[00:00:07.370] - Chris
Welcome back to the Head Heart and Boots Podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:10.870] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead.
[00:00:17.590] - Chris
Man, I love this industry. You know what, man? I'm feeling really good. Maybe we'll get into some of that or maybe be able save it for a different show. But it's been a really good week. Actually, we could get into that a little bit. I don't know. We'll see. We might. Don't want to bore people with our shit, but that's right. Already broke the cussing barrier there. Well, right out of the gates. I'm sure our sponsors will be really thrilled about that.
[00:00:39.040] - Brandon
Speaking of sponsors pretty good. That was a pretty good handoff.
[00:00:44.740] - Chris
They knew we were salty before they signed up. Just like it's in the contract, isn't it? Something like that.
[00:00:49.470] - Brandon
I think so.
[00:00:50.180] - Chris
Yeah. Okay, I'm taking liftify. Okay. Love it. Love you, Michelle. This habit came popped in my head. Zach and his team at Lyftify are really game changers in the industry. We were talking with a potential client, actually, just this last week, and they were talking about how much they're winning because he came from an adjacent industry, home services industry, and he understands the Google reviews game, and it's a major driver for his business. Several million dollar business. Very successful with a lot of organic inbound lead gen. And you look at their reviews, sure enough, they understand the review game. And I think that's what Liftify has to offer. To all the rest of us, it's all about recency, consistency, getting those Google reviews every single week, week in, week out, month in, month out. And let's just face it, you and your team, if you follow the industry standard, the national averages across all the home services sectors, you're probably struggling to get 5% or 10% conversion. If you're doing 1000 jobs, maybe you're adding 100 reviews a year. And honestly, some of you, you've been in business 5610, maybe even longer years, and you're still sitting at 110 reviews or less.
[00:01:57.480] - Chris
Not acceptable. It's affecting your business. You're leaving money on the table. Your competitors are getting leads that you.
[00:02:04.070] - Brandon
Could be getting without paying for them.
[00:02:06.010] - Chris
By the way, and you might even service them better, right? You may have upstart punk businesses in your market that are getting organic leads to do business, and they don't even have the same expertise, service level or whatever that you have, but they're getting the call because you haven't had a fresh Google review in the last ten days, and they're getting one every day after they close a job. Lyft, if I can solve that problem for you almost immediately, they did for us, shoot, we added a bunch to our own floodlight page, and every client that we've sent to them has started routinely collecting reviews because they figured out a way to automate the process, but in a professional way that still converts and it's affordable.
[00:02:44.270] - Brandon
5%.
[00:02:45.170] - Chris
It's crazy.
[00:02:45.800] - Brandon
That's a big number, dude.
[00:02:46.840] - Chris
It's a really big number. So if you do 1000 jobs a year, and many of you are at that scale, you should be adding 200 to 250 new Google reviews a year. Have you been doing that? If you haven't called Liftify, don't call them. That's weird. Go to their website. Nobody calls anybody anymore. Liftify comb. Ludlite, we've got a deal. We worked out with them. It's Onboarding special, blah, blah, blah. But that doesn't matter. Don't do it because of the deal. Do it because you need it for your business. Yeah, seriously. I mean, for some of you, like I just mentioned, doing this could net you hundreds of thousands of dollars over the next year, if not more. If not more, right? So there you go.
[00:03:26.440] - Brandon
Dude, you're salty today. I like it. I know. It's actually changing my whole perspective on this topic we might get into. I'm thinking, well, maybe it's sexier than I gave it credit for.
[00:03:35.480] - Chris
I'm feeling the juice.
[00:03:36.380] - Brandon
I'm liking it. Okay, CNR magazine gang. You guys have seen this. Oh, here's a real relative thing that happened.
[00:03:43.130] - Chris
No. Yeah.
[00:03:44.300] - Brandon
Both right? Look at the brains on this guy. Yeah. So we were talking to some people.
[00:03:49.500] - Chris
That was pretty douchey. Allow me to correct your grammar. Thanks, man.
[00:03:55.290] - Brandon
Do you want to check my spelling as well? On the transcripts? All right, so listen, CNR Magazine, not that long ago, we had this an interesting conversation. We won't go into detail. And you guys know how this industry works. It's like we hear hubbub, right, about what's going on. And literally, as we're having the conversation and we're kind of poking around, like, I'm not sure if this is public information or if it's not, blah, blah, blah, boom. CNR magazine does an announcement on one of the most recent acquisitions. Here's my point. I'm not even going to say who it is. My point is, dude, they are in the mix. CNR Magazine is in the mix. So when it comes to this idea of getting relevant information, getting current information, having some eyes out on the horizon, people that are collecting guidance and services and systems and all sorts of information about our industry and looking out in front of us to help us anticipate incoming changes, they're doing it. I know, you guys.
[00:04:53.260] - Chris
Here's a funny scenario. We're talking to a legit industry player connected to all the shakers and whatnot, and he started to tiptoe around, not saying names. And I'm like, oh, you're talking about so and so, right? He's like, Wait, how'd you know that? I didn't think the announcement was happening to him. I'm like, oh, I just literally saw it on CNR across my LinkedIn feed.
[00:05:13.870] - Brandon
Made you as.
[00:05:14.530] - Chris
You said that. I know. I felt so important.
[00:05:17.290] - Brandon
So there you go. Nod to Michelle. I mean, their team is just kicking butt, taking names. Just an absolute friend to the industry. A really high end resource for us is Restore. So anyways, guys, CNR magazine, go get signed up. There's no reason that you're not getting that on a regular basis. Tons of assets that they share, everything from print media, podcasts to digital resources. So do yourself a favor and be a subscriber to CNR.
[00:05:42.640] - Chris
Yeah, follow them on LinkedIn too, if you're not. I mean, I feel like the whole industry is probably following them on LinkedIn by now. If you're not weird, right? Go. We followed him.
[00:05:49.920] - Brandon
Weirdo.
[00:05:50.760] - Chris
Jeez.
[00:05:51.410] - Brandon
All right, my man. Where are we going?
[00:05:52.980] - Chris
Listen, storms are coming, and this isn't just relevant to the Gulf, the panhandle. There's so much talk about our industry. Why do you think so much PE money is coming in our industry is because whatever you believe, don't believe, think, have opinions about global warming, blah, blah, blah, is that there's a legitimate uptick that the bankers are noticing in natural disasters, storm activity, storm severity, all that kind of stuff, right? It's a reality. And it tends to happen in these next three to six months. So we're headed into that. So regardless of what market you're in, we were just talking, one of our clients in Idaho flash storm three inches of rain in like a three hour period or something. It was less than 24 hours and generated an outrageous number of calls. And their MIT log is now like 49 pages long. So we're in that period of the year, and it's why our business is so awesome, because these kind of things happen and people need help. So along those same lines, because I think so, we're all in that headspace, we're all preparing. Hopefully we're financially preparing for what that's going to mean for our business, depending on where we're at in the country.
[00:07:01.590] - Chris
We're trying to prepare our teams and we're also selling. I mean, I just can't emphasize it enough. We were talking to a client here just this last hour that's located near the Gulf. They are participate in regular storm and catastrophe situations. And I think one of the key behaviors that helps people succeed is free storm planning with commercial portfolios and clients finding a way to formalize that relationship, put a ring on the finger right before the event happens, and of course, everybody's doing it. There's an element of, oh, yeah, we've done that, that we encounter in those relationships. I think there's an element of people I guess it's very common in our industry to pencil whip those kind of ERP plans where we put out minimal effort. There's minimal intelligence gathering, there's minimal shoulder to shoulder sight walking time. It's really just a Mickey Mouse contract or binder that sits on somebody's shelf. I feel like I'm speaking the truth. Pretty reliably here. Even with those of you that are in these hurricane alley, we could all use some professionalizing when it comes to our ERP process with people do you think that's fair?
[00:08:15.680] - Brandon
Yeah, I think one of the things that I've seen and heard you trying to address with people consistently is yes. It's like there's this and scenario where our ERPs MSAs is there some element of it being a marketing function?
[00:08:32.470] - Chris
100% yes.
[00:08:34.470] - Brandon
And however, I think what we see people do is that's where they stop believing in the product. We've adopted the idea that clearly there's a marketing mechanism to that tool, but then it stops. Instead of there being an engagement around it and a more higher level of competency around how to deploy that resourcefully and in a way that actually does add an immense amount of value to the client, we've hung our hat on it. It's a marketing mechanism. And then we've stopped exploring how to deploy it correctly. And I think you highlight that when you talk to teams. It's yes, we recognize that. Is there some tongue in cheek? Is there some marketing mechanisms here? 100% like, it's one of the few ways that we can build relationship and start establishing some kind of formal engagement.
[00:09:20.250] - Chris
Without a first call.
[00:09:21.940] - Brandon
Right?
[00:09:22.340] - Chris
Yeah.
[00:09:23.000] - Brandon
But I also like I mean, today was a perfect example, actually, that you had a really interesting call where we're teaching people how to educate the end user on its real value. And so anyways, I think that's where we've stumbled is that we're pencil whipping it because we've bought in the idea it's only a marketing mechanism instead of no, this is actually a real critical element to customer experience.
[00:09:48.540] - Chris
Right. So even many franchises and I'm actually not dogging on this because I think it's one of those some companies have turned it into a KPI. You need to do X number of ERPs per month. And I don't actually think that's a terrible idea, but I think what we fail to do is inspect the quality of these and their actual function as a sales tool. Because just putting I mean, I think of this. We had a private school that was in our market when we were operating the field, and it's a big private school, big campus, lots of buildings, blah, blah, blah. I was in there talking to the facility manager and I see a large franchise, common, big name franchise, a binder on there. And I said, hey, what's that? Just curious questions, right? You guys know the floodlight program, so what's that? Oh, yeah, we did that thing. We did this thing. I say, hey, can we take a look at it? Pulled the binder down, started flipping through the pages. First page, name, address, phone number. There's some info about the number of buildings. I'm like, Boy, that's not very useful to this client, knowing how many buildings they have on their campus, presumably blah, blah, blah.
[00:10:58.760] - Brandon
It's like kind of filled out.
[00:11:00.530] - Chris
So here's a binder with like 25 pages in a three ring binder. And then of course, the binder is flanked by the pockets are flanked with sales trifolds and things like that. And I just start flipping through the pages, and out of the 25 pages or whatever, there's maybe three pages that are filled out. And I say, hey, when was the last time that the company came by to audit this with you and update, because have you had any change in your maintenance staff since you guys did this? Oh. He's like, yeah, it's incredibly hard for me to keep maintenance staff. And I said, okay. And he said, Honestly, now that I think about it, this was here when I got here, and we turned to the front page, and it was actually a different facility manager name. It was in the front of it. So, listen, stuff like that happens. And you know what, you and I, I'm sure, oh, my gosh, right? We've all done that. We've all flaked out on our follow up with a particular account, this or that. Okay? Unfortunately, that was not the first time I had that exact same experience.
[00:11:59.060] - Chris
But here's the thing. They had a catastrophic event before I sat in the office that day. I said, well, hey, tell me about so we looked through that. It was just nonsense, and it was a non starter. And I said, So have you guys had any damage events since you've been here? And he'd been there like, six, seven years. He said, well, actually, last year. And of course, isn't that just terrible when you meet with a prospect, you're like, oh, I just come in last summer, right? They had a catastrophic water loss. And this is really common, not just in private little Christian schools with minimal funding and minimal staff. This happens all the time. What happened was he was on vacation. Classic story. Murphy's Law, facility manager was on vacation. I think he was, like, in Mexico or something and didn't have an international call plan, was really out of pocket. And the Custodian was there at night is how I think they caught this old building with overhead water pipes. Their mains, like three inch pipes or something like that, broke, perforated, clamped. I don't know what happened, but started spewing water. Custodian found it.
[00:13:13.180] - Chris
Custodians freaking out, doesn't know who to call.
[00:13:16.880] - Brandon
I mean, let's think about they didn't refer to the three ring.
[00:13:20.830] - Chris
Well, for all I know, right, the facility office, I think, was locked over the weekend. Everybody went home or at night or whatever. So the irony here, right? Custodian probably can't even get into the facility office to grab a phone list. So he's going through his phone numbers somehow, eventually is calling around, doesn't know what to do. I mean, it's just like, holy cow, water spewing from the ceiling at however many hundreds of gallons a minute. And finally calls the principal. Principal's phone goes to voicemail of this whole school eventually, because I think most people, most even Custodial, they don't know to call the fire department. Who do you call? If you can't reach anybody on your staff, this is a reality. Guys, here's a little tip for your next team meeting. If you manage properties and you're listening to this, right, who the heck do you call? Well, finally, in desperation, calls 911, gets dispatched to the fire department. Fire department comes out, master shut off in the parking lot in a random place, kind of in front of a bush shaded. They finally locate this because even the fire department does all of their schematics.
[00:14:28.210] - Chris
If they have schematics of these Master shut offs around the city, they still have to hunt for it. And then the valve turner tool is in the maintenance shop. And so they got to wait till one of the other battalion rigs shows up and they got this valve tool. It was a comedy of errors, right? Yeah. All that to say, oh, my gosh. Right? So minute 15, nobody's there. Minute 20 is trying to chase down the principal. Oh, my gosh. Voicemail calls 14 times, probably no answer. Voicemail finally dials 911 because, holy crap, 30 minutes later, how much water in a main line has spewed into that building? It was catastrophic. And I was telling the story to our team just before this call. Our sales team that we work with. And I'm like, Guys, it still would have been a substantial loss.
[00:15:17.360] - Brandon
Oh, sure.
[00:15:18.020] - Chris
Could have been, say, a $200,000 dryout and recon kind of project, and it was like millions of dollars, utter destruction, which, of course, whatever restoration company handled it was probably very excited about, right? But the point is, whoever came in and did that so called ERP, I guarantee you, unless they got very lucky, there was not much of a chance they got that damage repair. And of course, that story underscores the value of these ERPs that we bring them and the components that are important.
[00:15:49.380] - Brandon
There you go.
[00:15:50.140] - Chris
Right?
[00:15:50.560] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:15:51.150] - Chris
Because it's not just a tool for it is a great marketing tool. Let's come back to that of how we use it as a proper sales tool.
[00:15:57.640] - Brandon
But yeah, and I would say I think everyone kind of gets the connection there, how to connect the dots, but it's the actual viable customer value piece that I feel like just gets missed. Now, part of that, too, is the silos that exist between operations and sales teams on most companies, too. I think that also perpetuates this issue because we're not actually looking at that ERP as a unified front tool. It's salespeople are deploying it for a.
[00:16:26.010] - Chris
Sales purpose versus It. No.
[00:16:29.740] - Brandon
Our sales team, our relationship development team, is deploying this tool to gather information, to equip our operational staff to conduct the service at the highest level, 100%. That's where the breakdown and I think.
[00:16:43.490] - Chris
The other breakdown, too, is we treat it like a sales process. We don't lead it like an Ops partner, because that's really what we are. We do these ERPs. So, I mean, an example of that, right? With ERPs and God, we all skip this step. We just don't think about these things. And I didn't for a number of years. When I first got in the industry, it took me a while to connect these dots, right? It took me situations like that, hearing the fallout of a really poorly not even really an ERP, right? But I've learned over time. One of my favorite sales coaches is Brian Burns. I've talked about him before, wrote the Maverick sales method. He talks about committee selling and how don't expect even your purchasing people. We give them too much credit in a lot of ways. Nobody teaches a purchasing agent how to buy, really. They teach them how to evaluate bids. They teach how to set requirements. They teach them how to do write RFPs, but they don't teach them how to buy effectively. They don't teach them how to navigate a sales process with vendors and stuff like that.
[00:17:41.430] - Chris
That was really formative for me because I realized a lot of times historically, there's been times where I've rolled into a sales meeting almost subservient to OOH. I'm in front of the VP of Yada Yada, assuming that they're going to tell me what they want to do and how they want that to play out, and they never did. Now, of course, some will if you give them that space, but it's not necessarily to their benefit.
[00:18:04.770] - Brandon
Yeah, they may not do it well. No, but they're going to fill their ego.
[00:18:08.320] - Chris
Their ego is going to fill some of them. Some of them, their ego will fill the gap and tell us what to do and all this kind of stuff. And that's a bad outcome also. Right. It's important we lead. And this is true of any sales conversation, but with those ERPs, I think it's really important for us to map out a process for them while not overwhelming them with it. Hey, look, I'm going to lead this. This is going to require very little time, effort, and energy from your team, but there are going to be some points of orientation here. So I'm going to do the heavy lifting for your team. I'm going to schedule with your team. I'm going to be the one that pulls together all the information. But there's going to be a few intervals where I have some questions. I need to fill in some gaps in order to have a plan that is really effective. And then I will initiate. We'll have an orientation meeting. It'll be a single moment of time where we get everybody on Zoom, or we get everybody at your next facility, your maintenance meeting, whatever.
[00:18:59.390] - Chris
And we're going to go through this because I don't want you guys to get caught in a scenario like I described. And all of you should have a scenario that's real, that you can speak to with confidence, your company has probably navigated a very severe response like that. Where there was very poor planning, there was chaos on site, people didn't know what to do. There was confusion, and it ultimately magnified or amplified the damage and the scope of work and ultimately the cost to them. It affected their business continuity, all that kind of stuff. So you need to have a real story. And if your company doesn't have one because you're too young, there's plenty of people in the industry go on one of the forums and say, anybody have a great damage recovery story where there was poor planning? Blah, blah, blah? Yeah, right. And so we have to lead them through that process. We have to really think about our language. Okay? So that's part is we have to lead the process. The other thing too, right now is, like I said, we have a lot of teams in these storm prone areas right now that are hustling hustling.
[00:19:56.550] - Chris
They're doing ERPs by the dozens. And one of the things that can hit, especially with newer sales reps, is kind of this oh, shit moment of like, we have a client in a storm prone area that got a huge multifamily group. It's like 40 buildings, and they're thinking, holy shit, this is one ERP how. And so one of the conversations we had, this was yesterday at one of our team sales meetings was, okay, how do we handle that? Because overwhelm doesn't benefit anybody, right? And we have an opportunity in front of us. We do need to formalize these relationships. But part of it was just a reality check. Look, let's just think about it this way. In fact, the owner piped up and said this, and it was very smart and comforting to the sales team. He said, look, guys, if an adjuster were responding to damage at a property like this after a hurricane with 40 properties, it would take them three or four days to walk through and assess that number of properties, maybe more, or multiple adjusters, right? So that's true.
[00:20:55.030] - Brandon
Yeah. You're not going to see 40 buildings and have a plan in 24 hours.
[00:20:59.460] - Chris
And the reality is that right now, if you're in one of those stormpone areas, you may not do a site walk, you may not identify the shut offs and tag them in every single building on properties. But here's one way that you can lead your customer and establish the right expectations. First of all, this is a process, right? Clearly, this is a physical process. Let me outline what this is going to look like, right? I'm going to create some sample language for you, for you to send out to all of your onsite managers and to your maintenance department. Edit it however you want. I don't care. I just want to make this easy on you, okay? So it'll just kind of let them know what to expect, what's the why behind why we're doing this in simple terms and then just outline the next couple of steps. You're going to send that out to your team. I'm going to follow up with each of them and I'm going to set up sitewalks. This is not going to happen immediately. This is going to be a process over the next few months. Right. Better off to get some of your properties totally dialed in than none, right.
[00:21:55.570] - Chris
So I established the value there. Look, something is far better than nothing when we're facing a storm season, right? So we just set that expectation. Obviously there's a reason why your team has never put this in place. It takes a lot of time and I'm going to do that for you, but it's going to take some time. And then the next question is, I say, during our last storm event, did you have certain properties that were more severely impacted than others? Because this is just a reality in these storm prone areas. Is that because of geography? Because of other barriers, other buildings in front of them that act as a windbreak? This is just a reality. Some get more prone to damage than others. Have them identify that. Now all of a sudden you've established your priority building. Yeah.
[00:22:37.410] - Brandon
I think a layer to add to that is the function of that building. Some structures, for instance, are maybe they house finance or administrative operations. Maybe certain buildings are the backup power. Right. That's the building that has the generator systems as part of it. Could be. Maybe you've got it. Or technology infrastructure. And so the indoor environment is more important. Like ask those questions of what's the operational specifications of that particular building? Because in places where there's a multi campus yeah, some look all the same, but normally one or two of those buildings, there's something about it that's different. Like, for instance, an HQ element. Right. You might have multiple buildings that house, lease, renters, or users, but then the HQ I e, the command and control is in this small building over an XYZ location. And we can easily forget that because that one's got 200 doors.
[00:23:30.150] - Chris
Well, if they want to stay in.
[00:23:31.890] - Brandon
Control of their company, they need their systems to remain in operation. And they may very well tell you that that's more of a focus point than some of the others anyway.
[00:23:39.660] - Chris
100%. Think like a boss. You don't need to have your MBA and understand executive business management, all this stuff. Just think like a boss. Like, listen, if I were running this campus of senior living buildings and a hurricane hits, what am I thinking about? What are my problems? You guys are smart. You can figure this stuff out. You can at least get a line on what's important here, right?
[00:23:59.520] - Brandon
Yeah, things to think about, right? Security, communication support, safety. Safety people, medical support. Right. Like what are those systems? Where are those located? Because they are probably likely going to be buildings with elevators.
[00:24:13.690] - Chris
That's right. Yeah. Depending on your environment. Air conditioning is a massive thing following a storm. Massive. And of course, in some markets more than others, but in our southern properties, temporary AC, temporary climate control, which buildings are going to need that versus others, all the things all right, Headhart and Boots listeners wanted to stop here just a moment and thank our underwriting sponsor, Bloodlight Consulting Group. As all of you know, right, Brandon and I, this is our passion project, head Heart and Boots is but it's also a way more and more that our consulting clients find us and in effect, they interview us. Right. Those of you been listening to Show for a while, you get to know who we are, right, what we're about. So if Head Heart, Boots is valuable to you, one of the best things you can do is share it with your friends. And it's been incredible to watch just the audience grow. And we still get text messages from many of you about shows that you really like and impacted you. So that's number one. And please keep doing that. Many of you have been huge advocates of the show.
[00:25:16.890] - Chris
We also just want to remind you too, if you're a restoration company owner and you're interested in a partner in your growth, you want some help building out systems, developing your leadership teams, helping set up the infrastructure for you to scale and grow into the company that you're trying to build.
[00:25:33.600] - Brandon
That's what we do.
[00:25:34.600] - Chris
That's what we do is we come alongside restoration company leaders, we help equip them and we help support them in that growth trajectory. So if you're looking for that go to floodlightgrp.com, potentially we could be a great match for each other.
[00:25:47.700] - Brandon
Another way that we really do serve our client base and our sphere of influence is through our premier partners. We work really hard to vet those folks that we believe bring a level of value to the industry, that it can really be leveraged in a way to have a sincere, positive impact on your business. We take that very seriously. The folks that we create, those kind of ongoing partnerships, that's not a check the box kind of scenario. We really see strategic alignment in the value that they bring. We see value in the way that their leadership teams and their partners are developed. And we've done very sincere work of ensuring that these folks that we introduce our clients and our sphere to can actually create vetted value. So go check out Bloodlightgrp.com Premierpartners and see if there's some folks on there that you can connect with and begin developing some other resources to support your growth and your business. One thing to remember here is that I think it's the term business continuity. Is that term what is an ERP designed to do to protect and attempt to fix or allow business continuity to remain in place?
[00:26:54.050] - Chris
Yeah. Another thing, too. And this is the role this is one of the roles of the ERP is to build resiliency. This is another term I've seen bounced around, and I like it. Right? It's like, how do we make your business operations more resilient in the face of storm damage fallout? Right. And pre planning is a huge part of that, right. Being strategic. So as we lead them through the process, we can use them to help us establish priorities and set realistic expectations. Hey, well, that's excellent. Okay, so these four buildings, or the brunt of damage during Hurricane Ian as an example.
[00:27:29.680] - Brandon
Right?
[00:27:30.400] - Chris
Awesome. Listen, my team and I, here's my promise to you. We're going to prioritize getting those buildings done first, and then as soon as I'm finished, I'm going to reach out and we're going to set up an orientation call to make sure that we take good advantage of this information and the planning. Everybody knows how to access it, all the things. We're going to go through that and make sure that everybody's on the same page. And then you and I will establish priority in terms of what properties come next. Boom. Now, when I go to do those ERPs, there may still be a sense of overwhelm because those priorities may be like, holy shit, well, that's just one customer. I promised I'm going to do these four buildings. But thinking about what are the most critical elements that I need to include, and I would say, and this is really a conversation for you to have with your senior leadership. I mean, really, this is a combo that if you're in a storm prone area, particularly in the south, the Gulf, the East, Lower Eastern Seaboard, et cetera, this is a conversation to bring up your next leadership meeting and think through this stuff.
[00:28:25.250] - Chris
Right. But from my perspective and some of the experiences you and I've had, is the single most important element of an ERP, if you could do nothing else, is to establish a very detailed and direct phone tree of no less than five cois inside that account. This is a deliberate conversation. This isn't just going back and forth on some emails, but it's really helping them process through. Okay. If a storm hits in the middle of the night, that's kind of a worst case scenario, right? A weekend in the middle of the night. Right. Let's think through that scenario. Under normal circumstances, how do you guys typically handle those sorts of situations? Who is the very first person? Practically speaking, I'm not talking about what's in the chart, but if it's a multifamily location, a resident starts ringing the phone, who are they calling? Is it front desk? Do phones forward? Who do they forward to? Let's start there. Right? You as the senior leader, do you want that call first or does that go to your chief engineer? Does it go to your maintenance manager? Does it go to one of your maintenance technicians where the call rotates amongst the tech teams.
[00:29:39.630] - Chris
If they don't answer, who do you want that call to go to? Well, that's the phone tree that we need to establish, and this is true. It doesn't matter if you're talking to a hospital system, a network of clinics.
[00:29:48.630] - Brandon
School district, whatever, and they'll run the gambit in terms of competency. You might talk to one client and you think, oh, my gosh, it's this medical center. It's going to be so obvious. They'll have it all dialed in and they're a tire fire. And then you go to a smaller entity and jeez. Clearly somebody on the team is focused on safety and pre planning, and they've got that tree well established. But you're right, that's probably the most critical element. It's just who's responsible for what is half the battle. I think maybe a couple of names to add to that are your core trades, right? That service, that building. So think indoor environmental, think Communications, Power, those subs that they have that existing relationship with, because I don't want to jump ahead here, but something to consider then is once you get those names, two things. One, leverage that relationship, because chances are they have more clients you like, right? And you can support each other, but then get those operations teams connected because ultimately they're going to partner together to support that client, right? Like when it's time to get into the trench, you want them to be a partner of yours as much as they are a partner of that client.
[00:30:54.670] - Chris
Boy, that is next level stuff, dude. And that's one thing that almost no company puts in is ask, hey, listen, tell me about your existing preferred vendor list. Do you have that in Excel Sheets format? I will go ahead and go to the trouble of uploading that into our ERP document so that every single person on your team has access to that. And guys like, side note, we've heard us talk about restorationerp.com. Honestly, Jeff's a great guy. It's a great product. There's a few other options out there. I don't really care. But a cloud served ERP program, it's where it's at if you want to create real value for you and your team and your prospect or your client, right? That's the way to go. Because then that really is truly a value add. Well, I will upload your vendor list to that cloud based platform so that it's in the hand of every single one of your technician, staff and facilities team so that nobody's caught flat footed.
[00:31:46.120] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:31:46.790] - Chris
We may need to get the power company out to provide temporary power source or whatever. So contacts, phone tree, which you're exactly right should include their preferred vendors. And by the way, the sales opportunity there. I mean, come on now, right? For us, how pro is it for us to reach out at the conclusion of that and say, hey, we just recently completed an emergency response plan for XYZ Property Group portfolio, whatever. And to say, while I was uploading all their preferred vendor contacts, I saw you guys on there and I realized, I think you guys also service So and So. Do you have a sales executive that is kind of your regional sales exec? I'd like to put them in touch with our sales. We should be introducing each other to clients. Spot on. So and So had great things to say about how you guys have serviced their account. Now all of a sudden we have the opportunity to get introed into other commercial accounts we're not currently connected to. So there's just a massive year round opportunity for us to work those ERPs well.
[00:32:43.830] - Brandon
And then those subs really have interest, self serving interest, to help provide some information and to potentially partner with you on the whole lunch and learn, for lack of a better term, or when you go to do the follow up and really educate their team on how to properly deploy it, well, guess what? Now you can invite that electrician to come out and talk about their elements of it. So you don't need to be the jack of all trades in terms of educating and partnering with that client either. Let the specialist come in and represent their lane and you stay in your lane, right?
[00:33:16.660] - Chris
100%. Now, here's another thing, and I'm getting a little bit I guess some will think I'm getting a little creative, a little nuanced here, but I think there's value first thing photos. I think front elevation photos are important. The other thing for us to consider with these properties is sometimes like I had this one property I did an ERP for up in the Greater Portland market. There are a lot, especially in these more urban areas, there's a lot of flag lot properties, you know what I mean, where these dense, like, urban markets and it's not just downtowns, but it's these huge metropolitan areas. You have a lot of properties that are buried behind another property. They've got a driveway access and a lot of times they don't have road signage. So huge problem because if our teams are deploying out there for the first time, this is a first notice of loss during a storm event. Holy cow. First of all, there's trucks and vehicles and debris everywhere. It's like worst case scenario for wayfinding. So identifying really good wayfinding that you can plug into that electronic ERP document. So when your team you're typically going two up to a place, the person who's riding shotgun, they're like, hey, look for and they've got some wayfinding indicator to know where that access driveway is.
[00:34:26.120] - Chris
Or as part of the ERP process, the client may say, look, here's where we need all the vehicles parked for X, Y and Z reasons. And it's a back way or something like that. So that's key. Another thing in terms of photos, I think is really important is doing an overhead with an overlay, meaning use Google Earth. Right? If you guys have drones, that's cool. I mean, that's Brad, right? You can get a much better shot, an aerial shot of well, you can even that out.
[00:34:51.920] - Brandon
You can have somebody to come help.
[00:34:53.250] - Chris
You pretty much shoot if it's a high end client. Right, sure. Right. But anyway, that overhead shot, what's so valuable about that is when we get the call in and it's Building C, if we've got a front elevation photo of Building C, if there's any distinguishing features amongst the buildings, like, the photos are even more valuable because people can very quickly eyeball, where are we going? Right? But then having that overlay with the compass marking on it so we can identify and of course, too, the wayfinding we can see that's the back driveway entrance, the front door, and Building C is it that way. It makes it so much easier. And look, when we're talking about my previous example of a three inch water main, minutes affect severity well, and then.
[00:35:35.040] - Brandon
In these cat environments, and many of you have experienced this firsthand, you may not be able to tell what the hell you're looking at. So depending on the structure damage, the overhead might kind of align. A plus B equals C. Well, I'm missing A, but I can identify where B and C is. Now I know what A is, right. So I think that overhead does help you give some context, especially if there's extensive damage.
[00:35:58.440] - Chris
And this stuff is so easy, to be honest. It takes time, but this isn't rocket science. Our methodology was we had iPads with our sales team, and it was very easy. They would pull up Google Earth while they're on property, take that aerial shot, do a screenshot, and then just do markup with an Apple pencil. Easy peasy. Create those markings, those Identifiers, and then take that image and just upload it into the ERP doc. It's not hard. It just takes some time and consistency. All right, so that phone tree. Oh, man. Just can't emphasize this enough. And I think there's an opportunity in that as well. So think about all the current ERPs you have in this lead up to storm season. There is no better time right now. In addition to you securing new ERPs, to be focusing on your existing ERPs and saying, hey, we need to do a quick audit before storm season, it allows you to get shoulder to shoulder with those people. If they've built any new buildings, they've done any renovations, any turnover, any turnover, just anything.
[00:36:55.990] - Brandon
And it's been a year.
[00:36:57.500] - Chris
It's been a year.
[00:36:58.500] - Brandon
How warm is the relationship, right? If you take advantage of getting back in there with a purpose, with a value added reason, could save you from having a competitor roll in leading up to storm time. Because as we're talking about it, they are too, right?
[00:37:13.400] - Chris
No joke. And, oh, by the way, if you're in one of these hurricane zones, it is 100% guarantee that ERP or not, you're going to have three or four competitors, some that are even more capable than you, let's be honest.
[00:37:26.830] - Brandon
And they're headed there. Now, we know right now of teams that are starting to deploy their kind of lead Echelon salespeople. They're coming to your territory right now to begin those relationships. Now is the time to go back.
[00:37:40.020] - Chris
They're leasing parking lot.
[00:37:41.700] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:37:42.360] - Chris
They're leasing parking lots. They're staging trailers. Like that stuff is happening now. It's may guys, I mean, let's be real. This is real stuff. This is billions of dollars of work that's coming. So in my opinion, if you can do nothing else but you can get a sitewalk with the local onsite person, you document, you get visuals. You get good visuals for wayfinding and identifying these properties from the air and from the front elevation photos. And we do a really good job of creating that phone tree, including the key vendors. You have really done a great service to that client.
[00:38:17.460] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:38:18.080] - Chris
You've done a powerful service to them. You've effectively put the ring on the finger. And what I mean by that is, once somebody walks you around their property, they give you time. This is critical. Sightwalk is critical. You have consummated that relationship in an important way.
[00:38:31.160] - Brandon
That's right.
[00:38:31.510] - Chris
And it allows you permission, because now when you come on, it's like, hey, is John or is Sally or is Jose here? I just want to check in. I had a quick question, a follow up from our sitewalk we did last week. I wanted to clarify something or oh, we never got around to going to the fire riser room. I wanted to make try identify that on our overhead visual our overhead sitemap. It gives you permission and access to that account, to that team in a real value added way forever. Now, if you steward it well, don't wait six months for your first follow up. Now, this is the best application for route marketing. This is like what route marketing should be. Guys is checking in on those ERPs on a minimum, a quarterly basis with a lot of these kind of accounts, right. So we could dive deeper. But I think people get the idea it's like every business is a little bit different. If we were talking about hospitals, different scenario. There's nuances to different business operations. Movie theaters, hotels versus restaurants, right.
[00:39:32.500] - Brandon
There's stuff, but this is more of an orientation around that mindset, like overcoming the whole it's a marketing mechanism. Let's just take a couple of minutes to connect the dots with operations, if you don't mind. And guys, listen, if you're one of these sales team members and you've got a real sincere focus on commercial business development and you get it like you understand the playbook and how these things work in hand. In hand, then there's two things that are happening right now. One is your team's unified and you are working parallel of each other. Or there's these opportunities where there's a disconnect because of these normal silos that exist in so many of our restoration businesses. Well, this is an opportunity to do a little bit of leading up the chain of command. So if your sales team is oriented on this already and they are beginning to have those proactive conversations, they're auditing existing ERPs and making sure they're current and ready to go, then what does the conversation look like with our Ops teams? And we have examples of folks on our client roster that are so good at proactive prep. And one of them I'm thinking about specifically, he's like the definition in the dictionary.
[00:40:42.180] - Brandon
If you were to look up pre storm event prep, this guy's got it. I mean, he's unbelievably proactive. My point is, though, is that's not super common. Even if we do storm work, we don't always have leadership in place that's doing a great job of partnering with all the moving players and getting them really unified behind a common cause.
[00:41:00.470] - Chris
Okay?
[00:41:01.350] - Brandon
So if you're one of those businesses listening right now, please take heed. And if you're one of the sales teams that operates in one of those kinds of companies, this is your chance to lead up the chain of command. Here's what I mean by that. Whether it's you or whether it's the management staff of the sales team, right? Depending on where you fall in the roster, this is that time to go sit down with the Mitigation manager or Production Manager if you're a Serve pro model, right? Go sit down with your recon department manager and start at least having some kind of baseline conversation and prep. Like an example would be, if I go out and collect some really good response information, this is my opportunity to ask my operations team, where does it make the most sense for you to access this? And then, what training is required with your staff to know that their muscle memory is my first step is to go here to read this information in route as part of my response priority. So, again, I know some of this sounds a little overwhelming if you're going from zero to hero, but these are these principal things that at minimum, we need to consider.
[00:42:00.540] - Brandon
So again, identifying with your key leaders, where do we store this information, and then what behaviors, what training do we need to put into place to make sure our team knows to default to go find this information here first as part of their response? Because I'll tell you what, guys. R1 great way to never do work for a commercial client again is to spend all this time and energy doing a great job of establishing an ERP and then not connect the dots with your production staff. And then the very first thing they do is show up on a job site and not know what the fuck they're doing or who they're talking to. You will never get a call again.
[00:42:33.740] - Chris
Okay?
[00:42:34.030] - Brandon
So there's a danger to setting a standard of you're going to be a professional and that is you have to deliver. Right? So think about that with your Op staff. To a certain extent, this is non negotiable. But again, if there's a little bit of a breakdown in the chain of command, which is so common, it's not malicious intent, it happens then go directly to your department level leaders. They're the ones that are going to be on the ground anyways with their teams when it's time to deploy. Oh, by the way, like pointing back to normal stuff that we talk about pretty consistently. This is also one of the most important reasons why we ask department managers to be engaged in the onboarding of a new relationship. In terms of the sales process is because this is where you get to meet that engineer that's going to be calling you anyways, right? And so you play a part in setting this course for how we'll respond in the near future. So anyways, that's critical here's another thing that I would just suggest is, guys, practice, practice. And again, it's so hard for us to be proactive.
[00:43:30.220] - Brandon
This is one of the many byproducts of things we don't get to because we're busy chasing the tyranny of the urgent.
[00:43:35.910] - Chris
I thought you were going to say chasing our ass.
[00:43:37.480] - Brandon
Well, chasing our ass and our head. But guys, this is that opportunity before shit hits the fan. Like, get your teams practicing. It's like you can do it in the shop in the back 40 in 15 minutes prior to loadout that day. Like, guys, what happens when XYZ Property Management calls us and that high rise tower on 14th has a 20th floor loss? What do we do and what are the things I'm looking for? I really don't care about where the equipment comes or what trucks we take because that's business as usual. What I'm looking for in that 15 minutes is team. Where do we go to identify the customer's information? How do we leverage that information to navigate to the job site?
[00:44:18.450] - Chris
Billy, show me their ERP. Pulls his phone out of his pocket, goes him up, right?
[00:44:24.760] - Brandon
Pull up the communication tree. Where do we start?
[00:44:28.260] - Chris
That's a walkthrough.
[00:44:29.280] - Brandon
That's a practice. We don't have to jump in a truck. We don't have to use a stopwatch and practice how fast we drive from point A to point B. That'd be cool. But that's not what we're talking about here. Where's the information?
[00:44:40.750] - Chris
How do we deploy it to give.
[00:44:42.190] - Brandon
A really great customer experience? Right? This is that stuff that we can start connecting the dots on.
[00:44:47.310] - Chris
So cool. If this has been valuable for you, please share it. That's the best way. It's funny, we get a lot of feedback from listeners. They'll end up sharing it with their team. They'd be like, oh, you got to hear this. That kind of stuff. That's awesome. Also sharing it on LinkedIn. We post these things every Tuesday morning, so please repost it, I guess, is the proper language, if we're aligned kind of in how we're thinking about the business. But you want a battle buddy, you want a partner to help you deploy and implement some of these kinds of mindsets systems processes to really help you dial these operational things in with your teams. Reach out to us. I'm thinking, I mean, Scott, this is the world, this is the air he breathes is large loss and cat work. And so we've got some really great resources on the Floodlight team that we can partner you with. So just go to floodlightgrp.com, mess around, find the links, click on One on One consulting. That's one of the ways that you can work with us. But thank you for listening and we'll be back for more later.
[00:45:45.130] - Brandon
All right, everybody.
[00:45:46.060] - Chris
Heath.
[00:45:46.340] - Brandon
Thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart and Boots.
[00:45:49.600] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show, you love this episode. Please hit follow. Formerly known as subscribe. Write us a review or share this episode with a friend. Share it on LinkedIn, share it via text, whatever. It all helps. Thanks for listening.