September 10, 2025 • 32 mins
In this episode of Digital Marketing for Contractors, Janet and Caitlyn sit down with Dean Curtis, CEO of Ingage, to talk about transforming the in-home sales presentation. Dean shares how Ingage helps contractors close more deals with polished, interactive, and data-driven presentations that boost professionalism and consistency across sales teams. You’ll hear real success stories, tips for overcoming adoption challenges, and a sneak peek at what’s next for the platform. Plus, Janet and Caitlyn announce that FatCat Strategies is now a Certified Ingage Design Partner—helping contractors get the most out of their sales pitches.
Want to find out how we can create a custom digital marketing game plan for your contractor business? Schedule a call with us at fatcatstrategies.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Unknown (00:00):
🎵 🎵
Speaker 00 (00:11):
Welcome to Digital Marketing for Contractors, a
podcast for home improvementcontractors to help you crush
your lead goals and take yourbusiness to the next level.
Join us each episode as we giveyou powerful insights and
practical tips on the bestdigital marketing strategies to
help you grow your homeimprovement business.
Let's get started.
Janet (00:31):
Welcome back to the Digital Marketing for
Contractors podcast, where wehelp home improvement companies
win more jobs, increase revenue,and build lasting brands.
I am Janet Mobley here withCaitlin Noble, and today we have
a super special guest thatwe're very excited to have join
us, Dean Curtis, CEO of Engage.
Caitlyn (00:51):
Yes.
Hey, Dean.
Everybody listening, if youhave ever wished for your sales
presentations to do more, grabattention, tell a story better,
actually help you close dealsYou are going to love this
conversation.
Engage is transforming the waycontractors present to
homeowners and we are divinginto exactly how.
Dean, welcome to the show.
(01:11):
We're so excited to have youhere.
Dean (01:13):
Thanks so much for having me.
I appreciate you inviting me onand having this conversation.
Janet (01:18):
Yeah, so let's just dig into it.
So for listeners who are notfamiliar, tell us what is Engage
and what problem were youtrying to solve when you
launched it?
Dean (01:31):
Well, it's It's a little twofold story.
So I'll, if you're, if you'reokay with it, I'll give you a
little history lesson.
Caitlyn (01:36):
Kind of
Dean (01:38):
crazy, but when Engage was conceived, I was actually at
Apple.
So I worked at Apple for eightyears and I was part of a team
building out partnerships andEngage was one of the partners
that we were trying to sign.
And at the time the company waswell known for creating
incredible, immersive,interactive experiences for the
iPad.
So as an Apple person, we weresuper excited for them, right?
(02:00):
But But what they were wasreally a digital agency.
So they had a piece ofsoftware, but it took a ton of
work to build anything on top ofit.
So it was very, very expensiveto build these interactive
experiences.
But they were buildingexperiences for the Super Bowl,
the launch of the Chevy Volt,GMG, GE, Johnson & Johnson, like
massive companies, Apple.
(02:20):
And what we said is, well, whatif you had your software could
do that for anyone and you coulddo it on an iPad?
And they were like, hmm, that'sa really interesting idea.
So they hired one of my friendsfrom Apple to come over and
lead the engineering effort.
And then they brought me oversix months later to lead the
go-to-market.
And what we created was fromthat core software, an iPad app
(02:42):
that allowed anyone to createthose same digital experiences
at a fraction of the cost andeffort.
And that's really where Engagewas conceived.
Now we solve a very differentproblem.
So it's kind of funny how theoriginal idea is still there.
We help people create amazinginteractive content.
content for touch devices andwe are focused on sales teams.
Janet (03:06):
Okay.
So how has the platform evolvedsince then?
Dean (03:10):
Yeah.
Since those early days, werealized a few things.
Number one, people don't wantto create content on the iPad.
So our original vision for theproduct was anybody with an iPad
could create great content,which is true, but the market
for that is not very big.
So we ended up creating adesktop creation experience
because 95 plus per of ourviewing of engaged content is on
(03:34):
mobile devices.
But that leaves a very smallamount.
The creators want to do it on acomputer where all their assets
are, where they're used tohaving a pointing device, all of
those
Janet (03:46):
things.
A big screen, a mouse, akeyboard, a tablet, all kinds of
stuff.
Dean (03:52):
Exactly.
So we also needed more featuresto differentiate the platform.
So we added additionalinteractive elements to it.
We added management of usersand content we also added rich
analytics to know what washappening when presentations
were being delivered so at firstit was this rapid creation
product on an ipad and now it'sa full platform and suite
Caitlyn (04:15):
oh that's amazing um i know we were introduced to you
guys because of the contractorsthat use it um right in the
industry we focus
Janet (04:23):
probably three or four years ago we first encountered
engaged
Caitlyn (04:26):
yeah absolutely um and our clients that do use it have
a ton of success with it um isit is it just for the remodeling
industry the contractors or doyou guys i mean yeah we only
have home improvement i knowthat's off script but i just was
like
Dean (04:42):
oh well here's the thing right so we intend we set out to
serve every market while we'rebuilding a software product it's
nearly impossible to do
Janet (04:51):
right yeah
Dean (04:52):
right you have to have a niche and a niche found us so we
had a little widget on ourwebsite and someone came and
booked the demo and It wasNewPro.
Okay.
Janet (05:03):
We knew
Dean (05:04):
NewPro.
Right?
Out of Boston.
Yeah.
And before we knew it, we hadNewPro as a customer.
And they helped inform ourproduct roadmap.
They gave us some ideas.
And they also gave us nineother friends.
Janet (05:16):
Oh,
Dean (05:16):
yeah.
And introduced us to them.
And then before we knew it, wehad 10.
Yeah.
And then we had a buildingproduct manufacturer who was one
of their providers, theirmaterials providers.
And we were like, wait, maybethere's something here.
Right.
We started focusing our effortson home improvement and now
it's pretty much what we do.
Caitlyn (05:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
I know that was not thequestion that I was going to
ask, but I was sitting herethinking, I'm like, are you
guys, is it just homeimprovement?
Janet (05:44):
Yeah, I mean, we know you through home improvement and we
have clients that use Engageand we've built Engage
presentations, but that goodquestion.
Caitlyn (05:51):
And yeah, and the manufacturers, et cetera, have
now partnered with y'all.
I mean,
Janet (05:56):
it's
Caitlyn (05:56):
amazing.
Do you have, I know you'vementioned New Pros being the
first, kind of home improvementcompany to get involved.
Is there a story that comes tomind?
Maybe it's new pro that showedreal results of the success of
switching to this, you know, toengage?
Dean (06:13):
Well, I'll tell you, in general, the big problem we
solve is raising the level ofprofessionalism.
A lot of times, I mean, I hadthis experience myself.
So I did a little secretshopping when I had a solar
project.
And I invited far too manysolar providers into my home.
And Because I wanted to see howthey sold.
(06:33):
And we have a couple of solarproviders on the platform and
I've obviously invited them andthen the others.
And what I found was a lot ofpeople come in and there's
absolutely no organization tohow they're trying to educate me
in the process of selectingthem to do my project.
And solar is a pretty bigeducation thing.
(06:54):
I have to understand creditsand how it's going to impact my
roof.
There's so much education.
And we found that peoplestarted choosing us because it
raised the level ofprofessionalism.
And what they found was whenthe customers would say, well,
why did you choose us oversomeone else?
That was like one of thereasons they said, you were so
(07:16):
prepared and polished.
And when you can have already,you know, ready-made content on
brand consistently delivered inthe home, you win more.
And those are the, and we havetons of case studies on our
website that can tell you theBut lots of different ways that
we've helped contractors toclose more business for higher
rates and quicker times, allthose things.
Janet (07:39):
No, absolutely.
I always like to break thingsdown.
I imagine like my grandmother,you know, listening, make it as
simple to understand aspossible.
If we haven't said it already,Engage helps your sales reps
with the in-home salespresentation of your
information, right?
Dean (07:58):
Yep.
I mean, we do more than that,but that is what we do.
is the primary use case thatpeople buy us for?
They have a sales presentation,however you're doing it today,
paper, flip books, PowerPoint,whatever it is.
That's how we help people win.
Janet (08:13):
I'm glad you brought up PowerPoint and flip books.
What makes Engage differentfrom a traditional presentation
that our listeners might befamiliar with?
Maybe they send their reps outwith binders of project photos
and samples, if it's an awningthe fabric samples.
So that's what everybody knows.
(08:35):
What makes Engage different orbetter than that?
Dean (08:39):
Imagine all of those things in one place, perfectly
organized, on brand, and alwaysup to date when your sales rep
opens their iPad.
That's pretty cool.
So what we do is a lot ofpeople have invested tremendous
amount of time, resources, andtraining someone on a sales
process.
Caitlyn (08:59):
Exactly.
Dean (09:00):
So being able to ensure that the sales process is
followed because one, thecontent is not editable.
Now it can be, we havedifferent controls.
If you want them to edit it,they can, but most sales leaders
don't want you to edit itbecause what they, what they did
in the past is they'd send outsome sort of electronic press
presentation, and then if theydid any sort of inspection later
(09:23):
on, they would look and belike, why did you rearrange
these pages?
We have told you, if you gofrom here to here to here to
here, and in that order forthese amounts of time, you are
going to have a 47% chance ofclosing that deal.
They know these things.
And we kind of give them all ofthe controls that they need to
embed their sales process,control how people navigate
(09:44):
through, stay on brand withrole-based permissions, and then
most importantly, distribute.
Know who gets what.
Exactly.
And then if someone leaves,they can actually take it back
too.
Caitlyn (09:54):
Right.
And that was going to be mynext point to bring up.
Another powerful part of Engageis the analytical and
interactivity that you guysbring behind the scenes.
So
Janet (10:08):
there's sales reports for the sales manager, are they
not?
Dean (10:12):
That's correct.
Janet (10:12):
So I
Dean (10:13):
won't go so far.
I mean, you could replace theride-along.
I don't want to be so bold andbrave to say you would because I
think there's there's stillvalue in that.
I think there's a lot of valuein going and seeing someone live
in the field.
But imagine you could have areport every week to show,
literally compare your fivesales reps and who's presenting,
how long they're presenting,how long they're spending in
(10:34):
each section, how long they'respending on each page.
If you know you train that by45 minutes into the sales
process, you should havepositioned financing.
You know that people aren'tgetting there.
That's a great trend to be ableto train on.
Janet (10:48):
And it's really Rather than you guessing or having a
sales meeting and asking, youknow, you get your five sales
guys in the room for yourTuesday morning meeting and you
ask like, who's talking aboutfinancing?
I mean, the old school way todo it is everybody goes, I'm
talking about funding.
So I'm always talking about,but now you're
Dean (11:07):
like, Hey Jim, no, you're not.
Janet (11:08):
You actually, you actually
Caitlyn (11:11):
did
Dean (11:12):
it.
Or maybe, maybe they are.
Right.
Found a different way.
Yeah.
You know, like everybody thinksof these analytics as like big
brother.
I think the opposite is, allright, well, Caitlin is actually
closing at five points higherthan Dean.
What is she doing when she'sdelivering the materials that
makes the difference?
Is it something to do with howshe's delivering, when she's
(11:35):
talking about certain things,what pages she's spending more
time on versus others?
I mean, the content can reallyleave clues to success.
Janet (11:44):
Yeah.
So in your hypotheticalexample, if Caitlin is our
leading sales rep, then we coulddive into how she's using the
presentation and then getinsights like, oh, within the
first 10 minutes, I'm makingthis up on the fly right here,
but in the first 10 minutes,Caitlin has hit on these three
product features and all thecolor options.
Dean (12:05):
That's
Janet (12:05):
right.
And she's doing that moreconsistently than anybody else.
And she closes seven pointshigher than all the other sales
reps.
Dean (12:12):
That's right.
Janet (12:13):
Well, then you train on that.
Dean (12:15):
Exactly.
I use the financing example asa real one because I think
there's a, There's a push forfinancing in today's day and
age.
And it's something that somepeople are really uncomfortable
talking about.
And it's one of these thingsthat we hear from our customers
all the time.
We need people to position andeducate on financing.
They built two or three pagesor one page to explain the
(12:37):
financing options that areavailable and they realize
people aren't getting to it orpresenting it in the right way.
So there's lots of really goodtraining, teaching, coaching
that can come out of usingadvanced analytics on top of the
presentation data.
Caitlyn (12:53):
So exciting.
All of this is amazing.
We geek out over data.
Absolutely.
I mean, people who listen tothis are owners, marketing
managers, sales managers, etcetera, from businesses of all
size.
A small, just mid-sizedbusiness, they might find this
overwhelming.
How am I going to manage thatinflux of data?
(13:16):
What can I get from it?
I mean, this is, again, alittle bit off script, but it's
easy.
It's not that difficult.
I mean, we're making it soundsuper powerful and it is, but
it's dead simple to use.
I
Dean (13:30):
mean, you can be as advanced as you want, right?
So we can create some advancedreports, but we also provide
very top level metrics of whopresented the most last week.
What was the most popularpresentation?
Unknown (13:41):
Like that, that kind of stuff that we present, we
provide right out of the box.
Caitlyn (13:45):
Okay.
That's amazing.
Do you see any like mistakesthat companies are making with
their sales presentations?
Like I mean, amongst some ofthe other data points?
Dean (13:56):
Yeah, I would say the biggest mistakes they make is
not, number one, not knowingtheir sales process.
I think it's really hard tonail down a good in-home sales
workflow.
And I think the presentation ispart of the workflow if you
don't understand your salesprocess.
I mean, we see the mostcustomers leave our platform,
(14:18):
not because they didn't like thecontent, because they really
struggled because they didn'thave a great sales process.
And then mapping thatpresentation to the process
makes it that much moreeffective.
Another one is not having greatassets to tell their story.
They don't have pictures.
They don't have lifestyleimages.
They don't really understandwho their customer is.
(14:39):
So they don't know, like, whatdo I put in the presentation?
Because you want the customerto see themselves, literally,
not literally like a picture ofthem, but, you know, people who
look like them, houses that looklike theirs, projects that look
like the ones they are.
Exactly.
don't have those great assetsto tell their story.
I'll tell you the saddest oneis they have no plan for
(14:59):
adoption.
They buy technology.
It's like loading up the plateat the buffet and they're like,
I have no idea how I'm going toconsume all this.
They just don't plan for thesales rep who's going to be
resistant to adopting newtechnology or the learning curve
that it takes because it does.
It's not all simple.
It takes time to adopttechnology.
Janet (15:22):
We have deaf with our clients, we have helped our
clients with the onboarding fromthe content.
I mean, we didn't sell Engage.
They bought Engage and thenthey told us, hey, help us build
out this Engage presentation.
But we have walked that walkwhere they didn't have the
assets.
They weren't exactly sure howthey were going to integrate it
into their sales process.
(15:43):
So we so know what you'retalking about.
But we've seen our customerskind of push through that and
then come out the other side.
with much tighter controlsover, you know, if you've got 10
sales reps, 15 sales reps.
I mean, one of the big thingsthat I heard from our customers
(16:04):
was, okay, we used to usebinders, like hard copy pocket
folders.
Then we bought everybody iPadsand we made a keynote
presentation.
But if we ever wanted to changethe keynote, they all had to
come back into the office withtheir iPad and we had to load it
up and And then you have thissituation where like, okay,
(16:26):
well, maybe Sally was sick thatday, which she's now got an iPad
floating around out there withan outdated presentation with
old pricing or an old promo orwhatever.
And so Engage kind of solvesall of that because it's a
central hub for your officialpresentation that then you push
(16:46):
out to those iPads without themhaving to come into the office.
So I'm glad you talked aboutthe adoption part of it because
I think with any technology, ifyou introduce it into your
company and you don't have aplan for rollout and adoption,
it's just not going to go verywell.
Dean (17:03):
Yeah.
I mean, how many people havehad failed CRM projects, failed
CPQ projects, failed digitalmarketing project?
I mean, you guys probably seethat all the
Janet (17:11):
time.
Dean (17:11):
Yeah.
We're doing marketingautomation.
You're like, are you, are youready for that?
What
Janet (17:15):
you did is you gave your credit card to a company.
Right.
That's right.
And now you're being billed forit and you're mad that it's not
working.
Dean (17:23):
Well, don't know what you mean i've never had any
customers call me about thatyeah
Janet (17:28):
so do you have any um i mean our listeners really love
to hear like concrete numbersthat they can get excited about
do you have um some numbers youcan share with us about a
customer that they broughtengage on they onboarded they
trained and they saw an increasein their sales closing ratio
can you share any numbers
Dean (17:49):
absolutely so we're super fortunate i mean our customers
are willing a willing to sharetheir success because everyone's
really proud like yeah it's nota simple thing you do have to
put some work in to make itsuccessful and we have a success
story on our website everybodycan go read this ridge top
exteriors okay in their firstyear using engage their average
(18:11):
closing rate rose just shy offour points so four points not
like four percent on top ofsomething i don't they didn't
give us the exact detail butthat's like 32 to 36 it's right
it's a significant jump.
So up, you know, just shy offour points and their average
ticket also increased 12 points.
Oh, now they closing more,they're closing for a higher
(18:33):
rate leading to an increase andget this 40% revenue improvement
across all three of theirlocations.
Caitlyn (18:41):
Wow.
Oh my gosh.
Dean (18:42):
Yeah.
And we've seen any, so the, youknow, the close rate we've seen
anywhere from, you know, two,3% all the I mean, it's
incredible.
And what it is, it'sconsistency.
It's doing the thing over andover.
It's what people train for inthe sales process.
Now you're giving them contentto support it, and it's just
(19:05):
kind of a high tide rises oldboat sort of scenario of just
that consistency over and over.
Janet (19:11):
You know, we've never talked about this before, but it
just strikes me.
I wonder if you've got a salesforce, and let's say you're a
growing company and you'rebringing on sales reps.
can be really hard to trainpeople and get them to do things
consistently especially if someof your sales folks are either
transitioning from anotherindustry or maybe they're
(19:33):
younger I would imagine and Idon't know if this is true I
would imagine that if you're newin that job and you have this
presentation that you're hearingfrom your colleagues oh you
know before you join the companywe used to do it this other way
and since we've been doing itthis way our closing ratio is go
up, which means the sales repsmake more money.
Dean (19:55):
For
Janet (19:57):
new hires on the sales team, I would imagine that it
actually gives them moreconfidence.
If you just do the program, ifyou do it the way we trained
you, if you use thepresentation, if you go through
the interactive steps the way wetrained you to, the numbers
show you could have four pointshigher on your closing ratio.
(20:20):
I don't know if you've heardany of that anecdotal from your
customers that it's softmeasurement, but it's this
confidence.
Dean (20:30):
There's a couple of things.
We've seen it as a recruitingtool.
Some of our better customerssay, you get to sell with Engage
here.
Caitlyn (20:40):
We
Dean (20:41):
actually track a referral type inside of our CRM that when
someone leaves somewhere andgoes to another place that's not
using Engage, but they tellthem to use Engage, we're like,
we we kind of give them creditfor saying, Hey, you brought
engaged to your new place.
Janet (20:57):
Right?
So then you've got, I'm goingto, I'm going to make up
somebody.
You got Robert.
He's a rockstar sales guy.
He left a roofing company andwent to a siding company.
That's doing really well, butthe siding company is kind of
behind the times on.
And Robert says to the owners,dudes, I don't know if you've
ever heard of this, but at myold company, we did this.
You should check it out.
(21:17):
That's, that's awesome.
Dean (21:20):
Yeah.
And what we also find is peopleare you, again, our best
customers, the ones who have themost success for their sales
team actually use Engage in thetraining process.
So what they do is they taketheir Engage presentation and
they get some of their best repsto present it live and they
record it.
And then what they do is theyliterally just take an
(21:41):
interactive, one of our littleinteractive elements and put it
on the screen as a trainingbutton.
So every page has one, two,three examples.
So their training deck is, is-
Janet (21:53):
On the device that they're going to be using.
On the device.
Dean (21:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So they have a separate versionof the presentation with three
little buttons, option one, two,and three.
And you can see how Janet andDean and Sally all present the
same thing.
So they use Engage to train onEngage.
It's kind of aself-perpetuating thing.
Caitlyn (22:12):
No, that's amazing.
So we've obviously talked abouthow the sales team uses it.
We've talked about how it'seasy to use, the data behind it.
So if somebody's interested,there's- obviously partnerships
with manufacturers, et cetera.
How, and again, a little offscript, but then I'm teasing
what I'm about to share.
How would you get started?
(22:34):
Like, I mean, are we askinglike a marketing or sales
manager to go in and like createthe presentation?
Like, I mean, you guys walk methrough that and then
Dean (22:46):
we'll share.
It's a very typical question.
Like, so what people do is theycome to our website, they sign
up for a demo, they get on withour sales team and we go through
the demo and then the nextlogical question is this sounds
really great but how do i getstarted
Caitlyn (22:59):
exactly
Dean (23:00):
and we part of what you buy into when you buy into the
engaged platform is you buy intoour onboarding team so we give
you an onboarding manager whostays with you for the life of
your contract with us they getyou up and running what we do
ask is that there's an ownerinternally right someone has to
own the adoption and own theplan to get engaged you know in
(23:21):
the infrastructure
Janet (23:22):
an engaged cheerleader.
Dean (23:24):
Yeah.
We call it a champion.
Yeah.
Stakeholder, champion,cheerleader.
I like all three of those.
And you have to have someonewho has ownership because like
any technology product, if youdon't have someone who's truly
owning how it's going to be usedand measured the success
measured within yourinfrastructure, you're not going
to be successful.
Same thing with CRM or anythingelse you're doing.
(23:45):
If you don't have successmetrics, why are you doing it?
So we help people get up andrunning.
So we'll find who Who's goingto actually administer the
system?
Who's going to add the users,make sure they have the right
content assigned, et cetera?
Who's going to build thecontent?
Do you have someone whointernally, who's going to be
responsible for building thepresentations?
(24:06):
Some companies have people forthat.
Some companies don't.
And we'll talk in a minutemaybe about how the companies
that don't might do that.
But it's more of a, in thatrespect, there's a kind of a DIY
world.
And then there's a DFY.
You do it yourself.
it's done for you.
And we have a whole host offolks who we can connect people
(24:27):
with if they want them to haveit done for them.
Janet (24:31):
On the do it for you, Caitlin, go ahead.
Caitlyn (24:33):
Yeah, no.
So I know we've been talkingfor a while and yeah, thanks for
answering that last questionbecause I wanted to tee this up.
So as of today, Fat Cat isofficially a certified engaged
designer, which is superexciting because of all of the
reasons we were just talkingabout.
I mean, this is a a powerful,powerful, powerful tool, but the
(24:55):
legwork to make sure thepresentation stays up to date.
Looks good.
With relevant content.
Maybe we've talked about, youknow, having versions for
different ages of people who,you know, you're going to sell
to.
You
Janet (25:11):
know, the type of home.
Different products.
Yeah, different
Caitlyn (25:13):
products, etc.
So what this means, it's notjust a badge on our website.
So our team has been trained byapproved and So we know what
we're doing.
you're not like left out, youknow, on your own to build this
(25:55):
presentation.
You can point to an agency likeours.
And I know there'll be otherswho can do this too.
So
Janet (26:01):
yeah, we're so excited about this.
So yeah.
Stoked to be part of theprogram.
Can you share with us why youcreated the certification
program?
Dean (26:12):
Yeah,
Janet (26:13):
absolutely.
Dean (26:15):
So, I mean, we realize until we, you know, hundreds of
customers coming to us all thetime and as, as, as much as we,
much as we want to believe thatthey are going to follow through
on their promises and as muchas they believe they're going to
be able to carve out the timeto do it, there are only so many
hours in a day.
I think we all get to the endof our day and you're like, yep,
(26:36):
I thought I was going to getthose 12 things done and I got
four.
Sometimes you
Janet (26:41):
need to buy back.
I'm impressed.
I get two out of 12.
Dean (26:45):
Sometimes you need to buy back your time.
When you look at your buybackrate and you say, all right, so
So if my time is worth $100 anhour and I can pay someone $20
an hour to do the thing, why amI spending my $100 an hour to do
it?
Whatever your buyback rate is.
And I think also you're hiringthe expert to shortcut the
(27:07):
process.
And there's a real cost todoing it yourself.
And however you calculate thatfor yourself, I actually think
about this in terms of a buybackrate.
I look at what value I bring tothe company and I think, is
this task that I'm about to do,right?
You don't spend, you know, yourtime on $10 tasks that not that
(27:27):
this is minimizing what youguys are going to provide.
You shortcut that for thecustomer.
And we feel like you haveunderstanding of their brand.
You have understanding of maybethe assets they have.
You understand the marketingstory that you're already trying
to tell.
You can shortcut it so much forthem.
So we figured why not partnerwith people like Fat Cat in
(27:50):
order to tell the story forAbsolutely.
Janet (27:54):
I mean, for the customers where we've built the Engage
presentation, to your point,we're already doing their
display ads.
If they're doing any kind oflike flyers at home shows.
Managing their website.
We're already managing theirwebsite.
We're already doing theirsocial media.
Email marketing.
(28:21):
there's very little frictionfor us because we already know
how to use Engage and we alreadyhave all their assets.
We know what their promooffers.
We know what their valueproposition is.
We know what their demographicsare.
We know what their service areais.
We're just putting it into aplatform that we already know
how to drive.
Dean (28:36):
That's right.
That's right.
Caitlyn (28:38):
So we're excited.
I know our clients who are notusing Engage have been poked
about it.
Absolutely.
And if you're not a client ofFat Cat, but you're a client of
Engage and you are listening tothis, you're like, gosh, I
needed help.
Just because we're not yourfull-time agency also doesn't
mean we can't help you plug inand just clean up the
(28:59):
presentation.
We'll talk more about that injust a second.
We want to hear real quick,what's next?
Is there anything new, featurescoming to Engage?
Dean (29:09):
Content is king or queen, however you want to look at it.
We believe that we need to doeverything we can to get
customers up and running faster.
One of the strategies is tobuild an engaged certified
design network so that you canwork with people to do it.
We're also looking at ways todo that within our platform so
(29:30):
that we can do what we'recalling dynamic content.
So imagine you create apresentation that's 80% the same
for everyone, but because it'sconnected to your CRM, we can
grab 20% of the content andupdate certain things so that
it's unique and personalized forthat pitch.
Janet (29:48):
That is super cool.
Dean (29:50):
So that's one big thing.
And then the other one aspremium content so that the
other side of that is what ifthere's form data or pricing
data that you want to insertbecause you just did a quote in
some quoting software we'reworking on those kinds of things
as well so lots of really goodways to make your content even
more valuable and dynamic at thepoint of sale
Janet (30:11):
and i would imagine once you get all those things plugged
in for the homeowner whohonestly is just looking for the
solution you know they justthey want they want the thing
they want the solar panels theywant the bathroom they want the
siding and now you're justmaking it really easy for them
to say yes
Dean (30:30):
yeah I mean hyper personalization is a huge trend
I think you guys probably knowthe more that I can see myself
in the things that you arepresenting to me the more likely
I'm going to buy from you andyou know people buy from people
they know like and trust and themore I can build that trust by
personalizing the content we'revery much going down that path
Caitlyn (30:51):
absolutely No, that's amazing.
It's just like what we do withour display ads.
Thank you so much.
You gave our listeners abehind-the-scenes look at how
Engage is changing the salesgame for the home improvement
industry.
We're so excited to be acertified Engage designer.
Janet (31:12):
Yes, and for everyone listening, remember Fat Cat
Strategies is now a certifiedEngage designer.
And that means if you're readyto upgrade your sales
presentations, we can not onlyget you set up on the platform,
but we can also design aninteractive deck built to help
you close more deals.
Plus, you'll get exclusiveperks to keep your presentations
working hard for you.
So we'll drop all thatinformation in the show notes so
(31:34):
you can learn more and book aconsultation with our team.
Yeah.
Thank you, Dean.
We could have talked forever.
Caitlyn (31:39):
Thank you for having me on.
Unknown (31:42):
I appreciate the time.
Caitlyn (31:43):
Yes, we so appreciate you.
And as always, be sure tofollow us wherever you listen to
podcasts so you never miss anepisode.
A review is always great and wewill catch you next time on
Digital Marketing forContractors.
Speaker 00 (31:56):
Digital Marketing for Contractors is created by
Fat Cat's For more informationvisit FatCatStrategies.com
🎵 🎵
Speaker 00 (00:11):
Welcome to Digital Marketing for Contractors, a
podcast for home improvementcontractors to help you crush
your lead goals and take yourbusiness to the next level.
Join us each episode as we giveyou powerful insights and
practical tips on the bestdigital marketing strategies to
help you grow your homeimprovement business.
Let's get started.
Janet (00:31):
Welcome back to the Digital Marketing for
Contractors podcast, where wehelp home improvement companies
win more jobs, increase revenue,and build lasting brands.
I am Janet Mobley here withCaitlin Noble, and today we have
a super special guest thatwe're very excited to have join
us, Dean Curtis, CEO of Engage.
Caitlyn (00:51):
Yes.
Hey, Dean.
Everybody listening, if youhave ever wished for your sales
presentations to do more, grabattention, tell a story better,
actually help you close dealsYou are going to love this
conversation.
Engage is transforming the waycontractors present to
homeowners and we are divinginto exactly how.
Dean, welcome to the show.
(01:11):
We're so excited to have youhere.
Dean (01:13):
Thanks so much for having me.
I appreciate you inviting me onand having this conversation.
Janet (01:18):
Yeah, so let's just dig into it.
So for listeners who are notfamiliar, tell us what is Engage
and what problem were youtrying to solve when you
launched it?
Dean (01:31):
Well, it's It's a little twofold story.
So I'll, if you're, if you'reokay with it, I'll give you a
little history lesson.
Caitlyn (01:36):
Kind of
Dean (01:38):
crazy, but when Engage was conceived, I was actually at
Apple.
So I worked at Apple for eightyears and I was part of a team
building out partnerships andEngage was one of the partners
that we were trying to sign.
And at the time the company waswell known for creating
incredible, immersive,interactive experiences for the
iPad.
So as an Apple person, we weresuper excited for them, right?
(02:00):
But But what they were wasreally a digital agency.
So they had a piece ofsoftware, but it took a ton of
work to build anything on top ofit.
So it was very, very expensiveto build these interactive
experiences.
But they were buildingexperiences for the Super Bowl,
the launch of the Chevy Volt,GMG, GE, Johnson & Johnson, like
massive companies, Apple.
(02:20):
And what we said is, well, whatif you had your software could
do that for anyone and you coulddo it on an iPad?
And they were like, hmm, that'sa really interesting idea.
So they hired one of my friendsfrom Apple to come over and
lead the engineering effort.
And then they brought me oversix months later to lead the
go-to-market.
And what we created was fromthat core software, an iPad app
(02:42):
that allowed anyone to createthose same digital experiences
at a fraction of the cost andeffort.
And that's really where Engagewas conceived.
Now we solve a very differentproblem.
So it's kind of funny how theoriginal idea is still there.
We help people create amazinginteractive content.
content for touch devices andwe are focused on sales teams.
Janet (03:06):
Okay.
So how has the platform evolvedsince then?
Dean (03:10):
Yeah.
Since those early days, werealized a few things.
Number one, people don't wantto create content on the iPad.
So our original vision for theproduct was anybody with an iPad
could create great content,which is true, but the market
for that is not very big.
So we ended up creating adesktop creation experience
because 95 plus per of ourviewing of engaged content is on
(03:34):
mobile devices.
But that leaves a very smallamount.
The creators want to do it on acomputer where all their assets
are, where they're used tohaving a pointing device, all of
those
Janet (03:46):
things.
A big screen, a mouse, akeyboard, a tablet, all kinds of
stuff.
Dean (03:52):
Exactly.
So we also needed more featuresto differentiate the platform.
So we added additionalinteractive elements to it.
We added management of usersand content we also added rich
analytics to know what washappening when presentations
were being delivered so at firstit was this rapid creation
product on an ipad and now it'sa full platform and suite
Caitlyn (04:15):
oh that's amazing um i know we were introduced to you
guys because of the contractorsthat use it um right in the
industry we focus
Janet (04:23):
probably three or four years ago we first encountered
engaged
Caitlyn (04:26):
yeah absolutely um and our clients that do use it have
a ton of success with it um isit is it just for the remodeling
industry the contractors or doyou guys i mean yeah we only
have home improvement i knowthat's off script but i just was
like
Dean (04:42):
oh well here's the thing right so we intend we set out to
serve every market while we'rebuilding a software product it's
nearly impossible to do
Janet (04:51):
right yeah
Dean (04:52):
right you have to have a niche and a niche found us so we
had a little widget on ourwebsite and someone came and
booked the demo and It wasNewPro.
Okay.
Janet (05:03):
We knew
Dean (05:04):
NewPro.
Right?
Out of Boston.
Yeah.
And before we knew it, we hadNewPro as a customer.
And they helped inform ourproduct roadmap.
They gave us some ideas.
And they also gave us nineother friends.
Janet (05:16):
Oh,
Dean (05:16):
yeah.
And introduced us to them.
And then before we knew it, wehad 10.
Yeah.
And then we had a buildingproduct manufacturer who was one
of their providers, theirmaterials providers.
And we were like, wait, maybethere's something here.
Right.
We started focusing our effortson home improvement and now
it's pretty much what we do.
Caitlyn (05:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
I know that was not thequestion that I was going to
ask, but I was sitting herethinking, I'm like, are you
guys, is it just homeimprovement?
Janet (05:44):
Yeah, I mean, we know you through home improvement and we
have clients that use Engageand we've built Engage
presentations, but that goodquestion.
Caitlyn (05:51):
And yeah, and the manufacturers, et cetera, have
now partnered with y'all.
I mean,
Janet (05:56):
it's
Caitlyn (05:56):
amazing.
Do you have, I know you'vementioned New Pros being the
first, kind of home improvementcompany to get involved.
Is there a story that comes tomind?
Maybe it's new pro that showedreal results of the success of
switching to this, you know, toengage?
Dean (06:13):
Well, I'll tell you, in general, the big problem we
solve is raising the level ofprofessionalism.
A lot of times, I mean, I hadthis experience myself.
So I did a little secretshopping when I had a solar
project.
And I invited far too manysolar providers into my home.
And Because I wanted to see howthey sold.
(06:33):
And we have a couple of solarproviders on the platform and
I've obviously invited them andthen the others.
And what I found was a lot ofpeople come in and there's
absolutely no organization tohow they're trying to educate me
in the process of selectingthem to do my project.
And solar is a pretty bigeducation thing.
(06:54):
I have to understand creditsand how it's going to impact my
roof.
There's so much education.
And we found that peoplestarted choosing us because it
raised the level ofprofessionalism.
And what they found was whenthe customers would say, well,
why did you choose us oversomeone else?
That was like one of thereasons they said, you were so
(07:16):
prepared and polished.
And when you can have already,you know, ready-made content on
brand consistently delivered inthe home, you win more.
And those are the, and we havetons of case studies on our
website that can tell you theBut lots of different ways that
we've helped contractors toclose more business for higher
rates and quicker times, allthose things.
Janet (07:39):
No, absolutely.
I always like to break thingsdown.
I imagine like my grandmother,you know, listening, make it as
simple to understand aspossible.
If we haven't said it already,Engage helps your sales reps
with the in-home salespresentation of your
information, right?
Dean (07:58):
Yep.
I mean, we do more than that,but that is what we do.
is the primary use case thatpeople buy us for?
They have a sales presentation,however you're doing it today,
paper, flip books, PowerPoint,whatever it is.
That's how we help people win.
Janet (08:13):
I'm glad you brought up PowerPoint and flip books.
What makes Engage differentfrom a traditional presentation
that our listeners might befamiliar with?
Maybe they send their reps outwith binders of project photos
and samples, if it's an awningthe fabric samples.
So that's what everybody knows.
(08:35):
What makes Engage different orbetter than that?
Dean (08:39):
Imagine all of those things in one place, perfectly
organized, on brand, and alwaysup to date when your sales rep
opens their iPad.
That's pretty cool.
So what we do is a lot ofpeople have invested tremendous
amount of time, resources, andtraining someone on a sales
process.
Caitlyn (08:59):
Exactly.
Dean (09:00):
So being able to ensure that the sales process is
followed because one, thecontent is not editable.
Now it can be, we havedifferent controls.
If you want them to edit it,they can, but most sales leaders
don't want you to edit itbecause what they, what they did
in the past is they'd send outsome sort of electronic press
presentation, and then if theydid any sort of inspection later
(09:23):
on, they would look and belike, why did you rearrange
these pages?
We have told you, if you gofrom here to here to here to
here, and in that order forthese amounts of time, you are
going to have a 47% chance ofclosing that deal.
They know these things.
And we kind of give them all ofthe controls that they need to
embed their sales process,control how people navigate
(09:44):
through, stay on brand withrole-based permissions, and then
most importantly, distribute.
Know who gets what.
Exactly.
And then if someone leaves,they can actually take it back
too.
Caitlyn (09:54):
Right.
And that was going to be mynext point to bring up.
Another powerful part of Engageis the analytical and
interactivity that you guysbring behind the scenes.
So
Janet (10:08):
there's sales reports for the sales manager, are they
not?
Dean (10:12):
That's correct.
Janet (10:12):
So I
Dean (10:13):
won't go so far.
I mean, you could replace theride-along.
I don't want to be so bold andbrave to say you would because I
think there's there's stillvalue in that.
I think there's a lot of valuein going and seeing someone live
in the field.
But imagine you could have areport every week to show,
literally compare your fivesales reps and who's presenting,
how long they're presenting,how long they're spending in
(10:34):
each section, how long they'respending on each page.
If you know you train that by45 minutes into the sales
process, you should havepositioned financing.
You know that people aren'tgetting there.
That's a great trend to be ableto train on.
Janet (10:48):
And it's really Rather than you guessing or having a
sales meeting and asking, youknow, you get your five sales
guys in the room for yourTuesday morning meeting and you
ask like, who's talking aboutfinancing?
I mean, the old school way todo it is everybody goes, I'm
talking about funding.
So I'm always talking about,but now you're
Dean (11:07):
like, Hey Jim, no, you're not.
Janet (11:08):
You actually, you actually
Caitlyn (11:11):
did
Dean (11:12):
it.
Or maybe, maybe they are.
Right.
Found a different way.
Yeah.
You know, like everybody thinksof these analytics as like big
brother.
I think the opposite is, allright, well, Caitlin is actually
closing at five points higherthan Dean.
What is she doing when she'sdelivering the materials that
makes the difference?
Is it something to do with howshe's delivering, when she's
(11:35):
talking about certain things,what pages she's spending more
time on versus others?
I mean, the content can reallyleave clues to success.
Janet (11:44):
Yeah.
So in your hypotheticalexample, if Caitlin is our
leading sales rep, then we coulddive into how she's using the
presentation and then getinsights like, oh, within the
first 10 minutes, I'm makingthis up on the fly right here,
but in the first 10 minutes,Caitlin has hit on these three
product features and all thecolor options.
Dean (12:05):
That's
Janet (12:05):
right.
And she's doing that moreconsistently than anybody else.
And she closes seven pointshigher than all the other sales
reps.
Dean (12:12):
That's right.
Janet (12:13):
Well, then you train on that.
Dean (12:15):
Exactly.
I use the financing example asa real one because I think
there's a, There's a push forfinancing in today's day and
age.
And it's something that somepeople are really uncomfortable
talking about.
And it's one of these thingsthat we hear from our customers
all the time.
We need people to position andeducate on financing.
They built two or three pagesor one page to explain the
(12:37):
financing options that areavailable and they realize
people aren't getting to it orpresenting it in the right way.
So there's lots of really goodtraining, teaching, coaching
that can come out of usingadvanced analytics on top of the
presentation data.
Caitlyn (12:53):
So exciting.
All of this is amazing.
We geek out over data.
Absolutely.
I mean, people who listen tothis are owners, marketing
managers, sales managers, etcetera, from businesses of all
size.
A small, just mid-sizedbusiness, they might find this
overwhelming.
How am I going to manage thatinflux of data?
(13:16):
What can I get from it?
I mean, this is, again, alittle bit off script, but it's
easy.
It's not that difficult.
I mean, we're making it soundsuper powerful and it is, but
it's dead simple to use.
I
Dean (13:30):
mean, you can be as advanced as you want, right?
So we can create some advancedreports, but we also provide
very top level metrics of whopresented the most last week.
What was the most popularpresentation?
Unknown (13:41):
Like that, that kind of stuff that we present, we
provide right out of the box.
Caitlyn (13:45):
Okay.
That's amazing.
Do you see any like mistakesthat companies are making with
their sales presentations?
Like I mean, amongst some ofthe other data points?
Dean (13:56):
Yeah, I would say the biggest mistakes they make is
not, number one, not knowingtheir sales process.
I think it's really hard tonail down a good in-home sales
workflow.
And I think the presentation ispart of the workflow if you
don't understand your salesprocess.
I mean, we see the mostcustomers leave our platform,
(14:18):
not because they didn't like thecontent, because they really
struggled because they didn'thave a great sales process.
And then mapping thatpresentation to the process
makes it that much moreeffective.
Another one is not having greatassets to tell their story.
They don't have pictures.
They don't have lifestyleimages.
They don't really understandwho their customer is.
(14:39):
So they don't know, like, whatdo I put in the presentation?
Because you want the customerto see themselves, literally,
not literally like a picture ofthem, but, you know, people who
look like them, houses that looklike theirs, projects that look
like the ones they are.
Exactly.
don't have those great assetsto tell their story.
I'll tell you the saddest oneis they have no plan for
(14:59):
adoption.
They buy technology.
It's like loading up the plateat the buffet and they're like,
I have no idea how I'm going toconsume all this.
They just don't plan for thesales rep who's going to be
resistant to adopting newtechnology or the learning curve
that it takes because it does.
It's not all simple.
It takes time to adopttechnology.
Janet (15:22):
We have deaf with our clients, we have helped our
clients with the onboarding fromthe content.
I mean, we didn't sell Engage.
They bought Engage and thenthey told us, hey, help us build
out this Engage presentation.
But we have walked that walkwhere they didn't have the
assets.
They weren't exactly sure howthey were going to integrate it
into their sales process.
(15:43):
So we so know what you'retalking about.
But we've seen our customerskind of push through that and
then come out the other side.
with much tighter controlsover, you know, if you've got 10
sales reps, 15 sales reps.
I mean, one of the big thingsthat I heard from our customers
(16:04):
was, okay, we used to usebinders, like hard copy pocket
folders.
Then we bought everybody iPadsand we made a keynote
presentation.
But if we ever wanted to changethe keynote, they all had to
come back into the office withtheir iPad and we had to load it
up and And then you have thissituation where like, okay,
(16:26):
well, maybe Sally was sick thatday, which she's now got an iPad
floating around out there withan outdated presentation with
old pricing or an old promo orwhatever.
And so Engage kind of solvesall of that because it's a
central hub for your officialpresentation that then you push
(16:46):
out to those iPads without themhaving to come into the office.
So I'm glad you talked aboutthe adoption part of it because
I think with any technology, ifyou introduce it into your
company and you don't have aplan for rollout and adoption,
it's just not going to go verywell.
Dean (17:03):
Yeah.
I mean, how many people havehad failed CRM projects, failed
CPQ projects, failed digitalmarketing project?
I mean, you guys probably seethat all the
Janet (17:11):
time.
Dean (17:11):
Yeah.
We're doing marketingautomation.
You're like, are you, are youready for that?
What
Janet (17:15):
you did is you gave your credit card to a company.
Right.
That's right.
And now you're being billed forit and you're mad that it's not
working.
Dean (17:23):
Well, don't know what you mean i've never had any
customers call me about thatyeah
Janet (17:28):
so do you have any um i mean our listeners really love
to hear like concrete numbersthat they can get excited about
do you have um some numbers youcan share with us about a
customer that they broughtengage on they onboarded they
trained and they saw an increasein their sales closing ratio
can you share any numbers
Dean (17:49):
absolutely so we're super fortunate i mean our customers
are willing a willing to sharetheir success because everyone's
really proud like yeah it's nota simple thing you do have to
put some work in to make itsuccessful and we have a success
story on our website everybodycan go read this ridge top
exteriors okay in their firstyear using engage their average
(18:11):
closing rate rose just shy offour points so four points not
like four percent on top ofsomething i don't they didn't
give us the exact detail butthat's like 32 to 36 it's right
it's a significant jump.
So up, you know, just shy offour points and their average
ticket also increased 12 points.
Oh, now they closing more,they're closing for a higher
(18:33):
rate leading to an increase andget this 40% revenue improvement
across all three of theirlocations.
Caitlyn (18:41):
Wow.
Oh my gosh.
Dean (18:42):
Yeah.
And we've seen any, so the, youknow, the close rate we've seen
anywhere from, you know, two,3% all the I mean, it's
incredible.
And what it is, it'sconsistency.
It's doing the thing over andover.
It's what people train for inthe sales process.
Now you're giving them contentto support it, and it's just
(19:05):
kind of a high tide rises oldboat sort of scenario of just
that consistency over and over.
Janet (19:11):
You know, we've never talked about this before, but it
just strikes me.
I wonder if you've got a salesforce, and let's say you're a
growing company and you'rebringing on sales reps.
can be really hard to trainpeople and get them to do things
consistently especially if someof your sales folks are either
transitioning from anotherindustry or maybe they're
(19:33):
younger I would imagine and Idon't know if this is true I
would imagine that if you're newin that job and you have this
presentation that you're hearingfrom your colleagues oh you
know before you join the companywe used to do it this other way
and since we've been doing itthis way our closing ratio is go
up, which means the sales repsmake more money.
Dean (19:55):
For
Janet (19:57):
new hires on the sales team, I would imagine that it
actually gives them moreconfidence.
If you just do the program, ifyou do it the way we trained
you, if you use thepresentation, if you go through
the interactive steps the way wetrained you to, the numbers
show you could have four pointshigher on your closing ratio.
(20:20):
I don't know if you've heardany of that anecdotal from your
customers that it's softmeasurement, but it's this
confidence.
Dean (20:30):
There's a couple of things.
We've seen it as a recruitingtool.
Some of our better customerssay, you get to sell with Engage
here.
Caitlyn (20:40):
We
Dean (20:41):
actually track a referral type inside of our CRM that when
someone leaves somewhere andgoes to another place that's not
using Engage, but they tellthem to use Engage, we're like,
we we kind of give them creditfor saying, Hey, you brought
engaged to your new place.
Janet (20:57):
Right?
So then you've got, I'm goingto, I'm going to make up
somebody.
You got Robert.
He's a rockstar sales guy.
He left a roofing company andwent to a siding company.
That's doing really well, butthe siding company is kind of
behind the times on.
And Robert says to the owners,dudes, I don't know if you've
ever heard of this, but at myold company, we did this.
You should check it out.
(21:17):
That's, that's awesome.
Dean (21:20):
Yeah.
And what we also find is peopleare you, again, our best
customers, the ones who have themost success for their sales
team actually use Engage in thetraining process.
So what they do is they taketheir Engage presentation and
they get some of their best repsto present it live and they
record it.
And then what they do is theyliterally just take an
(21:41):
interactive, one of our littleinteractive elements and put it
on the screen as a trainingbutton.
So every page has one, two,three examples.
So their training deck is, is-
Janet (21:53):
On the device that they're going to be using.
On the device.
Dean (21:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So they have a separate versionof the presentation with three
little buttons, option one, two,and three.
And you can see how Janet andDean and Sally all present the
same thing.
So they use Engage to train onEngage.
It's kind of aself-perpetuating thing.
Caitlyn (22:12):
No, that's amazing.
So we've obviously talked abouthow the sales team uses it.
We've talked about how it'seasy to use, the data behind it.
So if somebody's interested,there's- obviously partnerships
with manufacturers, et cetera.
How, and again, a little offscript, but then I'm teasing
what I'm about to share.
How would you get started?
(22:34):
Like, I mean, are we askinglike a marketing or sales
manager to go in and like createthe presentation?
Like, I mean, you guys walk methrough that and then
Dean (22:46):
we'll share.
It's a very typical question.
Like, so what people do is theycome to our website, they sign
up for a demo, they get on withour sales team and we go through
the demo and then the nextlogical question is this sounds
really great but how do i getstarted
Caitlyn (22:59):
exactly
Dean (23:00):
and we part of what you buy into when you buy into the
engaged platform is you buy intoour onboarding team so we give
you an onboarding manager whostays with you for the life of
your contract with us they getyou up and running what we do
ask is that there's an ownerinternally right someone has to
own the adoption and own theplan to get engaged you know in
(23:21):
the infrastructure
Janet (23:22):
an engaged cheerleader.
Dean (23:24):
Yeah.
We call it a champion.
Yeah.
Stakeholder, champion,cheerleader.
I like all three of those.
And you have to have someonewho has ownership because like
any technology product, if youdon't have someone who's truly
owning how it's going to be usedand measured the success
measured within yourinfrastructure, you're not going
to be successful.
Same thing with CRM or anythingelse you're doing.
(23:45):
If you don't have successmetrics, why are you doing it?
So we help people get up andrunning.
So we'll find who Who's goingto actually administer the
system?
Who's going to add the users,make sure they have the right
content assigned, et cetera?
Who's going to build thecontent?
Do you have someone whointernally, who's going to be
responsible for building thepresentations?
(24:06):
Some companies have people forthat.
Some companies don't.
And we'll talk in a minutemaybe about how the companies
that don't might do that.
But it's more of a, in thatrespect, there's a kind of a DIY
world.
And then there's a DFY.
You do it yourself.
it's done for you.
And we have a whole host offolks who we can connect people
(24:27):
with if they want them to haveit done for them.
Janet (24:31):
On the do it for you, Caitlin, go ahead.
Caitlyn (24:33):
Yeah, no.
So I know we've been talkingfor a while and yeah, thanks for
answering that last questionbecause I wanted to tee this up.
So as of today, Fat Cat isofficially a certified engaged
designer, which is superexciting because of all of the
reasons we were just talkingabout.
I mean, this is a a powerful,powerful, powerful tool, but the
(24:55):
legwork to make sure thepresentation stays up to date.
Looks good.
With relevant content.
Maybe we've talked about, youknow, having versions for
different ages of people who,you know, you're going to sell
to.
You
Janet (25:11):
know, the type of home.
Different products.
Yeah, different
Caitlyn (25:13):
products, etc.
So what this means, it's notjust a badge on our website.
So our team has been trained byapproved and So we know what
we're doing.
you're not like left out, youknow, on your own to build this
(25:55):
presentation.
You can point to an agency likeours.
And I know there'll be otherswho can do this too.
So
Janet (26:01):
yeah, we're so excited about this.
So yeah.
Stoked to be part of theprogram.
Can you share with us why youcreated the certification
program?
Dean (26:12):
Yeah,
Janet (26:13):
absolutely.
Dean (26:15):
So, I mean, we realize until we, you know, hundreds of
customers coming to us all thetime and as, as, as much as we,
much as we want to believe thatthey are going to follow through
on their promises and as muchas they believe they're going to
be able to carve out the timeto do it, there are only so many
hours in a day.
I think we all get to the endof our day and you're like, yep,
(26:36):
I thought I was going to getthose 12 things done and I got
four.
Sometimes you
Janet (26:41):
need to buy back.
I'm impressed.
I get two out of 12.
Dean (26:45):
Sometimes you need to buy back your time.
When you look at your buybackrate and you say, all right, so
So if my time is worth $100 anhour and I can pay someone $20
an hour to do the thing, why amI spending my $100 an hour to do
it?
Whatever your buyback rate is.
And I think also you're hiringthe expert to shortcut the
(27:07):
process.
And there's a real cost todoing it yourself.
And however you calculate thatfor yourself, I actually think
about this in terms of a buybackrate.
I look at what value I bring tothe company and I think, is
this task that I'm about to do,right?
You don't spend, you know, yourtime on $10 tasks that not that
(27:27):
this is minimizing what youguys are going to provide.
You shortcut that for thecustomer.
And we feel like you haveunderstanding of their brand.
You have understanding of maybethe assets they have.
You understand the marketingstory that you're already trying
to tell.
You can shortcut it so much forthem.
So we figured why not partnerwith people like Fat Cat in
(27:50):
order to tell the story forAbsolutely.
Janet (27:54):
I mean, for the customers where we've built the Engage
presentation, to your point,we're already doing their
display ads.
If they're doing any kind oflike flyers at home shows.
Managing their website.
We're already managing theirwebsite.
We're already doing theirsocial media.
Email marketing.
(28:21):
there's very little frictionfor us because we already know
how to use Engage and we alreadyhave all their assets.
We know what their promooffers.
We know what their valueproposition is.
We know what their demographicsare.
We know what their service areais.
We're just putting it into aplatform that we already know
how to drive.
Dean (28:36):
That's right.
That's right.
Caitlyn (28:38):
So we're excited.
I know our clients who are notusing Engage have been poked
about it.
Absolutely.
And if you're not a client ofFat Cat, but you're a client of
Engage and you are listening tothis, you're like, gosh, I
needed help.
Just because we're not yourfull-time agency also doesn't
mean we can't help you plug inand just clean up the
(28:59):
presentation.
We'll talk more about that injust a second.
We want to hear real quick,what's next?
Is there anything new, featurescoming to Engage?
Dean (29:09):
Content is king or queen, however you want to look at it.
We believe that we need to doeverything we can to get
customers up and running faster.
One of the strategies is tobuild an engaged certified
design network so that you canwork with people to do it.
We're also looking at ways todo that within our platform so
(29:30):
that we can do what we'recalling dynamic content.
So imagine you create apresentation that's 80% the same
for everyone, but because it'sconnected to your CRM, we can
grab 20% of the content andupdate certain things so that
it's unique and personalized forthat pitch.
Janet (29:48):
That is super cool.
Dean (29:50):
So that's one big thing.
And then the other one aspremium content so that the
other side of that is what ifthere's form data or pricing
data that you want to insertbecause you just did a quote in
some quoting software we'reworking on those kinds of things
as well so lots of really goodways to make your content even
more valuable and dynamic at thepoint of sale
Janet (30:11):
and i would imagine once you get all those things plugged
in for the homeowner whohonestly is just looking for the
solution you know they justthey want they want the thing
they want the solar panels theywant the bathroom they want the
siding and now you're justmaking it really easy for them
to say yes
Dean (30:30):
yeah I mean hyper personalization is a huge trend
I think you guys probably knowthe more that I can see myself
in the things that you arepresenting to me the more likely
I'm going to buy from you andyou know people buy from people
they know like and trust and themore I can build that trust by
personalizing the content we'revery much going down that path
Caitlyn (30:51):
absolutely No, that's amazing.
It's just like what we do withour display ads.
Thank you so much.
You gave our listeners abehind-the-scenes look at how
Engage is changing the salesgame for the home improvement
industry.
We're so excited to be acertified Engage designer.
Janet (31:12):
Yes, and for everyone listening, remember Fat Cat
Strategies is now a certifiedEngage designer.
And that means if you're readyto upgrade your sales
presentations, we can not onlyget you set up on the platform,
but we can also design aninteractive deck built to help
you close more deals.
Plus, you'll get exclusiveperks to keep your presentations
working hard for you.
So we'll drop all thatinformation in the show notes so
(31:34):
you can learn more and book aconsultation with our team.
Yeah.
Thank you, Dean.
We could have talked forever.
Caitlyn (31:39):
Thank you for having me on.
Unknown (31:42):
I appreciate the time.
Caitlyn (31:43):
Yes, we so appreciate you.
And as always, be sure tofollow us wherever you listen to
podcasts so you never miss anepisode.
A review is always great and wewill catch you next time on
Digital Marketing forContractors.
Speaker 00 (31:56):
Digital Marketing for Contractors is created by
Fat Cat's For more informationvisit FatCatStrategies.com
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