The Home Service Expert Podcast - How To Implement A Performance Pay System to Develop A-Players In Your Team

Episode Date: October 20, 2020

Martha Woodward is the co-founder of Quality Driven Software, a successful service business in Oklahoma. Despite living 90 miles away from it, Martha leads her employees effectively with a hands-off management style that she developed over the years. A frequent speaker and online teacher, she emphasizes the need for company culture turnaround and workforce empowerment. Her methods have helped many entrepreneurs develop a self-directed, self-motivated company culture that lets them enjoy freedom in their business. In this episode, we talked about recruitment, employee retention, customer service, business management...

Back in the day, people used to get a week vacation after they'd been with me a year. And once I had two people get it within about the same period of time. And both those people took their week vacation pay within a relatively short time. One of them I felt good about. I was like, yeah, I'm happy for her. She earned it. She does great work. The other one I was very resentful about.

I was like, you know, it's killing me to write this check. Because in this day and age, I probably wouldn't keep that person. But at the time, it was like, that really bugs me that this person got the same amount of vacation as this person who barely skims by. And then like everything, I stepped back and was like, well, who's giving it to them? You are. And so we developed a system to where they actually earn their paid days off based on the number of excellent scores. And so if you take more jobs, you get more excellent scores, then you're going

to get more vacation days or PTO days than somebody who doesn't do that level of work. And that I'm perfectly fine with. 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 guest visiting us from Independence, Canada. I got Martha Woodward here. I'll go over the bio here. How are you today? I'm good. How are you? Good, good. It's just a little warm here in Arizona. So you're an expert in recruitment, employee retention, customer service, business management,

business software. A little bit about you, the pay for performance expert owner. I love that. From 2019 to now. Quality driven software co-founder from 2015 to now. Dusting Divas, the owner and president from 2007 to now, and Mercy Director of Rehab Services, 1996 to 2007. Martha Woodward owns a successful service business in Oklahoma, despite living 90 miles away from it. As a co-founder of Quality Driven Software,

she leads employees with a hands-off management style that she developed over the years and emphasizes the need for company culture, turnaround, and workforce empowerment. A frequent speaker and online teacher, she has helped many business owners develop a self-directed, self-motivated company culture that enables them to find freedom in their business. Well, welcome. Thank you. Thank you. This is going to be great. So usually I start with Martha, just tell us a little bit about your journey to where you've

been and where you're going in the future. So when I left my corporate job, I left it to start a maid service and it was kind of on a whim. I knew nothing about the maid service. I just knew that I liked having my house clean. And I knew that as a consumer, I really liked it. And I was looking to start my own business. And so I picked that. The first few years were living hell. I really, really just very much questioned my judgment of leaving my cush job. And then, you know, I call it the pit of despair. I just had employee issues one after the other and felt really a victim in my own business. And it wasn't until I had an epiphany that, honestly, I was behind every one of the problems that we were having, that I was able to turn that around.

And then fast forward, I developed a lot of systems around employee leadership and systems in general, controlling our quality. And now things run so smoothly and nobody's even here to get people to do what they do because they have the right people and the right systems. I love hearing that. And I think that's exactly how I feel. You know, I'm so aggressive in growth mode all the time. There's two types of people. And I think some people go into business to have a lifestyle business, which is awesome. Right. I love that. And everybody should have a lifestyle for your lifestyle. But tell me about growth and what do you think is the right amount of growth? Well, I think that varies from person to person. So for me, we aren't growing in the trajectory that we were before I started my software business.

So for me, yes, growth is important, but freedom is equally important for me because I have started actually three other businesses while being an absentee owner with the maid service. So, yes, growth is important, but this is not like my main focus. So if I were willing to get in and really put 100% effort into it, our trajectory would be higher than it is. But we are in a smaller percentage of growth than we used to be when I was 100%. But growth that I'm comfortable with, my profit percentage is actually higher than it used to be when I was 100%. But growth that I'm comfortable with, my profit percentage is actually higher

than it used to be. And the time that it takes me to run this business is four to five hours a month. So that's the growth, is being able to get some freedom for the other things. What is a good percentage? I've heard people say eight to 10. It's being able to get some freedom for the other things. What is a good percentage? You know, I've heard people say 8 to 10.

I've heard people like Ken Goodrich say 25 to 30. Where do you think the profit should be as a percentage of revenue? So, again, I would say, depending on your overhead, that's up to you. But I like to be around 20%. I like that number a lot. That's where I like to be. I want to hear a little bit, as I'm reading your bio, the pay for performance expert. I want to hear a little bit about that because I am the king. I love pay for performance. That's like what I live, breathe. Every single person here is on the pay for performance. Right. So tell me a little bit about that. So I came into that from problems. So I talked about, there was that point where I felt like I was just a victim in the business. And

you know, when I was back working in the office and I was answering the phone at that point in time, if the phone would ring and it was the current client, I did not want to answer because I knew it was going to be a complaint. And, you know, I would literally think, should it go to voicemail? No, I'll have to call them back. So I'd answer it. But our quality sucked back then. And so when I started implementing systems, it dawned on me, why do I pay everyone the same hourly rate when I have people who never cause me complaints, you know, we never have to do redos. And then I have people who is constantly, they're just skimming by. And that was the very beginning of pay for performance for me is realizing that I had to differentiate between the higher performers and the bare bones performers.

So we started with quality and that's kind of how I got into quality driven software. I was surveying after every visit, just a simple, how did we do? And I was using those scores to come up with a customer happiness rating. And I use those scores for our pay for performance program, but it was all very manual. And so that's when I started developing the software that would do the reports. That's how important it is to me. But we do pay for performance with kind of everything. Even our paid days off. Back in the day, people used to get a week vacation after they'd been with me a year. And once I had two people get it within about the same period of time.

And both those people took their week vacation pay within a relatively short time. One of them I felt good about. I was like, yeah, I'm happy for her. She earned it. She does great work. The other one I was very resentful about. I was like, you know, it's killing me to write this check because in this day and age, I probably wouldn't keep that person. But at the time, it was like, that really bugs me that this person got the same amount of vacation as this person who barely skims by. And then, like everything, I stepped back and was like, well, who's giving it to them? You are. And so we developed a system to where they actually earn their paid days off based on the number of excellent scores. And so if you take more jobs, you get more excellent scores, then you're going to get more vacation days

or PTO days than somebody who doesn't do that level of work. And that I'm perfectly fine with. So that's how we've done it for years and years now. So you're talking about PTO days. Right. PTO. Yeah. So I was on a podcast yesterday. We started talking about the five love languages. Is PTO what motivates people? Is it gifts? Is it quality time? And one of the things that I

started thinking about is some people love to work. And I don't know, most people like a vacation. Everybody I forced to take a vacation because they need a refresher. Right. But how do you figure out what motivates your staff? It's an individual thing, I think. Well, for sure. So we do have the philosophy of the five love languages here as well. And so for most people, it is the blanking out here, acts of appreciation. No, it's the attaboys. Yeah. And then there's words of affirmation. Affirmation. And then there's quality time.

There's gifts. there's like touch right right right that one yeah i remember when i went through that with the staff and i have mainly females i have had men that work in the maid service but for the most part females but i remember when we went through that they're like, that one's weird. No, I don't need you to hug me. But anyway, so words of affirmation are big. But when I was looking at what motivates them, I basically gave a list. I gave a list of some choices because what I knew is I had a need. My need is I need you to do high quality work and I want you to want to. And so what's going to make you want to? of the people that work for me have kids, time with their family is huge for them. And that is a motivator. It is definitely a bigger motivator in my business than pay. So, I mean, they want both, but time off is a bigger motivator. And you're absolutely right. When you set up a pay for performance system, you have to match your needs with their wants. And if that means you have to individualize it, then you individualize it. never put in place like a prize or a thing that we're going after without having people have input

and really make sure that we've got a good match to what I'm just very fortunate that most of them are on the same wavelength and they want the same things, but I would never put anything out and we don't have a vote on it. Yeah, no, I like that. I think that people have to feel part of the empowerment of the decision-making. A lot of people say, you know, there's a dictatorship and there's a democracy. And the better you tell your people and give them a stake in the outcome, the more they appreciate it. And they say, that was our idea. And it's really, you're absolutely right.

I think it motivates. I have two ideas, two things I've heard. One of them is an idea. One of them is something in the maid service. And I want to hear your take on it. One of them is, I've heard of a maid before, you know, a house cleaner, whatever, going to the house and she'd always bring, I think she bought a big Costco size thing of cookies.

And I think she cut them into like a four pack and they were pre-made and she'd cook. She'd throw them in the oven 15 minutes before she left. And then she'd pull them out and leave them there with a nice letter. And she'd leave the cookies on a nice plate. Well, the people, every time they came home and she'd asked for a referral in there, every time they came home, they smelled these fresh cookies. And for me, I'm always trying to eat healthy. That would be tough for me, but I'd love the smell of it. But I thought that was a great idea. And then number two, so there's, this is

the idea I have because I do have a, someone that comes and cleans and she does an amazing job. She's got a group of three that come in. Right. They do an amazing job. They do my sheets. They do my laundry. They go above and beyond because I have them cleaning a bunch of my other stuff in my office. But I just thought of this like what would have been nice if she would have came to me and said, here's a checklist. What's important to you? Do you want your fans cleaned every six weeks? Do you want your baseboards clean? On a certain date, if you promise to keep the stuff off out of your refrigerator, just the stuff you want, would you like your refrigerator? I'd pay for that. I'd pay above and beyond for that stuff. And I don't know,

is there anybody doing stuff like that with a checklist and things like that to make sure like absolutely so i i bet i know the person you're talking about with the cookies at least the person i know is in olympia washington and that's awesome but i didn't even try that because i thought you know there's things that just don't fit your model. And I thought, we cannot pull that off, but we can do other things that will wow the client. But as far as there's absolutely business models that maybe have a good, better, best type of a model. And on the best, you would do all of those rotational deep clean items. The way that we do it in my business is every six months, we'll do a deep clean and get you on a rotation that way. But, and again, I would rather under promise and over deliver. And, and when I thought about that rotation model, I thought that sounds awesome, but I could see us not getting things in there. And I, we have a really high quality score.

We have 75% people that respond to our surveys. So I can say with certainty that we do a good job. But again, if I were to start adding in all of these variables, I think it would suffer some, especially with the level that I want to put into it. But I think it's an excellent model. And I do know people who do that. And they're very successful with it. You know, the reason I guess I said that, and I guess I was probably stealing from a book, one of my favorite books, The E-Myth with Michael Gerber. Right. There's so much in that book.

And he walks out of his hotel room and it's got the perfect newspaper. He reads the Wall Street Journal. There was a tulip on his nightstand And there was the coffee that he prefers. And he filled out a little checklist and he goes and talks to the, the hotel manager. And he says, Hey, how the heck did you guys do all this? I'm just amazed. And he said, you filled out a little survey when you came in to book with us at the hotel,

but we also have certain things. We cover a checklist for each and every detail of the thing that we check things. Like one of the things I'm working on in my apartment, different apartments is, is the hot water. So I'm having people as they leave, most of them are my technicians for training, fill out a quick survey. Was there anything not adequate or, or anything could be better? Or did the washer work right? Or does the garbage disposal work?

And then I have another person come in and check all that stuff. And it's just this process. And without a checklist or a standing operating procedure. And then I literally was just on the phone earlier. And I said, how is this not getting done? And they said, well, the role just got created 20 days ago. And I said, well, what are the KPIs and where's the manual behind the role? And they said, well, we'll get busy on that manual. And I'm not, I'm not a mean person.

I usually laugh all the time and I'm joking around, but I said, how do we expect somebody to succeed without a manual? So anyways, I just went off on a tangent, but I do think, and you would agree if you run your business five hours a month, you've obviously got a lot of systems and standard operating procedures and reports that you can count on to make sure you're not creating headaches. So talk to me a little bit about that. Well, we've got the financial KPIs. So the revenue, the number of leads, the sales conversion, and then we've got our budgeted versus actual time, our productivity, our job costing numbers, and then we've got our quality. So I use the WIGS model, the, what is that? Four disciplines of execution, 40X. And so they go over lead measures and lag measures. Does that

ring a bell? Yeah. Yeah. I got the book. I got the book sitting right here. Yeah. So, you know, how certain books just resonate with you. And that was one that really a weekly basis. And I have an employee section. And so we're looking at how many employee engagement things have we done this month? There are certain things that the management staff has held to as far as the attaboys and that falls under the employee engagement. So when you're talking about that, I'm like, I kind of suck. I'm not doing any of those extra things for clients, but I do for my employees. So we do a great job for our clients. We don't do as many wow things as what you're talking about, but I keep my people that work for us for much longer than the industry average. So I really feel like, yes, we do the KPIs. Yes, we do all the wow things, but

for me, my focus is really on taking care of our people. And then they take care of the clients. Those are your internal customers, right? And so many times we forget how much turnover and recruiting and training costs. Right. And I can tell you, I'm dumbfounded. I had a guy in here yesterday, one of the guys that's been with me for 10 years. And he said, Tommy, my hat's off to you.

He said, I've never seen the caliber of people we're bringing in now. He goes, how are you doing this? And I said, we get 500 applicants a day, and we narrow that down to 100. We actually interview those 100. We get those down, and we nail it. I mean, we've got 40 new guys here. We've got 45 coming next month. And these guys come in, and then we now i mean we've got 40 new guys here we've got 45 coming next month and these guys come in and then we sent two home last week so it's hard to get into my boot camp

and then boot camp a lot of people get sent home not a lot i don't like a lot but my trainers know they really try to fit the culture like one of the guys did a presentation and he said i really enjoy comedy and he goes well the trainer all right, let's hear some comedy. He goes, I only do comedy for people I respect. So that was pretty much the last day he, I was like, Oh yeah. And we want to keep you. It's like, who says that stuff? First of all. And you know, it's, it's a tough one. Have you ever had a fire?

An a player that are not an A player, but a top producer, somebody that did a great job, but they just didn't fit the culture? Absolutely. And not so much now, because they just wouldn't get that far in our system now. But when I was making that change, and you know, I work with a lot of businesses that are just starting to implement some of this stuff, you know, I warn them, you're going to have to let a lot of people go. Because chances are, if you want to make these changes, you are going to find that you do not have the right people working in your company. And yeah, I mean, it's painful because you're like, okay, they do this many thousand of dollars a year for me of revenue, but they also probably are running off so many good employees that come in. They kind of get a whiff of your culture that you're running when you do let these A players

just bulldoze your company. And like I say, it doesn't happen to me much at all anymore just because you talked about in training, we're at just under 2% of the applicants that come in. You know, we have that whole funnel system too and I would still tell you that we don't always make the right choice when we hire. But in training, part of our training strategy is to weed out further. So we actually test for attitude a couple of ways.

And it's like the trainers are taught to provoke. And it sounds mean, but I'm telling you, I don't want in six months to have kept this person who is just wreaking havoc in my company. And then I end up firing them and then they go and file an unemployment claim or file a fraudulent workers' comp claim, which has absolutely happened to me. And I learned the hard way that warm bodies do not help you in the long run. And you gotta get over that. You know, for me, I would rather pumpkin plan my clients and keep the right people

than to worry about production with people who are poisoning my culture. Yeah. And it's crazy. Sometimes you get rid of a top producer per se, and the whole culture gets so much better because you always think if you let them put up with it, if you're going to put up with that, but not with this, it really kind of is not right. And I know a lot of people listening are probably in the same shoes where you're going, well, if I get rid of my top producer, I might be in trouble. So have a plan for that. And I think the biggest mistake I've seen is Martha, companies are underfunded. They don't have enough money to be able to do that. And they're not making enough money to be able to lose a top producer. And for the the most part a lot of us have started off as the technician as

the house cleaner as the garage guy fixing it with our hands so it's a tough road to get through we've both done it but I applaud everybody who's gone through that have been able to do that you've created a lot of transparency and accountability. And you've got a hands-off business now. How did you come up with this model? Basically, every time I had a problem, I looked at that problem. So if it's like, for instance, training. It used to be that I felt like we had a pretty decent training program. I had a dedicated trainer. We spent X amount of time. They would get through training and then

I would watch their quality scores after they got out of training and they'd start just tanking. And I'd be like, what the heck? I just spent time and money on this person. So what I would do with that problem and every problem is I'd be like, okay, why is that happening? So I went to the trainer and I said, I want to see your training logs. And when I tore that apart, I found that, you know, in this particular instance, this person had had 20 attempts to get three perfects. So we required at the time three perfects in each area of the job that we do. So when I looked at that, I'm like, all right, well, here's the problem. 17 times there was something

wrong. And I'm like, no wonder they get out of training and they just bomb. So I told my trainer, all right, we're going to do three consecutive perfects. Meaning that if they're on the third try and one teeny tiny thing is wrong with my current system, they have to restart. And I remember her look, she was like, nobody will ever get out of training. And I'm like, you know what? We don't know that. And you're going to have to sell it like it can happen. And it's expected. And, you know, fast forward years, that's still our program. And that solved the consistency issue that we were having. And that's kind of how I attack all of it is. All right. What's the problem? Consistency.

Why are we not consistent? And then you go back and that's how I do it. I just reverse engineer and I assume that it's something in my system that's not right. Yeah, it is. I agree. It's like, hey, why does this burger always look like this at McDonald's? Well, probably something broken in the process. Maybe the way you're cooking the bun. Maybe the way the patty's being cooked. Maybe the way you're not portioning the mustard versus the ketchup. But absolutely. I remember there was a movie a long time ago where the guy gets the burger and he's had the worst day ever. And he like pulls out his gun and he goes, how come this burger doesn't look like that picture? I forget the

name of the movie, but it was an oldie, but a goodie. Where do most owners go wrong when it comes to implementing the pay-per for performance strategy in their business? I think people try to, so a lot of people come to me and they want to put in a pay for performance system. But here's the problem a lot of times is that they don't have the groundwork done. Like you can't take a toxic culture and all you do is slap up a pay for performance system. You can't like cuss somebody out on a regular basis and say, but hey, you're getting an extra, you know, whatever on your paycheck. So if you're not consistent and following your policies and procedures. And I know back in the day when I would let my policies and procedures slide, like we're short-staffed. I can't fire that person because they've had too many absences, even though my policy says it, well, that absolutely degraded the amount of trust

that people had with me. And so then to throw up a pay for performance system on a culture that had no trust and respect, then they don't trust the pay for performance program either. And the other thing that I would say, Tommy, is that it's not transparent. That's a big one, is that if you're going to run a pay for performance system, I always tell people, your employees, if their money or their benefits or whatever are tied to these measures, they better be able to see those measures. That should not be hidden. And that happens too often. And it does a number of things. I mean, trust is a problem, but also people won't attain those goals if they don't know where they're at now and where they're going.

Yeah, I think performance pay to me means you can't overcomplicate it. At the top five, I prefer three things that they get graded on. I think a lot of small business owners, we say, well, you're not busy 100% of the time, so you could do five different jobs. And then they fail at all of them. And we wonder, what the heck? Why didn't you do this right? And another thing is they have poor quality of data, right? They literally are judging on the wrong stuff and these metrics could be skewed. And then another one is there's no checks and balances. So one of my firm beliefs is you should be able to go home and tell your life partner what you do for a living and how you get paid.

If it's quantum physics and you got to pull out a calculator and take a round off to the nearest decimal, then I think you got an error there in your way of thinking. But I think you could start a role and put it into an hourly and then say, when it's a new role, the biggest mistake is to assume a performance pay because it's hard to take it away. Have you ever done a performance pay and you're like, because I've done this and I'm like, whoa, you made a lot more than I was expecting, especially for upper management.

And I'm like, I need a reset on that. Right. Yeah. That's happened with me. And then I've also been on the other end where I'm like, ooh, that's not enough. So I kind of think you should model your performance pay, overlap it with the current pay and run the same numbers you're going to run. And it should be winners and losers.

And you should have a median. And if you don't have winners and losers, and all winners are all losers, you didn't set the curve right. Right. Absolutely. You need to study your past pay for a certain period of time. And you know the system that you're going to put into place and you watch. And over that period of time, you analyze, all right, what would everyone have made so that you can feel pretty confident about rolling that out. And I learned that the

hard way too. So yeah, I absolutely. And I have done, like when we implemented our quality bonus system, back then our quality numbers were so much lower than they are now. So when I started it, I started it with numbers that I wouldn't even keep anybody now at that level. But thankfully, I told them this is a new program and chances are we're going to raise it because I'm not happy with where we are. So I did set the precedent from the beginning

that I certainly am not going to lower expectations, but I might raise expectations. And I did. And we have plateaued and been there for about the last five years with those numbers. You know, when you start buying huge, massive, massive companies, like publicly traded, they look at net promoter score. They look at how happy is your clientele and they actually come up, that's a derivative of the money they'll pay for that. And for us, it's basically, there's either reviews online or it's our quality feedback. If we have an internal system, what do you use to get customer feedback all the time? Is there any

mechanism you've put into place the business to make sure every customer is getting some type of way to rate the service? You said 75%. So how are you coming up with that? So it's sent out of the quality-driven software. And the day after service, that survey is always sent. We do a very good job of training our clients to answer. So from the moment they're a lead, at the very end of that sales call, we tell them they're going to get a survey after every visit. And that's a funny thing because they'll do the, you know, and I'll say, well, the reason you're going to love that is because have you ever hired a service that starts out good and then goes downhill, that isn't going to happen

with us because we are asking you after every visit, you have a very easy way to communicate and so forth. So we train them from the get-go and as part of our onboarding. And then if they don't answer us after that first visit, then we do resend the survey and we will actually pick up the phone and call anybody that doesn't answer. And what we do is we will let them know that the staff is bonused on the responses. We don't say the score, we say the responses. So it's the easiest way to give those technicians a tip. And it is by returning your survey. And it is true because with all of our programs that are based on these survey scores, the staff have to hit a minimum response rate for me to pay that bonus out. Because I, again, reverse engineered it. I hated handing over money when like 15% of the clients were saying that you're doing an excellent job. I'm

like, okay, so what about the other 85%? I don't feel good giving you this money. So the only way that I could be okay with, because I never want to be resentful about paying this stuff out. And to not be resentful, then I said, all right, you have to have this score and get at least this percentage of responses. And when we did that,

I remember the staff was like, well, I, you know, I can't do anything about that. And I'm like, you know, I bet you can, I bet you can, I bet you have more all of those things that I need those scores. It's a great mechanism. It's genius. I'd love to get some screenshots of how your surveys look to put on the podcast if we could just put it underneath. I think it's super valuable. And we'll reach out to you about that. I love this stuff. This is the kind of stuff I live and breathe on. I mean, it makes me excited. So level of responses plus the score is how you determine almost everything.

That's super cool. What's one tried and tested customer service strategy that has served you very well? So I would say one popular system that we use, we're recurring. And I actually got this idea from the lady that bakes the cookies. Yeah. Okay. It's called wow week. So we are recurring. So every fifth and sixth week, because most of our people are biweekly and we will do what's called wow week and we do an extra five to ten minute task when we're there and we have special cards that we leave behind saying it's wow week and the technicians write in there what they did and we get a lot of comments about that.

Another fun one we did, this is actually another contest we did, because I'll do my year-round pay for performance, and then I'll do some random fun contests. Like, if it's really hot and, you know, morale's kind of down, we'll throw in some contests. So one, because we are going in people's homes and a lot of the times the reason they're hiring us is because of their pets and the pet hair and they want us to love their pets. So we did a pets, like a selfie contest with the pets and they, from the company phone would send this selfie of them with the pets and say thank you so much for letting me visit with so and so you know whoever the animal is and for every one of the customers that replied back on the survey or we've got some phone calls we got some phone calls. We got some emails saying, oh my gosh, I loved seeing Miranda with Susie. And they ate that up. So I just try to think about, okay, what's important to the client?

And in our world, their pets are their absolute children. So it was like, what can we do around that? And you know, at Christmas, we do things for the pets more than we do the client. Yeah, that's crazy. That's awesome stuff. One of the things we try to do is I'm trying to get all my technicians and I haven't systematized it yet, but to be able to offer something at the end, we blow out their garage, we change out their light bulbs, we do all that good stuff. But I'm trying to do something above and beyond. Like, you know, Martha, while I'm here, I noticed we're coming into Christmas season. And I was wondering if I could help you get down the tree or anything you need that you could use a guy like me to help you lift or look at for you. And just that above and beyond that,

that's after I've collected the check for doing the work that I'm still here explaining to you and helping you. And I think that that goes, number one, that eliminates any buyer's remorse that there ever could have been, because now they're like, this person's tried and true. They're the real deal. And number two, I just think people go, Holy cow. This is unlike anybody I've ever met that's came for a home service, right? Right. A whole new level of professionalism. And for me as a consumer, I would love that because for me, convenience is the number one

thing. And so if I don't have to pick up that phone and think about it later, I love that. Yeah, that's it's these little things. There's a book that we're reading in my book club called Raving Fans. It's by Ken Blanchard and Sheldon Balls. It's a really just it's a simple, short little read. He always writes these simple, little, easy books that teach a lot. And I just think it's about above and beyond customer service. And you know, when you talk about the pumpkin plan is understanding your clients. I'm really starting to kind of absorb the fact that if I get huge clients that keep coming

back for more and more, and I make them happy and I become friends and we build relationships because they're flipping apartment complexes and flipping condo communities and they just know people. They're in that circle. It's so much easier. It's recession-proof. It's economy-proof and it's fun. Actually, you enjoy it more. Absolutely. I mean, would you rather have 10 houses further apart that are $100 each or would you have a $300 or $500 house that's a mansion but the people are super cool that's a bad analogy but I'd rather have a bigger house that we don't have the drive time for that we get paid way better on that the people are delightful and they enjoy our service right and these people that just don't I mean what what would be your

example of that we've had commercial clients, we've had residential, and absolutely we have all gamuts of sizes of houses. But I guess my favorite thing is when we are in one neighborhood and being recurring, you know, we go into a neighborhood and we're just banging through a neighborhood with all our cars and being able to work off of referrals. So already we're in a neighborhood that's more profitable for us and not driving all over the place like you talk about. And also, we've developed a lot of loyalty in these neighborhoods because they're all intertwined. You know, they've got their next door. They're talking about each other, you know, amongst each other. They've got their little neighborhood get togethers. And that's where we build a lot of brand loyalty with us is knowing that those are our target markets and those are the areas to pour our efforts into. And absolutely, I'm not real interested in getting all these little jobs all spread out.

I want to focus all of our efforts into where we built our niches. Yeah, I've learned that in my Christmas like business is own a street, own a neighborhood, own a community, and really work on getting them to give you referrals. Which brings me to my next question is, what's the best way to ask for a referral? To do an excellent job. But really very similar to what you said is we do a very high quality level cleaning. They're usually the most happiest with us. Well, I shouldn't say that. It's not that they're the most happiest with us, but we are new to them and they're most wowed in that first visit because a lot of times they haven't had anybody

and like their house looks so much cleaner than it's ever looked. And so that's when we get the greatest number of referrals is when we go in there and we do a transformation in their house and they're ecstatic and they're like, I have all this euphoria. And that's when we'll ask for a referral. And we do bonus our staff on referrals. And we actually, as part of our pay for performance system, those jobs are tougher jobs. And we used to have a lot of problems with the quality on those jobs because they are much more physical and the staff didn't like doing them. And so one time I had an employee come to me and she really wasn't my best employee, but she's one that taught me a lot of things. And so she came to me and she was like, we should get paid more for those cleanings.

And at the time, we were getting a lot of complaints on those cleanings. And so I said, well, let me think about it. And so I came back to her like the next day and I said, all right, I'm going to give you all $2 an hour more on those cleanings. If I get a good or an excellent rating back on the survey, I will pay you extra. And like I said, that's where we make our first impression. That's when we wow them the most. That's when we can get the most referrals. Sometimes I think, well, maybe I even should up that, but it's working fine. So I'm not going to. And it's like, we're good. But we would literally have people start with their first cleaning, not be impressed, and they drop us. And it was a real problem. So we solved it that way. And again, for anybody listening,

if you're having those problems, think through, how could I change this? And for me, I can make my staff happy by saying, absolutely, it's a more physical job. I will pay you more if I get this. And then it's a win you know, it's a win for the client. It's a win for me. It's a win for them. So I'm curious because a lot of home service companies, they don't function the quite same as the people like with a pool service or a cleaning service or a Christmas site.

They don't have reoccurring, like you get a service agreement, but it's hard to say, let me give you a new air conditioning unit once a year. It is very hard to do that. I mean, it would be great if we could do it. But the question I have is we've got our internal reviews, which are super important to run a company, but then we've got our external reviews, Yelp, Google, Nextdoor, Facebook, BBB. I could keep going. There's Judy's book. There's Angie's list. It just goes on and on. So when you're asking for internal, obviously internal is so important because literally the way you pay, the way you run your company. But how do you get the customers that already left

an internal review for you to go out and leave one on one of these sites? So my company, Quality Driven, is actually partnering with a review company. And the reason we're doing that is because there is a problem. The review company is going to send them another survey, and I don't want my clients to get two surveys. And if I'm going to choose between the surveys, I'm actually choosing between the internal survey. And I don't want my clients to get two surveys. And if I'm going to choose between the surveys, I'm actually choosing between the internal survey. So it is harder, but I think to be most successful is when you do a follow-up call. Like if they didn't leave one after the service, when you ask for it is to do a follow-up call and then mention it there or

do a follow-up email. And in that email, you have to be very specific about, like you have to talk about details that happened in the job and so forth to make it personal and then ask for the review. If you just send out like a generic, please review us on Google or da-da-da, it probably isn't going to happen. And it has to be super convenient. You know, those links have to be in there. It just has to be very turnkey. You know, one of the things that I found, Martha, is I use this phrase all the time. It's in the dispatchers, it's in the, is I use this phrase all the time.

It's in the dispatchers, it's in the CSRs, that it's in the technician's vocabulary. We want to deliver five out of five service. If any time we fall below that level of quality, we want you to make sure to make us aware of that so we can rectify it. And the whole purpose behind that is, why would I say five out of five? You want them to give you a five. I don't say 10 out of 10. I never had a survey that I've taken online for any of these review sites

that have 10. And why don't I say three out of three? I've never seen a three-star review. So five out of five, I'm conditioning them before they get that survey. And you're right. I think there has to be something afterwards that says, here's specifically what we did for you. I'm working on these handwritten cards that say, they take a picture while they're there and it integrates into our system. It's not here yet,

but, and it's like, take a picture of their Harley because you talked to them about their Harley and it's like, Hey, good luck on that trip to Albuquerque. I hope everything goes great. Then they get a handwritten card from them. It's just super cool stuff that goes like, and it might cost you money. And, you know, there's two types of people. One person, one business owner says that's an expensive cost. The other one goes, wow, imagine that investment into my clients and into my future of the company. And I'm telling you what,

a lot of business owners, especially the bigger they get, they think that's a cost and they forget where they came from. You know what I mean? Right. Yeah. Have you ever read the book, Never Lose a Customer Again? I think it's by Joey Coleman. Yeah, I think I have that one. Yeah. He uses an example that's a little bit similar about, they talked about the guy loved, love, love golf. And he was going to Palm Springs and got the golf ball and sent it.

And, and he won that what? $30,000 client from the golf ball. Yeah. I think that's brilliant. Just brilliant. I'm just taking a lot of notes Yeah. I think that's brilliant. Just brilliant. I'm just taking a lot of notes here. I love this stuff. How do people get ahold of you if they want to reach out to you? They would go to qualitydrivensoftware.com

and contact us or Martha at qualitydrivensoftware.com and you'd get me. I love it. I'm sure people are going to reach out to you. And you just said, never lose a customer again. I usually ask our guests, what are three books? And you mentioned one, never lose a customer again. Do you got another couple of suggestions? So for me, the book that probably inspired pay for performance and definitely the data. It used to be called the Three Signs of a Miserable Job,

but they actually, Patrick Lencioni, he actually renamed it because I guess that title didn't really resonate with people. So now it's called The Truth About Employee Engagement. That was huge for me. And the other one I mentioned 40x we didn't even really talk about like management pay for performance but for me on the 40x using those lead and lag measures that's what we build around for management. Never lose a customer again.

Truth about employee engagement and 40 X who's 40 X by, uh, it's Stephen Covey. Yeah. You're talking about, yeah. You're talking about the, uh,

four disciplines of execution. Yep. Okay. Perfect. So last thing I do here is give you the floor to give us maybe some gold nuggets, maybe some actionable items, or just some good knowledge that maybe you could throw at us that maybe you've learned from your mistakes. So what I would tell you is analyze your problems.

And let's just talk about employee issues because most everybody has some. And list your top three employee issues. And then do the reverse engineering like I was talking about. So if it's attendance problems, what do you need to do proactively to stop that? If it's quality issues, what do you need to do? Because, you know, it could be your training. It could be your lack of follow through that they don't take you seriously. It could be a number of things. So that's what I would tell people is list your top three employee issues and then dig down and to what are the problems. And if you don't know, if you can't figure it out, then go to your top people and have them help you. Because a lot of times they know, they know exactly. And if you have an environment of trust,

they'll tell you. You know, the more I'm on these podcasts, the more I realize there's no such thing as complete and there's always progress. It's like, I keep refining, refining and refining. And today I found so many more reports. I should, I'm such a data-driven person now, whereas before I'd be like, I don't want to look at this stuff, but now it paints a picture. It tells a story. More importantly, we keep score and people care about how they're doing. I hated the one-on-one meetings that we'd say once a year we'd meet up and I decided to give you a raise because of tenure. Now I'm like, I reach for the stars when you make a lot of money. And I'm like, yes, right. You're winning. I know

I'm winning and that's fair. And when I'm winning, you should be able to win. And it's really evident when you come into this building that man, these people really enjoy what they do. They have fun. And I think that that's important. If you know, next time you're in Phoenix, you got to come visit because we've got all kinds of fun games here and do a lot of fun stuff. And I can only get better. That's the good thing that I know in my mind is I've continued to progress, but I think I'm, if this is the finish line, which means either I'm dead or retired, which I don't think anytime soon,

this is where I'm at here on the bottom of this upward arrow. So Martha, you are a pleasant lady and a pleasant person and a pleasant business owner to have on the podcast. Well, thank you, Tommy. Thank you so much for coming on the podcast. Thanks. All right. Have a good one.

Thank you. Bye. 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, please, please, please subscribe. You're going to find out all the new podcasts. You're going to be able to ask me

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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.