February 18, 2025 • 27 mins
Understand what your cancellation rate reveals about your business and how to improve it. Learn actionable steps to reduce cancellations, from better customer communication to tracking key metrics like booking rates and repeat business. The conversation highlights the importance of aligning marketing with operations and creating nurturing campaigns to retain clients and improve overall efficiency. Gain insights into using data to address weak points and increase revenue. Join host Adam Sylvester and Katie Donovan of CAMP Digital Services.
New to Jobber? Masters of Home Service listeners can claim an exclusive discount for Jobber at https://bit.ly/4d0KAEh
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
With the dawn of ai,
there's no reason why you can't have ahundred percent of your calls evaluated
regularly and there's a lot ofreally inexpensive and darn near free
solutions that will help you listento calls and go through some things.
Welcome to jobbers, masters of HomeService, a podcast for home service pros,
buy Home Service pros.
(00:20):
We're in Las Vegas and today we'retalking about your cancellation rate,
other metrics, and how to improveyour job metrics. I'm your host,
Adam Sylvester. Today's guest ismarketing expert, Katie Donovan. Katie,
welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I'mso excited to have this conversation.
Why don't you tell our listenerswho you are and what you do?
My name is Katie Donovan.I'm the CEO of Camp Digital.
(00:41):
We are a digital marketingcompany just for the trades.
Camp actually stands for capacityaligned Marketing platform,
so we take a slightly different approachto how we market into the trades.
Katie, most people,
I think tend to think about marketersbeing responsible for just getting leads,
but you have a different approach.
You think a lot of the responsibilityof cancellations and some of these
(01:02):
metrics, booking rates,
those kinds of things actuallyfall on you as the marketer.
So can you explain that for us?
Not necessarily responsibility,
but marketing should alwaysbe subservient to operations.
There's so many things I think wejust think about just get leads,
throw 'em over the fence and everythingelse will take care of itself,
but it doesn't and there's so much wastein marketing because we don't take time
to work with our partners and operations.
(01:23):
A really great example ofthat is something I think we're going to talk a little
bit about today,
which is understanding those KPIs to keepperformance indicators of business and
how those KPIs can influencewhat you're doing in marketing.
Great example,
one we were talking about earlier iscancellation rates and those fluctuate by
season,
but knowing those cancellation rates maymean if it's HVAC company for instance,
(01:45):
it's the first big heat coming throughor the first big freeze coming through,
you might actually have to throw moreleads than anticipated because you're
going to have some cancellationrates going over the feds.
What do you mean by that?Cancellation rate, people canceling.
What are they canceling?
What we've found,
and it's been backed up by a lot of thesources that we've got from studies from
some of our partners like Google,
is that a lot of people noware calling multiple vendors.
(02:06):
I'm sure you see this all the time,
but they'll call two or three people asopposed to just calling one and whoever
gets there first is the personthey'll work with. Most of the time,
the first person that gets in the homeis the one that gets the business,
so we always want to be in the home,
so they're calling morethan one person at a time,
more than one business at a time,
and so you might get acancellation or mysteriously,
we see this happen a lot withdrains. Oh, it fixed itself. Well,
(02:27):
it didn't fix itself.
The problem just feels like it went awayfor a little bit and I don't want to
deal with it until the next timeI have a backup in my master tub.
So a lot of times those are some of thecancellations. So the customer called,
they booked and then for some reason hascalled you back and said they no longer
need your services, so.
People book an assessmentor an appointment for a sales appointment and then
they cancel the next day becausethe appointment wasn't soon enough.
(02:48):
That can be it.
That can be what we found is somereally easy things to do to help pull
that cancellation ratedown is some marketing,
probably not the traditional marketingmost people think of when they think
about marketing, but simply putting acampaign in place that does, Hey, Mr.
Or Mrs. Customer,
thank you so much for bookingthe appointment with my business.
We have you scheduled for Thursdayand we'll be there on Thursday.
(03:09):
Then the day before, hiMr. Or Mrs. Customer,
we have you scheduled for tomorrow.If anything changes, let us know.
Otherwise our tech will be out there.
Maybe a picture of the tech if you cando it. People love that the same day,
Hey, we're coming out this day. Want tojust remind you, we'll be at the house.
You'll get a phone call 20 minutes prior.
Whatever your practices andpolicies are for your procedures,
for how you do those,
that will actually pull that cancellationrate down significantly because
(03:31):
customers know they're understoodwhat to expect in the process.
They know what's coming. Theyknow you're actually coming.
They aren't shopping for other peoplein that meantime. They get nervous.
They booked it for Thursday and theyhaven't heard from you kind of thing,
and when that cancellation ratecomes down, you need less leads,
which means you'respending less in marketing,
which is a good thing foreverybody, including marketers.
(03:53):
We can get you more leads. That book,that convert, that convert for revenue,
the happier everybody is in that process.
Well, this, you've been reading mymail because the last few months,
whenever someone cancels, thankfullywe don't have very many cancellations,
but we're also not urgent services.
I'm always kind of perplexed likeyour gutters aren't instantly fixed.
(04:15):
What happened in the lastthree days for example,
that caused them to change their mind?And we obviously don't know. No, no, no.
The answer. Well,
we can guess and so what are someother reasons that people tend to
fall off the books?
The biggest ones that wesee are threefold, right?
One is either customer got somebodyelse to come out and do it.
Even with gutters.
If.
I'm having a party this weekend,put this off to the last minute,
(04:37):
want to make sure the houselooks great because gutters,
they're kind of the smile of the house.
They spit around the outside of the house,
want to make sure that those look great.
There's no plants growingout of them as mine are,
but so it's getting somebody elseto come first and service me first.
The second one is theproblem solved itself.
We see this a lot with water heaters.Suddenly the water got warm again,
and that's just because something'sfailing in the unit or trust factors.
(05:01):
They'll be digging up a little bit orthey went to Facebook and said, Hey,
has anyone worked with thiscompany and one bad apple, the one,
don't hire that guys smirk. You cut meoff on the street. Those kinds of things.
Those are probably the three biggestones. There's also a lot of other reasons,
but again, with marketing processes,especially if you've got a system,
A CRM in place that can help youdo these things, do the follow-up,
(05:23):
you see that reduced significantlyand the cost savings are phenomenal.
I'll give you a quick example. If I,
you're spending about a hundreddollars to get a lead and you have a
cancellation rate say of 10% means $10.
If.
You can increase what you actually run,so decrease your cancellation rate,
that savings goes rightto your bottom line,
one in every 10 would buy you anotherjob. Just some simple math, right?
(05:46):
It's amazing what it does when you startto do that at scale and just putting an
automatic email campaign in place ora phone follow-up process in place
to let those customers know you're coming.
Maybe even send them your great reviews.
So if they do hear from AuntBetty not to work with them,
you've already given them the reviewsthat say, I'm a 4.9 with 400 reviews.
Trust me.
(06:06):
I want to get into how totrack the cancellation rate,
some misunderstandingsabout how to do that,
but a lot of things you justmentioned I view are like a CSR issue.
If this is really urgent and theCS r books it a week from now,
that's a mistake. I'm curious,
do you guys do any direct work withthe CSR to make sure they're saying the
right things so that yourprocess is set up to succeed
(06:29):
after the CS R talks to 'em?
We do some call evaluation. Wedon't actually work directly.
Our relationship is more with the ownersor the marketing CMOs kind of thing,
chief marketing officers, but whatwe try and do is say, Hey, listen,
we listen to these calls and here's whythey didn't book with the dawn of ai.
There's no reason why you can't have ahundred percent of your calls evaluated
regularly. It tells you,
(06:50):
and there's a lot of really inexpensiveand darn near free solutions that will
help you listen to callsand go through some things.
That's interesting. Ihaven't heard about that.
So you can use an AI to listen to yourphone calls and they give you feedback
on what tonality, posture.
Yep. You give positiv.
Positivity, that kind of stuff.
Yeah, absolutely. There's companiesout there already that do it.
You can actually find stuffonline pretty inexpensive too,
(07:13):
but you can go in and say, Hey,
listen to these calls and tell medid they ask for the appointment?
Did they ask for the email?What was the overall tone?
Was there swearing on the call? Right?That's a great one to look for. Yeah,
I wish it wasn't a thing.Yeah, if nothing else,
you're going to want to listen to theones that didn't book to hear what was
really going on there.
That's really interesting. I'll add thatto my homework to go back and listen.
(07:35):
I do listen to a lot of my phone callsmanually though. I don't plug it into ai,
so I'll give that a try.
So in terms of how do you reallyknow what your cancellation rate is,
because the CSR can fudge somenumbers and that kind of stuff,
so how do you really know?
I think it helps to have a system,some kind of tool in place for sure,
but really looking, if you have a system,
(07:56):
really just looking at those total bookcalls and then how many calls called you
to Unbook.
There's a little bit of gray in therebecause I think depending on your
business, sometimes we're shufflingthe deck chairs around a little bit.
We're calling saying,Hey, we got really full.
I had you scheduled for atuneup and a nohe call came in.
You're probably going to move the tuneup.
I see. More urgent.
(08:17):
Yeah.
Really what you're looking for is thenumber of customers that call you back and
cancel that appointment,
and it can be hard if you don'thave a system or a CRM in place.
It can be a real challenge to get yourhands wrapped around that and some of the
other kind of key performancesyndicators of your business.
And so as a lead, justwhatever. Let talk about jobber.
So a request comes in jobber,
there might've been threecalls that led to that one,
(08:39):
so we might get a hundredcalls and only get 50 leads.
How do you mash those two together?
Well, really we're looking forthat request that comes in,
that request that comesinto jobber gets booked,
and then how many of thosebooks call back and say, Hey,
I no longer need your services,and my favorite is, Hey,
I'm going to have to call youback and book it another time.
They're not calling back, right?
I say.
(09:00):
Goodbye. Yeah, thank youso much. Appreciate it.
It's really for cancellationrate particularly,
you're looking at how many of thosecalls booked and then the customer called
back and said, no longer needyour services for whatever reason,
and most of the time they're notterribly transparent about it.
They want to be nice.
I want to get into booking rate.
Anything else about cancellationrate that are listed?
No. I'm thrilled that you're goingto go to booking rate. I think,
(09:22):
and you and I were talkinga little bit about this,
but your marketing shouldreally understand a few KPIs,
your booking rate being one of 'em,your cancellation rate run for revenue,
because even if I booka job and I run a job,
I didn't necessarily run it forrevenue and then your total return and
average tickets, so thoseKPIs are so important.
(09:42):
Okay, so booking rate is what exactly?
The calls that come in,
and this is where I think I get in alittle bit of trouble in the space,
but calls that come in that actuallyturn into a booked appointment,
whether they ran or not, but actuallyturn into a booked appointment,
and I think I have this conversationwith a lot of people. Everyone's like,
mine's like 95%. Well, I mean,
(10:02):
is it really? Yeah, I lookat those all the time.
I was kind of joking with youearlier, but my parents didn't know.
I almost didn't graduate high schooluntil I actually almost didn't graduate
because my report,
I'm old enough for the report cards tocome back in paper and I can turn any
letter into an A, right?When self-reporting,
which most of the reportingis self-reporting,
our CSRs are telling ushow well they're booking,
how well they're doing those things.
(10:23):
You're not really looking at theoverall calls that convert to bookings.
So in jobber, ourlisteners are using jobber.
You can look at a salesperson's report and see how many
quotes they sent and how many ofthose converted to jobs, et cetera.
It doesn't show right now is how manyleads were those quotes converted
(10:44):
from, and so it's a very importantmetric, quotes to conversion,
but if you don't go back in time a littlebit and see how many leads there were
and how many phone calls there were,you're really only getting half the story,
and so you really have to pay attentionto because you might be getting a lot of
phone calls that are justnot converting into anything,
and that's really costing you a lot of.
And the only time you're seeing thoseis when they get into jobber, right?
(11:06):
I mean, you've got to go alittle bit more upstream,
which is a little moredifficult. I always tell people,
look for your total calls, and I knowthere's a lot of, where is my tech?
Did you pull the permits? All those kindof three calls just to get one book.
There is a lot of thatnoise, right? Yeah, exactly.
Vendors calling those kind of things,
but if you look at your overall callsto what's actually getting into jobber,
that will tell you somethingpretty interesting to look at,
(11:29):
and then from once it's in the system,
how many of those actually booked onceit booked, how many ran for revenue,
and then how many of those,what kind of revenue,
the quotes that turn intoreal revenue and real.
Jobs. Well, let's go to the runmetric. What'd you call it? Run.
Rate with revenue? Yeah, run. Okay.
Explain that.
A lot of businesses will have jobsthat run with little to no revenue,
(11:49):
if any revenue. It's generally.
An example of that, like aservice call for HVAC service.
Call for hvac.
That just doesn't, you.
Want free inspection, free quote.
I'm going to go out to your house andgive you a quote for what it's going to
cost to do all your windows.
I'm going to go out your house and tellyou a quote for what it's going to cost
for pest control, those kind ofthings. Those don't run for revenue.
They can result in revenue later on.
That's why you're looking at thatquote to sale number as well,
(12:10):
but you really want to lookat that because your board,
your call board might look totally busy,but there's no revenue on that money.
There's no money on that call board.There's no money. That's right.
So they're really key metrics.
Each one independently don't necessarilytell you the story. To your point,
if I had 15 free quotes go out today,
that might be the best day of mylife. I didn't make money that day,
(12:30):
but if most of those convertto a sale, that was a good day.
So you've got to really lookat all the metrics combined.
Katie, this has been a great conversation.I want to pause for a minute.
Talk about jobber. A lotof your clients use jobber.
What have you seen from jobber that makestheir operation so much better and run
smoother?
Night and day difference? For sure.
Being able to even just understandwhat some of the metrics are that are
(12:53):
occurring,
being able to understand where there'sholes or leaks in my revenue or in my
processes.
Most of our clients that are on jobberget an advantage because they have the
ability to look into theirbusiness from a 10,000 foot view.
You're in your truck,you're driving on your road,
you're doing all these things.
You don't have time to dig throughsheets of paper or go through hundreds of
phone calls to figureout what's happening.
(13:13):
Jobber takes all that informationand puts your fingertips.
You can really run your business fromthe top down view as well as get into the
weeds should you need to figureout how to solve a problem.
Yeah, I agree. Well said.You need jobber two,
you need to run your business moresmoothly and more effectively,
and jobber can do that for you.
So new users get an exclusivediscount at jobber.com/podcast deal,
(13:34):
get an exclusive discount andgo start using jobber today.
Some might view this as a rabbit trail,but I want to go down this a little bit.
So what you just said, you might have15 sales that day for future work,
but there was no revenuetoday. If you do that forever,
is that sustainable or do you haveto make sure that those jobs you're
(13:55):
booking on that day are pricedhigh enough to make up for the
lost revenue today?
Well, I don't think it's a lost revenue.
I think one of the things we don'tlook at in this business enough,
and if you have jobber,
you can look at this and that's likethe lifetime value of a customer.
I think we are in such a today business,
and that mindset has to shift a littlebit. It's worth investing in customers.
(14:16):
When we look at thecustomer lifetime value,
most customers will service with youif you do a good job more than once.
For example, hvac, you should be seeing'em at least once every 18 months.
The goal will be to see 'em every sixmonths depending on your climate and your
market. If you see that customer multipletimes, that customer's lifetime value,
even if I lost money upfront,
the lifetime value of that customerwas significant to my business.
(14:37):
As long as you're doingthe nurturing over time,
but don't assume that clients will juststay with you forever because they had
you come into their housefor 15 minutes at one time.
No, that's why,
because you and I were talking aboutwhy are you talking about operations,
Katie, you're a marketer. That is why,
because then I get thatrepeat referral business,
and if I can get my repeat referralbusiness, which is exactly what you said,
that lead nurturing, thehigher I get that, guess what?
(14:59):
The less I'm going to spend on marketingand my marketing's going to go to
growth marketing.
So if I have 75% of my jobswith that repeat and referral,
because I've done a great jobwith my lead nurturing with the
bookings and how I'mmanaging all of that, 700%,
I as a marketer have to find the 25%demand to fill the rest of that board,
(15:20):
but can also focus that extra investmentinto your growth into finding 10
more jobs for the three more techs thatyou want to hire. So that's really,
to me, lead nurturing operationsis so key to marketing,
and marketing should always understandwhat operations is doing so we can serve
that master.
Yeah, totally. I totally agreewith that. What was the last one?
(15:43):
The last metric you said was anaverage ticket. Average ticket.
Let's talk about that.
Any marketer that doesn't ask or talkto you about your average tickets,
make sure you talk to them.
Get a new marketer.
Get a new marketer. I don'twant to say it, but yeah,
get a new marketer and the reasonwhy is not all jobs are the same,
and what I'm willing to spend has tocorrelate with what you're going to make.
A great example of that is an hvac, right?
(16:04):
If I'm just going out totry and find a tuneup,
I'm not going to make a lot of money onthat tuneup, but if I find an install,
I'm willing to spend a lot moremoney for that conversion. Now,
there is a little bit of,
most people aren't searching for replacemy AC near me. They're searching for,
can you fix it? I heard a callone time, it's my favorite story.
The lady's air conditionerwas outside, was on fire,
(16:24):
and she called and she's like, Hey, canyou guys come fix this? They're like,
no, hang up the phone. Call nineone one. Call us back afterwards.
We'll put in a new unit, but they don'twant to think about repair, right?
So you've got a little bit of that,
but really understanding what youraverage ticket is helps any marketer
make sure that we're being responsiblewith your marketing budget.
Average tickets, average job size,
(16:45):
so for HVAC it might be eight grandfor pressure washing, it might be 1500.
Question about that,especially my business,
so we're going to talk aboutmy business for a minute.
We have two very distinct job sizes, andthis is not just me. It's very common,
very common in home service wherethe recurring service is average
job size three, 400 bucks, butthen the big job ticket is 2000.
(17:08):
How do you go about handlingthat for your clients?
That's where I think understandingthat whole process is really helpful,
what your conversion is, so youtalked about a great metric,
which was quote to sale.
Understanding those key performanceindicators and why it's so important to
share that with your marketing team isonce we understand that we'll know oh,
one in four convert, that letsus do some math on the backend.
(17:28):
We've got to be responsible about howwe're spending your marketing investment,
but again, it's got to follow what'shappening on the operation side,
and that changes. That changesseasonally. That changes with the economy.
That changes with electiontimes that come up,
so it's not a one-time conversation.
You should be having thisconversation regularly,
and no one knows more aboutthat than the contractor.
(17:49):
No one knows more aboutthat information than you,
so you have to share it,
but your marketing company should beasking and then know how to put that into
play.
One metric that I pay attention to, butI don't really know what it's called,
is the conversion fromrecurring service to a big
ticket sale, a big upsell,basically, not a small upsell.
(18:10):
Basically there's same day upsell thathad the average ticket up a little bit,
but then there's like,
we'll come back two weeks later andhave a big new hot water heater,
for example. Is there a term for that?
I actually think I've heard. I'm surethere is. Somebody probably knows.
It's huge. It's huge. Trust us.It's huge for every industry.
If you think about, we'llgo to drains for instance,
so they put a camera downand saw a main line failure.
(18:32):
That's a full dig or a trenchlessinstall, right? I mean,
those are the big tickets, And we usedto always joke when I started like,
you got to kiss a lot of frogs,
so throw those camera downsfor free to find your prints.
Not that people's main linefailures are things I root for,
but I'm planting trees. I'm over people'ssewer pipes all the time. Nowadays,
it's an investment in the future,right? Planting the trees, but no,
so it definitely is something,
(18:52):
and you've got to look at that and that'schanged. The one I just said to you,
drains, it used to be aboutone in four would convert.
Now we're seeing about one in five.
Not sure if that's an indication ofwhat's happening in the economy or the
market.
That's what we're seeing in the spaceand understanding that is significant
because now I know it's one in five,
I might even have to change how muchI'm willing to spend to even get that
(19:12):
initial lead to put the drain down becauseless of them are converting to those
larger tickets.
So now that we've hammered out themetrics that you really pay attention to,
I want to talk about how to improve those.
I'm not sure if we can get to all of them,
but what are some ways we canimprove some of those metrics?
First, it's identifying them,
putting 'em down on a sheet ofpaper and being honest about them,
(19:33):
but it's first about,
it's really identifying whatthey really are and being okay,
not when you find out it's really 50%booking rate because not all the calls are
getting in, you're not seeing 'em.
You're spending money on callsyou don't even know happened,
not grabbing your hair and runningthrough the building screaming at CSRs.
You've really got to understand whereyou're at first and then make a plan for
each one. If it's cancellation rate,are you listening to some calls?
(19:56):
Are you doing some trainings?
Maybe even hiring somebody or leaninginto the Facebook groups. My goodness,
there's so many Facebook groups out therewith such great advice that people are
willing to do for free. One of theones I've seen a ton of in this space,
and the reason I love this space is thereare people probably like yourself who
are willing to mentor justone phone call a month. Hey,
(20:16):
this is what we did andit made a huge difference.
Reach out to those kind of networks too.
So that's on the cancellation or thebooking rates I think is a big one.
Question about that. For a lot ofour listeners, they are tracking.
They have call tracking numbers,
and so they know if a GoogleLSA ad fault call comes through,
it's different than an organic.
Do you handle those anydifferently because there's a pain when I see an organic
(20:37):
phone call slip through cracks, whatever,
but when I pay $40 for a lead and itslips through cracks, I'm like, not good.
Right? Totally differentemotional reaction.
I'm thrilled you asked about thatactually. So local service ads,
they do use AI to listen to the callsand they know if you had what they call a
meaningful interaction, so you should beprioritizing those LSA calls for sure,
(20:58):
because the higher themeaningful interaction, the higher the responsive rate,
the better the responsive rate,
the more likely you are to getmore leads with local service ads,
just kind of a knownthing, but on the organic,
that made me sad a little bit insidebecause organics tend to convert at a
higher revenue, right?
They're probably existing customersor they're more Really? Yep.
We see it across the board.
The return on an organic lead issignificantly higher than return on a paid
(21:20):
lead.
Interesting.
I'm not sure if there'sloyalty in that or what.
Google business profile leadstend to be your highest revenue,
probably because they're looking for youor had some kind of trust in your name.
They're looking for you. Yeah.
Next is organic and then paid.
I'll be darn. I had no idea.Okay, so other metrics,
how to improve other metrics. Any other.
So we talked about the booking rate,and that's a super easy great one.
(21:42):
I think the next one thenrepeat and referral customers.
We got to know that number andyou already talked about that.
I know Jabber has an email program thatyou can do some lead nurturing and some
drip campaigns, butanything along those lines,
you'll be amazed if you send an emailout to your customers who serviced with
you three months ago, six months ago,depending on what your business is.
If it's pest control service lastmonth, but maybe didn't buy a contract,
(22:03):
great time to reach back up,
but putting out those campaigns and it'sprobably the least expensive marketing
investment with one of thebest returns you'll make.
Yeah, I mean, if you're notemailing your clients regularly,
you're losing money.
A hundred percent.
If someone wants to start small andnot necessarily hire a marketer yet,
even though I think I recommend thatmyself, what are some tools? MailChimp,
jobber has a reallygood integr, MailChimp.
(22:25):
Any other tools that you would recommendjust for beginners doing 10,000.
A month? I think it's a lot out there,but I don't think you need 10,000 emails.
You said a month.
10,000 A month. People are justdoing 10,000 revenue a month revenue.
Small company.
That's great because I don't even thinkyou necessarily need to invest in all
those if it's small, Small enough.If you can get that email list,
you might even be able to just grab thecustomers you serviced one month ago,
two months ago, three months ago,
(22:45):
and send out an emailthrough your email system.
You want to be a little careful becauseyou got to make sure they opt in and a
few other things, but Ithink MailChimp is excellent.
HubSpot's got some automation.If you want to get really crazy,
there's companies called high level thatcan set some things up that a little
more sophistication, but MailChimp'sa really, really great place to start.
I agree. Yeah.
Automation though, andsomething, and again,
I'm not just saying this because we'rewith Jobber or some of those other ones,
(23:08):
let's you set it and thenmove on to the next thing.
As a small business ownerdoing 10 grand a month,
I don't have time to be my pro marketerdon't have time to also then be the head
cook and bottle washer as well as thejanitor as well as someone going out doing
the.
Jobs. And just to give our listenersa really different angle on this,
I would say that even if you're small,I mean this can be done at any level,
(23:29):
is hire VA from somewhere and
have them call through your listliterally every month or every quarter.
Yes.
Hey, it's the fall. It's time to do X,Y, and Z. Hey, it's the winter. Hey,
it's the spring,
and you'll be amazed at the valueyou get from the VA doing that.
A hundred percent. I did that abouta year ago for the first time,
(23:51):
and it blew my mind.
Yeah, virtual assistant.
I couldn't believe that. Ihadn't been doing it before that.
Yes, and I always try and load theirlips with something I don't want.
Every time you talk tome and you don't want,
every time I talk toyou to be a sales pitch,
think about something you can addfor value. Hey, it's the fall time.
Making sure you get some of those leavesout with a blower might make sure you
get longer use out of your gutters. Idon't know if I made that one, but hey,
(24:14):
it's time to change your filters.
If you haven't thought about thatcoming up is daylight savings time,
potentially time to change thebatteries in your smoke alarms.
Any of those little touches that youcan give customers that make them
understand that you're there for them,
not just there to do something to themgenerally helps quite a bit as well.
And I second your commentabout virtual assistance.
It doesn't change your booking rate.
(24:34):
Repeat, repeat referral.
Yeah. That rate, it helps.
And the higher you get yourrepeat and referral customers,
the more you can invest in growth,
and I think that that maybe isn'tnecessarily everybody's goal,
but we all want to be doing some growingand some improvements in our revenue
changes. So to me, the more you canincrease that repeat and referral,
the better my investment can beto take me to that next level.
(24:56):
Last thing,
is there a way to increaseaverage job size through
marketing?
Yes.
How do you do that?
I think there's a couple of ways.
One is depending on thelevel of sophistication,
some niche marketing or niche marketing,
we talked about thatniche or niche marketing,
so if you know what your best jobs are,
take a small percentage of your budgetif you're using a marketing budget and
(25:18):
put it towards that,
even if it's just a Facebook campaignand an area that has stucco homes and
you're doing some repainting and thosekinds of things. That's one thing.
I think the second thingis how you present yourself in that marketing ahead of
time.
Someone did a study about adding thephoto of the tech to the email or the text
message prior to coming out. Itjust creates that trust level.
(25:41):
Now I see who's going to bein my home. People love that.
Yeah, they love knowing what theguy looks like before he gets there.
Well, it just makes me feel better now.
I'm not going to get someone knockingat my door that with all the scams and
things out there. Again, it's justabout increasing that trust level,
that communication to the client.
Katie, this has been great.
I'm going to try to boil down ourconversation in three actual items here.
Number one is create a contentcampaign after your jobs book to
(26:03):
keep them engaged. That mightbe an F, A Q that's helpful.
It might be reinforcingyour fives for reviews,
whatever you can do to make peoplefeel more comfortable so you get less
cancellations the next day.
Number two is be emailing yourclients on a regular basis.
If you're not emailing your clientsregularly, you're losing money.
Nurture them.
Remind them that you exist or remindthem that you're always there to solve
(26:25):
their problem.
Number three is add a photo ofthe tech coming to their house.
It makes a big difference. Katie,
I feel like it's just starttracking is the theme here.
Yeah, there was a lot of really greatideas, a lot of great takeaways.
You summed it up really well,
but I think the biggest thing is youcannot even start things until you know
where your numbers are at now, so justtake it, go in there, take a look,
(26:47):
deep dive,
identify what you think yourkey performance indicators are and start tracking.
Yeah. Awesome. Katie, how dopeople find out more about you?
Katie Donovan with Camp Digital. You cancheck us out by going to our website,
camp digital.com, or you can emailme directly at katie@campdigital.com.
Great. Well, thanks for beinghere. I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure.
And thank you for listening.
(27:08):
I hope that you heard something todaythat will help you improve your booking
rate and your cancellationrates and all the other KPIs.
My name's Adam Sylvester. I'm your host.
You can always find me@adamsylvester.com.
Your clients and your team deserveyour very best, so go give it to 'em.
With the dawn of ai,
there's no reason why you can't have ahundred percent of your calls evaluated
regularly and there's a lot ofreally inexpensive and darn near free
solutions that will help you listento calls and go through some things.
Welcome to jobbers, masters of HomeService, a podcast for home service pros,
buy Home Service pros.
(00:20):
We're in Las Vegas and today we'retalking about your cancellation rate,
other metrics, and how to improveyour job metrics. I'm your host,
Adam Sylvester. Today's guest ismarketing expert, Katie Donovan. Katie,
welcome to the show.
Thank you so much for having me. I'mso excited to have this conversation.
Why don't you tell our listenerswho you are and what you do?
My name is Katie Donovan.I'm the CEO of Camp Digital.
(00:41):
We are a digital marketingcompany just for the trades.
Camp actually stands for capacityaligned Marketing platform,
so we take a slightly different approachto how we market into the trades.
Katie, most people,
I think tend to think about marketersbeing responsible for just getting leads,
but you have a different approach.
You think a lot of the responsibilityof cancellations and some of these
(01:02):
metrics, booking rates,
those kinds of things actuallyfall on you as the marketer.
So can you explain that for us?
Not necessarily responsibility,
but marketing should alwaysbe subservient to operations.
There's so many things I think wejust think about just get leads,
throw 'em over the fence and everythingelse will take care of itself,
but it doesn't and there's so much wastein marketing because we don't take time
to work with our partners and operations.
(01:23):
A really great example ofthat is something I think we're going to talk a little
bit about today,
which is understanding those KPIs to keepperformance indicators of business and
how those KPIs can influencewhat you're doing in marketing.
Great example,
one we were talking about earlier iscancellation rates and those fluctuate by
season,
but knowing those cancellation rates maymean if it's HVAC company for instance,
(01:45):
it's the first big heat coming throughor the first big freeze coming through,
you might actually have to throw moreleads than anticipated because you're
going to have some cancellationrates going over the feds.
What do you mean by that?Cancellation rate, people canceling.
What are they canceling?
What we've found,
and it's been backed up by a lot of thesources that we've got from studies from
some of our partners like Google,
is that a lot of people noware calling multiple vendors.
(02:06):
I'm sure you see this all the time,
but they'll call two or three people asopposed to just calling one and whoever
gets there first is the personthey'll work with. Most of the time,
the first person that gets in the homeis the one that gets the business,
so we always want to be in the home,
so they're calling morethan one person at a time,
more than one business at a time,
and so you might get acancellation or mysteriously,
we see this happen a lot withdrains. Oh, it fixed itself. Well,
(02:27):
it didn't fix itself.
The problem just feels like it went awayfor a little bit and I don't want to
deal with it until the next timeI have a backup in my master tub.
So a lot of times those are some of thecancellations. So the customer called,
they booked and then for some reason hascalled you back and said they no longer
need your services, so.
People book an assessmentor an appointment for a sales appointment and then
they cancel the next day becausethe appointment wasn't soon enough.
(02:48):
That can be it.
That can be what we found is somereally easy things to do to help pull
that cancellation ratedown is some marketing,
probably not the traditional marketingmost people think of when they think
about marketing, but simply putting acampaign in place that does, Hey, Mr.
Or Mrs. Customer,
thank you so much for bookingthe appointment with my business.
We have you scheduled for Thursdayand we'll be there on Thursday.
(03:09):
Then the day before, hiMr. Or Mrs. Customer,
we have you scheduled for tomorrow.If anything changes, let us know.
Otherwise our tech will be out there.
Maybe a picture of the tech if you cando it. People love that the same day,
Hey, we're coming out this day. Want tojust remind you, we'll be at the house.
You'll get a phone call 20 minutes prior.
Whatever your practices andpolicies are for your procedures,
for how you do those,
that will actually pull that cancellationrate down significantly because
(03:31):
customers know they're understoodwhat to expect in the process.
They know what's coming. Theyknow you're actually coming.
They aren't shopping for other peoplein that meantime. They get nervous.
They booked it for Thursday and theyhaven't heard from you kind of thing,
and when that cancellation ratecomes down, you need less leads,
which means you'respending less in marketing,
which is a good thing foreverybody, including marketers.
(03:53):
We can get you more leads. That book,that convert, that convert for revenue,
the happier everybody is in that process.
Well, this, you've been reading mymail because the last few months,
whenever someone cancels, thankfullywe don't have very many cancellations,
but we're also not urgent services.
I'm always kind of perplexed likeyour gutters aren't instantly fixed.
(04:15):
What happened in the lastthree days for example,
that caused them to change their mind?And we obviously don't know. No, no, no.
The answer. Well,
we can guess and so what are someother reasons that people tend to
fall off the books?
The biggest ones that wesee are threefold, right?
One is either customer got somebodyelse to come out and do it.
Even with gutters.
If.
I'm having a party this weekend,put this off to the last minute,
(04:37):
want to make sure the houselooks great because gutters,
they're kind of the smile of the house.
They spit around the outside of the house,
want to make sure that those look great.
There's no plants growingout of them as mine are,
but so it's getting somebody elseto come first and service me first.
The second one is theproblem solved itself.
We see this a lot with water heaters.Suddenly the water got warm again,
and that's just because something'sfailing in the unit or trust factors.
(05:01):
They'll be digging up a little bit orthey went to Facebook and said, Hey,
has anyone worked with thiscompany and one bad apple, the one,
don't hire that guys smirk. You cut meoff on the street. Those kinds of things.
Those are probably the three biggestones. There's also a lot of other reasons,
but again, with marketing processes,especially if you've got a system,
A CRM in place that can help youdo these things, do the follow-up,
(05:23):
you see that reduced significantlyand the cost savings are phenomenal.
I'll give you a quick example. If I,
you're spending about a hundreddollars to get a lead and you have a
cancellation rate say of 10% means $10.
If.
You can increase what you actually run,so decrease your cancellation rate,
that savings goes rightto your bottom line,
one in every 10 would buy you anotherjob. Just some simple math, right?
(05:46):
It's amazing what it does when you startto do that at scale and just putting an
automatic email campaign in place ora phone follow-up process in place
to let those customers know you're coming.
Maybe even send them your great reviews.
So if they do hear from AuntBetty not to work with them,
you've already given them the reviewsthat say, I'm a 4.9 with 400 reviews.
Trust me.
(06:06):
I want to get into how totrack the cancellation rate,
some misunderstandingsabout how to do that,
but a lot of things you justmentioned I view are like a CSR issue.
If this is really urgent and theCS r books it a week from now,
that's a mistake. I'm curious,
do you guys do any direct work withthe CSR to make sure they're saying the
right things so that yourprocess is set up to succeed
(06:29):
after the CS R talks to 'em?
We do some call evaluation. Wedon't actually work directly.
Our relationship is more with the ownersor the marketing CMOs kind of thing,
chief marketing officers, but whatwe try and do is say, Hey, listen,
we listen to these calls and here's whythey didn't book with the dawn of ai.
There's no reason why you can't have ahundred percent of your calls evaluated
regularly. It tells you,
(06:50):
and there's a lot of really inexpensiveand darn near free solutions that will
help you listen to callsand go through some things.
That's interesting. Ihaven't heard about that.
So you can use an AI to listen to yourphone calls and they give you feedback
on what tonality, posture.
Yep. You give positiv.
Positivity, that kind of stuff.
Yeah, absolutely. There's companiesout there already that do it.
You can actually find stuffonline pretty inexpensive too,
(07:13):
but you can go in and say, Hey,
listen to these calls and tell medid they ask for the appointment?
Did they ask for the email?What was the overall tone?
Was there swearing on the call? Right?That's a great one to look for. Yeah,
I wish it wasn't a thing.Yeah, if nothing else,
you're going to want to listen to theones that didn't book to hear what was
really going on there.
That's really interesting. I'll add thatto my homework to go back and listen.
(07:35):
I do listen to a lot of my phone callsmanually though. I don't plug it into ai,
so I'll give that a try.
So in terms of how do you reallyknow what your cancellation rate is,
because the CSR can fudge somenumbers and that kind of stuff,
so how do you really know?
I think it helps to have a system,some kind of tool in place for sure,
but really looking, if you have a system,
(07:56):
really just looking at those total bookcalls and then how many calls called you
to Unbook.
There's a little bit of gray in therebecause I think depending on your
business, sometimes we're shufflingthe deck chairs around a little bit.
We're calling saying,Hey, we got really full.
I had you scheduled for atuneup and a nohe call came in.
You're probably going to move the tuneup.
I see. More urgent.
(08:17):
Yeah.
Really what you're looking for is thenumber of customers that call you back and
cancel that appointment,
and it can be hard if you don'thave a system or a CRM in place.
It can be a real challenge to get yourhands wrapped around that and some of the
other kind of key performancesyndicators of your business.
And so as a lead, justwhatever. Let talk about jobber.
So a request comes in jobber,
there might've been threecalls that led to that one,
(08:39):
so we might get a hundredcalls and only get 50 leads.
How do you mash those two together?
Well, really we're looking forthat request that comes in,
that request that comesinto jobber gets booked,
and then how many of thosebooks call back and say, Hey,
I no longer need your services,and my favorite is, Hey,
I'm going to have to call youback and book it another time.
They're not calling back, right?
I say.
(09:00):
Goodbye. Yeah, thank youso much. Appreciate it.
It's really for cancellationrate particularly,
you're looking at how many of thosecalls booked and then the customer called
back and said, no longer needyour services for whatever reason,
and most of the time they're notterribly transparent about it.
They want to be nice.
I want to get into booking rate.
Anything else about cancellationrate that are listed?
No. I'm thrilled that you're goingto go to booking rate. I think,
(09:22):
and you and I were talkinga little bit about this,
but your marketing shouldreally understand a few KPIs,
your booking rate being one of 'em,your cancellation rate run for revenue,
because even if I booka job and I run a job,
I didn't necessarily run it forrevenue and then your total return and
average tickets, so thoseKPIs are so important.
(09:42):
Okay, so booking rate is what exactly?
The calls that come in,
and this is where I think I get in alittle bit of trouble in the space,
but calls that come in that actuallyturn into a booked appointment,
whether they ran or not, but actuallyturn into a booked appointment,
and I think I have this conversationwith a lot of people. Everyone's like,
mine's like 95%. Well, I mean,
(10:02):
is it really? Yeah, I lookat those all the time.
I was kind of joking with youearlier, but my parents didn't know.
I almost didn't graduate high schooluntil I actually almost didn't graduate
because my report,
I'm old enough for the report cards tocome back in paper and I can turn any
letter into an A, right?When self-reporting,
which most of the reportingis self-reporting,
our CSRs are telling ushow well they're booking,
how well they're doing those things.
(10:23):
You're not really looking at theoverall calls that convert to bookings.
So in jobber, ourlisteners are using jobber.
You can look at a salesperson's report and see how many
quotes they sent and how many ofthose converted to jobs, et cetera.
It doesn't show right now is how manyleads were those quotes converted
(10:44):
from, and so it's a very importantmetric, quotes to conversion,
but if you don't go back in time a littlebit and see how many leads there were
and how many phone calls there were,you're really only getting half the story,
and so you really have to pay attentionto because you might be getting a lot of
phone calls that are justnot converting into anything,
and that's really costing you a lot of.
And the only time you're seeing thoseis when they get into jobber, right?
(11:06):
I mean, you've got to go alittle bit more upstream,
which is a little moredifficult. I always tell people,
look for your total calls, and I knowthere's a lot of, where is my tech?
Did you pull the permits? All those kindof three calls just to get one book.
There is a lot of thatnoise, right? Yeah, exactly.
Vendors calling those kind of things,
but if you look at your overall callsto what's actually getting into jobber,
that will tell you somethingpretty interesting to look at,
(11:29):
and then from once it's in the system,
how many of those actually booked onceit booked, how many ran for revenue,
and then how many of those,what kind of revenue,
the quotes that turn intoreal revenue and real.
Jobs. Well, let's go to the runmetric. What'd you call it? Run.
Rate with revenue? Yeah, run. Okay.
Explain that.
A lot of businesses will have jobsthat run with little to no revenue,
(11:49):
if any revenue. It's generally.
An example of that, like aservice call for HVAC service.
Call for hvac.
That just doesn't, you.
Want free inspection, free quote.
I'm going to go out to your house andgive you a quote for what it's going to
cost to do all your windows.
I'm going to go out your house and tellyou a quote for what it's going to cost
for pest control, those kind ofthings. Those don't run for revenue.
They can result in revenue later on.
That's why you're looking at thatquote to sale number as well,
(12:10):
but you really want to lookat that because your board,
your call board might look totally busy,but there's no revenue on that money.
There's no money on that call board.There's no money. That's right.
So they're really key metrics.
Each one independently don't necessarilytell you the story. To your point,
if I had 15 free quotes go out today,
that might be the best day of mylife. I didn't make money that day,
(12:30):
but if most of those convertto a sale, that was a good day.
So you've got to really lookat all the metrics combined.
Katie, this has been a great conversation.I want to pause for a minute.
Talk about jobber. A lotof your clients use jobber.
What have you seen from jobber that makestheir operation so much better and run
smoother?
Night and day difference? For sure.
Being able to even just understandwhat some of the metrics are that are
(12:53):
occurring,
being able to understand where there'sholes or leaks in my revenue or in my
processes.
Most of our clients that are on jobberget an advantage because they have the
ability to look into theirbusiness from a 10,000 foot view.
You're in your truck,you're driving on your road,
you're doing all these things.
You don't have time to dig throughsheets of paper or go through hundreds of
phone calls to figureout what's happening.
(13:13):
Jobber takes all that informationand puts your fingertips.
You can really run your business fromthe top down view as well as get into the
weeds should you need to figureout how to solve a problem.
Yeah, I agree. Well said.You need jobber two,
you need to run your business moresmoothly and more effectively,
and jobber can do that for you.
So new users get an exclusivediscount at jobber.com/podcast deal,
(13:34):
get an exclusive discount andgo start using jobber today.
Some might view this as a rabbit trail,but I want to go down this a little bit.
So what you just said, you might have15 sales that day for future work,
but there was no revenuetoday. If you do that forever,
is that sustainable or do you haveto make sure that those jobs you're
(13:55):
booking on that day are pricedhigh enough to make up for the
lost revenue today?
Well, I don't think it's a lost revenue.
I think one of the things we don'tlook at in this business enough,
and if you have jobber,
you can look at this and that's likethe lifetime value of a customer.
I think we are in such a today business,
and that mindset has to shift a littlebit. It's worth investing in customers.
(14:16):
When we look at thecustomer lifetime value,
most customers will service with youif you do a good job more than once.
For example, hvac, you should be seeing'em at least once every 18 months.
The goal will be to see 'em every sixmonths depending on your climate and your
market. If you see that customer multipletimes, that customer's lifetime value,
even if I lost money upfront,
the lifetime value of that customerwas significant to my business.
(14:37):
As long as you're doingthe nurturing over time,
but don't assume that clients will juststay with you forever because they had
you come into their housefor 15 minutes at one time.
No, that's why,
because you and I were talking aboutwhy are you talking about operations,
Katie, you're a marketer. That is why,
because then I get thatrepeat referral business,
and if I can get my repeat referralbusiness, which is exactly what you said,
that lead nurturing, thehigher I get that, guess what?
(14:59):
The less I'm going to spend on marketingand my marketing's going to go to
growth marketing.
So if I have 75% of my jobswith that repeat and referral,
because I've done a great jobwith my lead nurturing with the
bookings and how I'mmanaging all of that, 700%,
I as a marketer have to find the 25%demand to fill the rest of that board,
(15:20):
but can also focus that extra investmentinto your growth into finding 10
more jobs for the three more techs thatyou want to hire. So that's really,
to me, lead nurturing operationsis so key to marketing,
and marketing should always understandwhat operations is doing so we can serve
that master.
Yeah, totally. I totally agreewith that. What was the last one?
(15:43):
The last metric you said was anaverage ticket. Average ticket.
Let's talk about that.
Any marketer that doesn't ask or talkto you about your average tickets,
make sure you talk to them.
Get a new marketer.
Get a new marketer. I don'twant to say it, but yeah,
get a new marketer and the reasonwhy is not all jobs are the same,
and what I'm willing to spend has tocorrelate with what you're going to make.
A great example of that is an hvac, right?
(16:04):
If I'm just going out totry and find a tuneup,
I'm not going to make a lot of money onthat tuneup, but if I find an install,
I'm willing to spend a lot moremoney for that conversion. Now,
there is a little bit of,
most people aren't searching for replacemy AC near me. They're searching for,
can you fix it? I heard a callone time, it's my favorite story.
The lady's air conditionerwas outside, was on fire,
(16:24):
and she called and she's like, Hey, canyou guys come fix this? They're like,
no, hang up the phone. Call nineone one. Call us back afterwards.
We'll put in a new unit, but they don'twant to think about repair, right?
So you've got a little bit of that,
but really understanding what youraverage ticket is helps any marketer
make sure that we're being responsiblewith your marketing budget.
Average tickets, average job size,
(16:45):
so for HVAC it might be eight grandfor pressure washing, it might be 1500.
Question about that,especially my business,
so we're going to talk aboutmy business for a minute.
We have two very distinct job sizes, andthis is not just me. It's very common,
very common in home service wherethe recurring service is average
job size three, 400 bucks, butthen the big job ticket is 2000.
(17:08):
How do you go about handlingthat for your clients?
That's where I think understandingthat whole process is really helpful,
what your conversion is, so youtalked about a great metric,
which was quote to sale.
Understanding those key performanceindicators and why it's so important to
share that with your marketing team isonce we understand that we'll know oh,
one in four convert, that letsus do some math on the backend.
(17:28):
We've got to be responsible about howwe're spending your marketing investment,
but again, it's got to follow what'shappening on the operation side,
and that changes. That changesseasonally. That changes with the economy.
That changes with electiontimes that come up,
so it's not a one-time conversation.
You should be having thisconversation regularly,
and no one knows more aboutthat than the contractor.
(17:49):
No one knows more aboutthat information than you,
so you have to share it,
but your marketing company should beasking and then know how to put that into
play.
One metric that I pay attention to, butI don't really know what it's called,
is the conversion fromrecurring service to a big
ticket sale, a big upsell,basically, not a small upsell.
(18:10):
Basically there's same day upsell thathad the average ticket up a little bit,
but then there's like,
we'll come back two weeks later andhave a big new hot water heater,
for example. Is there a term for that?
I actually think I've heard. I'm surethere is. Somebody probably knows.
It's huge. It's huge. Trust us.It's huge for every industry.
If you think about, we'llgo to drains for instance,
so they put a camera downand saw a main line failure.
(18:32):
That's a full dig or a trenchlessinstall, right? I mean,
those are the big tickets, And we usedto always joke when I started like,
you got to kiss a lot of frogs,
so throw those camera downsfor free to find your prints.
Not that people's main linefailures are things I root for,
but I'm planting trees. I'm over people'ssewer pipes all the time. Nowadays,
it's an investment in the future,right? Planting the trees, but no,
so it definitely is something,
(18:52):
and you've got to look at that and that'schanged. The one I just said to you,
drains, it used to be aboutone in four would convert.
Now we're seeing about one in five.
Not sure if that's an indication ofwhat's happening in the economy or the
market.
That's what we're seeing in the spaceand understanding that is significant
because now I know it's one in five,
I might even have to change how muchI'm willing to spend to even get that
(19:12):
initial lead to put the drain down becauseless of them are converting to those
larger tickets.
So now that we've hammered out themetrics that you really pay attention to,
I want to talk about how to improve those.
I'm not sure if we can get to all of them,
but what are some ways we canimprove some of those metrics?
First, it's identifying them,
putting 'em down on a sheet ofpaper and being honest about them,
(19:33):
but it's first about,
it's really identifying whatthey really are and being okay,
not when you find out it's really 50%booking rate because not all the calls are
getting in, you're not seeing 'em.
You're spending money on callsyou don't even know happened,
not grabbing your hair and runningthrough the building screaming at CSRs.
You've really got to understand whereyou're at first and then make a plan for
each one. If it's cancellation rate,are you listening to some calls?
(19:56):
Are you doing some trainings?
Maybe even hiring somebody or leaninginto the Facebook groups. My goodness,
there's so many Facebook groups out therewith such great advice that people are
willing to do for free. One of theones I've seen a ton of in this space,
and the reason I love this space is thereare people probably like yourself who
are willing to mentor justone phone call a month. Hey,
(20:16):
this is what we did andit made a huge difference.
Reach out to those kind of networks too.
So that's on the cancellation or thebooking rates I think is a big one.
Question about that. For a lot ofour listeners, they are tracking.
They have call tracking numbers,
and so they know if a GoogleLSA ad fault call comes through,
it's different than an organic.
Do you handle those anydifferently because there's a pain when I see an organic
(20:37):
phone call slip through cracks, whatever,
but when I pay $40 for a lead and itslips through cracks, I'm like, not good.
Right? Totally differentemotional reaction.
I'm thrilled you asked about thatactually. So local service ads,
they do use AI to listen to the callsand they know if you had what they call a
meaningful interaction, so you should beprioritizing those LSA calls for sure,
(20:58):
because the higher themeaningful interaction, the higher the responsive rate,
the better the responsive rate,
the more likely you are to getmore leads with local service ads,
just kind of a knownthing, but on the organic,
that made me sad a little bit insidebecause organics tend to convert at a
higher revenue, right?
They're probably existing customersor they're more Really? Yep.
We see it across the board.
The return on an organic lead issignificantly higher than return on a paid
(21:20):
lead.
Interesting.
I'm not sure if there'sloyalty in that or what.
Google business profile leadstend to be your highest revenue,
probably because they're looking for youor had some kind of trust in your name.
They're looking for you. Yeah.
Next is organic and then paid.
I'll be darn. I had no idea.Okay, so other metrics,
how to improve other metrics. Any other.
So we talked about the booking rate,and that's a super easy great one.
(21:42):
I think the next one thenrepeat and referral customers.
We got to know that number andyou already talked about that.
I know Jabber has an email program thatyou can do some lead nurturing and some
drip campaigns, butanything along those lines,
you'll be amazed if you send an emailout to your customers who serviced with
you three months ago, six months ago,depending on what your business is.
If it's pest control service lastmonth, but maybe didn't buy a contract,
(22:03):
great time to reach back up,
but putting out those campaigns and it'sprobably the least expensive marketing
investment with one of thebest returns you'll make.
Yeah, I mean, if you're notemailing your clients regularly,
you're losing money.
A hundred percent.
If someone wants to start small andnot necessarily hire a marketer yet,
even though I think I recommend thatmyself, what are some tools? MailChimp,
jobber has a reallygood integr, MailChimp.
(22:25):
Any other tools that you would recommendjust for beginners doing 10,000.
A month? I think it's a lot out there,but I don't think you need 10,000 emails.
You said a month.
10,000 A month. People are justdoing 10,000 revenue a month revenue.
Small company.
That's great because I don't even thinkyou necessarily need to invest in all
those if it's small, Small enough.If you can get that email list,
you might even be able to just grab thecustomers you serviced one month ago,
two months ago, three months ago,
(22:45):
and send out an emailthrough your email system.
You want to be a little careful becauseyou got to make sure they opt in and a
few other things, but Ithink MailChimp is excellent.
HubSpot's got some automation.If you want to get really crazy,
there's companies called high level thatcan set some things up that a little
more sophistication, but MailChimp'sa really, really great place to start.
I agree. Yeah.
Automation though, andsomething, and again,
I'm not just saying this because we'rewith Jobber or some of those other ones,
(23:08):
let's you set it and thenmove on to the next thing.
As a small business ownerdoing 10 grand a month,
I don't have time to be my pro marketerdon't have time to also then be the head
cook and bottle washer as well as thejanitor as well as someone going out doing
the.
Jobs. And just to give our listenersa really different angle on this,
I would say that even if you're small,I mean this can be done at any level,
(23:29):
is hire VA from somewhere and
have them call through your listliterally every month or every quarter.
Yes.
Hey, it's the fall. It's time to do X,Y, and Z. Hey, it's the winter. Hey,
it's the spring,
and you'll be amazed at the valueyou get from the VA doing that.
A hundred percent. I did that abouta year ago for the first time,
(23:51):
and it blew my mind.
Yeah, virtual assistant.
I couldn't believe that. Ihadn't been doing it before that.
Yes, and I always try and load theirlips with something I don't want.
Every time you talk tome and you don't want,
every time I talk toyou to be a sales pitch,
think about something you can addfor value. Hey, it's the fall time.
Making sure you get some of those leavesout with a blower might make sure you
get longer use out of your gutters. Idon't know if I made that one, but hey,
(24:14):
it's time to change your filters.
If you haven't thought about thatcoming up is daylight savings time,
potentially time to change thebatteries in your smoke alarms.
Any of those little touches that youcan give customers that make them
understand that you're there for them,
not just there to do something to themgenerally helps quite a bit as well.
And I second your commentabout virtual assistance.
It doesn't change your booking rate.
(24:34):
Repeat, repeat referral.
Yeah. That rate, it helps.
And the higher you get yourrepeat and referral customers,
the more you can invest in growth,
and I think that that maybe isn'tnecessarily everybody's goal,
but we all want to be doing some growingand some improvements in our revenue
changes. So to me, the more you canincrease that repeat and referral,
the better my investment can beto take me to that next level.
(24:56):
Last thing,
is there a way to increaseaverage job size through
marketing?
Yes.
How do you do that?
I think there's a couple of ways.
One is depending on thelevel of sophistication,
some niche marketing or niche marketing,
we talked about thatniche or niche marketing,
so if you know what your best jobs are,
take a small percentage of your budgetif you're using a marketing budget and
(25:18):
put it towards that,
even if it's just a Facebook campaignand an area that has stucco homes and
you're doing some repainting and thosekinds of things. That's one thing.
I think the second thingis how you present yourself in that marketing ahead of
time.
Someone did a study about adding thephoto of the tech to the email or the text
message prior to coming out. Itjust creates that trust level.
(25:41):
Now I see who's going to bein my home. People love that.
Yeah, they love knowing what theguy looks like before he gets there.
Well, it just makes me feel better now.
I'm not going to get someone knockingat my door that with all the scams and
things out there. Again, it's justabout increasing that trust level,
that communication to the client.
Katie, this has been great.
I'm going to try to boil down ourconversation in three actual items here.
Number one is create a contentcampaign after your jobs book to
(26:03):
keep them engaged. That mightbe an F, A Q that's helpful.
It might be reinforcingyour fives for reviews,
whatever you can do to make peoplefeel more comfortable so you get less
cancellations the next day.
Number two is be emailing yourclients on a regular basis.
If you're not emailing your clientsregularly, you're losing money.
Nurture them.
Remind them that you exist or remindthem that you're always there to solve
(26:25):
their problem.
Number three is add a photo ofthe tech coming to their house.
It makes a big difference. Katie,
I feel like it's just starttracking is the theme here.
Yeah, there was a lot of really greatideas, a lot of great takeaways.
You summed it up really well,
but I think the biggest thing is youcannot even start things until you know
where your numbers are at now, so justtake it, go in there, take a look,
(26:47):
deep dive,
identify what you think yourkey performance indicators are and start tracking.
Yeah. Awesome. Katie, how dopeople find out more about you?
Katie Donovan with Camp Digital. You cancheck us out by going to our website,
camp digital.com, or you can emailme directly at katie@campdigital.com.
Great. Well, thanks for beinghere. I really appreciate it.
Thank you so much. It was such a pleasure.
And thank you for listening.
(27:08):
I hope that you heard something todaythat will help you improve your booking
rate and your cancellationrates and all the other KPIs.
My name's Adam Sylvester. I'm your host.
You can always find me@adamsylvester.com.
Your clients and your team deserveyour very best, so go give it to 'em.
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