The Home Service Expert Podcast - How To Create The Starbucks Effect In Your Industry And Rise Above The Competition

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

Joe Crisara is called America's Service Sales Coach, and is a world-wide sales educator and entrepreneur. He combines 40 years of contracting experience with strong expertise in performing “Pure Motive Service.” He co-developed a sales educational firm and website for HVAC, plumbing and electrical service contractors, www.ContractorSelling.com, that helps thousands of owners, managers, service techs and sales people in the HVAC, plumbing and electrical contracting business create high revenue and personal income by understanding and utilizing the principles of persuasion, selling, presentation and closing. In this episode, we talked about sales, coaching, customer service...

That gentleman may be able to fix a spring in 10 minutes, but what he can't do is create a lifelong relationship in 10 minutes. You know what I'm saying there? So if everybody thinks that being in the service business is just about doing the technical part of your job, well, then you're living out at least 50% of the work. To me, 50% of the work is making sure that you are creating a relationship between the frontline employee every service business has and each customer you have to create a customer experience that differentiates you and separates you from other people. Does that make sense? So what are we really doing here? It's like, if we're not taking the time to create that relationship, then I don't think we really have very much right

to ask somebody to make a purchase from us if we aren't willing to invest in the relationship with our clients. Welcome to the Home Service Expert, where each week, Tommy chats with world-class entrepreneurs and experts in various fields, like marketing, sales, hiring, and leadership to find out what's really behind their success in business. Now, your host, the home service millionaire, Tommy Mello. Welcome back to the Home Service Expert. My name is Tommy Mello, and today I have a very special

guest. His name is Joe Crisara. He's out of LA, and he is an expert of sales specifically. He does coaching, customer service, sales management. He's the king of HVAC plumbing, but he's also good at garages, believe it or not. He can do anything for any industry when it comes to sales. He's worked with us and absolutely amazing. He's ContractorsSelling.com, service sales educator and coach from 2001 to present. Big time business development CEO from 2001 to 2006. Crisara Home Comfort owner from 1985 to 2001. So he actually made it in the real world and decided to teach afterwards, which is great. He's called America's Service Sales Coach and is worldwide sales educator and entrepreneur. He combines 40 years of contracting experience with a strong expertise in performing pure mode of service. And he co-developed the sales education firm and website for HVAC plumbing and electrical service contractors, contractorsselling.com.

That helps thousands of owners, managers, service techs, and salespeople in the HVAC plumbing and electrical contracting business create high value and personal income by understanding and utilizing the principles of persuasion, selling, presenting, and closing. Joe's a good buddy of mine. Really excited to have you on today. Hey, thank you, Tommy. It's such a pleasure to be here.

And thanks to all your guests for having me and listening to me. Definitely, it's an honor to be here. Thank you. Yeah, you know, very rarely I've had accountants. I've had CPAs. I've had a lot of best known authors. Very rarely have we been able to only talk about sales. And one thing I want to talk about, the elephant in the room is sales are bad.

We should service 10 calls a day. One guy went on Facebook the other day. I said, you should be running three or four calls a day in a garage tour group. And I said, seven or eight is just ridiculous. Just the drive time alone. It's just impossible to give the customer the best service, the best ultimate stuff. And he goes, you don't think my guys could do a spring job in 10 minutes and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, so you're really good at just fixing the broken piece and leaving is what he is. And you know, that's why I think these Facebook groups, some of them, until you get into a specialty group, let's just talk about sales for a minute.

What sales mean to you, first of all. Then I want to ask more of a foundational question about where you came from. But I just want to get this out of the way. Well, that's fine. You know, that gentleman may be able to fix a spring in 10 minutes. But what he can't do is create a lifelong relationship in 10 minutes. You know what I'm saying there? So if everybody thinks that being in the service business is just about doing the technical part of your job, well, then you're living out at least 50% of the work. To me, 50% of the work is making sure that you are creating a relationship between the frontline employee every service business has and each customer you

have to create a customer experience that differentiates you and separates you from other people. Does that make sense? So what are we really doing here? It's like, if we're not taking the time to create that relationship, then I don't think we really have very much right to ask somebody to make a purchase from us if we aren't willing to invest in the relationship with our clients. Does that make sense, Tom? It makes more sense than you know. And trust me, I'm an advocate of making money. I didn't go into business for a job. I went into business and I took a lot of risks. I just looked at my house and there's a note against my house in Scottsdale for a line of credit to expand that I took. I'm taking all the risks. Therefore, there should be some rewards. Obviously, we're doing good. My

lines almost paid off. But ultimately, if we go bankrupt, do you think my employees take ownership of that bankruptcy and say, take my house too? Not at all, Tom. Not in the least bit, no. And, you know, I love my employees and they're amazing. But we came in business to do more with our families, friends, live a better life and quality of life and more time with different people. So I wanted to just tell you that I firmly agree with you that building relationships, people take time and these relationships, you know,

I took a friend out to a steak dinner and I'm telling you, Joe, this was by far the best service I ever received. It was like everybody knew I asked the manager to come talk to me to congratulate him. I just never seen something done like this. It was so far greater. The meal was over $300. Now, you know as well as I do, I could get a steak dinner from Denny's or Applebee's for 60 bucks. So when you really create a great experience with brand new trucks, great technology, texting the people on the way with a smile with, hey, and when you really create a great experience with brand new trucks great technology texting the people on the way with a smile with hey and when you stop i'm stopping off at 7-eleven joe if i

could pick you up something on the way to come fix up your garage i'd love to you really put together the processes that separate you from the pack i'm truly a big believer that you don't have to be the cheapest because you want to spend time with customers. I want the people spending time with customers, building that relationship, asking for reviews, getting them to become raving fans. And I feel like that's what separates us from 99.99999% of other companies. Yeah, I think that's true, Tom. It reminds me of a story that, if you don't mind me sharing, I had this guy named Zach from Orange County. He was the drain cleaning guy from a company I worked with. And he first got to the house and the woman starts saying, I'm really concerned because I got my 93rd birthday party coming on Saturday. All my family's coming here to celebrate with me. And

I'm just worried that the drains aren't going to work properly. And while he went back to his truck, he called several of his coworkers. Now, this is something that obviously it starts at the top, right? Because management has to support something like this. But what he did is he called his coworkers, a few guys he knew that were in the area. And he said, hey, where are you located? Could you stop over at Walgreens and pick up some balloons? And so he's sure I'll get the other guys too. And so it wound up with like three or four guys driving over to this woman's house. And when he came back in with the prices, the prices, all these plumbers are in the front yard and they had her come out and they all sang happy birthday to her and gave her the balloons.

And then they gave her the prices. Well, Tommy, I wonder how that sales experience went when he showed her all the prices. How do you think that went after they did that? You know what I'm saying? Well, how did it go? I'm curious so the audience understands. She bought the premium option, you know, but on top of it, not only did she buy the premium option, Tom, but she told her friends and family are coming over to the birthday party. This is the company you got to use.

And so that company wound up doing like $150,000 from that one party, all the people buying stuff from the company because they were told by her, you need to call these people. She told the story to all their – and then not only did she get thank you notes from her, the company, they got thank you notes from all of her grandkids about how nice that was that you could do that for grandma and things like that. You see what I'm saying, Tom? So that relationship doesn't just go with the immediate family we have. We know that it's going to touch 17, 20, 25 people when you do something that creates that wow experience that I know you truly believe in. I know that when I first met you,

I knew I seen a brother from another mother. You believe in that wow experience, you know? Yeah, I believe in raving fans. And there's a good book called Raving Fans. I haven't talked about it in a hundred podcasts, but you know, the fact is you could have a happy customer or a happy client. That's a lot different than someone that goes out of their way. You got to understand when I had this experience, I told everybody for the next week about this experience with this restaurant. It was that good. And if you think going in and say, wham, bam, thank you, ma'am, it's fixed. Here's the problem. Did you go over every option with them? Did you offer them a new door? Maybe they don't like the old one. Maybe they didn't like how it looks. Maybe they wanted more insulation

because the husband works out there all the time or cuts fish or does whatever. Maybe they wanted something with newer technology to tell if their door's open from the mobile app for LiftMaster. I just think it's crazy how much technicians assume people don't want financing or a service agreement or won't take the best option. And I think it's very poorly executed. And I say this a lot,

but certain people should not be in business just because they don't, I'm not saying I'm right. You're wrong for the people. I'm just saying, if you wanted to just make 80 grand as a business a year, go work for a good company. Why would you work this hard and take these kinds of chances and put out the time and time energy and blood, sweat, and tears to make barely six figures most of the time, and the company makes zero. You know what I mean? Yeah.

There's so many people who talk about how much harder it is to do great service, right? Like if I told people that, well, to me, a world-class service experience begins by making the extra effort to not just look at the garage door, but look at the family that uses the garage door. How important is the quality and the reliability of this barrier that separates you from people who just walk into your home and secure your family, right? And you have the safety and health of the family involved with the opening system and all the things that go along with it.

And then, you know, customer service means, here's the thing I think about customer service that people don't realize, Tom. Customer service means to anticipate what people need next, not wait for somebody to tell us what they need next. Because if we wait for somebody to tell us what we need next, then it's just like having a coworker. Do you ever work with a coworker that you had to tell him how to do everything? He didn't try anything on his own. If you've ever had that kind of a coworker who was aggravating you because he could never on his own think about

the next thing that you needed. You had to literally tell it to him. Well, that's exactly what your client, the aggravation that your client gets when they have to tell you to program that remote. When they have to tell you, could we get a quieter system? Could I get something that's more beautiful? Could I get something that secures my family and creates more weather-proofing than my current system? If they're having to ask you that, Tom, it's already a crappy experience in my belief. I believe that we should be thinking of things before we're being asked for it. Because that's really why you got that good steakhouse, why that thing stood out probably because they were probably doing things

before you even asked for it. And that's the part that makes us feel like, man, these people are like Nostradamus of steakhouses. They kind of know the next thing we need before we even asked for it. Does that make sense there, Tim? Yeah. And I think what you're talking about, the best way I describe it is, Mr. Customer, do you want to be proactive or reactive? The best thing I can apply it to is when you go to a dealership, the dealerships are known for giving the best service because they understand the warranty. They've got the close

relation with Ford, Chrysler, Dodge, all these companies, is you go in there with 90,000 miles. They're going to do a checkup and they're going to require certain parts. At 90,000 miles, you're going to get a water pump replaced. You're going to get new hoses. You're going to get all these things replaced, which may not be completely bad, right? Is that true? Oh, yeah. I mean, well, what kind of crappy service the provider waits for the car to break down every time we fix something? I mean, if you replace one tire on a car, what are you saying? The other ones are still not flat, so we're going to wait and come back every couple why don't we go ahead and replace all the tires? And while we're at it, the brakes have never been changed in 70,000 miles.

And then the suspension, you should at least see an option to do the suspension, the brakes. And then while I'm here, why don't we go ahead and take care of the oil change? I had an option for that too. And then the economy option is just do a patch on your tire. I could just patch that tire for $89. And the top option could be $4,700 for premium tires with a brake job and suspension and oil changes for the next couple of years, right? But then you'd have to anticipate that people need this. All you got to think about is this, what are people going to need next? Because that's what the world-class service

provider is thinking. And you know what, Tom? If what the world-class service provider is thinking. And you know what, Tom? If you provide world-class service, you don't have to be good at sales. The customer sells themselves on you, just like you did at that steakhouse time. There was no sales pitch. It was just great service and you sold yourself on that. Make sense? A hundred percent. And the main thing, I'm so excited for you to be on here because you're very articulate in the way you explain how the customer should feel. And ultimately, my goal is to have a win-win. It's not to say, you know, I hate those companies. And the problem is, Joe, as you know, darn right, that there's a lot of companies out there that do evil. They see a grandmother and they say, I'm going to triple my price.

They take advantage. And then the other company that sells for a high price but has better parts, better customer service, doesn't tend to any other employees, actually has relationships with each and every employee. The good companies get a bad rap because they charge more to deliver that great service, that higher quality part. And you've seen it in every single industry out there. The problem is there's certain industries that it's more prevalent. Like you've heard locks in this, they're notorious for taking advantage of people. And there's a lot of automotive shops where you get that mechanic that'll just, it's something simple. They'll turn it into your motor's bad. Well, all I can say is this, Tom.

I would say great service, which anticipates people's needs, is like the knife that cuts through the fog of uncertainty for clients. Clients are uncertain. Let's face it. If I get a garage door, how many times in my life am I going to buy a garage door system? I'm probably the first one I tried to do myself and I screwed it up. And then I hired a professional. And the next time I got the whole door, I've done it like three times in my life.

And I can tell you right now, I was disappointed with every experience because I asked, literally had to ask the person, hey, what would it take to do this? And they're like, oh, my God, I don't have the prices on that. I'd have to have the boss call you. And they acted like it was a burden that they had to do. It wasn't like service was a burden. So I do agree with you about one thing. I don't really think some people are cut out for the service business. They think that making the extra effort for people.

The weird part is that the people who complain about the effort it takes to do great service for people are the same people who are actually working harder than the best service professionals because the best service professional, the job always goes easier because they make enough money to get the job done right. It's always the guy who thinks he's doing red carpet service by fixing broken things, leaving a 40-year-old garage door in place and putting an opener in it and not telling them what the better door would be or putting in the better system. To me, that's just shoddy service that I had to ask. I was in Templeton, California. I had a house with a three-car garage.

I literally had to, like pulling teeth, I had to get the guy out here Templeton, California, had a house with a three-car garage. I literally had the, like pulling teeth, I had to get the guy out here to give me the prices. And it sounded like I was, like it was like a inconvenience for them, right? I went ahead and purchased anyway, because that was the only place in town. But guys, it doesn't take that much more to be outstanding and to be, I would say to be standing on an island where you have a blue ocean with no competitors around. In a place like in the garage door business, there really is no competitors when you do anticipate the needs of your customer. Sales and service go together. It's not customer service in sales means how can I show people solutions that they haven't thought of yet? Because I'm the professional.

How can I expect the customer to know that the garage door system could be put in with a new garage door and new rails and everything like that? I didn't. They probably don't even think it could be replaced, right? And that you have all these Wi-Fi connected devices. Nobody would even give it a second thought if you didn't introduce it to them. Make sense? And I'm going to end with this piece of the podcast.

Walk into the doctor. Get weighed. Get your blood pressure taken. Give them all the symptoms. And then you, as not the doctor, you as the patient, diagnose for the doctor. Because that's the same thing. Why did you even go to the doctor? If you wanted to diagnose it yourself and say, do the bare minimum to keep, don't even worry about keeping me healthy. Just do this right now. If my heart is failing, tell me what I need for my heart,

but don't pay attention to anything else on my body. Even though I've got all kinds of other issues, that's, it doesn't make sense. And I am the doctor when I walk in a garage and there's air conditioning specialists, comfort advisors. There's these people that sense. And I am the doctor when I walk in a garage and there's air conditioning specialists, comfort advisors. There's these people that specialize. And you know, I have a Christmas light business. And what I found is people don't know what they want. And Christmas is awesome because it's a luxury. Everybody loves Christmas for the most part. And it's easy to sell people because they're like, yeah, I mean, I wanted this to be amazing for my family, for the party we're having for my kids. So it's like, but you got to get creative and give them

ideas and show them what's the quality. Why would you use us? Well, right. Right. But anyway, you know, you've, you've had a pretty extensive career. You've been known to be one of the top sales persons in HVAC and that equates to plumbing electrical. And I really think sales is such a good word. There's nothing wrong with it, but we like to put fancy names around it. I think sales is service. I don't think there's anything I can do to ever sell somebody, but I do think I can create the environment where people sell themselves. And based on the relationship, increasing people's esteem. And based on the relationship, increasing people's esteem. And here's the thing about it, Tommy, if you can't help people imagine improving the situation they currently have, I mean, really, what kind of service provider are

you? Always doing the minimum, always doing butt service. And butt you know, but service means, yeah, you could have had the doors as well as the opener, but I didn't have the prices on me or I didn't feel like doing it. You know, and to me, that's just lame. And so that's the weird part is that that's the kind of guy who would go to five, maybe 10 calls a day, as opposed to saying, let me just do two or three calls a day and just nail those calls and do as much service as I can. You literally are being told that the more service you can provide for somebody, the better your service is, right? And that's one thing I would just like everybody to go away with that message today. A good service is not about how many people you do. It's about what do you do with the one person that you're in front of right now?

How much service can you provide that person that they will make the investment in as well? Love that word investment. And very few people in most industries understand what investment versus cost means. So you've been doing this a long time. Talk to me about what in the hell made you want to coach? Because you deal with a lot of people, man. And I'm just curious. There's so many people. You get some good. You get some not so good.

Tell me about what led you to that direction. You know, when I had my own business, one of the most rewarding things I witnessed was my own recovery. I was not very smart or articulate about being able to communicate value in my own recovery. I was not very smart or articulate about being able to communicate value in my own service until I started learning. I had a client of mine who really took me under his wing and gave me coaching, right? And then I coached my employees. And then I really learned about what was inside me that made me tick. And really what made me tick was I lived for that transformation. Somebody who was just didn't have the knowledge or didn't have the information, taking that person under my wing and showing them what to do and then seeing them transform their life. I tell you what,

there's nothing more rewarding than seeing some guy who was willing to start working for a minimum wage. And then three years later, they're buying a house on a golf course. That's generational wealth that makes an impact for generations. And I realized that my mission statement was to make a positive impact in the life of other people. And that's really what I try to do every day. Even when I go on Facebook or whatever, I don't go on there to make money. I go on there to help people. And of course, the more I help people, the more they want to pay me.

Tom, go figure. Yeah, you know what? I don't really care what the price is at the end of the day. I'm just pulling numbers out of thin air. But if you were to charge me $20,000 a month, but you increase my sales by $500,000, you know, here's one thing. All of us get caught up in so many things. We just don't understand why are so many people afraid to take the plunge?

And I'm a big fan of yours. And I'm a big fan of consulting in general, if you find the right ones. I mean the plunge on what Tom? The link up with a contractor, like no matter what I remember, I spent six figures with a trainer, if you will, someone that helped me with manuals, put things together. I mean, it's made millions of dollars. The investment was such a small amount compared to what we got accomplished over the course of the last few years. Why do people look at it as you're spending money rather

than setting up your future self? Well, I think that's where consultants go wrong. To me, I wouldn't advise anybody to spend money with a consultant unless they have already provided value before you even hired them. Like, if you hire a consultant, you shouldn't be wondering whether that person's going to help you. I know you recently introduced me to somebody who does Facebook advertising, but I spent a half an hour with that. It was Dennis, right? Yeah. He sent me to Dennis.

I spent 30 minutes with him, and it was like a crash course on Facebook marketing and tracking. And I'm like, man, I've already gotten value from the 30 minutes. He hasn't even given me a price yet. And 30 minutes into the conversation, we had to end our conversation. I felt like I need to spend more time with him. This is the kind of guy I need to spend more time with. And this is the kind of guy I'm ready to invest in because I've already gotten something from him before I even did that. So I would say this for myself, I never have a hard time keeping myself busy or pretty much

everybody that engages with me, I wind up hiring me. The reason is I always make sure I provide value first because my feeling is as a consultant, the client should always feel like they owe me something rather than I haven't provided enough value for them. I think in the garage door business or any business that you're in, in the service business, I think the same thing is true. You need to find a way to make sure your client feels like, man, I feel like I owe him more, even though I spent like $12,000 on a tankless water heater and water purification and some of the re-piping, I feel like I should have spent more actually for the amount of service I got from that company. And that's really the value curve, right? Does

the client feel like, man, I can't believe that I got this kind of service for that price? Because that's how it should feel, right? And I think that it's not the consumer's fault when they don't see enough value in what we provide. We have to take responsibility for that ourself. We have to think of a way to create higher value and innovate that, make sure that happens first. Because expecting consumers, I never blame any consumer who doesn't purchase from something.

I only purchased the service provider who didn't provide enough value to see the value in it. Make sense? Yeah. And I think that one of the things that I've learned, I want to ask you a question because there's different opportunities for different advertising sources. What I mean by that is I've done a lot of endorsed radio and the people would, I mean, they would just say, we're buying, we're using you. And they were really affluent customers. It was a perfect avatar.

I've also done Craigslist and I've also done Living Social and I've done ValPack and Money Mailer. I've done Pay-Per-Click, you name it. And tell me a little bit about figuring out who the affluent customers are that actually, because only 4% of the population are only price. Price is it. So that means 96% we still got a good chance of delivering value to this customer. And a lot of them don't own houses, that 4%.

So talk to me a little bit about marrying the marketing message to find the customers that want that experience and making sure they can afford that experience versus maybe not so much. Well, I think that comes in being able to understand what is the code that's going to speak to that customer based on whatever business that you're running, right? Like, so for instance, you know, I come from Chicago where I originally grew up in that area and it was empire today, carpets tomorrow, right? That was the saying they had. And that was something that spoke like, yeah, that'd be cool. That's what I need. I don't need to be going to a carpet place and getting confused because if you ever go to buy carpet at a carpet place, first of all, you walk in the showroom, stand around, look for people to help you. Nobody helps you. So they saw that market and the weakness in the market and they took advantage of it. Instead of having to come into the showroom,

we come to you, right? And so same with the things that I teach in the sales system. There's also some marketing benefits too, right? Like there's a lot of my companies that say, ask us about our pure emotive service. And then people are like, what is that? That is interesting. Or they say at our company, we always give options, not ultimatums. Ask us about our options, not ultimatums. And there's different talking points, you know, that you can see that trigger high-end clients. So if you want to get high-end clients, you have to speak to high-end clients. And what doesn't work with high-end clients is pricing triggers. So saying that you have a lower price is never

going to be in there. Like for instance, instead of saying I have senior discounts, you'd be better off saying, ask us about our senior bonus and then give them more as opposed to giving them a discount. Ask us about our military bonus that we provide. See, that sounds more enticing than we're going to give you some cheap cut rate meal that gives you half of the mashed potatoes and half of the meatloaf. We're going to provide you some cheap cut rate meal that gives you half of the mashed potatoes and half of the meatloaf. We're going to provide you a bonus as a senior citizen. So if you're looking to find like, what would we all like to have? Well, somebody who's a little bit older, who's got kids are gone, they got spendable income, right?

Seniors are a great target. So you have to speak to seniors as if you're trying to do more for them. What do seniors need? Where you always get more service from us. Pure motive service. We focus on the quality and the reliability of a system. We focus on the safety and health of all the people who visit your home. We focus on doing things before you need them. Where you always get things done before you need it done. Those are things that would appeal to a high-end client, where if you boiled it down to something that was articulate and put that in your marketing message, what I've always found is that that will track and deliver high-end clients. Does that make

sense? That's my feel. That's what I found with the client. Because all the companies I work for are some of the most expensive clients in the market. Horizon Service in Delaware, John Wayne Service in San Antonio. I mean, just around the country. Gens Ryan in Minnesota. It's like a who's who of contractors. But they're all the most expensive, right? That's where I come in. I come in to help people take higher prices. People are doing red carpet prices, but sometimes they're doing brown bag service, Tom. They're not doing red carpet service with red carpet price. Make sense? Yeah. And I think you got to match it too. I mean, no one, no one gets mad. I know people that spend a couple hundred thousand dollars on a new home just on the crown molding and baseboards.

And all these people in the industry, they go, well, they're just a ripoff. And I always say, Joe, I'm so passionate about this. Wait a minute. This person works out of their house. They have a 20-year-old truck. They're not properly paying their taxes. Their wife handles the phones for them. Their son does the installs with two other guys, and they're turning over employees every three months. And apparently, the companies that do red carpet service are the crooks. I think there's something wrong with this picture. And people go, well, you shouldn't be able to get rich as a garage door owner. Well, maybe not in a small city, but when you're in 12 states because you're a good operator in 20 states and you do good work and you take care, more importantly, of your internal customers and create a better life for them, then you know you're doing something right. You know, and, you know, what does rich really mean?

Because it doesn't mean you have to be a multimillionaire. If you're making, I would say, somebody who owns a garage door business, there's no reason why you couldn't make $500,000 to a million dollars for yourself a year. There's so many solutions that there is to offer. It's only limited by our imagination. And the first person who has to imagine people owning something is the service provider. If we can't imagine why people would need it, then don't expect your customer to kind of discover it. You got to help them imagine what it would be like to have a new beautiful front of the house, to have a new secure weatherproofing, to have the Wi-Fi remote control, to have everything we could do for them so that they can imagine owning it. But they can't imagine owning it if we don't, Tom.

Yeah, absolutely. You're absolutely right. You've been in this industry so long, just the home service space, and I mean less than a lot of people still in it, but more than me. What have you seen change over since maybe the 90s, then this new day and age here, especially post-COVID-19? seven younger contractors who were, they were all under 40 years old, these seven guys. And within under five years in business, they had all reached $30 million in revenue. And what that tells me is that one of the biggest liabilities, like it used to be the liability was the new startup, you know, that that guy had the liability.

But now what I'm seeing, the liability is in the old family business that can't pivot because of the white elephant in the room, the father who won't let him do something or the wife that wants the guy do something or the brother who's part of the business, the partner. So the family business is sort of a self-inflicted wound because they can't pivot as quickly or as decisively as the people entrepreneurs who are coming up now as part of the online culture, which is that you start a business and you pivot, you make your decisions and you move a certain direction, just like you're doing, Tom, or just like so many of the people, Ishmael Valdez and people like that, that you probably met, Travis Smith, so many different people around the country who have hit a lot of success in a very short period of time. And I learn from my clients, Tom, to be honest with you, just as much as I teach them. I teach them a lot of good stuff.

But you know what? Sometimes I learn the decisiveness of what they provide and how they approach their market. And I'm like, yeah, I got to change as well, too, because I'm going to be a dinosaur. I'm lucky enough to have a business, Tom, where I can pivot. And if I want to go a certain direction, I don't have to ask anybody. I just go there. And that's probably the biggest thing, the I don't have to ask anybody. I just go there. And that's probably the biggest thing, biggest killer is having to ask permission as opposed to apologize, right?

You are wanted all over the world. I was at Ismail's last week for a couple days. I was at Travis's four months ago. If you want to be successful, surround yourself around successful people. But, you know, and I'm not bragging, but ultimately we do a lot more revenue than both those guys, but they're only in one market. So if I could get my one market to do what theirs do, and they understand business is not about the technical. That's one small piece. You got to be a good recruiter, a good marketer. You got to build a really, really fun environment for your employees. You've got to have the backend. The big thing that most people are missing is the finance, the reporting, the technology

to know where they're at and know what moves to make. But so many people are just such a great, I'm good at this. I'm good at cleaning windows. I'm good at concrete. I'm good at HVAC. And they forget that you need to do so much more. Most great people I know that go into business were never in that industry. They don't know how to do electricity and redo a box. They go in as a good operator and they know how to hire, delegate. They understand that you should only have so many direct reports. They understand marketing. They understand P&L more than anything. We are a business to make a profit

and that's after I pay myself. The company needs to be standalone. I just, no one ever told anybody that. They went in there saying, all I need to do is make a small living out of this. No one ever said the business needs to make money and you need to pay yourself six figures and buy nice things, new computers, keep your HVAC cold in the summers in Arizona,

should buy new trucks. You should have the latest equipment. No one told anybody that. So they go, well, I know this guy does it. And then wait for the first few years of the nightmares they face of not knowing what they're getting themselves into. Cause they went into business with $5,000 that they saved up over the last 10 years. Yeah, I would say, I have this poster here in my office. It says, just imagine for a moment that we're in business to make money. That's all I need to say is that says, just imagine for a moment that we're in business to make money.

And then everything becomes clear, a clarity. But I will say this, Tom, even if you're a good window cleaner or a garage door guy or a plumber or an air conditioning guy, the work doesn't begin until somebody can persuade and sell themselves to a customer. So the customer is sold on you as a professional. And so without the sale, there's no need for a bookkeeper without selling something. That's really why I got into this business because I really found that like I have systems that I have that we put in place, a sales system and a service system, but there's no need for working or project management if you can't sell the job, right? And so everything begins by selling it. Why market if you can't sell the job? Why get a project manager

if you can't sell a job? Why answer the phone if you can't sell? Why get a truck if you can't sell the job, right? So to me, this is the number one job. and if we can't sell our services or we have to sell that like you're worried about how much money we're going to make when i'm selling it like you're you're not sure if you could charge enough well then you're not you're not looking at the right way you're looking at it like i can't charge that much as opposed to saying, I need to create more value so I can charge that much. Because there is a hard cost of doing business and your accountant can tell you that or your bookkeeper can tell you that if they're smart enough. But it's up to you to exceed the value of whatever the cost of doing business is so you do have that profit. But that all begins by creating value.

You can want to make money all you want, but unless you have the understanding on how to create value, and that's really to create a personal relationship, giving people premium mid-range economy options, helping people and assisting people to bring every single job to a conclusion of getting a yes, a no,

or another future appointment out of it. Like I don't really believe in rehashing calls or calling people back after the call. I believe in either selling it or moving it forward. There's no such thing as leaving a call behind. If we didn't sell it, we should have made an appointment in the future. If people didn't want to make an appointment, I would just withdraw my bid. There's no need to clean up somebody's mess. Either it got sold or it got moved forward. That's my feeling about it. And that's just how it is. If you did that, you would close 86% of all your jobs and your average invoice would be three to five times higher than it is

right now, just because you were more functional than everybody else. I should just drop the mic right there because I teach everybody, you build rapport and you spend your time building rapport, you educate. But the one thing you do is you follow up and follow up is a misconception. You're right. You call them back. Why not set the future appointment? That's genius. Those are the gold nuggets that people need to take out of this. When they listen to this podcast is if they could take one thing, that one thing right there is just gold. You know, a lot of people are in sales, they're in the service industry. And give me one thing that really you find a lot of techs, a lot of salesmen, whether it's

comfort advisors, what is one thing they find really difficult to get into their learning or adaptation of really what's going to bring them to that next level? What's one tough thing you find? Probably the hardest thing is that it's ironic, actually, Tom. People who are in the service business are afraid to offer services in the future. Like, you know, if we can anticipate that we put a furnace or air conditioning unit or even do a new drain system, well, we could anticipate that people are going to need to maintain the furnace or air conditioning unit or the drain system. If I put a garage door system in for people, people are going to need to maintain that, right? So why are people afraid? The biggest thing I find

that's challenging, the average service provider can't imagine selling like a garage door package with a 10-year service agreement and saying, you know what, this includes 10 years of service already packaged and bundled into the offer. You don't have to write a check. We just come out every year, we lubricate it. We adjust the springs. We make sure everything is running good. We put new batteries in your openers and double check all the connections. And then if there's anything else you need, we take care of that while we're here too. And that's something you could build into every call that people would purchase. Tom, I told you I had a struggling part of my business when I was 1991. And then one of

the things my customer told me, he goes, Joe, don't people need to service their equipment and things like that? I said, yeah, they do. Then why are you not offering them future services? Like when you sell a furnace, why are you just giving them one year of service? Why aren't you giving them 10 years? I'm like, oh, Dave, it costs too much money. And he's like, well, how do you know unless you offer it? And so I tried it. And sure enough, the average person purchased from me 7.8 years of service, planned service in advance of everything I sold and equipment. And every repair, the average customer bought 2.9 years of service on every repair.

And so what got me out of a troubled times was people purchasing future services today, knowing that they would need that service. And I think that's something we all could learn from. It's hard for people to get their mind around that your garage door systems, windows don't stay clean. Garage door systems are not infallible. They need to have somebody look at it and inspect it. If you just get it through your heart, that the heart and soul of every service business is a planned service agreement. And you would sell multiple service agreements

into the future and give people a chance to purchase those. You would be shocked at how much people would actually purchase. That's the hardest thing to get the average service provider to even think about. I love it.

I love that. Something popped into my head while you were talking. Have you ever heard of the Starbucks effect? Well, I live the Starbucks effect because I'm a coffee snob, as you probably know. Go ahead. Tell me. Go ahead and tell me. The Starbucks effect is when Starbucks came out and they started creating this experience, you would think that coffee bean and coffee plantation and all these places would have went out of business, but it actually doubled their business. They elevated an industry. That's how great Starbucks, the Starbucks effect. So with culmination with other people that are listening to this podcast,

because most guys are, I want to elevate the whole industry because when we start charging the right prices as an industry, everybody wins. It's like taking a five gallon bucket to the ocean. There's no reason why we all can't make money in this industry. And, you know, I'm just curious your perspective on, I think what we're doing, HVAC has already done it. HVAC got into this. I think they've been doing it for a long, long time. Now, when you got started in the early 90s, that's how garage doors are today. So you've got to witness a whole change and you're still seeing so many industries that haven't been able to do it. But then you're looking at pest control. They've done it. They've done it in plumbing. They've done it in electrical. They've done it in roofing. They've done it in windows, by far in windows. But there's so many

industries that haven't. So my question to you would be, how do you elevate a complete industry? How do you start to build the Starbucks effect? And I think we're doing it right now by having this podcast. And hopefully people will share it and the industries will more adopt the fact that they can charge a decent price and say, oh, how do you sleep at night? Oh, that's a rip off. Well, how do you sleep at night? You don't have any employees that are happy. You don't have 24-hour service. You don't have new

trucks that are breaking down all the time. You don't have good employees. You don't offer insurance to your employees. I mean, you don't do anything for your internal customers, but well, you know, I really think it begins by taking something that's commonly done a certain way, doing it yourself in a way, and then doing it for people, right? So it does begin with any kind of a transformational service that has that Starbucks effect, which I do talk about all the time, how back when I was younger in the 70s and 80s, coffee was free. The diners and stuff, when you bought breakfast, they just gave you free coffee. They wouldn't even think of charging for it. And then it wasn't until Starbucks came around where now all of a sudden you go to a coffee shop and they're charging $2.25 a cup or $2.50 a cup

at the diner now, right? So it transformed everybody. It gave everybody a chance to see the value in a cup of coffee. So the thing is this, how can we look at the business that we have and make that transformational? How can we make that customer experience something that's easy to do? And here's the thing about it. I think that all these transformational businesses have an element where the customer is given the choices when they walk into the place or when you go into their place. And you're only in charge of one thing, creating choices that are customized and relevant to the people you serve. And then thinking about what the people you serve want and anticipating that and then providing these choices and then letting them purchase voluntarily so you don't have to think of it every time, right? So

the customer can voluntarily choose these things like that that's really what everything like Apple computers or Starbucks or any of these companies that have transformed other consumer behaviors they've only done it because they've they've taken something we commonly do and they just did it a different way that allows people to voluntarily purchase. So the work of having to think about something, because IBM had a statement, Tommy, and the statement is this, they told all their sales professionals at IBM, think because nobody else does. And what they mean by that is you need to think because nobody

thinks in this country. We're all just, we're floating around like corks in the ocean, right? Nobody wants to put the effort into thinking. So as a service professional, you need to think because nobody else is doing that, especially your competitors. And I tell you what, if you can't succeed in this kind of environment nowadays, Tom, well, look in the mirror because the biggest competitor is you. It's nobody else. Yeah, amazing. This is so crazy, but, you know, I very rarely care about my competition.

It's nice to know what's out there, but ultimately I spend 99.999% thinking about what I'm going to do, what changes I'm going to make, what software I'm going to use. I don't think about creating a competitive advantage. I'm already the competitive advantage. No one's thinking, and you know what, that's cocky to say, but if you think I'm like, oh, I need to figure this out. No, I just know with the group of amazing people that I work around, that we're doing things so innovative, pulling things from different industries that have never been done before that everybody's going to have to focus on me. Now, I wish that people would focus on themselves half as much as they focus on me because everybody's like, oh, what's he doing? And I'm like, why don't you look at your own backyard, work on your own business? And you can see, I'm not trying to complain about it because at the end of the day, there's

not one company or one guy or a hundred guys I'm mad at. I'm mad at the industry. And I'm mad at a lot of industries. It's not right to have it to where you can't have, you know, why is it that you got to go to a four year or six year, eight year degree to be able to make decent money? We're out there all day, busting our humps, working as hard as we can, having just as much, if not more, responsibility than someone with a degree.

Why would we have to make less? It just behooves me. A lot of people in this country are service workers, and I don't think there's anything that they don't deserve. The biggest thing is that they themselves have to believe that, though. That's something that we can't do. That's something that they have't deserve. The biggest thing is that they themselves have to believe that though. That's something that we can't do. That's something that they have to believe. You know, I think it really comes down to the self-esteem. Do you believe in yourself? And some people actually just need therapy or something where they just don't think that

they're worth it in a way. When somebody says you shouldn't be able to get rich in the garage door business, I'm like, who are you to say that? That's a pretty arrogant statement that you would say that, you know, that that business is not something you can get rich at. Any business can get, you can get rich at it. Again, but what is richness? Richness is serving your internal clients, serving your external clients, and then finally serving, you know, if you had to say I'm coming third, you would serve yourself with the profit that the return on the investment that you deserve as well. Cause that's really a business that's in balance, right? Internal clients, number one, I believe external clients, number two, and of all those things are being served,

we've got to make sure we're charging enough money for it so that we, in the return we get on our investment, we deserve that back too. So I think that to me is a business in complete balance. I agree. What are three books, Joe, that you'd recommend to the audience? One of the books we use as a textbook for our training is called Maximum Influence by Kurt Mortensen, M-O-R-T-E-N-S-E-N. And I hesitate to give that to you because we use those for textbooks and sometimes they're sold out. So I guess my own best interest, I'll give you that one. Another one is called The Success Principles by Jack Canfield. And both of those books are books that you can pick up any chapter

is to start reading a page and you'll get value immediately. You don't gotta read the entire book to get value. Just open any page randomly, start reading, and within 15 seconds, you'll start getting value from The Success Principles and also from Maximum Influence. And then there's another book by Dr. Robert Cialdini,

who is a good friend of mine from Arizona State University. I call him the godfather of persuasion. He's done many studies on persuasion. It's called the book Yes, which is a book that has over 51 studies on persuasion. And in those studies, there's lessons learned about how you could use those. So every single thing I teach, Tom tom has got a science behind it so if you tell me why joe why are you saying those words i'll tell you why i use the word investment because it has a a 36 percent difference as

opposed to using the word price you're going to increase sales by 36 percent by using the word if you use the word because if you tell listen, I did this option for you because when you told me about the frustration your wife had, I knew we had to show you the brand new doors and everything. The word because, which is giving people a reason why you do things, is a magic word too. So you start to learn these different words and they become normal in your life. Pretty soon it becomes magnetic in a way. So those are three books I would recommend. Perfect. Now there's two last things here.

How do people get a hold of you? You can go to, actually we're rebranding. The name of our new business is called Service MVP. So if you go to servicemvp.com, you can search us there. Or if you just want to email me, you can email me at joe at servicemvp.com. Or you can call us too. It's 877-764-6304. Ask for Joe and I'll be happy to be your personal concierge to guide you through what world-class service looks like and to help you create a service system that can be duplicated and that can scale to grow.

All right. And the last thing I'll do is let you take the floor and kind of tell the audience one last thought to kind of leave this. And that is a great podcast. Well, thank you so much, Tom, again, for allowing me to be here today and all the service professionals listening to this podcast. I know that if you get even half the value that I get from listening to Tommy,

that you'll have gotten a lot of value from this podcast. All I would say is this, everybody, great service begins with having an open mind and an open mind to where you don't profile customers. Assumptions are the graveyard of lost opportunity. When we assume we know what people need or want, then we're putting ourselves in a position to become a door that stands in the way of possibilities as opposed to a window that helps clients imagine possibilities. And if you can help your client imagine new possibilities, then you can be that transformational business that has

that Starbucks effect on your market and on your community. And you can then have what I call richness, which is something where you serve your internal clients, your external clients, and you serve your own investment that you've made in the business and the effort and the money you put for your family as well. And I wish everybody the best. Call me if you need my help. Remember, I'll be your personal concierge. You're the reason for my work, Tom, not an interruption to it. So if you need my help, I'm here for you. Thanks, Joe. Well done and appreciate you being on here. Thank you, Joe. Well done and appreciate you being on here. Thank you, buddy.

Hey guys, I just wanted to thank you real quick for listening to the podcast. From the bottom of my heart, it means a lot to me and I hope you're getting as much as I am out of this podcast. Our goal is to enrich your lives and enrich your businesses and your internal customers, which is your staff. And if you get a chance, customers, which is your staff.

And if you get a chance, please, please, please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to ask me questions to ask the next guest coming on. And do me a quick favor. Leave a quick review. It really helps us out when you like the podcast and you leave a review. Make it four or five sentences. Tell us how we're doing.

And I just wanted to mention real quick, we started a membership. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. You get a ton of inside look at what we're going to do to become a billion dollar company. And we're just, we're telling everybody our secrets basically. And people say, why do you give your secrets away all the time? And I'm like, you know, the hardest part about giving away my secrets is actually trying to get people to do them. So we also create a lot of accountability within this program. So check it out. It's homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash club. It's cheap. It's a monthly payment. I'm not making any money on it to be completely frank with you guys, but I think it will enrich your lives even further. So thank you once again for listening to the podcast. I really appreciate it.