Revolutionizing Technician Development and Its Marketing Impact (Copy)
0:00
Lemon Seed Q4 Training Overview
6:58
Strategic Annual Planning and Training
21:03
Strategic Growth Planning and Development
28:01
Building a High-Value Winning Team
33:26
Marketing Budget and KPI Strategies
40:01
Team Effort in Marketing Strategy
Strategic planning and training are the backbone of any thriving business, and this episode highlights why having a long-term vision is non-negotiable. By aligning decision-makers with your company’s core philosophy, as demonstrated by our experiences with McWilliams and Son, you can transform your enterprise into a wealth-generating powerhouse. We also delve into the importance of not just technical skills but also character and soft skills in training, ensuring your team isn’t just skilled, but also well-rounded and motivated. Striking the right balance in training approaches is crucial to avoid the traps of over-saturation or neglect.
Marketing blunders and operational missteps can be costly, and we address these head-on, especially for contractors. From calculating lead requirements accurately to fostering a supportive organizational structure, these elements are pivotal for sustained growth. We unpack the significance of cohesive teams and well-set KPIs to maintain profitability, especially in competitive arenas like Dallas-Fort Worth. Building a high-value, winning team involves more than skill—it requires nurturing a positive environment with recognition and appreciation. Listen as we explore how cohesive marketing efforts, paired with robust internal dynamics, drive success and ensure your company thrives.
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Speaker 1: 0:00
What's up, lemonheads? This is Kennedie and I am the podcast editor here at From the Yellow Chair. This episode we're going to give you a special behind-the-scenes look at what our clients get to experience every quarter here at Lemon Seed. Each quarter, we put together a specialized training for specific seasonality and trends that are going on at that time. Four times a year that you get special content that no one else gets to see. This quarterly session was in Q4 of 2024, so you get to know the seasonality of what we're talking about. This quarterly session we were joined by Ben from Go Time Success Group. Are you ready? Because it's time to sip some lemonade eliminate.
Speaker 2: 0:55
Hello, hello, welcome to our Q4 training. Due to some weather, we're having a little bit of issue getting the GoTime team on the webinar, but they're working on it, so I know that they will be here shortly. They're very, very close and so I wanted to jump in here and talk to you guys a little bit about what today's webinar is going to talk about. We are going to be talking very much about what are some things that we need to be very careful of going into 2025. So, as we are planning for 2025, most of you hopefully already have your budgets done, hopefully already have some semblance of what your revenue goals are going to be and how you're going to reach those things. And Limit Seed has three ways that we always encourage clients to look at your plans for 2025. There are three ways, as a company, that we can make more money and we can control what our business is doing. So one of those is operational efficiencies, right? So are you making sure that your clients are successful? No, you can make sure that you guys are hitting your average tickets every single day, every week, every month. You're watching those average ticket numbers to make sure that you are operationally doing everything that you can Lemon Seed. I do say this a lot from Lemon Seed. Marketing is one of those things. It never gets the credit, but it'll always take the fault. So when things aren't working well in business, a lot of times people are like oh, it's my marketing, it's my website company, it's this, it's that, and most of the time I try to tell you you're exactly right in the sense of something's not working. But I will say that businesses that I see be most successful, whether they're using Lemon Seed or not, normally are very, very strong on the operational side of business, and so operationally is where I think you win and lose ballgames. As I say, your strategy, your implementation and how you just modify things and pivot when you need to. And, guys, I'm telling you that is where I see the biggest difference is the difference between good operators and just good business. People like good technicians that are running businesses is definitely in the operations side. So that's one way that you can make more money next year is just holding your team accountable for hitting average tickets on install, average ticket on service, average ticket on repair and replacement, all of those average tickets, and then the best one that I'm really going to start tracking for all of our clients in 2025 is the lifetime value of the customer, being able to watch, once you got the customer, how much money are you making from that customer base as you continue on more and more and more, and so I really think that that lifetime value number is going to become more and more important as your market gets more and more concentrated and more and more busy.
Speaker 2: 3:37
Operationally efficiency is one of the big things. The second one that we can do is our own pricing. So your own pricing for your equipment and for your services is another way that you can. With a simple percentage change in your price book, just modifying that slightly automatically will increase your revenue brought into your company, and so operational efficiency is number one. Number two would be just being priced competitively and honestly.
Speaker 2: 4:06
Remember, we live in this life every single day. So we do heating and air conditioning, cooling every single day, plumbers, roofing. We live in that headspace. Our consumers do not. Our consumers live only when they need this service, and so many times what happens is they are focused on. They don't really go. Oh my gosh, he went up a hundred dollars on this equipment, or he. They don't know really. So I encourage you like, don't get caught in the outliers when you're talking about pricing. Really focus on what you need to be priced at to be competitive, and it's like two hours of hard work for a year of more revenue generated. And the third leg of that stool which Ben is who taught me the three-legged stool approach the third leg of that stool is marketing. So marketing is another piece of the puzzle here that helps generate more leads and more revenue. So, as I tell you, when you're looking at ways that your company can make more money in the next year, those are the three ways. Operationally, are you managing average ticket and having clear expectations for your team? Are you priced competitively? Are you priced fairly and are you paying attention to pricing on a consistent basis? And then, last but not least, is definitely going to be your marketing strategies for 2025.
Speaker 2: 5:24
Lemon Seed has a bucket style approach, if you've ever, like, talked with Lemon Seed. So what are you doing for branding, what are you doing for calls to action and what are you doing for cultivation? And when you look at those three buckets, some of you may have more things in more buckets. I know that this, on this call, is mostly all of our Lemon Seed clients. So we're always pushing you to balance out your buckets to make sure that you're not just going to your existing database or just doing branding pieces or just doing call to action. It's really about hitting your secret sauce in your market of where you can be the most successful.
Speaker 2: 5:57
I am so thankful to have been here, guys, and I knew if y'all saw GoTime's name I thought this will be the most attended webinar because y'all love the GoTime people, and I knew I knew if y'all saw GoTime's name, I thought this will be the most attended webinar when y'all because y'all love the GoTime people and I love them too, so I'm so excited to have you.
Speaker 2: 6:10
So, ben, I know you were trying to get logged on to the call. Some of the things that I was just talking about is the things that my brother taught me are three ways that businesses can can prepare themselves to make money next year is operational efficiencies managing average tickets, managing just expectations with your team. Pricing, making sure that people are priced correctly and that you're priced competitively, yet fairly, and not overthink, like even your margins on equipment and things like that. And then, last but not least, marketing is another way that we drive lead count, but also taking care of people. So I'm gonna just turn it over to you for you to start talking, like what are some don't make some of these mistakes and some best practices for really having a great kickoff to a year in 2025.
Speaker 3: 6:54
Right.
Speaker 3: 6:55
Well, I think you know there's a lot of different things. There's a. I think you know your your annual planning is is a is kind of the, the vision that you build for the company. You know, whether you be the owner, the general manager, it's how you structure where you want to be, not just a year from now, but 10 years from now. It's kind of like you know your branding plan. When you're talking about marketing, it's up to you to draw the whole scope for your business. So, really, you know, when you think about how long it took them like all the smartest scientists in the world and all the people that are trying to get us to the moon from 1960, it was like a 10-year process.
Speaker 3: 7:38
Well, I think you know you got to also take your annual planning like a 10-year process too. It's not something that you're building short term, you're building long term and I think you know the key to it is, you know, creating your vision, which is an in-depth build into what you're trying to do with your company and how you're trying to grow it out, trying to grow it out. And then you got to, you know, with your mission statement. You know, which is also another real key factor to it is, you know, your short, brief message to the public. So in the marketing aspect of it, those are two big things that you've got to look at. That's how you're going to portray where you're going to be this time next year and 10 years from now on down the line.
Speaker 2: 8:34
So those are my, always my biggest focuses on how I start out in my annual planning and starting to build that picture out.
Speaker 2: 8:46
So I remember when McWilliams and Son was first getting going, we had Chris Hunter actually come out and do one and I know that Trey looks up to you guys a lot because we realized so my dad kind of did annual planning before annual planning was a thing for any air conditioning companies.
Speaker 2: 8:54
We would kind of meet up and see, kind of you know, what was going on or where we were, where we could do some stuff. And I learned that in those annual plans it wasn't necessarily that we solved all of our issues, it was more that we started as a group collaboratively identifying things and diligently working towards those. And I will tell to me it was a game changer when we doing that in 20, I think, 2012, 2013, something like that, and it really was. You can tell the difference and I know at GoTime you guys see probably lots and lots, hundreds, if not thousands of companies and I think it really is a clear defined, like a clear defined definition piece of who's going to be more successful in the next year as people that are participating in those annual plans.
Speaker 3: 9:40
Yeah, and the annual planning is you know, for us there's always you know your top group of people, you know your key decision makers in your company, because I think they need to have a good input in what it does, because you know when they believe in it and they buy into it, it's something that's going to happen for them and you can show them a way that they're going to be successful in that annual planning. And I think that just the development of your core philosophy of your business. You need to know what type of business you're in. Are you a wealth machine? Are you a money machine? Wealth machine is something that you build on every year and becomes better. A money machine is kind of like take the money and run as quick as you can.
Speaker 3: 10:37
It's not a lot of customer care, which, with wealth building machine, you're building long term customers and you got to instill that in your people, especially when you bring them on. So you got to find them, you got to hire them, you got to onboard them. After you onboard them, then you start how do you want to train these people and what's your? For instance, how do you want a service technician built? Or how do you want an installer built. You've got to develop these people because initially we're just kind of labor brokers, so what our product is is how good we can do with the people that we have surrounding ourselves.
Speaker 3: 11:09
I think one of the key things about training especially like what we? Our philosophy with GoTime is that you know, we want to build character in people so that it instills and makes our company as a whole, the group of people that work there, all do better because of the type of people we have in it. One of the things that makes marketing easier when you're building your marketing plan is like what you guys do. You do a philosophy on whether you're in a large metro area, which is a certain kind of marketing, or if you're a rural area, which you guys are probably the most successful I've ever. If you're a rural area, which you guys are probably the most successful I've ever seen anybody in a rural area because of the way you market, you spider web through your people and you make all of your people an initial touch point for other people that they spread out to. So I think that's a great philosophy.
Speaker 2: 12:02
Thank you, thank you, and I see that too.
Speaker 2: 12:03
So some of the mistakes that I'm taking away from what you're saying is, like you know, lack of having an annual planning session, right. So even if you're like very unfamiliar, it's just about sitting down and writing out your goals and objectives and how you're going to get there with everything from you know, like I mentioned earlier, how operationally marketing all those things. And then training you know we undervalue training a lot. So I actually have two sets of clients, like I have sets of clients that really value training. So I almost feel like they inundate their team with like every new product that's out there. They're trying to get it out and about. And then I have clients that I think are very intentional, like they train on just overall basic technical training. And then one thing I think we might miss out on sometimes is people that don't focus at all on the soft skill side of training. So training, I do know, has been a big mistake that people make, either really getting like oversaturating their team or not saturating them enough on the right things.
Speaker 3: 13:04
Right. Well, for instance, like what you're saying is you know for you to be to to sell your product, you know you've got to have the best people that do it. So you've got to. You have to have specialized training for your salespeople you have to have specialized training for your phone taker, your call takers.
Speaker 3: 13:24
You have to have specialized training for your phone taker, your call takers. You have to have specialized training for how you do an install, what separates you from your competition, so that you have the selling edge and you know to grow your company. I think those are real key things to consider in your annual planning is how do you structure the mindset of where you want these to develop and how you build them so you're attracting both customers and people to work for you into your organization?
Speaker 2: 13:53
Yeah, you know we talk a lot, so that unique selling position doesn't have to mean reinventing your whole entire company. It's more about just identifying. So I remember when Mcwilliams, you know we sat in a room, um, and literally we just started throwing out ideas like and I'm a big idea person, so I throw out ideas that make the whole team like shaking their boots like we will never be able. But I feel like that was my job was to push us to think. So one day I threw out and said what if we guaranteed same day install? Yeah well, of course the install coordinator was like absolutely not, we can never do that. How would we ever do that?
Speaker 2: 14:28
And then I was like well, so if everyone else is two and three days out with install, if we can't do it same day, what about if we guaranteed next day install? Yeah so, but we had to think through it together, um, and be respectful of each other's departments, and so another thing and I'm really not on a tray kick today, but it seems like I am he told me there's going to be creators in your business and there's going to be doers in your business, and the creators will keep creating, but the doers will never create more than they think they can do. And so I'm like, if I keep asking the people that do it, how do you feel, do you feel good? They're always going to feel like you're pushing them too hard. They're never going to say you know what? I'm actually very fine, just send me 10 more installs, you know?
Speaker 3: 15:11
Well, that's a philosophy thing, you know. You've got to measure it right. You've got to be realistic about what your production people can do, especially on the install time, and time are limited, but it doesn't mean that you can't manage your labor better and send more people to a job, get a job done in a day, even if it's a big job. So I think there's a lot of ways to handle that. But it's also how are you thinking about how you're going to design this business to make it work like what your guarantees are guaranteeing? And maybe you know a guarantee that gets you a job may be a 100% satisfaction guarantee to earn your money back for two full years, which is what we extended. It set us out of the realm because most contractors that I competed with felt they couldn't offer that. But we could because we knew it was a numbers game. It was a matter of how many times is this going to sneak up and get you, and you got to be prepared to make sure that you can handle it, just like your guarantees. What's realistic to guarantee, what's not realistic to guarantee, and that's all done in the annual planning, in the setup of how you do things. Another thing that comes.
Speaker 3: 16:32
A big factor in annual planning is your manpower. You know, if you don't have the correct manpower to take care of the guarantees or the wants and needs of your employees, you're going to have a challenge. So you better make sure that your January staff, you know, might not fit what your June staff needs to be versus your September staff. So you better make sure that when you do make changes in your company, you can either shift a guy from one department to another or sometimes you got to get rid of the bottom 10 percent to be. You know that's not a nice thing to do but you know sometimes guys are not going to stay with you and you got to assess and evaluate your employees at all time. So you're making the correct move for the company. The entity that you're managing is what everybody in the company is working for.
Speaker 2: 17:31
Yes, I love this because you know we Lemon Seed, like even Lemon Seed we already had, like our pre. So I'm an annual plan freak now. So I figured out, emily and I figured out together like we needed to start, so we had a pre-meeting to our annual plan.
Speaker 3: 17:48
Exactly.
Speaker 2: 17:49
Because you realize the power behind that and we were working through this same manpower thing as well Like, okay, if we are, you know, if we want to get this many new customers, then we're going to need this many. This, and I'm telling you, it just gives you to be able to say, well, it doesn't look like I need to hire a new technician until March to be prepared for July. It feels really good and it helps you alleviate some of those sleepless nights of oh my gosh, how am I going to keep all these people busy? And I really just there's so much power in that annual planning.
Speaker 3: 18:30
Plus the fact of manpower also. Really, we budgeted a whole percentage factor that we put in for training for our employees. So if we needed some of our service technicians to step up to be maybe commercial technicians or whatever, we would bring in maintenance guys because they're easy to train, easy to put in the trucks, maintenance guys because they're easy to train, easy to put into trucks. And then we'd figure out training programs to get our other techs up a level so they could take on more of the workload that they weren't used to being as a maintenance tech. So you got to think about, you know, manpower is real key in, in my opinion, because that's what we are again everything.
Speaker 3: 19:03
We don't produce products, we install and fix products.
Speaker 3: 19:07
So our you know really what we are is labor people and we've got to make sure that our labor is better than our competition or our competition is going to overtake our competition, what we are, so that that's those are real key. And then you know, you get to. There's a lot of things in the annual planning. I know we don't have a lot of time to talk about all this stuff, but you know. Then you got to. You know, in your marketing budget I mean, we got, I think we put generally, you know, 8 to 16 hours in our market planning. So when you're doing the annual planning, you also got to kind of make sure that you're getting the key points in each one of these steps and you got to allow the time it takes to plan for them as well. So sometimes marketing, sometimes the annual plan, takes three or four days, sometimes it takes two weeks.
Speaker 2: 20:00
Yeah, that's very, that's a good point. So that's why I would say, like that pre-planning side, like Emily, her job at Limit Seed is to gather all of our budget numbers. She created a budget, my job is to be the creative side too, and then she, then we support each other in those steps. It's the same thing in a company. You know, I remember Trey used to come to our board to our planning retreats, and we mostly did all of ours offsite for this same purpose, so that we could focus, mostly did all of ours offsite for this same purpose, so that we could focus.
Speaker 2: 20:29
And we had, you know, the large notepads and we had whiteboards, because it was truly a time of brainstorming and trying to solve those problems, and we would normally have to do two and three days of cleaning, because to really tackle, you know, the things that you need to tackle whether it's retention of employees or recruitment of employees it's a new marketing strategy, whether it's just calls to action or is it refocusing your whole brand. And every year was different where our focus went. Every year was very different, and so when you talk about spending time on the marketing side, I'm assuming like with with. I think the biggest mistake that contractors make is not really knowing how many leads they need to generate, based off their booking rate and then based off their average tickets, to really know if their marketing is really, really working. They just really go by the, the tracking number.
Speaker 3: 21:19
You know the tracking number, you know and I think you know well, along with all this stuff is is if you're not in your annual planning at the end and end of it all, if you're not putting it in a book that everybody, all your managers, can follow and you bring it up in every weekly meeting that you have. I mean, you know you've got to see if you're on track of what your annual plan says. You know in your annual planning you'll do. You know the attaboys, you know and the oh shucks you know, what worked real good for us last year.
Speaker 3: 21:56
You know what didn't work very good for us last year and you need to decipher those things and change your plan annually to make sure that your growth is being successful. You don't keep on making the same mistakes twice. You know, and when you make good decisions, how do you expand and accelerate that decision?
Speaker 2: 22:17
Absolutely. And you know one of the things again, you know these are just mistakes that we, you know, that Ben and I see contractors make you know a lot of times. I think, in marketing specifically, you know these are, these are just mistakes that we, you know, that Ben and I see contractors make you know a lot of times. I think, in marketing specifically, you know, we tend to get real scared of the outliers, the three or four people that might, that might reach out and and and hold your feet to the fire. That really wasn't a fire you intended to start, you know. Um, so when McWilliams went to 777, so we went to a guaranteed next day install, which, honestly, we were pretty much hitting that anyway. Now we just promoted it that way. But we also went to 7 am to 7 pm, seven days a week, with no overtime charges.
Speaker 2: 22:57
So we took that unique selling position and we had to figure out how it affected everyone in our team. So the marketing team can't just create things and go buck wild when there's no, the structure's not ready. So as we talked through those things, we had to go back and restructure, like our work schedule for our technicians to make a 777 structure work. We had to go back and figure out how we were going to be stocking trucks to get ready for guaranteed next day install again without working our team to death, you know, and so we really had to think through how these marketing they all sounded great, but how did it impact the entire team? And that's where that time really came into play.
Speaker 3: 23:39
Yes, definitely. Well, you know, you got to also build an organizational chart along with your. In your planning you got to make sure that you have people in the right positions. So you know, I always, you know we, as you grow a company, one year you stay the same, you know, and it fits. But we almost always rebuilt our egg org charts every year because of the fact that we needed to continue always to be focused on developing people. How do you get the next guy up? What if you? What if a guy has a heart attack?
Speaker 3: 24:23
Unfortunately, sometimes things like that happen or gets hurt or is in an accident, you always have to be thinking, and even the supervisory which is kind of between management and the field sometimes if you're a big enough company, which is a lot of times what we had to deal with.
Speaker 3: 24:57
So the planning and the development of people Again I can't say enough of importance about how we depend upon what they do, what they feel, how strongly their connection is with other people in the team. So another great thing that I see that y'all have done over the years we emulated a lot of that was just the building of intertwining team and family into the company as well. And then you've got people that have a lot more longevity and you build upon that and I think that's just real key for keeping the drastic between one year and the next year. A lot of difference, because the steadier your employees are, the more stable they are with your company, the routines build in better, and then it's easy to always adjust your routines by saying, well, we're going to go with this method of doing something, and people accept it a lot better when they're working with each other rather than for the boss.
Speaker 2: 26:07
Oh yeah, and I did a presentation on this for a group at Service Titan the other day in Savannah, the day that Service Titan announced or went at NASDAQ and all that good stuff. But one of the things I said there was you know when you are building a company. There was you know, when you are building a company, you have which we all should be consistently building our companies for. Whatever our end goal that we have in mind, whether it's selling or family wealth or whatever you're building it for, we have to keep in mind the importance of our team and their buy-in to what we're doing. So a whole nother part of our annual plan was okay, these sound great, these are aggressive goals. Like we were about to come back to our team and say, hey, we think we can, you know, almost double our revenue and not add a lot more people. Well, all of a sudden, they're going to be like there's no way. I'm already so. You know.
Speaker 2: 26:57
I feel like I work all the time as it is, and so you have to combat that with things that most contractors are not super successful at, which is a lot. I call it shaking hands and kissing babies. Right, we have to do a lot of just and I hate to use this word because it has negative connotations, but we have to coddle a little bit, like you guys are doing great Like thank you, here's lunch on us, here's a new jacket, here's a new hat, here's a party. All of those things are done specifically to motivate and to encourage. And the day that they wake up and we spoil their wives for the specific reason of the day, they get up and their wives are mad that they're on call that weekend and they're like you should just quit, you should go work somewhere that doesn't make you be on call. Well, you know what I wanted to say? Well, not at the expense of that Christmas bonus and our holiday party.
Speaker 3: 27:51
I agree with that too, but I think also in your training mechanism, when you invest into people. We have what we call the four toolboxes of success. You know your physical toolbox. How do you build your toolbox and learn how to use all the tools in your toolbox? And you think about it for a minute, that everybody has a toolbox. A CSR uses software, a salesman uses a briefcase with third-party articles and tape measure and all this other stuff. Technician has their tools, but tools are what helps you get through a job quicker and more efficient, right.
Speaker 3: 28:32
The next thing you've got to focus. Our second toolbox is the knowledge toolbox. That's our training programs. How do you build a person's identity and help them to think about what their job really is and focus on doing that job better, whether it be a manager, whether it be a CSR, whether it be a field technician?
Speaker 3: 28:55
The third toolbox is your communication toolbox, and it's. You know you have all this technical stuff in your mind, but how do you get it out of your technical brain and through your mouth so that everybody comprehends the layman's terms of it? So you got to think about your communication skills and grow that on every employee. And you have those three toolboxes, but none of them are any good if you don't have the mindset. And the mindset is, you know, is the glass half full or half empty.
Speaker 3: 29:24
So we really teach that every time a guy goes to class or gets trained on something, or even just raw field experience, they're enhancing their value to the industry, so that it's like you know I've got all this.
Speaker 3: 29:43
Now you know baggage with me that how can I use it to best benefit me? Then they become more, a higher asset to the entire industry, whether they decide to stay as a service technician or they want to move to a manager or a salesperson. Because I can tell you one thing for sure is I think of myself as a service technician first and foremost, but I've also been trained in sales. I spent five years in sales, I spent two or three years as a manager and I've spent 35 years now as a business owner. So I know that my value has increased each time I've done things, know that my value has increased each time I've done things. So training is trying to get those people that are your team members. How do you instill what their total value is to not just themselves but their family and to the company and their teammates?
Speaker 2: 30:42
Yes.
Speaker 3: 30:42
So that's, I think, a real important aspect of the whole employee philosophy is how do you build people to be better assets in the industry? Then you've got a winning team, and then you've got people that do take on extra workloads so that the whole team benefits rather than just the individual benefits.
Speaker 2: 31:09
I love that. Yeah, I love it. One of the things too that you just said, the mindset side. You know, I've learned too like and this is terrible to say because it makes me kind of feel bad but I will get clients or potential clients and from there my initial interview I'm like their mindset is wrong. So now I'm going to be watching them like infiltrate that mindset down to technicians and so, like they'll start like we'll still start a call and or even when we were helping other companies do their their annual plan, you'll sit down and talk with them and you'll say, okay, that'll never work, or my team is just lazy, or they're never gonna agree to do tune-ups, or they're never gonna worry about average tickets.
Speaker 2: 31:48
And finally, I just wanna say sometimes like, well, it has to start at the top. We have to care about our own mindset and our own structure and our own ability to do things. So if you are very disengaged with your company, then they are going to be very disengaged and it really is a matter of setting the precedent yourself. And I have learned a lot. I seek out contractors, like when I will talk to contractors if they act like, if they can show me like some vision and some I will help. I'm glad to help on the marketing side all along there.
Speaker 3: 32:26
Well, you know, one of the things that we do here also is Dave Rothkir does the leadership. You send all your people through our leadership class. You don't believe how incredible that effect is, because it teaches a person not just to walk by. You know, be involved, be part of it, because it's all human relationships that our companies are about. How do you get into? How does a business owner like me the first five years of my business I was not an involved business owner. I was a guy that walked by him and went to my office and started working on something where my job is more than anything else. How do I extend my gratitude and my lend of my knowledge to these other people to help them be able to do their job better? Then you build something of value.
Speaker 2: 33:23
Yes, yes, absolutely. Well, what are a couple of what are maybe a few more mistakes that you see contractors making? Is it not tracking the right KPIs? You know what do you think?
Speaker 3: 33:34
Yeah, I think, I think KPIs are real, are real key and I think you know with you know, key performance indicators are things that you briefly look at. Key performance indicators are things that you briefly look at on at least a monthly basis. But some people look at KPI on a daily basis and I think the more often you look at it, one of the secrets to success, in my opinion, is never to go through a month less than break even. I mean, I focused on that for many years. It took me several years to get to a point where I didn't have a loss of a year, but once I got there we went almost, I think, over 48 months without having a single month with a below average. And the way we did that was shifting our jobs, so that we knew that.
Speaker 3: 34:28
You know, in the marketing area, you know August 15th it was going to drop off because kids were going back to school. So we started 45 days ahead of that and in, you know, in middle of June, thinking about how are we going to keep that drop off from happening. So we developed programs that were out of our normal realm, like it could be. You know we're HVAC, but you could be adding plumbing, or you could be adding attic insulation, attic systems and things like that to keep that revenue flowing. So you're at least at break even blowing. So you're at least at break even. I think break even is so key because you got to think when you drop below break even every month, you got to make up that much more monies before you even hit the next month. You know profit goals.
Speaker 3: 35:16
I think focusing on those KPIs of profitability, making sure your labor is in check. You know our labor was below 20% for service techs, below 10% for install department labor, a few things like that Salesman closure rate. It must equal. You know it started off at 35% or better but it got eventually. Our KPI changed where we were. We wanted 50% closing ratio or better, but it got. Originally our kpi changed where we were, we wanted 50 closing ratio or better. So your kpi changed every time. You, you know, focus and refocus on things so you build the kpi that fits your company. You know like what percentage you invest in marketing. That's another important KPI. How many maintenance agreements you add to your base each day or each week or whatever, is very, very important to your KPI. So your physical KPIs, numbers-wise, are real key that you take into consideration when you're doing your annual planning so that your budgets meet up.
Speaker 2: 36:26
Yes, I wanted to ask something like on if you were to make recommendations and we may have a different. I think this would be a good conversation if we are a little different here on the marketing side. So you know, I always tell contractors like we're going to focus on the residential, because commercial side of your business requires a different strategy than the residential side of your business, and so I encourage contractors that are in growth mode, meaning they're aggressively trying to grow by 30 40 percent year over year. I encourage them to be at 10 percent of their marketing goal for the next year. Now, those people that live in markets like East Texas we may not have to be at 10 percent because we just don't have the competition, but those that are what you came from a Dallas market. So you have lots, lots of competition, right, and so what is? What advice do you give around marketing percentages and thoughts around that as well?
Speaker 3: 37:25
Marketing percentages are real key, I think, when you're in a, when you're a young off, with probably around 12, up to probably 25%, maybe even sometimes to grow that company that first year. Then it quickly adjusted down to where it was livable.
Speaker 3: 37:43
So I think livable is probably somewhere north of 6% and below 10%. I think those are pretty good numbers. But I've seen some very, very big, successful companies running at 2% or 3% marketing budget and I really applaud those people because that means that their internal or natural growth in that company is very successful and generically they grow by themselves and that's a good sign of a company that has a following in the community, then you can have those low numbers.
Speaker 3: 38:29
But when you have a place like Dallas-Fort Worth area, you're always going to be faced with always having to market to a new customer because it's just there's so much company. You know we've got three. I think at one time we had 3,500 licensed contractors in the Dallas-Fort Worth area people that held a license just in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and your competition is not that big. But when you got that many people working in the area you got a lot of competition. So your marketing budget is going to have to be higher.
Speaker 2: 39:03
Yeah, and I will say this too. So when we started, my brother and sister and I started a pest control company that my sister and brother-in-law run. What we started off off we're probably hitting 20 in marketing right now um, but we had financially prepared our company the company for that, uh, trey was very intentional about having the, the money behind the scenes to fund 20 marketing go out of the, out of the gate, you know, um, and so some of the things like behind that I just look and say you know there's nothing wrong with being gritty and you know literally clawing your way if you don't have a lot of, you know, extra cash to help your marketing spend. And I've seen it. I've seen some franchises like really build these new companies through lead aggregators like ANG or home advisor or whatever. It's just a strategy. You just have to have an intentional strategy of how you are going the thing about those are the.
Speaker 3: 40:01
the challenge to those type of that type of marketing is that you're very, very price driven to success, so it's going to be low-end and then you can't afford the budget to step into high-end marketing. When you do high-end marketing, of course you've got to realize and know and understand that it's got to go in your gross margin. When you spend more on marketing, you've got to put, you've got to operate at a higher gross margin. When you spend more in marketing, you've got to have operating at a higher gross margin and if you don't, you're going to fail or be non-profit situation.
Speaker 2: 40:38
No, I 100% agree, and I take clients a lot of times and I'll say, okay, let's talk about why we're not branding, and again, it's just a harp on this. But I would love to see contractors get a little more aggressive with their branding and their and their marketing strategy all the way around, because the more branded we can be in a market, the more people are seeing. So, yeah, wrapped trucks is great, that's great. It's only a piece, though. We have to keep adding on things, whether it's billboards or being on tv screens, being in cinemas, doing all of those things.
Speaker 3: 41:15
We have to just be noticeable, because people don't make it manageable too, because when you, when you spend a lot like on a jingle or something like that, you got to learn how to use that jingle to your advantage. You know we had one where it was just a five second jingle on a TV ad that just reminded us, at you know weather time whenever the news weather came on, that that was supported by our company. So things like that, just managing it is real key to success and having you know a marketing person either in your company or you work side by side with one, like you guys, you know, just keep in mind of what those things get the best traction when you're out there using them yeah, you know, just, are you?
Speaker 2: 42:12
are you prepared so you mentioned this earlier like you can run with a 20 marketing budget and then you won't have the staff if you don't prepare to have the staff to keep your team from, you know, falling apart on on those things. Um, I want to jump back to one of those, the physical toolbox that you talked about. You know, how do you, like when you're in your own business, how are you, um, working through technicians? Like in your own business, how are you working through technicians? I know several of my clients will mention to me like they just can't quite get buy-in from their technicians on things. Like you know I'll recommend let's do an $89, you know, tune-up offer, $109 tune-up offer, and they struggle to get their own team on board with those things. Do you have any advice or thoughts behind that?
Speaker 3: 42:50
I think, again, it's team effort. It's how well, I mean, if you've got 15 guys that go in all their own directions, or you've got, you know, three teams of five people, you know, and with a leader in each team, so then you've got a middle person. That both is kind of liaison from their team to the service manager or the department head, whatever it may be. So I think you know, sometimes you've got to break these groups down a little bit, see which team fits best with which, and then you've got closer, tighter communications that help a lot of people, you know, with getting through these issues. Because, yeah, like you're right, you get guys that call in and you know it's 430 on Friday, it's I want to get off, you know, and well, sometimes that's just not doable.
Speaker 3: 43:46
So you've got to think ahead about how do you plan in your meeting that week. It's going to be 95 degrees Friday and you guys got to keep in mind we got to keep pushing this, because this is when we make our money. Think about all the times we did spend a lot of extra money to help carry you through the slow times. Well, there's a little bit of payback. So this is a team effort. Sometimes the business owner needs to walk in those meetings and explain a little bit of how overhead is allocated and how important it is for you guys to step up a little bit, because I took this out of my pocket a few months ago to make sure that you guys didn't starve this winter by doing something, this or that around the shop. Remember that.
Speaker 3: 44:32
Well, this is a little bit of payback.
Speaker 3: 44:34
We're going to push you here a little bit extra, but when you give them that payback, sometimes in the wintertime, when it's slow, make sure you talk to them about hey, I'm giving a little bit here. You got to remember to be able to give us a little bit when we, when the need is calling for your high demand of service. So it's a team effort, it's a work back and forth, it's communication, it's getting guys mindset right where we're here for the team, we're not just here for me, and I think you actually build that relationship a lot stronger and people are a lot less apt to oh, the grass is greener, and leave you when the times get hard. Because I'll promise you one thing if you've got a good team and you've got good management and you've got good ownership that train people and work on people, they're going to hop ship and go over somebody and they're going to quickly see that the grass is not greener.
Speaker 3: 45:29
Because this is only about five percent of the people out there that do planning and do actual you know, keep in mind of training and building a company. The rest of them are fly-by-nighters or they don't really care and they're not really focused on growth and what's good for the team rather than just the individual. An individual does include the owner too. You don't want to be one side and you want to share.
Speaker 2: 45:57
I love that thought that you just said of the owner coming in and speaking on overhead and things like that. There is power in educating your technicians on why you do some of the things you do. I even preached that on the marketing side. Like we'll do a gift with purchase, like buy a new system from us and get a Traeger grill, a TV, whatever. And a lot of contractors will go, ah, my team's not all about that stuff. And I'm like, well, you need to tell your team it's really not about what they like, it's about what the market likes and how can it help them sell more equipment. And so it's again that word buy-in figuring out how you can get your team buy-in. Many of them maybe they just want to understand why you're offering what you're offering. So I love what you said there.
Speaker 2: 46:46
Like owners and there's a lot of several owners on this call, you know I encourage you to like step in, speak into the lives of your team about, you know, overhead, they they've never a lot of them have never run their own business. They don't understand why you don't just do whatever the heck you want to do, you know. So I do know that there is power in educating to an extent, and being transparent to an extent that protects the team, protects them and educates them at the same time. So I just kind of love that concept there. So we're about to wrap things up here. I have the chat section open if anybody wants to throw any questions in there. But also, ben, I wanted you to chat a little bit about what is GoTime Success Group, for those on here that don't maybe know exactly what you guys offer.
Speaker 3: 47:37
Well, we do a lot of technical training. We do sales training. We have a team of I think six or seven certified service titan trainers. So we actually do the physical training of a lot of Service Titan software building and implement of inventory and price books and things like that Great team there. All of our trainers they're all field people, so they've actually lived. They're all field people, so they've actually lived. All of our technical trainers probably have over 10 years in the field and over 10 years in training as well.
Speaker 3: 48:19
So you know we've got a lot of experts on how to take a brain guy that's just coming into industry, how do we get him to be a service technician or a good, solid maintenance technician in two weeks? We have the programs to do things like that so very well built in. That you know. A couple of things I'll touch on is make sure on your annual planning you have a wish list of what you want in your departments and when are you going to implement parts of that wish list A breakdown of profits and bonus structure plans and an action plan. How are you going to achieve what you planned? And that again goes into building a little book share with all your managers and the managers bringing it into a meeting every week and discussing where are we at this time, right now, how is it going with our plan? Are we on track or we didn't need to do? We need to make up or are we ahead of track?
Speaker 2: 49:19
so keep those things like that in mind and a wish list is important, especially those of you that are large enough to have managers over departments. You know, allowing them to say I wish I had this equipment, I wish I had this team member I was, you know, allowing them to say, I wish I had this equipment, I wish I had this team member. I wish you know building out that wishlist and then actionable things like don't just write out this action plan and then go back to life as normal, actually start implementing, like with this timeline and action plan. Well, I love this. I really appreciate your time today. It looks like we answered almost all of the questions that we had or thoughts that they had in here. So, ben, thank you so much for joining us. If there's anything that we can ever do for the Go Time team, please reach out and let us know.
Speaker 3: 49:57
Apologize for being late.
Speaker 2: 49:59
Oh no, no, it was technically on Lemon Seed's side, so we apologize, but we will definitely get this live recording or this recording live and sent out to everybody in our database. Lupita was able to put the link to GoTime's website. All of my leadership team actually goes through Dave Rothacker's leadership trainings. We catch them every time they come out. It's a great way to I hate to say force, but put it on your calendar to make you participate in leadership, to grow you guys, because there's so many leaders on this call.
Speaker 2: 50:30
I encourage you to not don't sleep on self-education, and Dave does a great job through GoTime of making sure you are. He's very philosophical. The work like he really makes you think about things, and so we're doing a John Maxwell book right now. It's been great. I referred one of our clients, perfect Climate, over as they were onboarding with ServiceTitan and wanted some guidance. That's been a great partnership and so lots of great things over at GoTime. And, of course, my favorite people before LemonSeed was even a thing was Ben and Chris, and so I'm really excited for the success they're having for GoTime. So thank you all so much for joining us. We appreciate it and we'll see you next quarter.
Speaker 3: 51:05
Thank you for having us.
Speaker 2: 51:07
Thank you.
