, okay. Well, we are at the top of the hour So wednesday we'll be wrapping up sales and marketing months and dan is a great way to do it We're going to be talking local seo So you guys take care. We'll see you wednesday five o'clock. Bye. Bye. Bye