[00:00:00.500] - Chris
Wow. How many of you have listened to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast? I can't tell you that reaction, how much that means to us. Welcome back to the Head, Heart, and Boots podcast. I'm Chris.
[00:00:11.380] - Brandon
And I'm Brandon. Join us as we wrestle with what it takes to transform ourselves and the businesses we lead. This new camera angle makes my arms look smaller than yours.
[00:00:21.490] - Chris
I'm noticing that, and I really appreciate it. I thought you did that on purpose.
[00:00:24.460] - Brandon
No, I don't. I didn't, and I am not happy with it.
[00:00:29.140] - Chris
Hello. Good morning. That's right. How are you doing?
[00:00:30.860] - Brandon
What's up, brother?
[00:00:32.090] - Chris
Well, you know what's funny?
[00:00:34.170] - Brandon
No, I don't know what.
[00:00:36.310] - Chris
It's good. This morning is good. The day is good. I've gotten so out of the habit of just responding with the customary, Oh, it's all good, man. Yeah, it's fine. Everything's fine. I'm like, Well, and I pause and I think about it, How is it? Some stuff is really awesome, some stuff is less awesome.
[00:00:53.090] - Brandon
Then the person's going, I don't know if it care.
[00:00:54.980] - Chris
The person wasn't actually asking for that little detail.
[00:00:57.300] - Brandon
I wasn't.
[00:00:58.840] - Chris
Yeah. Okay. So it's all good, bro.
[00:01:00.970] - Brandon
I didn't care. Yeah. Yeah.
[00:01:02.580] - Chris
It's great.
[00:01:03.280] - Brandon
I have noticed, too, that I know you and I don't do this on purpose, but because we are recipients of our friends' swag, every once while we show up for a recording like today, and it does feel like we're... It's all partner's way. It's completely... Yeah, I think you picked that shirt because of where it falls on your arms, but I could be reading it.
[00:01:23.800] - Chris
Just following your footsteps, bro.
[00:01:26.070] - Brandon
Oh, man. Dude, I got to... I got to tell you what.
[00:01:29.810] - Chris
This It's been a hard bro. Several weeks for you.
[00:01:33.550] - Brandon
Oh, I wish it was weeks. It's been hard Q1 for Brandon, personally. Yeah. What was me? But we're almost there. We just decided to... We Third person. I just decided to buckle down and get all the dumb stuff I've needed to get done that I've been ignoring, like old injuries, new injuries. Those weren't planned. Old stuff that I needed to do. I was like, You know what? I've been down. I'm just going to get it all done in one swoop. I think I'm down to the last few weeks of walking around like something's wrong with me.
[00:02:07.230] - Chris
I don't know. You know what, though? I was hanging out with the boys last night doing our sauna thing, and we were inevitably... I mean, these are mostly 30-something guys. I was going to say it. Which I love hanging around with these young guys because I love the energy of it. It just so happens they're all extraordinarily successful, too. Just being around all the ambition. It's just fun. But anyway, so we're all talking about body stuff. We're all... We're sitting in the sauna and sweating to the oldies there. But all of us are talking about this stuff we're doing, and I'm just getting ready to go on a... It's not actually TRT, but it's in clomophying, Which is supposed to spike your natural production of test. We'll see. I have a couple of buddies that are on that and have had really great results from it. So I'm excited. And you're 45 now? I'm 45, yeah.
[00:02:55.200] - Brandon
You've hit the old threshold.
[00:02:56.460] - Chris
I'm excited. I'm excited just for the... Just a little extra juice, a little extra gas in the tank, hopefully. But I think there's something really powerful about focusing on your physical condition and how it spills over in all the other areas of your life. I hear people complain about the cost of a CrossFit gym, and I've been one of those people. It's like, Oh, gosh, it's how much per month? Then an app that I do, it's like 30 bucks a month, and I was getting ready to set my wife up on it, and she's like, Wow, that's a lot. It's like 30 bucks a month on top of our gym membership and everything else. I'm like, Yeah, but what's it worth? It's like, when you're feeling really good about your health and it's trending in a positive direction, it's like, Man, is there anything else apart from maybe your spiritual life or something that has a more powerful downstream effect on everything else. When you think about when you really start noticing gains or you start to see your body composition in the mirror, is there anything more confidence-inspiring? Yeah, there really is. Good on your mental health, right?
[00:04:07.580] - Chris
I've just been noticing that. It's like when I spend the money to eat well, buy better food, when I'm getting in the gym regularly and I'm making these investments in things. Same thing with the Enclomphene. I had to freaking go to the doctor.
[00:04:21.470] - Brandon
Yeah, it's going to cost money.
[00:04:22.170] - Chris
It's a priority. I had to go get all the labs and had to do all the things. But I like the fact that I'm investing in my health. I feel like it's worth it. It's good for my head space, too.
[00:04:34.590] - Brandon
It's funny because I felt like, this isn't today's topic, by the way, but-We're going to talk about sales, just forecasting. Just hang in the pocket there. One of the things that I was running to towards the end of last year is I had lost context with the value of maintaining my physical fitness. I was still checking the boxes, doing what we do, go on the road, of course. I feel guilty if I don't lift with you and all the things. I stayed in the pocket. But then I ended up, what made this year suck so bad is I got really, really ill at the end of December. Probably for years, I've never been that sick.
[00:05:10.380] - Chris
I've never seen you that way.
[00:05:11.780] - Brandon
Was there forever. I felt like 60% for another three weeks after that was over. Well, then we get in the other side, blah, blah, blah, all these little things hurt my back, all this stuff. I'll tell you what, though, what's been really good about it is it's been dark. To be honest, it's not good. When I'm down for three months, physically unlimited, it sucks. When you're already 48, you're already fighting all the midlife bullshit and all the stuff. It just sucks. Anyways, what it does do, though, is it reminds you because you can't. It's not a choice. For a while, I've literally just not been able to do the things that I've grown accustomed to. But boy, does that motivate you to be excited about when you have the choice again? Sure. The one thing I would say is I needed that new internal motivation, the spirit of, why was I doing all this It. And boy, I've been reminded in the downtime, and so I'm excited. I think I'm about two and a half weeks out, and then I should be able to get really pretty much back to what I was doing before.
[00:06:14.130] - Chris
Well, I have two just things that I've noticed to share just for everybody else on this topic that have been meaningful to me over the last couple of months. I've made two changes on my exercise stuff that's been really, really helpful. The first one is I have never, ever used any of those apps.
[00:06:31.600] - Brandon
Oh, sure.
[00:06:32.230] - Chris
For creating your workouts and stuff, and workout tracking. I hate that stuff. I've always hated that.
[00:06:39.450] - Brandon
Well, you're such a big data detail guy.
[00:06:40.920] - Chris
Yeah, exactly. But I've tried them because I'm a total gizmo, gadget, tech nerd. I've downloaded all these various apps and stuff like that, and I'll use them for a week or something, and then I'm like, whatever. Then I'll just go back to doing my bro split and just picking my exercises as I go. I It's part of this RP Hypertrophy app, and you downloaded it, too. What it does is it not only does it pre-program all your workouts, you can change out exercises if you don't like them, but it sets you up on however many days per week program. You can choose, I want to get chest. Is this beach muscle I'm working on? Is this full body? Is all these different workouts you can choose from? But it modulates your reps and number of sets and your weight for you as you go through the six-week cycle.
[00:07:32.520] - Brandon
Because it's checking in with you, right? When you complete.
[00:07:35.810] - Chris
Yeah, it's checking in. You're putting how good of a pump that was, it was in the joint pain, how hard you tried, how hard you pushed on that set, all that stuff. It's super simple, but I show up to every workout, and every workout is a little bit different because sometimes it'll have me do four rounds of that exercise. Other times it'll be two. Sometimes it'll be a single set to failure.
[00:07:56.070] - Brandon
Because it's set count.
[00:07:57.600] - Chris
It's set count, and it's just got some algorithm behind it that's taking you the progressive overload. I got to tell you, I have worked harder in the last 8 or 12 weeks of doing this than I maybe ever have. It's helped me put on muscle. I'm at 215 right now. That's awesome. That's the heaviest I've ever been. I'm just not used to weighing that much. But I think it's because it's helped me put on muscle, especially my legs, because it's just pushed me harder. But here's the thing. I I recently, this is the second half of my point, is I went back to... I was just doing three days a week, and it was taking me an hour and 15, hour and 25 minutes in the gym. I just, one, I'm totally burnt by the end of it. Two, I started to dread going in, and I found I was kicking the can down the road. Then I'd be doing a workout on Saturday.
[00:08:53.650] - Brandon
Just a little too much of a time.
[00:08:54.650] - Chris
It's too much. But I went to a four-day-a-week split where I do upper body one day, lower body Classic bro split. I'm in and out of the gym in 45 minutes. It's like the magic. For me, it's like the magic duration. 45 minutes, I can go as hard as I need to based on what the app tells me to do. I feel awesome getting in and out of the gym in less than an hour. It just reduces that mental drag of, Oh, I got to go to the gym, because now I think, It's only 45 minutes. I'll plug it in. I'll be in and out. I'll get it. You know what I mean? That's great. Yeah, that's a good point. I just never really thought about that. I've always spent, when I did work out, an hour or so, and it felt like a burden. Just this little switch, bringing it down to 40, 45 minutes. Helful. Yeah, it's helpful. I don't know. People that are struggling to get in a rhythm, maybe just change things up. You're trying to live for three hours. Maybe reduce the amount of time you're going in, reduce some of that mental drag.
[00:09:49.470] - Chris
It's really worked for me.
[00:09:51.430] - Brandon
All right, dude. We're going to talk sales. You had a- This isn't like a- Yeah, this was- This podcast. No, this isn't guilting you into reestablishing your New Year's resolution that you guys have already quit. Okay. I've done a few of those. But no, we were going to get into sales. You had an interesting experience here recently in prepping for... Well, I've actually been sporting it today. I've got some one Tom on. You're getting ready to go hang with some of those owners. Anyways, yeah, just bring us up to speed. What were you wrestling with?
[00:10:18.150] - Chris
Well, our friends at One Tom invited me out to come talk at their owner's roundtable event that they do periodically.
[00:10:25.290] - Brandon
That's next week, right? Next week. It'll be behind us by the time we share.
[00:10:29.180] - Chris
Yeah. When they asked me, they did want me to focus on sales, and I'm also going to be talking about profitability and stuff like that. But on the sales front, I asked them, I said, Hey, well, is there anybody in the network that's selling really well? Who are your high producers? Are there any? He emailed me a list of three sales reps, top to bottom. I was able to have some interviews with these folks. It was really fun. I think the interesting thing, too, is that the one-time model is they're not necessarily They're really just selling emergency plumbing. They're cross-selling the water mitigation as well. It's really a combined sale. And many of you listening, maybe you have other accessory services, maybe you have a plumbing company as well. In fact, we have another client that's an independent that has a plumbing company that they spun up for their business. It's becoming a popular model. So whatever your tip of the spear is, I think this stuff is really relevant. You know, it's funny, even still, with all the experience I've had selling in all these different verticals and industries. When I go to talk to a top sales rep, I still anticipate that they're going to have some silver bullet or some special thing they do, or that they're extremely good-looking and charismatic.
[00:11:48.940] - Chris
I just expect that I'm going to see some special in the story. I don't know why I continue to default to that expectation after all these years. But yet again, I was proved wrong in that the success is really born out of the normal mundane discipline. Alex Hormozy, Wayne sent me a clip, and some of the verbiage in the clip was Alex saying, Discipline always trumps innovation. Discipline over innovation. Discipline first, innovation later. And it just relates to that whole more better the new concept that he has, which is most often when companies want to grow, they're unsatisfied with their revenue, what do they do? Well, they find the new shiny object. They find the new PPC agency that's promising these outsize returns. They hire a new sales rep because this one, they maybe hire a training company to teach them a new methodology. It's new. Just like, let's try something new. This thing isn't working. Part of his shtick is, look, that's almost always a fallacy. Something is working. And the better thing to do is to do more of what's working first. Because oftentimes, we're deceiving ourselves. We tell ourselves we're working really hard and it's not working or we're not getting the growth we want out of it, when in reality, we're probably not putting enough reps in to get the increased result we're looking for.
[00:13:22.880] - Chris
Anyway, so that's what it made me think of. But as I was talking with a sales rep, his name is Andrew. Andrew, if you're listening, stud job, bro. In fact, he just got promoted to... He's the regional sales manager now and has a team that he's building. But he's been absolutely killing it in his personal selling role. I said, What is it? He told me two things. One is just a very practical nuts and bolts thing for all of you that are chasing commercial or multifamily. Part of his strategy is the ALN Network. The ALN Apartment Database. Those of you that aren't familiar with it, you should Google it. Aln Apartments database. It's It's just a really good business intelligence tool for multifamily, specifically. You can look up all of the apartments in your market. You can see who the community manager is, any other key players, key employees. Often, it'll be listed there, too, in terms of a maintenance manager, a leasing manager, etc. Kind of your top approach. Yeah, it's cool, man. It's really cool, and it's relatively inexpensive, too. I want to say it's like 60 bucks a month, which is one of the-Wow.
[00:14:26.140] - Chris
Deepest BI tools that I've been able to find compared to, say, atlas by Convex or Co-star. Like 20 grand a year.
[00:14:33.100] - Brandon
Oh, my gosh.
[00:14:33.980] - Chris
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thousands and thousands. You can even see who the previous property management company was associated with that property. And you can also click and you can see, okay, this property, Whispering Winds, is connected to a group that has another 20. Yeah. And it'll show you. Anyway, it's just a really awesome research tool if you're going after multifamily. So he used that. So there is a little bit of a tip here that I guess is fun. And then I'll get back to the basics. But Here's how he did it when he started. When he very first started selling and was new to the industry, he started with ALN to do his research and make his initial prospecting list. And of course, like many of you listening to this, when you start prospecting multifamily, they say, Oh, well, you need to get on our vendor list. Sure. Whether it's Compliance Depot, NetVender, there's a bunch of these that have sprung up. And so what he did was just... None of this is rocket science, but what he did was he looked up the complex on ALN, and then when he talked to him, he said, Hey, what vendor list are you guys on?
[00:15:35.870] - Chris
I'll make sure I get set up. They told him, and then he researched all the other sister properties. So he got set up on NetVender or Compliance Depot. Then he subsequently went to all of the other sister properties in that portfolio and was able to lead with, Hey, I met Sally last week at your other property. She mentioned you guys were on NetVender. I've got us all set up, so now we're an approved vendor. Would love to chat with you and maybe do a property, and then he goes in, and it was like it greased the wheels for all of his subsequent visits. He did that for dang near all of the multifamily properties in his area. He got signed up for all the various vendor programs. I thought, that's smart, because a lot of sales reps fall into the mistake of reactively signing up for these vendor programs. Instead, he was very proactive, Hey, I'm sure you guys a vendor list. Which one do you guys use? Yeah. Awesome. I'll get on that right away. I'll let you know as soon as we're on the list and approved.
[00:16:37.710] - Brandon
I wonder, too, if there's just like, he's preventing some of that getting overly romantic because the conversation had a next step to it. I think we all know that's right up there with, you'll get my next one, is hunting you to the process of getting on a vendor list. It's like, got that out of the way.
[00:16:55.050] - Chris
You are not going to get on the next one. If they use a vendor platform and you're not on it, you won't get the next one. Yeah. And even if you get that call, you'll probably get booted from it because you're not on the vendor list. Anyway, just very smart, but again, not a silver bullet. This is having a strategy, deploying a specific strategy long enough to see it bear fruit. I said, How much of your success would you attribute to that ALN vendor platform strategy? He's like, I don't know, maybe 80 %. I said, Okay, well, what else? Now, of course, this goes hand in glove with this strategy was he said, Look, I just made it a point to make a ton of touches. It is not unreasonable ever. There's no reason why I can't do 15 drop-ins a day. There's no reason. Anybody can do that. And that's what I did. I hit dang near every door. He said, The other thing, too, was is that- A day.
[00:17:54.170] - Brandon
15 a day. A day.
[00:17:55.940] - Chris
A day. And what's he doing? I made a note.
[00:17:58.380] - Brandon
This is important.
[00:17:59.260] - Chris
I wanted to- Because people here talk a lot about the pain solution selling. And so your customer hearing me talk about, Hey, your customer has a problem. The most likely reason they're going to change vendors is because you've got a solution to that problem. Okay, let's come back to that. Because all that stuff is real. But what I wanted to point out, too, is that the more, better, new. So let's consider the pain solution selling better. Okay, and we'll get to that. But the more... So he has a very simple approach. He has a really unique swag item. And I was talking to another client about this recently. I am not against swag. We at floodlight are not against candy and smiles. Are you allowed to say what it is? Candy and smiles. Oh, yeah, for sure. Those of you that don't know, one Tom Plumber, they bought, must have been a container load of these plungers with a white handle and a pink-Yeah, it's pink.
[00:18:44.430] - Brandon
Plunger That's literally on the shirt.
[00:18:46.520] - Chris
When somebody walks in, it's impossible not to notice them. So that's their thing. That's their swag thing. And he levers it to the hilt. He's like, If I had to guess, every property management company in my market has a pink plunger in their office. No joke. And so that's what he did. He walked in and then he had a simple leave behind with his scope of work. As those of you who listen to us a lot, you've heard me talk about this. I'm not a big fan of a ton of different flyers and things, but bring in an example of your scope of work, your contact information, and some clean and professional branding. And he did just that. He introduces himself. He walks in with the plunger, which gives him an opening because people are like, Okay, what is this about? And then he gets to introduce himself. He leaves behind the material. Please let me know if I can be a support for you. Oh, and by the way, what vendor program do you guys use so I can make sure that I get set up? This is all he did over and over and over and over and over again.
[00:19:43.290] - Chris
I think another thing, too, that he mentioned that has been a key part of his success is that after he got his first few jobs, he always circled back. Now, for him, it's plumbing was his first tip of the spear. But the same thing could be said for their first water job is that quality assurance visit, he's like, I did that religiously. And so fast forward a year later, he's like, I had a really great book of business built. Just with 15 stops a day, having a consistent way that he was presenting, had his scope of work leave behind, had a swag item that is unique, distinctive, and memorable, and had a positive professional interaction with them, and then gathered that vendor information. That was it. That's the playbook. That's the playbook. I thought, Oh, my gosh, that's good. He also said that what he found is that it takes 5-6 touches to actually convert into first job on average. I was like, Good reminder. It's not something that I've talked about recently. I'm like, Yeah, that's probably very true. Even on the restoration side, those of you that are trying to get water damage and recon, same deal.
[00:20:55.720] - Chris
Series of follow-up. You're going to probably have five, six touches, meaningful interactions before that comes in. And that's not even going into pipeline management, qualified versus non-qualified. That gets us into the better. But my point in saying this is we often neglect the basics. We do it sometimes. I've had to I org myself. And here's what I've noticed. A lot of otherwise talented sales reps, and I would put myself in this category, especially earlier in my career, and I still have this default behavior, and I sometimes have to pull back into what we're talking A lot of otherwise talented sales reps, they languish in their sales results, or they don't get as good as sales results as they could because their tendency, their default behavior, is to target and be strategic and only go after an only cold call on the ones that they think are qualified prospects. You're like, Well, yeah, isn't that smart? You don't want to waste your time. I was reminded of this on this chat with this guy. He's like, Look, I observed an with other sales roles that a lot of sales reps that I thought were really talented weren't selling as much as me.
[00:22:08.550] - Chris
I think, I'm not even as talented as them, but they were hyper-targeting And like their prospects, they would create these really targeted lists, and then they go out one by one and visit these really optimal ideal customer prospects. He said, But I was bringing in more business because instead of me bouncing around all over town, I just hit everything. It just hit everything. And he's like, Of course, I ran into people that weren't really prospects. I'll hit a nail salon. When are they ever going to call me? Well, you never know. Most don't, but I just hit them. You stumble into referrals when you do that also. I think my point in saying this is sometimes we can get, and some sales trainers even push towards this, and there probably is a context for it. But generally speaking, when we're selling services and we're trying to build our pipeline and increase our sales, the shotgun approach might actually be smarter and more productive.
[00:23:13.130] - Brandon
Can I add some just color to that? Yeah, please. I think part of what I'm hearing you say, and obviously, correct me if I'm wrong, is, and we see this a lot, I think we've even wrestled with it in our own organization. I struggle with it in other applications for certain, where Or what I'm hearing you really hyper focus on is the consistency in the behavior. You've got to take enough action for the statistics to begin to work in your favor. Yes. I think we've used the term getting overly romantic. Once you go out, what we see is the spurt of energy because they're desperate, they don't have any other choice. They go out and they start doing some cold calling. They do it just long enough to where there's a series of what could be promising conversations Then all of their attention goes in on these five people, these six stops, instead of getting the cadence of all the stops. Now what has happened is because those feel better, those are like better conversations. That's exactly right. All the things.
[00:24:16.820] - Chris
Because you know they could really- Then we start telling ourselves.
[00:24:20.630] - Brandon
I think what I can do is I can sell myself into thinking that that's going to work. I think what I'm hearing this guy emphasize is this this idea of 15 stops a day. Not once, not twice.
[00:24:37.530] - Chris
Yeah, five days a week.
[00:24:38.720] - Brandon
But five days a week on and on and on until statistics began to work in his favor and it started to produce the result. Am I off?
[00:24:50.690] - Chris
No, that's exactly right. I think there's an efficiency to it, too. One of the things we teach in our Commercial Sales Master course is the anchor strategy. Yeah. And so this business, whether it's emergency plumbing and restoration or it's restoration and carpet cleaning, whatever, it's a local in-person, face-to-face sell. We can run ourselves ragged, especially if we have a fairly large business we work with, a fairly large service area. Maybe you have multiple locations with the company that you work with or your company you own. Territory management and time management is a really big deal. You and I, when we were growing up with the business, we had a really broad service area. One of our locations was two hours away. I mean, you'd kill a day just going to visit that operations center, maybe calling on a couple of clients, and there's your day. Certainly, it happens with PMs and our field staff all the time. It's really difficult to manage that road time spend. But with salespeople, we have a lot more control over our schedule. I think that's part of Andrew is speaking to is that if I'm hyper-targeting everything, one, I'm still not guaranteed that just because those people are a prime qualified prospect, I just know because they're a hotel, a multifamily property, a senior living location.
[00:26:16.620] - Chris
We know they use restoration, but it doesn't mean I'm going to get them. It also means that I'm likely bouncing across my territory one by one to go to these known prospects rather than planting Parking my car and potentially hitting seven or eight drop-ins in the same time span that I would go hit one prospect. I have found this to be true. In fact, this reminds me, I did a call blitz with one of my new employees. Gosh, this was years ago, but in the Portland Metro market. He and I just did a contest. We were like, both of us parked our cars, and we were going to meet for lunch, late lunch at the end of the day, essentially, at two We hit the ground at 8: 00 AM, and we were going to have a contest to see who could get as many prospects and follow-up meeting schedule.
[00:27:08.320] - Brandon
Yeah, I remember you guys doing blitzes.
[00:27:10.090] - Chris
I ended up doing 27 drop-ins in that six-hour period, and I beat him. I think he did 25. Mike, if you're out there, bro. That's impressive. I took you out that day. It was great. But I uncovered a lot of opportunity in that time period. Never moved my car. If I had been driving around, maybe I'd have gotten 10, 11, if I'd been popping to this senior living community over here and then going to this other Brookdale facility over there. All of a sudden, we may have 10, 11. If I'm really hustling, Because I'm parking, I'm moving my car, I'm getting my bag out, my stuff out, and all that. Instead, I had a stack of rack cards in my back pocket, and I was hustling, and I probably got 15,000 steps in that day, too. So It's really easy for us as owners, sales managers, GMs, to look at the results we're getting from our sales team and to have an emotional reaction. We're frustrated, irritated by what we're seeing. We're doubting the effectiveness of our team, and to make a drastic move to do something different or new. And answer force. We tend not to give the attention to our call and take that I think we really ought to have as restores.
[00:28:29.370] - Chris
And of course, one One of the biggest challenges we have with our call intake, whether it's an in-house receptionist or a service like answer force, is what do you do when your receptionist goes out to lunch? Well, answer force makes that very easy to solve for. They're 24/7. You have a receptionist or a call intake person that's out for maternity leave, out on vacation, et cetera. Answerforce has a solution to all of those things. I think, too, it also solves for us having a very consistent repeatable call intake process. We all know how important that is. A hundred %.
[00:28:58.450] - Brandon
The cool thing is actually we just hung out with these guys, and they let us know, let us in on some big feature updates that have recently been pushed through the system. So first, verified contacts. Verified contacts, basically, it allows the system to understand that this is a repeat caller, and then it allows them to auto capture and fill those details as part of the intake process. So smoother, more professional intake, much easier to give that client that impression. That's awesome for commercial. This isn't the first time you've called, right? Yeah. We'll listen to the rest of these sets because I think they're super applicable to our commercial opportunities. So specialized scripting, okay? This is great because this is everything from holiday shifts, after-hour shifts, I mean, you name it. There's different reasons, right? Or different layers of the cake, if you will, just based on what's going on in terms of call volume, what's going on time of day. And so with specialized scripting, the script then will match that. And so it's shifting live, if you will, along with that richer context of what's actually happening in the business. Then this other thing, I thought this was super cool, is dedicated a phone number.
[00:30:00.650] - Brandon
Going back to that repeat client or that key client or customer, we now can associate a specific phone number to them. What happens is, is they get received very uniquely. I can imagine creating a customer A system script for that client. We now can recognize a repeat caller and autofill and speed up their intake. Then on top of that, there's a specialized number that's dedicated to them. You really get to marry up that professional service offering that we're promising, if you will, during the prospect.
[00:30:32.520] - Chris
Right from the jump, if you've got a commercial client with specific needs or specific expectations, build that into the script, a call intake.
[00:30:38.970] - Brandon
It's beautiful. Super powerful. Another one is just access to information wherever you are. I don't know how many of you are already currently using answer force. You should take it seriously in terms of getting a demo and checking them out. But if and when you shift over to them as a partner, the cool thing is now is that you've got access to all this data, all this information on the go from anywhere on your mobile device. And so you can literally check inbound outbound calls. You can listen to recordings. So actively coach the team midstream, right? Again, just a ton of efficiency, a ton of automation, and just higher levels of customization coming out of answer force.
[00:31:17.320] - Chris
It is so stink and affordable. This isn't just for big multimillion dollar companies. This is for you that's still working out of your home shop, your garage, and it's also for you that are running a $25 million operation with four locations applications. It's pretty extraordinary. They work with some of the biggest companies in our industry and many of the smallest ones as well.
[00:31:37.360] - Brandon
Actionable. Guys, we have talked about our friendship and relationship to these guys for a long time. Many of you know in the recent, probably, year and over the last several months, just this hyper focus on the efficiency and quality of our estimating.
[00:31:53.340] - Brandon
At the end of the day, our cash flow is heavily impacted by our team's skill and competency around writing a really comprehensive sheet and really making sure that the scope is accurate.
[00:32:04.320] - Brandon
One of the powerful things that Actionable has is their actual Xactimate profile. This profile is a live AI tool that's monitoring you as you write the estimate and as you're implementing specific line items, it's helping you be sure that you've really taken into full account all the individual elements and line items associated with this element of the scope that you're trying to accomplish. I'm We're not going to highlight any specific teams, but we have heard robust numbers from teams using this. We're hearing anything from 5%, 6%, even 8% top-line growth, specifically from the quality of their estimates increasing.
[00:32:43.540] - Chris
I remember when they rolled this out to you that one of the use cases or part of the value that they were trying to hit on is the ability for us to bring up a new estimator quickly up to the standard and competency and the results, ultimately, of the more experienced estimator on the team. This is an incredible onboarding and training tool to get somebody up to where they're very, very competent and producing quality estimates just that much faster.
[00:33:09.530] - Brandon
Way faster. Just one last thing I want to hyper index on is they have just an absolute boat load of white papers and F9 supporting notes. This is something that you could participate in being a member with Actionable Insights. But guys, we all know that getting our estimates approved in that negotiation phase is hard right now. It just feels like every carrier is significantly understaffed. They're fighting for error, we're fighting for error, and anything we can do to reduce that friction is better. The better we are at providing really good support for what we're calling out in our scope and why we're calling for it, the better. And so these white papers, these F9 support notes are super powerful.
[00:33:49.800] - Brandon
Man, it's been a little while, but we've been refueling the relationship with CNR quite a bit lately, and that's been good, man. I think both teams got so ding busy.
[00:33:59.410] - Brandon
We had a tough time locking in and getting some FaceTime together. But the team over at CNR has been great for our industry, you guys. We've often referred to Michelle as a friend of the industry. She really is keyed in on giving us what we need in terms of tools, communication, intel on the industry. And so we just continue to encourage you guys, participate, make sure that you're receiving your quarterly copies and that you're getting all the online content that just comes in boatloads from their team.
[00:34:27.970] - Brandon
Cnr magazine, guys, pay attention, make sure that you're participating and getting your intel from that team as well.
[00:34:34.300] - Brandon
Liftify, bro.
[00:34:35.040] - Chris
Yeah, Liftify. It's interesting. Yesterday, I was just seeing one of our clients was getting awarded their 750 Google review trophy, and they were already talking about hitting a thousand. A thousand, that's right.
[00:34:48.860] - Brandon
Which somebody has done.
[00:34:50.090] - Chris
Yes, one of our clients has done. It's remarkable, and I think the most remarkable thing that people are discovering, we're seeing this every single day with our clients, is that when you start upping the volume of Google reviews you're getting consistently week after week, the recency. When you're getting the recency dialed in and just meaning every week you're adding Google reviews to your profile, dramatic jumps in organic phone calls and lead gen. And of course, who doesn't want that? Every single one of us, including floodlight, we want that. And that's why we've index on. We use Liftify to build up our Google reviews. So it's a simple turnkey service. They've really created a process for capturing the most quality Google reviews from the jobs you're already getting. So if you want to get more work, grow your revenue just off of the existing work you're already getting, Liftify is a big part of how to do that. And it's simple. It's very, very Very, very cost effective from our experience with Liftify and what we've seen with our clients, significantly better value and better results than many of the other platforms that some of you might already be trying.
[00:35:55.760] - Chris
So if you're not happy with the number of Google reviews you're getting, you need to reach out to Liftify And I think as a point of reference, it's worth us saying, Liftify expects 20 to 25 % conversion. So think about that within your own numbers. If you're doing a thousand jobs a year, you should be adding 200 to 250 Google reviews to your profile every single year. If you're performing under that, you owe it to yourself to reach out to liftify. Com/ floodlight.
[00:36:22.260] - Brandon
One last thing to add to that as part of their more recent integration of AI or advancing that integration of AI, one of the big focus for their team is gathering more live project data and analytics for you guys. Really what this is focused on is equipping all of us to create better customer experiences. Not only are they keyed in and driving Google reviews for us, but now they've actually turned the corner and began developing toolkits for us that use Liftify to actually be getting information that can help us modify our service delivery to create better client experiences. Midstream. Super powerful. Midstream. We're talking mid-job. Yeah, super powerful. All right, liftify. Com. All right, guys. Thanks for hanging out with us. Let's get back to the show.
[00:37:08.850] - Chris
I've made that mistake many times, and most of the time it was a mistake, when in Instead, the better thing is for us to look at, okay, something is working here. It's not that we're not producing any income. It's not that our salesperson isn't bringing in any jobs. It's not enough. Let's look, and is there a common thread? We can use things like the JOC The analytics tool that we recommend this marketing dashboard to see exactly where our business is coming from. In a lot of your job management softwares, you can see what your customer segment most of your work is coming from. If there's a common thread, we can identify Well, the first thing we had to do is let's double down. Let's double down on the number of calls we're making to that segment and see if we can't get more production out of that. I love that.
[00:37:54.570] - Brandon
I got something. I just want to layer on this because I think this is interesting, and I've got my own personal version of this that I've been going through, and some of you might be able to relate to this. I'm ex-military, as many of you guys know, and so therefore, I like firearms. I love the ability to go out and fire and shoot them, and I like building them. I was just This last week, I was nerding out because I've had more downtime than normal physically. I rebuilt a new AR, and I was sending photos to the team, just bragging on what I was doing because I just love it. Anyways, here's my point. Is I grew up in the part of the military where really the 99% of your weapons training focus was on a rifle. I had little to no experience with a handgun. As I've gotten older, out of the military, I just I'm starting to fall in love with handguns, and I want to be more proficient with them. Yeah. And so recently, after rebuilding my AR, and I've purchased a couple of new handguns, which is just dangerous, but I take both of them out, and I've been getting to fire them on our friend's range.
[00:39:01.920] - Brandon
You and I have been shooting pistols, and I just suck. I suck at pistols. I don't know how to use them. Well, I took my wife and my daughter out because I wanted to do... I got to put in some work. This is tied to the reps. Hang with me here. I needed to put in some work on my pistol. I needed to check some things. I was going to reach format my zeroing methodology. I'm trying to figure out how to become proficient at a pistol because I suck. I'm just embarrassingly at them. Well, I brought my rifle and I brought my new AR that I just got done building. I replaced my trigger, I replaced my entire upper, I've changed everything. It's just this sweet. I went from a long-range scope, magnified to a red dot, so it's more like CQB setup. This is hell of fun. Well, we're firing the pistols, and I'm frustrated. I'm going through the reps. I suck. I'm just trying to put in the basics, right? Well, then I'm like, I want to take a break, so I pull out the AR and the girls fire a couple of rounds, and then I succumb to them wanting to have me show off a little bit.
[00:40:10.860] - Brandon
Well, then, dude, I went to work. Okay. You were driving nails. I got to go to work with the AR, and it was really fun. It was very dynamic. It's safe. No one's really around.
[00:40:19.530] - Chris
All that muscle memory.
[00:40:20.420] - Brandon
All the muscle memory, man. The reps had been put in. I've got hours and hours and hours behind an AR platform. When I go to have fun on the range, meaning I want to do the new, I want to do the different, I'm prepared. When I go to do that stuff, for instance, we were doing very dynamic movement. Say, if I wasn't walking around the whole range or anything, but I was moving from target to target, shooting smaller targets, ones that were active so that when you hit them, they swung and made a sound, and it was just fun. The dance was fun. The reason I bring that up is that I didn't get there if I didn't have all the hours slogging it out at the range, doing the dumb, unsexy, boring shit over and over and over. And fortunately for me, in the current context, I've got this Pistle example that I'm seeing, I'm all the way back there. I'm all the way back at building my book for the first time, and I have to not... Don't change anything. Don't go find new. Don't go read the latest Watch the latest YouTube video on this and that, and this method's better than that.
[00:41:33.770] - Brandon
I just need to go put in the time. Because until I do that, I don't have the ability to take advantage of the new, or even really the better in its current state. Anyways, it's a stretch, but it's just my... That's where my head's been. I just had this contrast moment where it's like, man, you go to something old that you know, and you're in the fun. It's jazz. You get back to this new skill and you're like, oh, boy, there's a grind. I got to just put in the time on this bad boy.
[00:42:05.000] - Chris
I think that points to the other benefit of putting in the reps and focusing on the more is it is skill training. You get better, you get more Confident.
[00:42:15.360] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:42:15.480] - Chris
What a perfect example, right? Because when you pick up a pistol, you're so much less confident in the outcome you're going to produce-For sure. Than you are with a rifle because you have so many more hundreds or thousands of hours behind the rifle than your pistol.
[00:42:29.970] - Brandon
Well, I think that's one of the things that stands out to me from Hermosy's more, better, new. The framework is so interesting to me. One, we believe in it because it's the only thing you can really measure in a proactive way when somebody starts with your team or you're going after a new target market or whatever. It's like, you You can't base it necessarily on leads yet. You can't base it on revenue. You got to base it on something else.
[00:42:50.410] - Chris
Yeah, you almost can't base it on skill, because the other thing that's interesting about our industry is it is not a typical sales environment. No matter how you slice it, you and I have seen a lot of really skilled salespeople come through. Frankly, I felt the pressure of this when I first got in the industry. I'm like, God, I've been a really successful sales rep in other markets, and I'm struggling to crack the code here. It's so ambiguous. You don't know when you've really won the deal until that phone rings, right? Most of the time, and it's a tricky environment. You almost can't even judge somebody's skill early days. All you can really judge is their level of diligence and their willingness to in the reps. There's so many positive things that come from that. But yeah, it builds a lot of confidence. I think you start to see patterns, and then I think it starts to become easier. You start to get a quiver of some questions that work really well, that become go-to questions. You start to notice things more. It's like the more cold calls you do, the more people you introduce yourself to, the more drop-ins that you've done, your confidence builds.
[00:43:57.300] - Chris
We recently adapted our Commercial Sales Master Course in this way. I did a final at the very end. It's about 14 hours. At the very end, I did a new module where I speak to this because I think the mistake that I've made in the past with our clients is, Hey, just go through the master course. It's going to teach you everything you need to know. That's true. That's been validated. People will say, Oh, my gosh, this is great. But somebody's ability to go implement the methodology, people People spend months and months training with Sandler Sales Institute. There's all these different sales programs and stuff out there. They spend months practicing and learning the methodology, and then they eventually get good at actually doing it in real-time with a prospect or a customer. At the end of this last module, I say, Now, first, you've gained this backdrop of understanding of how to approach sales in our industry. First, start with jacking up your prospecting activity. Give yourself 30 to 60 days of really putting the hammer down with your visits and your outreach. Then let's start to implement. Let's start to optimize the conversations we're having.
[00:45:17.430] - Chris
Let's really orient ourselves around this pain solution selling methodology, and then you're going to do it with so much more confidence.
[00:45:24.440] - Brandon
It reminds me of something I feel like probably maybe a lot of people can relate to this, but it's almost like this curve that you go through where part of the reason the 15 a day has value, and the whole more has value, is that I think you go through this curve where it starts out with Oh, my gosh, there's so many different types of situations. Then you go over the crest of that hill, and then all of a sudden it's like, yeah, but they all boil down to three or four themes. But until the longer it takes you to put in enough work to get on the other side, where you just stay stuck perpetually in this. It could be so many different things and so many outcomes or responses. It puts you in this perpetual place of fear or dragging your feet because you get stuck on this side of the hill where it just says, Oh, my gosh, there's so many different versions of this. But, man, you crest the hill, and it's like, I've talked to 80 people in the last two weeks, and you know what? It all boiled down to three or four things.
[00:46:25.470] - Brandon
Yeah.
[00:46:27.420] - Chris
Last thing about this is it helps to overcome call reluctance.
[00:46:31.550] - Brandon
Yeah, exactly.
[00:46:32.500] - Chris
Call reluctance is... It's just what every sales rep deals with at some point, and usually it's not their last. You get a really good book of business built up, and then your revenue tapers off. You're like, got to get back to work. You got to refill my pipeline and get going. You can feel that call reluctance going. It's just one of those funny things, right? It's like the way you overcome call reluctance is by making more calls. Just do more. Yeah, it really is. Do more. It just really is. Because I think part of what you find out is just like you said. You're anticipating a different response that gives you some uncertainty. Like, what if they say yes? What if they reject me? What if, what if, what if? What if? And I think the more calls, the more outreach you do from a sales perspective, the more you realize everybody's just the same. There's a pattern of responses I'm going to get. And the more I do them, the more confident I am that I can deal with whatever is on the other side of that door.
[00:47:29.030] - Brandon
Yeah, there's nosame as the continuous explosions. Yeah.
[00:47:32.260] - Chris
Anywho, that's the...
[00:47:34.610] - Brandon
That's our more.
[00:47:35.370] - Chris
That's our more. Yeah. And then the better...
[00:47:39.110] - Brandon
Dude, you got to rotate your mic up a little bit.
[00:47:41.200] - Chris
How about this? Yeah, that's better. That's better? Yeah. Okay. Come on, man. I want to make sure you hear me well. You're a pro. The better ultimately revolves around the quality of our conversations and the targeting. And I think over time, we're going to notice patterns. We're doing all these drop-ins. We're doing 15 a day. We're going to notice patterns that are going to help us better focus our time. We're going to see who the referral sources are that are actually over time sending us business. We're going to see what customer segments are yielding fruit the quickest. And then we can start to focus our energy a little bit more. But I think more than anything, and just listening to Andrew, the activity continues to be the primary driver. The better is really honed around the quality of the interactions that we're having. I love it. Yeah. And so for You that are owners and GMs, as you start to move into that quality phase or the better phase with your team, one of the best ways that you can drive that is with a simple question. What are you hearing out in the field as you're talking to people?
[00:48:45.250] - Chris
What are you hearing? And that should just be a constant dialog that you're having at your sales meetings when you have your reps in, in addition to their reporting of their activity and their numbers and everything else is, what are you hearing out in the field? What are people are people saying? What are people saying about our competitors? What are people, what are you hearing about us? And what is people's general experience with other contractors and restores? Not just restores. And that really speaks to the pain solution selling that we're engaging in. I'm being more curious about my customers' business than I'm being preachy or evangelical about ours. The only time that we ever want to talk about our business, generally speaking, unless I sponsored a chamber of commerce event, or I sponsored a golf tournament, or a multifamily chapter meeting, or something like that, that's a different story. The only time I'm talking about my business is relative to pain, frustrations, irritations, service level deficiencies that they tell me about, that they have with contractors or restorers. And then I'm relating the systems, processes, and people in our business is solved for that. And those of you have been listening to us for a long time.
[00:50:06.400] - Chris
I know this is old hat, and yet if everybody were doing this, we wouldn't get so many calls about help help us with our sales. Help us build a sales team. That is the better, is helping orient our teams and our people around engaging in the right conversation with people. Because most often what we're doing is we stop at handing out the flyer and telling them we do restoration. That's where it stops. We're the biggest, we're the best. It's the whole features and benefits. That's normally where we start and we stop. That's basically the nature of the conversation we have with people and where we need to go and where operational leaders want us to go is, talk to me about what you're currently doing. Tell me about your last time you had a contractor on the property. I really don't care if it's a roofer or a siding company, or the one that redos the asphalt in their parking lot. Tell me about the last experience you had with a contractor. What was it about their people or process that you liked? Do you think you'll work with them again? Why or why not?
[00:51:11.890] - Chris
What's the biggest challenge that you face with the contractors that you work with here? I'm sure there's a bunch of them you work with. One or more of those questions are going to lead to a pain point, an irritation, or a frustration. But then I have the opportunity to speak to. Now, the other thing about the and why it's so important to start it more is because owners, GMs, Department heads listening to this, there's an aspect in your business that's quite possible you're not actually ready to sell. Like, your sales rep, they don't really have anything better to talk about yet. Yeah.
[00:51:50.150] - Brandon
Because- Very common.
[00:51:51.930] - Chris
We're talking with a new inbound client a couple of days ago, and they're great at selling. They're really struggling with their internal systems and service delivery, getting paid and all these things and documentation. They're very inconsistent in the photo documentation that their technicians are doing. Some are great, some are not. It's creating problems with their collections, which is creating cash flow. There's a lot They love dysfunction on the back-end, but they're really good at connecting with people and selling. So part of that better conversation that you need to be having with your sales rep is your sales rep needs to be clear on what are the things we do differently that helps solve for these common irritations and pain points people have with contractors. That's just mission critical for you as an owner and a GM to make that very clear, to make it real. One of the easiest things that you can implement in your company right now that'll be a significant differentiator is the 24-hour job update. There's nothing more impactful to your customer relationship, and frankly, every other area of your business. It's like there's so many positive downstream effects to that that we've seen, and we've been preaching this to our clients since the beginning.
[00:53:05.570] - Chris
It was one of the most impactful things that we implemented in our companies that we've led.
[00:53:12.570] - Brandon
It's funny. Actually, we've got some new things in development here at the old floodlight house. Anyways, it's causing Chris and I to be in some conversation with some folks from the past, which is always super fun. One of the persons that I've been speaking to, and we'll wait, we'll do in the- It's still cryptic. I know. I like it. It's fun. One of the people we've been talking to, she's just an absolute killer. I think her last year producing as a BD, she did a little over 15 million. I know there's many people listening to the show right now that produce into the 10, 15 million mark on an annual basis. Yeah. Not. Pumping. Yeah, it's a company, not as a single BD. Anyways, point being, she's been around. She understands the job well and does it at a high level. And part of our conversation was literally that. It was this idea that this 24-hour job report, it is literally to this day, and one of her claims to fame is she really found an in on the medical side of things, hospital, medical clinic environment. It's like, dude, the 24-hour job report was the thing that operationally couldn't be compromised.
[00:54:22.490] - Brandon
Just affirming what you're saying. There's some basic stuff that I think is so universal. But I think part of where you've gone so far in this conversation, if I could just try to hang in this pocket with you a little bit is, without getting into the weeds of the what, just really hyper-focusing on this concept of more, better, new. So what I'm hearing you say around the better is it's like, okay, we've done enough work on the standard reps, the baseline activity that we know regardless of environment, whether you're a plumbing outfit, HVAC outfit, a restoration outfit, we've got to do enough of these basic steps, ie, so many cold calls, getting in front of so many people a week, period. Until you're doing that at a consistent enough pace that the statistics are in your favor, there's really no reason to consider anything else. It's like you're starting to solve a different variable too early in the formula, almost. Okay, so then we move to better. What I'm hearing you say is we're focused on having better conversations, more focused. Maybe we're shrinking the time frame of how long it takes us to get through the pleasantries, to get to these questions that highlight the things that we need to.
[00:55:38.130] - Brandon
I'm also hearing you talk about iterating around who we're talking to. What is that? I think one of the things you probably picked up on a little bit here is our audience is growing here at H-H-B, and we're now not just talking to restorers. There's still the vast majority.
[00:55:53.190] - Chris
Yeah, we got a lot of remodelers, plumbers.
[00:55:55.710] - Brandon
Yeah, it's starting to open up. And these are universal behaviors. This is not for restoration. This is really universal. So how do we get better at what we're saying, or excuse me, who we're talking to? How do we iterate in that behavior?
[00:56:11.040] - Chris
Well, I think the way we get better at selecting our prospects is we get better based on the conversations that we're having. Meaning, I start to understand who the underserved customer bases are. I mean, we talked multifamily. It's just so They have so many different subcontractors and vendors that they work with. A typical community manager, when you get into a conversation with them and you ask them the question, Hey, what's the hardest thing or most frustrating thing that you experience working with the various contractors you work with? I mean, that might kick off a 45-minute conversation with your typical community manager, property manager. It's in the answers to these questions where we identify our best prospects, because what is a prospect? A real qualified prospect for us is one who has a felt need. They have a felt need. Those are our best prospects we want to dedicate as much time as possible to, because these are the ones that there is an existing motivation to make a change if they're presented with something better. Yeah. The thing that always comes first when we go to the better stage is we have to focus in on the quality of the conversations we're having.
[00:57:31.990] - Chris
Are we actually getting into those discovery conversations? Because we're not. That's the first thing we have to do, because then it's going to become obvious. It's going to become painfully obvious who to follow up on and who to just not worry about. If we go back to more, here's a phrase to memorialize the more, Every floor, every door. I forget where I first learned that. I think it might have been Sintas, where a lot of my sales training happened, but every floor, every door. It's important, I think, as we send our sales reps out, first of all, to give them a good, clear, basic understanding of our scope of work and what we do. They need to be able to say something. It's like they need to show up with their plumber, their plunger in hand in a polo shirt and not be a complete dumb dumb. It's like someone, why are you here with this plunger? Well, we're an emergency plumbing company. We do X, Y, Z, and PDQ. Here's my information. Please let me know if I can ever help. Really, we have to frame it for our people and say, Hey, I want you doing that 20 times a day.
[00:58:36.320] - Chris
Every floor, every door, don't skip over ones because you think they don't need you. You might run into a referral. Hey, my brother-in-law runs this. You should talk to him. You guys 24/7? Oh, my God, you need to talk to someone. If you do every floor, every door, you're going to stumble on opportunities, which is going to stoke you, and it's going to give you more motivation to make the next call. You're going to run into real qualified prospects. You're going to get practice. It's going to build your confidence. You're going to hone your approach based on the facial responses and body language you get in reaction to the first handful of times you do it terrible. You're going to learn all of this. So that's the more. Every floor, every door. And I think that's important because if we don't tell our reps when we first launch them out, they're going to try to mastermind the best way to do it. And they're not going to do every floor, every door, and they're probably not going to hit 20 calls a day. They may tell you they are, but they're probably not. I think we need to tell them, take all the skill out of it, take all the methodology off the table and just be like, all right, you know what we do now, right?
[00:59:41.770] - Chris
We do drain cleaning, we do this, we do repairs, we do water heaters. We tell them the scope of work, give them a bunch of plungers in their car, and tell them, I want you doing this 20 times. I want you to hit every door, every floor. You park your car, I want you to hit every door on that strip. You go into that commercial building, I want you to hit every suite and grab a business card and leave behind the scope of work document. When we get to better, that's where we go into, Okay, how have your visits gone? What were you hearing from people? Did anybody say, Oh, my gosh, this is so great. We've been needing an emergency plumber. Did anybody talk to you about the plumber they've used in the past? What came up? Because something's going to come up when you're doing 20 drop-ins a And then we start to coach them and/or we put them through the Commercial Sales Master course. And that's where we start honing in on this. What are the best questions to ask to uncover the felt need? And how is the best way to ask it?
[01:00:48.660] - Chris
And again, one of the things that we've learned to modulate over the years is not just asking about disaster restoration, or in some case, if you run a different trade, electrical or plumbing or home remodeling. But, Hey, what is your experience been with contractors? Because let's face it, and listen, all of us are contractors in some way listening to this. We're not known for being the best at customer service, community Communication, following a consistent process. That is not something that's commonly not the case. Commonly not the case. I think it's really safe when we ask property managers, public work directors, chief engineers at a hotel, Hey, talk to me about your most frustrating thing with the contractors you have to work with. You're going to uncover some pain. It gives us the opportunity to say, Well, you know what? That's a really common problem in our industry. Can I tell you about a system that we use? Or, Hey, can I tell you about Sally, who's a member of our team? Her job is specifically to address that thing. It sounds like it's just routinely frustrating for you. Let me explain to you what she does on our team to solve for that.
[01:02:04.480] - Chris
Or, Gosh, it sounds like common problem. Never know what the heck is going on when we have a job on property and we're always having to chase down our problem. Hey, I get it. Can I tell you about a process that we have in place, a system we use, we call it our 24-hour job update, and we hold people accountable to it. It's probably the most important part of our whole process at our company because we know that our property managers have to have daily updates to be able to give to their owner clients.
[01:02:33.180] - Brandon
I really like this. This is interesting to me. If we can, I want to hear you talk about the new, just to frame the new when we move into that phase. I think if it's cool, I'd actually like to just consider this from an operations perspective in general, because I think our team, for instance, is going through some changes right now that puts us almost square in the center of this. We're about to experiment it with some new while we've been embedded in the more and the better. Anyways, I just want to lay maybe some global perspective on this from an operations perspective. But what... Okay, we've locked in more. Just freaking do the reps. We've got better. We're iterating our behavior for efficiency and effectiveness. Then what does new then look like?
[01:03:24.710] - Chris
I think the very first thing when it comes to new is we start exploring other verticals that are underserved. The first stage in that is discovery. Again, it's another round of putting the reps in. For example, if I charge my sales rep, and there's a lot of ways to skin this cat, right? Sometimes we suggest some teams like to have sales reps who chase all the key verticals. Maybe they're chasing multifamily senior living hotels.
[01:03:56.290] - Brandon
It's more market versus... It's geography versus, yeah.
[01:03:59.860] - Chris
And others, they have one sales rep on multifamily, and they have another one on health care and senior living, and people have their own verticals that they're chasing, whatever. But one way to approach the new is then we identify a new vertical that we haven't been as present in, and we haven't done as much work for, and we start putting the reps in, dropping in, getting into conversations, maximizing the number of repetitions and exposure exposure we have to that vertical, and we do that for a period of time. We give it 30 days. We get 400 drop-ins. We visit all of those properties in our market, then we take stock of what's coming up in those visits. Then we drill in on discovery. We go back to the ones that seem the most open and warm, and then we go to the better, and we start digging into those discovery conversations and understanding the felt needs that these folks running into with regard to their experience with contractors. And then we just continue to build the pipeline in that space. But I think that's the first new. And I think, too, if we get through all of those the more repetitions, and we refine our approach, and we're still not getting the results we want, and that's our reason for going to something new, then I think the very first thing we look at is we look at, are we talking to the right people?
[01:05:32.690] - Chris
We could be pivoting to a new vertical because what we're doing is working, and we just want more. We just want, yeah, let's expand. I mean, shoot, we've got multifamily on lockdown now. Let's go explore senior living and see what we can make of that. But then the other scenario is we're doing all the things. We're supposedly having the right conversations with them, and we're still not getting results. Andrew, in my conversation, this one time top sales guy, actually spoke to this because in one of his markets, his multifamily approach wasn't working.
[01:06:03.420] - Brandon
Okay. Okay. This is where my head goes with new. It's like you've put enough reps in to know that you've got good data. You've then focused on refining the process there to make sure we're operating at high as skill. Then we still learn that either something's not what we thought or- What it was is he found in this particular market, it was a pretty big metro area, who was part of one of his territories, just bottom dollar, bottom of the barrel mission, race to the bottom multifamily environment.
[01:06:33.020] - Chris
Some of you have a market like that. They exist. They exist.
[01:06:36.050] - Brandon
Sometimes they're pockets, and sometimes feels like the whole damn city.
[01:06:39.060] - Chris
Another analog is plumber referral partners. Yeah, sure. Where it's like, you might be in a market where the ante to play is $1,500 per lead. It's like, Okay, nonstarter. Let's do something different. But that's exactly what he did. So after going through the reps, putting in the time, investigating, getting into those discovery conversations, he's like, This is not a place we want to play. Made a pivot to senior living.
[01:07:04.450] - Brandon
All of a sudden, the market opened up. That makes sense to me.
[01:07:08.210] - Chris
Okay.
[01:07:08.950] - Brandon
So new could be a target shift. It could be new service line. It It would be... I mean, basically, the idea is either we've won with the previous two behaviors or the previous two focuses told us we're barking up the wrong tree.
[01:07:25.120] - Chris
How do we shift gears or how do we continue to scale? Yeah.
[01:07:29.430] - Brandon
Okay, so This is interesting. The whole time you've been chatting, I've been thinking about the progression with Floedlight. One of the things that, if this is new, maybe you haven't heard our podcast before, Chris and I own Floedlight Consulting Group, and Floedlight supports restoration businesses that want to scale, grow, and create enterprise value in the process. We're in the trenches with our clients, but first and foremost, we're entrepreneurs, like many of you listening, doing the same thing that you guys are all out there doing. One of the things that's been happening with our organization is we got in. Chris and I were the first two, and we started putting in the reps, and we're practicing different consulting methodologies, we're different focus points and all the things. As we continue to put in the reps, we learned that, according to our assessment in our business, we weren't hitting the standards we wanted to see. We wanted a more effective and influential relationship with our clients. And so that caused us. So we put in enough reps first of doing the job. It It allowed us to gather some information. And then we said, look, we love consulting.
[01:08:34.900] - Brandon
Consulting is a powerful way to influence the industry for the good. It's a great business model as entrepreneurs, but we needed to refine the model. The model wasn't as effective as we want it to be. It didn't meet the standard. And so we started changing some of the how. And so that's where we began to do better. Our company spent probably, I would say now, the last six months, seven months, really being honed in on the better and taking what we know and what we're doing and refining it so that it's as efficient, as transparent, and movement-oriented as possible. And we're beginning to see the fruit of that, and we're beginning to validate the systems and the changes that we've onboarded and that we're making. Now, as a team, we're saying, Okay, we've got the rep cadence in now. We understand how to do that. We've learned how to manipulate the model or modify the model for efficiency I see now that you and I aren't the only consultants and blah, blah, blah, all the things. Now, as a team, we're also beginning to dip our toe into the new. I can't talk about new yet.
[01:09:42.680] - Brandon
No. That's part of the cryptic. But my point is that our shift is us identifying in our client circle, so restoration companies, contractors, trade contractors, we know there's another problem to help them solve. And so now our new is us stepping into offering or providing a different type of service to help solve yet another problem that many of our clients already face. And so for me, I feel like we're really following. So globally, that's an example of as an operation, how we do that same thing where it's more, better, new. And I'm just thinking about our organizations that we consult with. Many of them are in this place where that same more, better, model applies to all these little places in the business, refining collections. Let's do more, better, new as you're trying to solve that problem. Let's find where in the process we're killing it. Let's refine that to make it as better and as efficient as possible. And then let's start solving some problems with some new methodology, some modification to our process. So I think what's really cool about More Better, New, Man, is it's just this... It's a process that you can follow for literally anything.
[01:11:00.010] - Brandon
It just makes sense.
[01:11:01.410] - Chris
It addresses the thing, the elephant in the room when it comes to most entrepreneurs, which is we get shiny objects. Oh, bad. Something's not working the way we want to, shoot and move. There's a time for that, but we over index on, it's not working, let's try something different. And it's like, oh, we got to hang in the pocket. The other thing, too, is like, yeah, whatever the new is, and the new can be changing to a different customer focus, it can adding a new widget in the process that the customer likes more or that is more profitable for you or whatever. But what we're doing, this new service line that we're getting ready to launch, we wouldn't have known Yes. That there was a felt need for this service if we hadn't put in the reps.
[01:11:50.930] - Brandon
That's right.
[01:11:51.560] - Chris
The volume of reps, the conversations, not only with clients, but prospects. We heard over and over and over again indirectly and indirectly, that there's a want, a desire, and a need for this other thing. That's the other thing that comes up. It's like, if we do enough reps, there's a clarity that comes about what our customers or would be customers are saying out there, what they care about, what they're thinking about, what they have anxiety over. Then that gives us the opportunity to say, Okay, could we address that with our business? That's great. We've seen our clients have done this in a whole variety of ways. I think our industry has done tons extension into ancillary services, and I think it's a really positive trend in our industry, whether it's floor maintenance or it's duct cleaning. We see companies that are rolling out soft building wash and power washing services. But that stuff, you only know if there's a market for it by getting out there and talking to your customers.
[01:12:52.240] - Brandon
That's good. Otherwise- Otherwise, it's just a wild ass guess.
[01:12:56.320] - Chris
Yeah, you're playing the Steve Jobs game, where you're creating something that you think what people will like.
[01:13:01.470] - Brandon
Yeah. Very few people do that well.
[01:13:04.930] - Chris
Very few people anticipate customer preferences correctly. That's right. That's right.
[01:13:09.750] - Brandon
Well, that's awesome. I think that's... Let's bring her to a close. More better new, guys. What an awesome framework to just remind ourselves. Stay in the trench. For those of you that are on the selling side, Hey, I know that stuff's not the sexy part, but pretty soon you'll be doing the rapid fire drills and having more fun, but you got to put in So more about her new. That's a little bit for all of us.
[01:13:32.600] - Chris
Going back to the gun thing, I took Kara out. Oh, yeah. To go shoot. Kara is my wife, for those of you, uninitiated. She's not having it, bro.
[01:13:43.180] - Brandon
Oh, she's not in.
[01:13:43.800] - Chris
I I'm glad to know how to use this. I know where it is in our house. I know how to... I'm glad I know all this, and I don't like shooting guns.
[01:13:53.720] - Brandon
It breaks my heart a little bit. I still love Kara. It does break my heart a little bit.
[01:13:57.860] - Chris
She's great, but I was I tried to cajole her.
[01:14:01.680] - Brandon
Dude, I'm in full nerd mode. I know. As soon as both my feet are working, I might be signing up for a Haley class.
[01:14:07.350] - Chris
I might get her a 22 pistol, something that doesn't whack quite as hard.
[01:14:12.570] - Brandon
Yeah, you did go.
[01:14:13.540] - Chris
I went straight to a 57 Magnum. And by the way, it's just absurd.
[01:14:19.050] - Brandon
But that thing's serious business.
[01:14:21.530] - Chris
Yeah. So anyway, we'll see.
[01:14:22.890] - Brandon
Well, we'll have to record a show. I know. You know what we need to do is we need to bring in a real good trainer, somebody really keyed in on weapons.
[01:14:31.990] - Chris
Have a weapon show. Anyway, it's okay, guys. Okay. Yeah, maybe so.
[01:14:33.950] - Brandon
Thanks for hanging out with us. We'll see on the next one. All right, everybody. Hey, thanks for joining us for another episode of Head, Heart, and Boots.
[01:14:43.350] - Chris
And if you're enjoying the show, if 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..