The Home Service Expert Podcast - Special Episode: Meet the A-team Behind A1 Garage Door Service’s Success

Episode Date: December 20, 2019

To celebrate our 100th episode, we’re getting up close and personal with individuals from different departments of A1 Garage Door Service who play key roles in ensuring the company’s growth, profitability, and success. In this special episode, we talked about sales, marketing, relationship building, recruitment...

This is the Home Service Expert podcast with Tommy Mello. Let's talk about bringing in some more money for your home service business. 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. Hey guys, welcome back to the Home Service Expert. This is our 100th episode, so it's going to be a really special one. Standing here outside of the building at A1 Garage Doors. The reason I'm standing here is because we're going to be interviewing a lot of my employee

of the month. My marketing manager, we're going to be going through my call center manager, one of my top performers in the call center, a couple of my technicians. This one's going to be really, really special. Everything's about culture here, leadership. We're not here to manage employees. We're here to build leaders. The more leaders we have, the more projects we can take on, the faster we can grow. We want to get to a billion dollars. What does a billion dollar company look like? It's 2,000 technicians. How do we get 2,000 technicians? Well, in the next three years, we need to get over 600 technicians a month or a year onboarded and doing at least a half a million dollars a year. So 2,000 times half a million dollars brings us to a billion-dollar company,

and we will hit those numbers. I promise you that. I hope you guys really enjoy this podcast. It means a lot to us that you guys listen and continue to listen next year. I promise I'm going to have on better and better guests. It's just going to keep delivering value and hopefully make your business stronger. I have Andrew. Andrew works in the marketing department and he's in charge of quite a lot of things we're going to talk about that he does. I think the two main things that a business needs to do well is marketing and sales. And he heads up the whole department. He's got his own

key performance indicators he looks at. So we're going to spend about 10 to 15 minutes with Andrew, and then we're going to have other people from dispatch, call center, and some of our MVPs out in the field. So, Andrew, you want to introduce yourself, tell them how long you've been here? Yeah, my name is Andrew, and like Tommy said, I handle all things marketing here at A1. I've been here about a year and a half now. But yeah, I take care of everything from a lot of the digital, a lot of our traditional

advertising being print and other aspects of the advertising and marketing department we do here at A1. So we've got a lot of stuff going. about a third of our revenue comes from probably half of the revenue if we include pay-per-click comes from Google. Right. So we got a lot of work on the website and then there's a lot of stuff going on with print so how many call tracking numbers are we up to? 3,900? Yeah we have about yeah a little bit under 4,000 tracking numbers. So tell us a little bit about why we decided to go that route. Really it's to find out who your winners are, who the losers are, putting your resources into the marketing and advertising that's winning,

finding out how we leverage different things, but basically to see who the winners are, who the losers are, put our resources into the things that are winning, grow those, but it's basically to decide that. Yeah, so it's just tracking each and every single zone. So in a Money Mailer or a Val Packer Clipper, they usually go 10,000 homes per zone. And then we know there's a separate tracking number on there. It's a local number, and we also make the whole ad local to that community so in sun city we have a picture of an elderly couple because it's 55 plus and what we found was the conversion rate goes through the roof right when we customize those right yeah

anything that we can do part of that tracking too is because we're so localized every piece of marketing every piece of advertising digital print whatever We try to make it as locally relevant as possible. So when we put those tracking numbers, we can see the results. But yeah, we've had huge success with doing that in the print space, but online as well. Just making everything as relevant, especially with locations, pictures, that type of thing has had a huge impact on our ROI. So we're working on a lot of things coming into the new year. Some of the stuff we're working on has a lot to do with data.

And one of the KPIs that we had a problem with was the online chat box, Yelp, Angie's List, Merchant Circle. I mean, it keeps going. What's some of the other ones? The home warranty companies. There's Porch. There's Thumbtack. We never knew if the call center was really, it was coming into the inbox,

but we weren't getting back to people fast enough. Home Advisor. So right now, Andrew's working with another teammate of ours that's really, what state, country is he in? Portugal. Portugal. So we got a guy we're working with to put everything into one other CRM called Zoho. So what's going to end up happening is all of these leads come into Zoho. And anyone that's got a phone number will automatically call up on our VoIP service.

So we've got a call center service that's voice over internet protocol. And those leads will be, boom, our call center picks it up and it says press a number to connect to the customer. So now instead of waiting hours to get back to customers we're creating accountability and i think that's going to be huge so zoho actually has a an api which is complicated terms application process interface but what it does is it um what is that called the the one for the call center where we can text and do voicemail drops? Twilio. Okay, yep. So talk to us a little bit about how that's going and what it's going to do for our business.

Yeah, I think that's a challenge a lot of businesses face is that you're getting messages from every which way possible. Not only are you getting calls, you're getting messages from your website, like Tommy mentioned, Yelp, HomeAdvisor, Facebook, any social media site. There's a thousand websites. And that's hard to manage, honestly, when you have that forwarding to an email inbox. Your CSRs, your team might not be able to get to those messages in time. And we all know getting to those messages right away is key to capturing these leads and these jobs. So what Zoho is going to do, one of the big things, is it's going to integrate all those inboxes into one master inbox, which is a huge thing. We'll be able to get to all of our customers.

You know, the goal is always to get with them to a minute, essentially. Because a lot of these, you know, they're in that get with them to a minute essentially because a lot of these you know they're shopping they're in that discovery phase where they're shopping companies are sending you an email or going to a few different websites and they're they're reaching out and saying hey how much is it you know i want a quote for this but they're not only going to our website so we really need to capture them and get to them as soon as possible so that's what zoho is going to do for us is really put everything in one space which you know as you grow and as companies get bigger the amount of messages you get from all over it just becomes really hard to

manage but that's really gonna help us out so one of the things one of the things we're working on for 2020 is called simulator Pro and it simulates the new door on the home of exactly what it'll look like. But here's the cool thing. We bought a website called nominatemyneighbor.com. And what it's going to be when we start advertising it is you could nominate the ugly house in the neighborhood and put a picture of before and after. And so your neighbor nominated you to get a new garage or new windows or a new front door. I think that's pretty powerful. We spend a lot of money on pay-per-click. What is your take on PPC versus organic? PPC is pretty powerful. I love the ability to scale as we need within an hour.

If we have, we have so many different marketplaces for our company. Every different market has a different capacity, has different needs. So, you know, with PPC, we're able to turn that on as we need literally that day. So we can get calls coming in that day. It's obviously a little bit more expensive, but that's, you know, sort of the trade-off with the flexibility. You pay a little bit more, but you can get those jobs and those leads that you need right then. Compared to organic, organic's more long term, but that's obviously really key because you're getting that free exposure essentially. You put your money into your website, you put your money into your SEO strategy, but that's more of a long term, but the PPC-SEO is a really good short term filler between

your traditional advertising pieces your organic to really fill in those gaps um when you need it in different um different ways well beta is high super high quality too oh right i can tell you this i've worked with at least 10 different pay-per-click companies uh you name it i've worked with them and and the thing about it is some of them will get you a lot of calls but they're not quality calls so you really got to look and compare your average ticket and your CRM should be able to do this to that advertising source because I'll pay a thousand dollars for a lead if they're wood overlay garage doors and then I'm getting seventy five hundred dollars

I don't want to pay much more than twenty dollars if I'm getting only tune-ups or reprogramming remotes we're working on some pretty cool things I don't want to put everything out of the bag but one of the things just talk a little bit about and we don't need to go into details but the handwritten cards kind of explain that process and yeah I don't know how many details Tommy wants to reveal but we're working with this uh really cool company that um does some automated uh handwritten cards for us so it's not actually a person writing them it's a cnc machine yeah um but basically they're open to a lot of integrations with our crm so just the ability to send out at scale personalized cards for any occasion we want.

Either it be your yearly tune-up check-up or a follow-up on a quote. Or some of the things we're doing is welcome to your new home. We're pulling some data right now. Welcome to your new home. And what's cool about that is you change the locks on your door, don't you, when you move in a new house? That's pretty normal, but most people don't change their transmitters. So the old owner has access to the keypad and everything.

Not to mention, programming a car is pretty difficult. An Audi, you need to go to the front right light to program it. It's complicated. So we're going to be sending a mailer, a handwritten card, to every single person that buys a house with a garage door. Pretty cool stuff. Some of the things we're looking at in marketing that we're going to be pulling into our CRM, this is going to aggregate data. I want to know their credit score. I want to know how long they lived in the house.

I want to know their annual combined income. I want to know things like how many doors do they have at their house? How powerful is this data these days? Data is everything. It's powerful. So here's the thing. People, I know a guy, and actually Giuseppe was with me when we interviewed him, does $8.5 million in 10 zip codes in Dallas because he just owns,

they penetrate 10% or more of a community and when you could do that and you they call it marketing to the affluent it's a game changer so I can tell you this the biggest mistake I see in marketing is people say ValPak doesn't work pay-per-click doesn't work they don't do things like BirdE Hey, if you guys want to tell them a little bit about BirdEye and that they could get a better deal if they call us. Yeah, absolutely. We are a partner with BirdEye. We can get you on BirdEye. We have fantastic wholesale pricing.

But essentially what it is, it's helped us, I mean, not only with our reputation management, but it's boost us organically too. But essentially- You need to get bird eye. Yeah. It integrates with your CRM or you can do it in different ways. You can do it manually, but it's best to integrate with your CRM. They integrate with hundreds and hundreds of CRM. If you're not using a CRM, you can still use it.

You can still benefit from it. Really what it does is every single customer that you go out to a job with sends an SMS and an email to all your review sites but it doesn't only do that it gives you a whole dashboard you can have a ticketing system you really capture negative feedback before it goes live that's a big thing it's helped us boost our ratings I mean we've gotten thousands of reviews just in the last few months. It's been a huge boost. I mean, people see that.

Any type of advertising that you're sending out there, people are looking you up on Google. It's just a known fact. And when they see those high star ratings, those quality reviews, it just converts them so much easier, and they call you. But we've gotten a huge amount of calls a huge revenue boost but it's been awesome for us it's easy it's simple you let it run you get the reviews you have the ticketing the dashboard everything it's awesome so the cool thing about bird eye is this is cool but kind of not cool because i get text every time we get a one star and i got two this weekend but at the end of the day if we're getting 20 reviews and only one of them is a one-star, one-stars happen.

One-stars happen because maybe they didn't like the price, maybe we ran late. I mean, look, with over 100 technicians, there's going to be some obstacles. I always say 1% of the population, it's impossible to please these people. One of the cool things we're doing is we just hired a full-time recruiter. So what I want you to think about as we listen to the podcast and really go through what A1's doing is marketing is not just for customers. It's also for internal customers, which are employees. So we're setting up a lot of our campaigns. We do an email to past customers. So when we're looking for for tell us a little bit about what we did when we went to i don't know albuquerque or one of our markets that we actually did an email

blast yeah um so i mean we have that huge customer base and like i said we have a tons of happy awesome customers that love us um so why not recruit from them they might have that nephew that grandson um whoever um that would be perfect fit. So yeah, we email our past customers saying, you know, hey, thank you again for being, you know, our customer. You know, by the way, you know, we're hiring, you know, we want to attract, you know, career driven people and have that those, you know, family values that we have as a family company that's growing. So, yeah, we do the email blast to our existing customers,

but we also do Facebook ads that do really well. A lot of people don't realize that everyone's on social media, but for recruiting, it's a little bit different of a technique than just hitting Indeed, hitting LinkedIn. Career Builder, yeah, all those. Yeah, Facebook, we've had Career Builder, yeah, all those. Yeah, Facebook. We've had tremendous success recruiting from Facebook. And it's cheap. It's really cheap to get really good applicants from all over the country just from a simple Facebook ad that we do.

So one of the cool things with all this technology we're working on is we can scrape data from websites. So you might say, well, what would you want to scrape? So right now we're working on scraping from Facebook and LinkedIn, anybody that works at a discount tire or big O, because those are the perfect people to fix crossroads. We found out that that's the perfect demographic. And we found out that it's better to steal some, an employee from another company than it is to go on the hiring boards, because if they're unemployed in this economy, there's something wrong. So we scraped the data. We found out everybody that works at these places, and then we skip trace that to get their mailing address and their phone number. Then we send them a voicemail blast and a handwritten letter. What could be better than that? Nothing. I just think

it's so cool. So just wanted to tell you guys, I think that one of the best things about Andrew is he's very analytical. And he makes calls based on facts. He lets the data lead his decisions. So how many times have we renegotiated with our marketing? As much as possible. I mean, it's all the time. One of the things I wanted to say, too, is what are we doing? We're in December.

Tell them what we're doing right now with our advertisers to save money. Yeah. we doing we're in december tell them what we're doing right now with our advertisers to save money yeah um so we are uh negotiating we're pre-paying uh for all of 2020 uh it gives us a lot of leverage and getting discounts uh but to mention to kind of jump on what tommy was saying um we you know we have all the data so when we go to these advertisers we can we you know they always say oh you know you just give another chance you know you know it'll, you know, they always say, oh, you know, just give it another chance. You know, it'll work. You know this. But we have the data. I mean, we can say, we can bring to the table,

say, hey, look, this is exactly how many calls that this mailing got. This is how many exactly... Revenue generated. Revenue generated. And that gives you a good, really, really good leverage when you're negotiating getting your rates. Because there's no...

That's what it is that's the revenue you've gotten you know you've probably heard a million times you know give it another chance you know give me I promise it's going to work you know when you track and you know with all those tracking numbers you have the data you have that information and it's the truth there's there's no walking around that I've renegotiated with pretty much every advertiser now and is doing the same thing. What I want you guys to think about too is when you prepay for the next year, we're saving 20% on some campaigns. So what is the reason we'd prepay? Well, if we're saving 20%, that's great,

but also I can write it off. See, I can't write off my materials I buy till I sell them, but I can write off any advertising dollars spent before December 31st. That's legal. That's what we do. No one loves to pay taxes. I don't mind paying taxes, but our goal as business owners is to minimize our taxable risks and liabilities. So that's a great way if you've got extra cash is to renegotiate all next year's contracts by prepaying. And they love it because they're getting a big lump sum of money to get them and boost them into January. So one last thing I really want to talk about, and I think this was probably the largest

catalyst of our business, is the CRM, which we use Service Titan. There's a lot of good ones out there. Everybody knows I'm a big advocate of Service Titan. But I don't think we would be half of what we are today without it. Well, how important is it? So important. I mean, from a logistical standpoint, I mean, service Titan, it allows us to run our business. It's everything. It's where all of our data lives, you know, from dispatching to capacity to every piece of data that we get, we get from Service Titan. You know, from forecasting, it's been amazing for us.

So what do we forecast? Around 60, between 55 and 60 million next year? Yeah. And we're going to blow it out of the water? Yep. All right, cool. Is there anything else you want to add to the 100th anniversary Home Service Expert Podcast? I'd just say, yeah, thanks for listening.

Listen to this guy. He knows what he's talking about. But, yeah, you guys are all awesome. He's got a lot to teach us. He's taught me plenty. You know, how hard is it to work with me? It's not too hard. It's hard to keep up with the energy level, which I'm sure you guys all know.

He is always on it, and that's why he's successful. He's got the energy. I don't have as much energy as him, unfortunately. Well, when you're working, you said, we're part of a book club here, day one. We just read The E-myth by michael gerber and uh you said well i've worked i'm a certain type personality and there's only about four percent of us in the world tell me a little bit because owners are a certain breed sometimes sometimes they're not but what is it when you said that you made me start thinking about it so what is it how do you got to treat someone like me like it's good to know this stuff yeah um i guess the thing is about uh the thing about

doesn't want to get in trouble yeah yeah the thing about that uh you know uh yeah um it's really people like tommy uh people who are strong entrepreneurs they're, they're all about vision. They're all about idea. Sometimes you really got to try to – I don't want to get in trouble. Well, sometimes you just got to slow down. Sometimes – I understand sometimes a lot of the times it's rare to get an entrepreneur with a vision that actually implements. And I think that's the hardest part is a lot of the people that I know have great ideas, but they never implement them. And I'm a pretty good implementer, I think,

but my biggest problem is keeping it implemented and actually hitting a finish line. Because the biggest, best thing I can tell you is you've got 100 things you're working on today. Trust me, Andrew's got 1,000. And I'm coming up to him every day, where are we at on this? How are we, is this moving along? Are we doing this? And the hard part for him is he just likes to get to the finish line

on each thing so prioritization is hard for entrepreneurs right and it's something that I've been working on we had a consultant Al Levy come in and say guys you got to focus on your top five top five things and hit the finish line once one hits the finish line, you could add another one, but prioritization is hard for us. Right. Yeah. I agree. Well, Andrew, it's been a pleasure, my friend. Thank you. Andrew was the employee of the month. What was that? Three months ago? A couple months ago. Yeah. Yeah. How was that? It was good. Good. It's good to get the recognition. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We got a little trophy that we handed around in the office. Tell them about the trophy. Yeah, it's a big giraffe trophy, and I think it's for sticking your neck out, right?

Stick your neck out for the company, and giraffes have the biggest hearts. Bigger heart, yeah. Because they've got to pump that blood up to their brain, and it's the long neck. So big heart, put their neck out for the company. So once again, Andrew in marketing, if you ever have any questions, just get a hold of me,

and I can run it by you. All right, here we are with Angela and Laurel. Angela runs our call center department, and Laurel is one of the best call center reps ever. She's got the highest booking rate in the company by far. What's interesting, Angela's been here about two years, and Laurel's been here a little less than a year, but we moved buildings, so she got to see kind of where we were and where we're at now. But she had no experience, did you, Laurel? No. No experience.

So tell me a little bit about what you did before you worked here. I worked as a server for 10 years. A server. So I was a server, bartender, busboy. I washed dishes. I done it all at a restaurant. I think that's a great spot to go to get great customer care representatives or whatever you guys call them. What's a typical day like as far as how many calls do you take in a day? How many do you expect to book?

What's your booking percentage? Between 80 and 100, depending on the day. So 80 to 100 calls and you like to be, what's like your tolerance level? Where do you like need to be in your mind? 40. I like to book a day. 40 calls. And how many, like 90% at least or what are you usually?

95. Okay, Angela, Angela crafted our pay structure, which it's not too complicated. Are you used to it by now? So, Angela, why don't you tell the listeners the awesome pay structure you came up with? Well, first, starting back, it's pay for performance. So you've got to take a look at your team and what are your pain points and what are your goals. So in call center, it's always attendance and retention of the employees. Call center normally has a high turnover rate and people showing up for their work

because it is very monotonous, repetitive. So that was one of the key factors in the pay-for-performance. The other is a shift differential. If someone's going to take kind of a little bit more of a challenging, unfly shift whether it's on a Sunday or it's a closing shift you want to be able to recognize and reward them for that plus generally there's lower call volume so you want to put them on the same level playing field as someone that's working during peak time getting those back-to-back calls then the third is really where the money is, is the book rate. So the conversion. And everything's set on a tier structure outside of attendance. So we've got

a top cap, 95% or greater. They're really at the top payout per book job. And then it tiers down based on a range. And then it stops at a certain percentage. So anything below a certain threshold, they don't get any money for that category. So it allows them to know that it's not an all or nothing unless it's attendance, but they're able to continue to strive and be in control of their pay. So, yeah, they're paid per book job. So there's five main structures we look at and the biggest weighted one is the booking rate per call so it's minimum wage or this is an and it's or minimum wage which is 11 it's 11 and in january 2020 minimum wage in arizona goes up to 12 okay so I didn't know that that's good so $12 an hour or

your protocol so what did you make last week per hour I think it was 20 20 and then what's your best week 33 $33 now I love that and I hope you make 40 50 dollars an hour next year because the more money you could make the better opportunity to get the best people so what I like about the pay structure is if you're making minimum wage every week, probably not doing the company any favors. No, and you're not fully in the game. Yeah, you're not fully invested. Correct. So here they know that even if we're understaffed, they know that's an ability

to handle more calls, book more calls, and they're going to be naturally more efficient with the calls that they're on when we're in queue because they want to grab more calls. So it makes everyone more drive towards the common goal of the company and puts us all in the same playing field. I think it's pretty cool when you're out there trying to find good people in the call center to say, hey, one of our best employees in the call center made $33 an hour. It's not uncommon to make $25 an hour,

but you're going to have to give it your all. And these are the things we look at. And yeah, it's pretty cool. Well, well done on that. So your history is you used to work in a huge call center for Pella, right? Well, I ran both their online or excuse me, their virtual call center and also managed their call centers. We were vendor relations, so we managed their day-to-day. But they had a stream for 23 years. So 23 years, she was hard to get because she walked away from my first offer. And then we worked it out.

So one of the things I'll tell you is we've got a secondary call center. And I don't really want to mention them because the service has not been great because they've got a lot of green people. They're newer people. But how important is it to have a second call center that if we can't grab that call, it goes to them? It's huge. Even if you're paying per minute or a dedicated rate for a backup call center. For nights, weekends, holidays. Exactly.

Or if you're understaffed for a certain day. If an average job is over $400, $500, but you're only paying maybe $10 for that agent. What does a minute usually cost for a smaller company? A buck thirty. A buck thirty per minute. So your average call is 10 minutes. You might spend $13 on that call. Now you got to be careful. Some people, she likes it. I hate it. IVRs. That's when you have the options to press one for this, press two for this, press three for

this. We had a guy come in, I won't go into too many details, but he worked for another large, large company. And he said the IVR sometimes can be detrimental because people don't like it's a little bit more big company press one press two press three but but it works well especially if they need your service so if they absolutely have to have your service like at the movies that's fine but when they're calling around and they've got options I don't think I would have. I would have to, I would have to agree. I mean, even though we're a growing company, we're, we still want to have that local small feel and customers like that. They want to be able to have the phone ring, a person answer the phone,

they can visualize that person sitting in a reception desk and just there to help and, and actually is communicating with the tech saying hey you know i've got suzy go ahead and run that job suzy they're on their way um but we are growing the the ivr it's really an auto attendant the feature that i like is more to get rid of the spammy calls yeah so now we do we do use it press any any button. Right. So what do I say? I did the recording. I say, we've been getting a lot of spammy calls lately. So press any button so we know we're talking to a live person. And then we'll connect you to a team member.

We're going to be doing some testing because we'll be switching to a new API soft phone. And we'll be turning off that feature and on the feature to kind of do some A-B control testing to see really what is our customer's threshold and is it a greater advantage just to remove it just quickly and efficiently and move through those jump calls that are coming through? So that's the hard part is you want someone like Laurel on opportunities, not taking calls, what is my technician or what's this warranty information or hey, I never got my invoice. And those are wasteful. They're important, but they're wasteful for a rock star that can book a lot of calls.

So we're working on that system. And then what's cool about our new phone software is it transposes every single call. So anytime price is mentioned, I can look up Laurel and search for the word price and hear her at anything. But what's cool about this is I can easily make training videos and say, hey, look what Laurel does when she gets questions about pricing. So we've got explainer. We don't have to be too much longer here, but explain level one, level two, and kind of the way we do it here.

Well, when an employee is first hired as a CSR customer, some people call them customer service representatives. I like to say sales representatives because everything they're touching is they're selling on behalf of the company. They're selling our technicians. Or customer care. Yeah, customer care, customer service, customer sales. But they start off as level one, which means there are certain things they're not able to provide, such as pricing, except for basic, like, labor rate, trip charge. Level 2s, after they've been here for four or five months,

and they're in the top tier of payout, meaning they're in the top 3-4 of the payout threshold, and their quality is good, they have minimal errors on the jobs that they're booking, then they're made a Level 2. So this isn't, it's a promotion, but it's not, do you want the job? Do you want to apply for it? They've now earned that privilege. And then their base wage goes up as well. That's a part of the pay for performance outline.

But then we've got the level ones being able to have additional support through level two. So it's not bogging down our team leads and supervisors to do these one-offs. They can focus on the floor as a whole instead of individual support needs. So Level 2 really, in essence, becomes an escalations team member. So Level 2 is a lot of good pricing, and then we've got the supervisors. How many supervisors typically do we have? Two. Two. So we like to keep our ratio one to six, which honestly is exceptionally low. In call center, it's generally a one to 20 ratio, one to 25 ratio. But as we start expanding and growing, then we'll probably get a little bit more right-sized with that ratio versus a supervisor overseeing the floor. And then we've got team leads that are more at that one to twenty so we've got I think

ninety five seats out here to fill not some of them already filled but what's cool is they don't know this but this is something that I'm contemplating doing is I would love to take roster calls for smaller companies because we've got the power, the people that can book the calls. So if you're already on our CRM and you're just busy, I mean, call centers are tough. I mean, look, our booking rate is through the roof compared to even the third-party call center that we use. I mean, they're garbage compared to us. Yeah, when we subtract out our after hours answering service, which also helps with overflow during the day, my team, Laurel and her other

compadres, exactly, we're at 90% or greater. So 90%, that was the goal I wanted her to hit. So here's the deal. Nine out of 10 calls we're booking. Now I'll tell you this, if you hit 10 out of 10, you're probably getting customers you shouldn't be getting. So 90% is that threshold we want to be at. Now, there is a little bit of gray in there because we are counting parts calls now. Or are we not? Parts calls do impact the call center metrics. But parts calls, if an agent has followed the proper protocol and trying to overcome the objections

and try to get a tech out, are removed off of them, but it still stays under the umbrella. It still impacts the overall call center. We have an agent called Baby Tommy. Baby Tommy. And they get shifted under Baby Tommy, which is a part of the call center stats. About half of the calls that agents handle are not related to a new lead or a revenue generating lead. So it could be an existing customer. It could be someone checking status.

Tommy talked about that. So what we want to do when we get on to the new API soft phone and we've worked out some of the kinks and we've got our recruiter kind of helping us right size with growing the team is create that personal human IVR. And they're the ones that are new employees coming in, and they're simply answering the phones, handling those lower-stressed calls where it's check status. Yeah, they're simple ones.

They're not a performance bank. Meeting and voice. Correct. So those would be $15, $16 employees that handle everything. So that way we keep our call bookers the best bookers where they can make $40, $50 an hour. So super cool if we could start taking in the mom and pop shops around the country that are on service Titan, maximize.

So we make a little bit of money as a company, but what's super cool is someone like Laurel can make $50 an hour and she's happy because she comes in here wanting to do her job and make money. That's why she's here. Well well and she's not going to want to go anywhere else well yeah well that's you know it becomes a great recruiter tool so Laurel had no experience and I'll tell you she was employee of the month what two months ago just this month oh yeah that was just I was out of town so Laurel was employee of the month um what are you annoyed by because we talked about this but some of the co-workers you're with uh so maybe some of the millennials um just they're always on their phone right what

else what are some of the other things all the time calling in sick so freaking aggravating how often have you called in sick i called in one time one time so in almost a year that's amazing how often that's because they went five days without hearing. So that's a pretty cool concept. Angela, what are some other tips that you would tell some of the listeners about really setting up a robust advanced call center? You've got to have the right people in place. You've got to have the right phone systems and the right reporting or the tracking to make sure your stats are accurate. Then from there, someone has the drive and dedication to take your

team to the next level, whether it's enhancing technology or, you know, people is our greatest asset. So it's working closely with them and finding someone that can connect with the individuals to help them take their game up one notch. So, interestingly enough, two of my managers switched to performance pay. Our market manager is rolling out for performance pay. And Angela is going to be getting a performance pay eventually, but the cool thing is, hopefully in the next month, she'll make at least what she made this year. That's one of the things that's important to me with managers, is they never should see a performance as losing money.

So I always guarantee that you'll make at least the same as the previous year. So I think performance pay, here's what I love about it. If the economy is great and things are going well, you can make a lot of money on performance pay. If it's not so great, you still got to strive and you can still make good money. But the thing is, is that if the economy just tears tears apart we would go out of business really really fast if everybody was on a six-figure you know you know what i'm saying so or if they're on hourly i like to always tell the employees that when our volume is low they're not going to be getting paid as much but when our volume is high and they're booking more, it's going to counterbalance that. So really we're wanting to do whatever we can to impact the revenue. And if we're lower, if we have fewer jobs,

we have less revenue. Therefore, it's kind of a trickle-down effect. And my team, I think, has embraced that pretty well. In fact, the pay period before last was Laurel's highest, where she hit a little over 30. And we were a little understaffed, but the volume was also higher than normal. And she was able to reap the benefits from that. And our revenue was more as well. Revenues, we're setting records every day, every week. Two more things I wanted to cover. So what are some of the things you do when someone says how much are springs or how much

is, you know, what, what are the... Try to avoid giving price. So, so let's just do a quick call. Hi, my name is Tommy. I live at 3956 Lowell Court, Sterling Heights, Michigan. That's my home address. Like that came quick. Yeah.

Uh, how much, uh, how much are springs? I got a broken spring. It's best to get the technician out. Our springs are based off size and weight. So that's it. When are you looking to book? When are you looking to book? Okay, so then we charge $20, right? So how much is it to get someone out of here? Explain to me that. $20 trip charge.

$20 trip charge. Now, I don't want to pay that. I'm doing a fully stocked truck. And that's a fully stocked truck. So what happens if I don't want to pay that? And I say, you know what? I got another company that's coming out for free. You have the right to waive that fee. We have the right to waive it, yes. If you're a loaner too. If they move forward with our service.

If you move forward with our service. So we try to get someone out there face-to-face. Their job is simply what, Angela? To get a technician from the hospital. To get someone to knock on that door face-to-face. Last thing I wanted to cover, this is more of a dispatch question, but you're both familiar with it, is we've got priority levels. So explain to me what a P1 versus a P2 versus a P3 is. P1 is priority one, priority two, priority three.

He pretty much answered that. So a P1 job would be springs, anything to do, crash door, emergency. We can also override it if it's another issue that's really the job type is a P2, but their garage door is stuck open or a car is trapped. Then we'll just divert that and tag it as a priority one. Those are important for us to get out there and take care of the customer. So explain to me, so there's a little number next to each technician. What's that number? You can say it.

It's for their performance. It's their rankings when it comes to conversion, sales, customer service. So the lower the number, the better they are, right? So what do we want to do with P1s in a perfect world if you're brand new? You just tell them the lower the number, match up with a P1, right? Yeah. So it's pretty simple. We want the best conversion, the best customer service, and sales matters, obviously.

Sales matter. It's no different than putting in the perspective of a human IVR coming in and going, okay, here's a qualified lead. I'm going to get it to my top tiered three or my top tier twos first. And then if they're busy, that's when they go to level one. So I like the idea of P1, P2, P3. The one thing I want to start taking into consideration is how many garage doors do they have, when do they purchase the home, the dual income, the credit score, all that stuff,

because we like to sell financing. And we know if a job is in a certain area with five wood overlay doors and they call for a tune-up, chances are four other doors need a tune-up as well, and there's a big opportunity there. So it's not sometimes dispatching is an art, but I still feel like we're going to build an algorithm that just says this one is the best, not based on it's really marketing to the affluent like we've got a customer this year gonna spend seven hundred thousand dollars with us um when we get if we

have a hundred of those customers that'd be 70 million dollars so i used to be a shotgun approach type guy but now we're really starting to get concentrated on these nicer areas and here's the thing we are keeping track of our discount rate. So we've got people at 18% of their ticket. They discounted 18%. We've got people at 3%. I like the number 7 the most because that's where our top performers kind of live. A lot of the guys used to give stuff away because they call from coupons.

Well, now we're getting a lot more Google calls, not as many coupon shoppers. And so you don't have to offer a coupon. Look, some people don't, I don't go to any of the Fry's or Albertsons or any of these places with coupons, and I don't expect it. I'll go, do you got any deals? But so often, people just automatically give this stuff out, and I don't understand. So anyways, Laurel and Angela, ladies and gentlemen, they're amazing employees. They do an amazing job. Thank you guys for doing this.

Thank you. All right. Appreciate it. Thanks. Thank you. Hey, we're it. Thanks. Thank you. Hey, we're here up at the A1 Lounge area on the massage chairs now. I'm here with my MVP, Brandon Colby. He's one of the number one technicians every single month.

He won Employee of the Month this past month. And he came on, had some issues. He worked for us in Prescott and Flagstaff, had some issues with the management, and I happened to be shooting pool one night. How long ago was that? A year and a half ago. A year and a half ago, and I convinced him to come back,

and it's all been downhill since then. So, Brandon, tell me a little bit about how you get ready before you pull up to the customer's house. Uh, what are some of the things going through your mind? Basically just looking at the entire, like the outside of their house, the appearance after I had the first impression with them, when I talked to them on the way there, basically just trying to feel them out and see who they are, what they value in their own home. It's like, all right,

you got to make sure that everything's okay. They have a, uh, look at the outside the trim's not good i'm like there's dents in the door bottom rubber's cracked basically analyzing before even talking to the customer that you already have previous knowledge about what's wrong with a garage door by just looking at the outside because it's kind of once you're in the garage you can't look at the outside again so kind of just so you get you get that going in and then what's your mindset though even if you have a let's say you have a real shitty job you go to the next call how do you kind of clear how do you clear that basically every job's a new opportunity it's time to make make it and do the best for the customer, do the best for the company, and provide an excellent customer service.

So one of the things we talk about all the time is best, better, good, and start with the best. And you always sell the best. You very rarely sell a lower-end opener for the air conditioning companies out there or whatever it is. You don't offer the cheapest first because you anchored at that. So tell me a little bit about – one of the things I'll tell you about Brandon, I'll let him talk. He's traveled with me to state to state to state, and he trains guys in their own market that it could be done. People tend to think, yeah, Arizona's different. There's more money there, but you've proven over and over again that that's not the case. Everybody that owns a

home, they're going to want the best stuff in their their home they don't want to mess with it again so why not offer the best product possible that we offer give the customer the option of just saying this is what you want and that this is why you want it and so you kind of put that thought in their head and a lot of technicians when they train with you they tell me man he gets a lot of nose but you don't care what you're gonna know that's just that's just you're not even that so if someone says no I'm not interested I don't just get's, but you don't care when you get a no. That's just, you're not even there. So if someone says, no, I'm not interested, you just get right over it. Yep, don't even listen to it.

Just basically keep on reiterating the same thing. I have to get three or four or five no's sometimes before I even think of it because I'm like, a no is just another excuse for them. They just don't want it because of the money. You need to tell them why they need it and why it's the best product because you're the technician. You're there. You know what it is. Yeah, you're the doctor.

Doctor of the garage door. So one of the things that I hear a lot is you're one of the only guys that follows the eight-step sales process that we put out three years ago. And when you train, you're following this protocol. I don't want to go much into the process, but what's the most important thing we talked about on a mojo call this morning start to work start the work So start the work what they called you out there for then you can access other damages and see everything else But you already have that trust you already have that work guarantee You have that money right then and there and now you can examine every little part to it having a safety inspection go through every little Possible thing in that garage door.

So let's talk real quick. So you're one of the highest ticket writers, some of the best reviews, best conversion rate. Now here's the funny thing. Tell me about some of the tips you've been getting in the last couple months. I've gotten street bikes, hundreds. Motorcycle. Yep. Cash, hundreds of dollars.

You get dinner sometimes dinner I've got drive that car easy other day yeah to driven their cars here's the thing everybody thinks price price price oh you charge too much blah blah blah blah it's not about the price fix it right the first time we carry things we carry 80,000 cycle Sprint's you only install the best openers that they could literally talk their phone open their door. It does everything. So why not? I want the nice stuff in my own house. I want the nice stuff in life in general. You don't want to go into something and just you want the bare minimum because the bare minimum is just going to fail later on. You go for the best. You fix it right the first time. Then

you're not coming back. Then they're not going to hate you. They're going to just want you to come out and do your second door. Then you go into that second door instead of saying, hey, let's not wait until it breaks. No, fix it all right now. I'm already here. I've already wasted your time by being here taking care of it now. And then it's going to take more time out of their day for another day of work. And it's an inconvenience. I'd rather make it more convenient.

It's taking care of right then and there. So you've trained a lot of guys, and I'm sure you've got some type of personality. I'll tell you one thing I see about you. I see it about some of our other top techs is that you like nice things. You've got a brand-new Harley. What's your truck?

You drive a Raptor? Yeah. Two Raptors? Two Raptors, 14, 18. You've got your own place in Scottsdale, nice house. So you like nice things. I think about a lot of our top producers. What do you think are some of the traits, the qualities that you identify to say,

this guy's going to be good or this guy's going to suck? Basically, how they want to live a lifestyle. Because if they want to live a lifestyle of basic, bare minimums, they're not going to then offer the customer the best product because they have a negative personality towards having the best things they if they could just live on the bare minimum they're not going to want to be the best you want to always achieve to be the best number one that's why i strive for all the time be number one because i can sell it the right way and have the good reviews because people want to buy the

right things so so you're on snapchat like, what, five, ten guys? Yeah. And you guys always talk about your day. You're competitive with each other. You want to win. How important is it to keep score? Very important. And how important is it – do you feel pretty good when you're – how shitty does it feel

when you're number four? Doesn't want – I don't want it to happen, ever. See, there's certain guys that they don't care. They say, as long as I made the money I needed this week to pay my bills, I'm fine. There's other people that have to win. And one of the biggest attributes I see with a badass technician is his willingness and want to be number one. He wants to win the game every time. And there's nothing we hide from

you. You know, on every single paycheck, every single job, how much you've earned. Do you know how many companies, they don't show their texts? I don't want to say any names, but they have no clue. And I mean, we make mistakes. I'll be honest. We've made as many mistakes, not in our favor as we have in our favor. But, you know, at the end of the day, I think you'd know we're pretty transparent. And I think that's an important quality. How important is it for you to have a relationship with the dispatchers? Great, because they're the ones giving you your jobs. And I'm like, you treat them right.

You treat the respect right. You'll get all the respect you deserve as well. So here's a funny story. One day Brandon was at my place, and he was upset about the dispatchers. And I went, and I got a gift card for him, and he was upset about the dispatchers and I went and I got a I got a gift card for him and he gave it to the dispatchers and I said how's that working he goes it's great he goes today I bought him coffee and donuts so it was a funny story because sometimes you got to juice the wheels although they should

be doing their job of dispatching the here's what we have to say you don't leave Tom Brady on the bench in the Super Bowl, you make him play. And that's the same thing with your techs, you should be keeping track. Obviously there's not a ton of favoritism, but better opportunities should go to the better conversion rate customer service technicians. So we're pretty strong on the way we dispatch, but everything could get better. And what's really hard about a dispatcher's job is sometimes the job might look good on paper, but we were out there two years ago, and you've got to really do your due diligence.

What do you think the secret is to a great dispatcher? I think we know we've got a lot of great dispatchers, but there's a couple in particular you like. Now, what are the things that you really like in a great dispatcher? They look at the history. They look at the job. Look at the area. Try to route the best way the less drive time even it's like if you have to run an extra job in that same area that you're only five minutes away it's another opportunity it's plenty of opportunity to make

an extra little bit and it's like all right if somebody hasn't been out there been two three years there's a lot of opportunity especially if other tech's been out there that you know you could no offense outsell them and be like, fix the door the right way. Well, yeah, you know, sales is not a bad word, and I always talk about this, is, look, if you bring in your vehicle, the funny thing is you bring in your vehicle at 10,000 miles, 30,000 miles,

then at 90,000, you've got to change out all the belts, the water pump. The water pump's not bad, but you still change it out because it's at that cycle life of the water pump. Exactly. Well not bad but you still change it up because it's at that cycle life of the water pump exactly well there's nothing wrong in any industry by offering these things I remember when we rolled out financing and no one wanted to sell it and the reason why is because typically I never buy financing so why would I offer it if I don't believe in it but it's not our decision so now how many times have you used financing to close a deal?

A lot. A lot. I'm like probably at least 40%. 40% of the time he uses financing. That's how important it is. And I guarantee you, I guarantee 90% of the people listening, and it's just something to grow into 2020, is start offering financing. Now how important is it to have it that you don't have to go into a separate app

and you've already pulled in all their information through green sky with service time it's great it's just so easy it takes them five minutes it's done it's approved they have the money there now they want to make sure everything's fixed they're like oh look at the second door look at this can can we add this to it because now it's just a small payment it's not that painful right then and there of spending a certain amount right then they could get it in a bill and they're like some of them are like well I qualified for 8,000 so how could I spend an extra 2,000 well that what we

got guys are storage solutions literally that's how their mind thinks when people get credit cards are like well I still got money on my credit card right but you know in my opinion that's borrowed money so I don't feel the same way about it because I get kind of a conscience when I go deep into debt. But anyways, what are some of the other things that you'd give to some of the listeners? A lot of the people that are listening are business owners. They struggle finding great technicians. What would you say to these people that are struggling?

Basically, find where your top guys are. Try to then have them interview some of the people that you're trying to hire and see if they find that they're gonna be good people for the company find your best guys have them work with everybody else and train them to be better and yeah and I'll add on to that if he goes out with a guy after two weeks and says this guy's not gonna make it there's no ands ifs or buts to try to go through a process when when some of your best people say this person is not going to make it. Now, they could be wrong, but for the most part, it's right. Why would I invest time, energy, and money into someone that might take two years to come around?

The first thing you've got to have is the attitude. The next thing is the willing to succeed, the want to be number one. And the willingness to work late, like late days and not be like i need to be home at this time not a nine to five no it's when you're in the service industry you'll be out seven eight o'clock nine o'clock at night i'm like just get over it and i'm like get over it because your family's gonna be taking care of well at night it's like why not so you go you don't go on a ton of vacations but we give a couple it's not a ton of money but we do some pto how important is it to take some time off and reset every once in a while three-day weekend i'm like just that extra day it makes it

a tremendous difference three-day weekends are great what i hate to see and it happens because we have families but sometimes people take all two weeks at a time and it's almost counterproductive to take that much time off i've done it um and it's nice to clear your head. I come back, but you don't get as much vacation time in the interim throughout the year, so You know there's a lot of things that go into finding a great technician. I always say here's the deal You got to find someone that looks appealing to the eye. They can't be gross The next thing they got to do is have a clean driving record background check drug test then on top of that they got to be good at sales good at technical I mean it's not easy to find great technicians

there but the best thing you do is steal them from another industry what did you do before you needed garage doors had a body shop that full collision restoration stuff like that so very mechanical so this is basically kind of a giant erector set it's like you so it's easy whenever you know your product and know how to fix it the right way you have the confidence to be able to tell the customer what's wrong with their product right now and why they need a different product or to fix it the right way because if you don't know what you're talking about you're going to get walked over hand over fist you might be the best salesman in the world but if you don't know the technical aspect of it you're going to get walked over hand over fist. You might be the best salesman in the world, but if you don't know the technical aspect of it,

you're going to be a horrible technician. So we're talking about sales, technical, operational. Technical and operational, you've got to get down, learn your CRM, learn to take a credit card payment half down, learn to do a finance job, learn to do a post-data check, whatever it might be. Know the system, the CRM, and know the technical side because you'll never be good at sales ever if you don't know the first two things, technical and operational.

How important would you say? I mean, that's pretty accurate. That's 100% accurate. I'm like, without that, you're basically shooting yourself in the foot. You're not setting yourself up for success. You're setting yourself up for failure. So a lot of times it's just crazy to me how often you get no and you run right over it because you know no one's wanting to

spend that money that day they didn't plan on it and you come out there when you saw a new door though what is it about so so even in the hvac industry or plumbing with a new hot water heater hot water heater not so much because it's curb uphill, but there's something about spending money on something new rather than a repair, right? Yeah. It's like, when I, I remember I had to replace my five ton AC unit at one of my, the Scottsdale house.

And I was like, okay, I got it for the four grand. I think something cheap, George did it. But my point is, I felt a lot better about that purchase cause it's got a 10 year warranty on it. And it's not going to go bad. I've had to fix it every summer for the three years previous. So $300 here, $300 there, $300 there. I felt better about spending the four grand than I did about the 900 to repair it every

year. And that's the problem. Like when you keep on repairing and coming back and coming back, it's like when it's not a good door to work on and fix, be like, all right, let's just replace this. Let's spend your money wisely and fix it. Now you have everything new on the outside. It's going to get painted. It's going to match your house.

Everything is going to be the best thing for you. Now we can upgrade you to a steel back insulated door instead of just a regular pan door. Help them out. Save energy efficient. Make it stronger, quieter. Everything about it feels more satisfying to a customer because they're like, okay, now we can do a little bit of repair right now just to get it fixed until we can order the door, the right door for them. Give them their options, show them what they want, and okay, match the HOA,

match certain things, and see what they want. And then they're like, okay. Then they feel happy, satisfied. Then they're calling you back out there when the door's installed just to see, okay, this is what it looks like. And they're excited. And then you have that relationship with them yeah it's uh it's fun watching this guy work it's been amazing when you get your top producers you got to make sure that there's a rarity of a day that you're not training somebody i mean it's not as much as i'd like but when there's trainees available you're working with them so it's it's so important if I go out it's like look what kind of doctor

would you want working on you someone that trained amongst the best or one that trained with the worst doctor ever obviously you want them with the best so is there any other tips that you give last minute last minute thoughts basically find their why why do they want to be a top technician why do they want to work for you and like because if it's about just a want to be a basic employee a basic c or b player they want to be an a player you want to have the a players working for you you don't want just the bare minimum guys you want them to be the best and basically find that how often do you ask for reviews ask now i used to i used to not ask as much because i was trying to i was learning the

system learning the operational now learning the operational it's like i'm asking for reviews all the time and i'm getting those good reviews they're calling i think you up and everything well the one thing you you got to personally ask for those and try to get them while you're still in the house so as you're cleaning up, throwing away the scrap metal, everything like that, I think it's really, really important because people are more likely to leave a review for Brandon than they would anyone. They don't know me. They haven't met me. They're going to leave a review for the technician that they just met because he's going to say,

listen, keep doing me a huge favor. Every Thursday morning, we talk about the reviews we get, and I want to be on that leaderboard for the reviews this week. And then you hand them your card and have them refer to all their neighbors. So what happens if you hand them your card and they call us and we do the work? Make extra money. I'm like, just to book the call. Because we have a recorded line, and it shows that that was our business line that booked the call, and we make extra money.

It's free money. $50. They get $50. Every time they hand out their card and they call, he doesn't have to run the call. If he runs the call, he'll get an extra 50. But if someone else were to run that job,

if he handed it out at a gas station, and let's just say that, you know, Steve ran the call. You were out of time. Right. You'd still get that 50 bucks. So you're becoming a marketer for the company

when you're out there at gas stations, restaurants. People say, what do you do? Hand them a card. Now you're becoming a marketer for the company when you're out there at gas stations restaurants people say what do you do hand them a cart now you're more incentivized to do it because before you know what's in it for you nothing so pretty good stuff thank you brother it's the best opportunity like this best garage door company to work for I don't think there's anybody else that's even close I'm like just because the experience that basically all the tools you have every tool with this company to be successful. You have the training, you have the dispatchers, you have the CSRs, you have the managers. And the owner. And the owner.

Duh. So basically it's just an awesome experience. And then all the camaraderie between all the different employees, all the different markets, everybody works together. We all talk. We have group messages between the whole company. If anybody has a question or concern, we can help each other out at any time. So it's basically everybody working together. It's a family business and it's a great family business. Hey there, so I'm sitting with Bree

and Bree is my assistant and she's been with me a long time now. And funny story behind that is she worked for me for probably eight to ten months. And then we went separate directions, which I'm not going to get into. But it was a good thing. She was moving on a little bit. And then I came into a rut.

I needed her back. And we made things work. But, you know, Bree has to work around crazy Tommy all the time. She's the one that sets up my schedule. She also sets up the podcast schedule she also sets up the podcast she also sets up the apartment she also sets up shoot when anybody needs something in the company they go to her especially if they need to meet with me uh she handles a lot of the travel it just goes on and on she's been with me on trips the speaking engagements. Bree, what is it? Well, first of all, I'm just kind of curious.

You do really good at task-oriented things. What do you think it is about someone that has to work for someone else that makes somebody better than others? Definitely being organized and putting the highest priorities first. So tell me today, for example, what you were doing or what you got going on. What does your day look like? So you get in here around 7 a.m. and I get in about 7.30. So the first thing I do is I open up the calendar. That's the first thing I do because I have to know what your day is like,

even though I know it like the back of my hand and then I open up your emails I go through your emails respond to the ones that I can respond to print the ones out that I have to go over with you and then go through my emails okay so today you're working on a lot of stuff we're working on some stuff for the Christmas party slash some gift card stuff. You organized and redid all those files. I have three presentation PowerPoints. Then you're helping me organize a huge closet full of stuff we've had for a long time that just needs to get straightened out. And then what else did you have?

I had a couple things I had to do for Luke. I don't know. I have like a whole to-do list it's just so you've got a whole you come in here you make your list and you start crossing things out and you prioritize them as they go uh have i ever been mad at you yes multiple times why um because it doesn't get done as quick as you think it's going to get done. I think you just think you can snap your fingers and it's going to get done so fast, but I don't think you realize what really goes on behind it. That's true. There's some times I don't realize, but I would say, have you gotten better and better?

How long do you think it took for you to be able, you be able to know exactly how to respond to people? You had to get to know me. You had to know what emails I needed to look at right away. You knew what comes first and learn how to prioritize. How long does something like that take for the people out there thinking about really getting somebody like you to come help them? Definitely a couple months. But if you don't have any like experience in doing it first like I

didn't so I like I feel like I failed the first time and then I left and I got like a lot of experience with being organized and you know putting together like lists and prioritizing everything and that helped so when I came back and then I know you and I know like the way you speak and like you know what you need so it just made it 10 times easier. So we're really friends outside of work, too. I think that's important because we work together all day. Today, I asked you a question before I even knew we were going to do this. Is that where our desk used to be right next to each other?

And now we're in separate offices. And you said, well, sometimes I used to like being next to you but also privacy is good and shoot you have like every single guy and gal in the company come visit you at least for 10 minutes a day because you're an easygoing person and you know what's nice about brie too everybody that's listening she's kind of my eyes and ears of the company she lets me know as important things i don't get involved in any of the drama, but she tells me what's going on. She says, did you know this is happening? Did you know they're going on this trip? And some of it's important, some of it's not, but you kind of decipher what is it not. You don't come with

every single thing, but I think it's important because you're the voice. People want to get a hold of me. They get a hold of you. You don't let anybody in my office before they go through you and you say, no, he's got something coming up.'re my biggest thing you are for me is two two twofold you're my time management and you're my organization and i would say that there's other people out there that are listening that might say i'm really organized and i'm good at time management but maybe you're not good at something else that that assistant could help you do and i hate the word assistant because it's almost like i just think you're just way more than that it's just like a look i don't like the title of that role so i think that uh you know maybe

we'll change it to like compadre no not happening compadre this is my compadre but what else would you say you know owners are difficult to work with owners sometimes that we do we think we can snap our fingers we think we think an email is going to turn out like we want or we think when you help me with a powerpoint i think why would you do it this way you got to have a thick skin right first for sure yeah what else do you think it takes to meet somebody great that's going to be great as a role to to help do something like that I think they really have to be patient. I think patience is key in a lot of it because you can get so overwhelmed by just with one task. And if, especially if there's a deadline set and, you know, say that deadline's coming up, but you have 10 other things

to do, like stuff starts to pile up and it's not easy. And then, and then you have you, and then you're just like, well, why didn't this get done? you're like well you know I had all this other stuff to do and then everyone else is asking you to do things so it just it gets hard well you don't really close your door very often I'd say that might be a skill set when you really have a deadline other times you'll stay here till seven at night you even coming on the weekends when you have to which is unbelievable you've got a laptop you do stuff at home you're very good you've got what tell weekends when you have to, which is unbelievable. You've got a laptop. You do stuff at home. You're very good. You've got, tell everybody what you have on your phone for me.

Your calendar. You've got my calendar. Email. You've got access to my email. You've got basically anything you need. And I can ask you anytime what's going on and you'll come fix something or do something to my computer or whatever. But it's important. I don't want to get held down by the minutia of the daily, the little micromanagement things that you're so good at.

And I think that's great that we've worked together. We've actually learned to work together. And you're so good at the details. And I don't care if I could say to everybody, I don't love the details. I'm a macro guy. I want to be the owner of a large company and be good at relationships.

But more importantly, keep my time frame. Keep my organization. And you really, you were disgusted. You were like, we need to organize this. You collect junk. We need to throw stuff out. I want to go through this. And I just say, go ahead, get rid of it.

Get rid of it. I remember. No, you don't. I said get rid of a lot of stuff. But, you know know going into this this next year here i'm so glad the podcast has been a pretty good success you've helped me since the beginning we've got what 100 episodes now this is our anniversary episode and um it's been going good you know we've been getting a lot of guests it's only beginning been getting better and it's

excited with the future holds i think we're up to about 15,000 downloads a month. You've met a lot of these people. I've traveled to see a lot of the podcasters that have been on the podcast. It's very, very exciting that you've been a part of this. And I'm excited that I have such a cool assistant that I get along with so well. So thank you. You're welcome. All right.

Keep up the great work. So I so sitting here with daniel dryman he was the october employee of the month uh he started out how long have you been with us about three years three years you started out as a technician yeah i started as a technician so now you are a field supervisor you train and you're the lead door salesman oh yeah that's all three of those hats on my big head. Okay, and you, potentially your goal is to, we talked about it this week, and what's your goal? Yeah, so I've got two goals, kind of for two of those three positions is I want to be essentially

the lead field supervisor or the supervisor of the field supervisors. I've taken an initiative to try and reach out to the other field supervisors and try and mentor them and see if there's something that they're doing that I can grow from because I'm always willing to learn also. And then as the lead salesman, I want to get to the point where I'm doing exclusively the custom and high-end stuff. So my day's booked with appointments of high-end clientele. High-end clients meaning high-end door sales you're not going in selling a $200,000 house the basic run-of-the-mill you want to go to the custom and big apartments and more higher end bigger ticket stuff.

Explain to me what we do here with the junior to apprentice program and moving all the way up the career path yeah so essentially we've developed a program here where instead of taking other people's developments and trying to build from there or reprogram uh we've correct we've created a culture where you can start off as an apprenticeship you learn the basics of what garage door parts are how they coincide with each other how how to pull stock from the inventory, and then you start your training from an apprentice in the warehouse out to running in the field. You learn the trade. You learn how to work on a door. Use our facility here to train and learn what a hung door is, how to do a spring job, and not just how to do a spring job, but how to do it

the A1 way. How to do it the right way, the most efficient way, the safest way. And Where do we have this stuff? What's the right way to do it? How do you find out? It's all in our employee manual or the handbook depending what you want to call it. So we have right now about 30 manuals. So you started as an apprentice and then you move up to? To a junior technician. And then you move up to? A technician. And then? A senior technician. And then and then field supervisor so you got a good career path here and now how much last month you can say it how much last month did you make just for a beat not including any of your other pay just the field supervisor position oh my bonus for field supervisor yeah uh 27 50 27 50 you made month. So that's on top of all your other pay.

So overall, it's going pretty good for you. You're hitting all your goals, your KPIs, all your metrics. I know you have some outliers on your team in a good way. So it's kind of easier to hit. So you're going to Michigan for two weeks. You live in Phoenix. Well, you live in East LA, which is like Buckeye. You're going to Michigan for two weeks you live in Phoenix well you live in East LA like Buckeye you're going to Michigan for two weeks tell me what you're going to be doing for me out there

in Michigan yeah for two weeks I just booked the hotel and the airfare today going out there to ride with a lot of the guys that are ace not so much the new guys I do want to ride with them I want to see now that we've kind of cut their leash and set them into the wild. I want to see what they're struggling with, what weaknesses they have, something they've, a roadblock they've encountered. But I also want to ride with the guys that have been struggling as well as spend some time with Jake, a field supervisor out there and develop that market to start moving towards its potential because Detroit's got so much to offer we can expand the population there is is immense it's it's a great it's a great

area that's where I'm from so tell me a little bit about what you think when you because you're actually now a recruiter in some sense yeah to do this you want to get people on your team that help you to hit your goals. And there's conversion goals, there's customer satisfaction goals, there's sales goals. Tell me a little bit about what you look for in a tech. Now, you were the guy that told me go to Discount Tire to recruit. Absolutely. And you worked at Discount Tire. I did, I did.

So, great people, great training program there. Tell me exactly what you look for in a guy that you think is gonna be win the game yeah so personality the way that they have the linguistics or their conversation skills how they can articulate how they relate to someone that doesn't mean you have to be at Harvard educated it just means you can't be a stick in the mud and you have to be able to relate to people you have to be personable and then some willingness to do mechanical work. Not necessarily mechanical aptitude. I mean, I tell this story all the time.

One of the greatest guys I've ever trained was a bartender. And he was a great technician. He didn't even know what a ratchet was when we started training. But he had the drive and the will to learn. He would take notes. He would actually record conversations between the two of us and write down key phrases that I would use when I would be talking to a customer. Things like, you know what? Hey, that makes sense. I should use that. It's working for

Daniel. Why shouldn't I? So not that I'm, you know, the gospel or anything, but success shows itself. So if I'm doing something that works, you're more than welcome to use it. I want us all to succeed. We're on the same team. So other things I look for is just, like I said, listening skills, as well as the ability to communicate outwards is to communicate inwards. You know, if I'm at a restaurant and a server doesn't remember half my order or says they're going to bring a drink and doesn't bring it, I mean, that's something we don't want because they're just going to do the same thing in this industry. But one of the reasons that I always say to discount tire guys

is because they too breed a culture. They have a vision and a mission statement just like we do. And they talk about how certain things aren't just about making money. And you talk about it all the time. You don't want us to ever sell anything that the customer doesn't need. Don't ever want to be disingenuous. You don't want to be, you know, any sort of used car salesman stigma. We want to talk to the customers and show them with a benefit of what they're doing and why we're going to do it that way. So the ability to listen to the customer of what they want, be it a bartender that I'm ordering a drink from,

a waiter that's ordering my dinner or taking my order, or the guy at Discount Tire, I don't want to walk in there and say, hey, I've got a Yugo. I'm just trying to make this thing last to the end of the year. And all of a sudden, they're trying to sell me lifetime-oriented Michelins. You want to be able to listen to the customer. That's huge. So we've got a NAITSTEP sales process. Part of that is asking a lot of questions, but we ask guiding questions. One of the things that I got pretty upset about, this was about six months ago, when I hear somebody say, I got this lady for this much or something like that. And you should never say those phrases, I got this person for this. You should say, this person was intelligent and

spent the money they needed to get the job done with the best parts possible. And yes, I made a healthy paycheck because of it. So I think that that's important. That's something I've told all of my guys and I've told anyone else who wants to listen too, is if there's three parts to it, if there's keeping A1 or the company you work for in mind, if it's keeping the customer in the company you work for in mind, if it's keeping the customer in mind and keeping your paycheck in mind, if you just focus on doing the right thing, both for A1 and the customer, your paycheck will fall in line. If you're doing the right thing by the customer, making sure that their door is not going to break again in three weeks when you leave there,

just because, oh, this customer had a coupon, you know, I'm just going to do what they asked for. Just tell the customer, this is what you asked for. is what you need or hey your door is great congratulations everything is going well I did just this that's all you needed this is how it works let's get out of here but if you do the right thing and you keep the customers best interest in mind as well as the company's best interest in mind your paycheck can't help but to be fruitful. What's the, I don't know if I should ask that. I was going to say what's the best week you've ever had.

I'm not going to ask that. But, you know, it's not uncommon if you're selling. There's times that you've sold 50 doors at a time to an apartment complex or a big community. It's probably not uncommon that you can make five grand in a week. I know that's not the norm. Yeah, it's definitely, uncommon that you can make five grand in a week. I know that's not the norm. Yeah, it's definitely an outlier. But, I mean, to answer your question vaguely, my best week was more than my field supervisor bonus. Oh, okay. Yeah, for sure.

So that's cool. So what other advice would you give out there? I think you've talked a lot about you're big into culture. I am. You're big into leadership. I'm a big fan of making leaders here not just managing people yeah and I don't think you should be managing more than six or seven direct reports direct people once you get more than that things start to fall fall down explain to me a little bit about Phil supervisors so four days in the field

the fifth day what happens yeah so you work your normal whether it's me as a door salesman or as a regular technician and that being said you don't necessarily not be a field supervisor those four days either i'm still fielding phone calls from both the technicians the office the customer whatever has to happen and take care of those duties of those days but the fifth day you ride along with one of your your direct reports one of your technicians and you have how many i have six so you have a little bit more than most seven if we count we have one that's on military duty oh yeah yeah that's right so so you can handle yeah and i don't mind you having seven because

you're hitting all your numbers um we you know what point you say, I need to replace somebody on my team? I mean, I don't think you've had to do that. I haven't yet. I mean, there was definitely some discussions and some thoughts about, is this guy trending the right way, which kind of sort of leads into the answer is I don't terribly mind someone who's not. A top producer. Not necessarily a top producer, but also the fact that someone that's not

taking 100% of the coaching. But as long as they're making, just like football, forward progress, if we're moving those chains, if you're doing a little better than before, I'll take that. But if you're just stagnant, I hear my dad yell at me in my head all the time, if you do the same thing you've always done, you're going to get what you've always got. Albert Einstein, that's the definition of insanity. If I'm trying to help someone and I'm trying to help someone, either I'm not helping them and they need to get help from somewhere else,

whether it's another field supervisor or someone from the office, maybe I'm just not connecting or reaching that person. You're not getting through. I'm not getting through. But at that point, you have to look inwards and see if I'm the problem or unfortunately that person's not the right fit for the company. It hasn't happened to me yet. I did have a thought and had to really think about it but this one employee has made baby steps and i'm okay with that forward progress is all i ask so at some point i think you

either got to manage people up or unfortunately that's the law of your life up or out so daniel does a really good job of communicating with the customer obviously how important is it now this is hard for everybody there's no there's nobody listening that can't do a better job of follow-up how important is follow-up follow-up you know that's something I struggled with a long time I did what I had to do I mean I always kept in contact with a customer especially when they're showing interest and it's all too easy to filter or to judge. You know what? They're going to call me. I got that one. They're going to call me. Or the inverse of, why am I going to call them? They had zero interest. Just because that happened at that time, they may have something else on their mind. You know, they may have had bad news in the morning or maybe they weren't feeling well. So to shake those and really follow through, to follow up is huge.

Take an hour out of your day and just follow up the last, you know, 10 people you have there. And if you do that every day, you're going to keep a steady flow of follow up because you're going to field questions that maybe they didn't know to ask you. Maybe their other spouse came home and they asked questions that they didn't know the answer to or maybe they changed their mind you were there and they told you they wanted a non-insulated door and all of a sudden they talked to their neighbor or their father-in-law or whomever and said you know what insulator is not that much more and when

you were there they could not even care less well you got a whole you got a pretty good way we've got a pretty good way of doing a presentation most people don't know what they want it's true we kind of build into their mind how important is this presentation folders we carry i mean it's the process we ask the questions and it's consistency and here's what's the beautiful thing about consistency is you see the same things every time it starts to become second nature it does it's kind of like in your subconscious it lives there and if it's working keep doing it if it doesn't work you kind of modify it but you know that's why we teach the a1 way now it might not be the best way at every single circumstance but at least we know the outcome yeah and i think that's important uh i think that uh the eight step sales process

what's the number one thing we talked about today? Today? One of the things. The morning mojo. I was on, too, and I'm pretty on spot here. We talked about going... What's one of those eight-step sales processes? Selling it right is one thing that we've been talking about.

What's the main thing, though? I'll give you a clue. Starting the job? Start the job. Get them to make a buying decision with you. We did talk about starting the job. That's what we did talk about. What's the main thing though? I'll give you a clue. Start the job. Start the job. Get them to make a buying decision with you. We did talk about starting the job. That's what we did talk about. But no, I was focusing on something that I've been struggling with my team is the final process of selling it right and making sure the customer is 120% satisfied and understanding what they got. Tell them all the bells, the whistles, the features, how it works, what it looks like when there's a problem, how to either call us

or to maybe adjust the safety eye by themselves. Take the extra 5, 10, maybe even 20 minutes if it's that in-depth of a job or an elderly person that you need to slow down with. That 20 minutes will save you hours on a potential callback where now you're not making money and most importantly, A1's not making money. And you may even potentially get an upset customer that blasts us on social media and that's the eighth step is sell right and part of that is look it's going over the warranty it's running the door up three or four times showing them how the safety eyes work i blow out their garage i clean the unit and clean my fingerprints.

I put my sticker. I show them the sticker. I let them listen to it. And the most important thing, here's the final step, is you say, listen, while I'm here, is there anything I can help you move or anything you need a hand with? That little step, start with something that I've added. That little step says, whoa, this guy's human. This guy's cool.

I don't get that buyers remorse you see the buyers remorse you just walked out of there with five hundred thousand bucks whatever and you're like wham bam thank you ma'am see you later peace but now you collect that check and you say listen I'm gonna run you through some things I went ahead I took your manual I wrote down the serial number here's how to answer this here's how you work your phone here's how this is done by the way i really love your house you have the greatest family i love that dog is there anything you need a hand with while i'm here absolutely i can't even count how many times i've helped clients bring groceries in the house or one of my go-tos is what about a house with multiple doors you

groceries house right i don't think so hey i've been offered dinner more than once this year. But my other thing is if I see that there's two, two houses or two garage doors in the house all the time, I'm like, Hey, do you have a burnt out light bulb? Do you have one on here? I'll throw a light bulb in there for you. And obviously not charging labor. It takes me 45 seconds to walk over and change a light bulb. But that goes so far to go to the customer. i'm like wow not only do you care about how this worked he cares about his job and he cares about leaving me you know better than satisfied you know yeah it's called raving fans it's better and what do i say better your best so even the best employees here they have goals they have goals to be better look

i don't care if you're running a marathon and you run it in, let's say, seven hours, I don't know. Should your goal be to always hit seven or should it be to hit six hours and 45 minutes? So last thing, give me some, I'm just going to say pros. I was going to say pros and cons about working here. But tell me some, give me some good things that, you know, I think we've got a pretty good team. You're buddies with all the managers. You're buddies with all the managers. You're buddies with all the field supervisors. We hang out.

I'm not a Harley guy like this guy. One of these days. Give me the good. Yeah, I mean, most importantly to me is you're coming into a quality company with a culture that cares about each other, that cares about the client, but also it's up and coming. up is the only way to go at a one so for me to come in three years ago and now be where I'm at now and I can only imagine where I'll be in three years and that's in a good way I want to

be here forever and I don't plan never try to find another job and that's something that makes me sleep better at night. The culture of someone who cares, and that goes all the way down to our support staff in the office from every position. And we all have our personalities and bad days and whatever. But long story short, if you have to band together and say, listen, this customer really needs X, Y, Z, I'm off, can you do this? The culture is really good and getting better it only goes up yeah it's a great way to pay the bills you know you came in here into this very office but three days ago four days ago and had an issue yeah and

you sat down and did we resolve it oh yeah within what an hour yeah that is not all me but listen that you don't come to me hardly ever but obviously things weren't getting done in a certain department we worked it out hey i love it i love it that people can still come in come into my door when something's bothering them and they're not getting it resolved that very rarely happens but it needs to happen so anyways great work brother i appreciate you a lot hey i just wanted to take a quick minute and thank you for listening to the podcast. You know, most people don't understand this, but the way that the podcast has grown

is when people subscribe and they leave a review. So if you would please, please, please, while it's top of mind, take a quick minute to subscribe and leave a quick review. It'll help me out so much. If you just took a little bit of time right now, I can't tell you enough how much I appreciate

the listeners and the feedback. And also when you subscribe, what I'm going to do is let you know the next guest coming on the podcast. And I'll let you email me anything you want me to ask that next person coming on. All the pros I have on here. I want your feedback. I want you to subscribe so you can start giving me the questions you want me to ask and help us grow together. Also, I'm giving away my book for free now. All you got to do is go to homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. You got to cover the shipping and handling, but I'm giving the material out for free. It's 200 pages. It's a hardcover book, homeservicemillionaire.com forward slash podcast. I appreciate each and every one of the listeners and thank you for making this

Home Service Expert podcast a success. I hope you're having a great day. And thanks again.